Time is Zooming By

It's true, it's almost Thanksgiving.  Last week I thought I had written a blog post the week prior, but I had not, so it has been almost 3 weeks since my last post.  

It seems there is not a lot to write about, or at least not a lot of photos since the weather has been very dreary.  But I have finished some things and Grover and I went Bar Hopping (agility trial) and there are more things coming up.

First of all, Grover and I did go attend a 3 day agility trial Nov 3, 4 & 5.  It wasn't as great as the prior trial for us, but it was still good and lots of fun.  We had no Qs for 3 runs on Friday.  On Saturday, we had 1 Q for 3 runs.  That was a standard Q.  Then Sunday we Qd in both standard and jumpers, for our 12th QQ.  Which brings our QQ total to 12 out of 20 needed for our MACH.  We still also need 356 points out of 750, so we're (more than) a little behind on that, which means we need to be faster AND accurate.   Grover and I are attending a trial in Zanesville this coming weekend.  We will miss Friday and also Saturday morning since we will be going to Dayton for Thanksgiving.  We will leave my truck in Zanesville on Thursday on the way to Mom's and Sam will just drop Grover and me off on Saturday and he and Rowdy will go on home.   

And of course Thanksgiving is only 3 days away.  Our gathering will be a little larger this year than the last few years, with my brother's family having moved back to Ohio from Arizona, but we will still be missing the Michigan contingent and my own kids living out west. I know life is change, but there are people whose presence will be greatly missed.  
 
It was cold a dreary all weekend as I said.  Today it is cold, but the sun is shining, which helps a little.  Since it was cold and dreary, I spent some time in my studio over the weekend finishing up some projects and starting a new one.  I also did a little tidying up.  The finished project is several towels all from one warp.  Originally I wanted to make them all with the Christmas borders on them, but I had so much trouble with the plain weave parts that I gave up.  The yarn was fine and I had all kinds of tension problems with it.  If there are too many problems and the project is not fun, there is no point in struggling through.  I do this because I enjoy it after all.  A week from this coming Saturday is our local Christmas Festival and I will have a booth space there, so these towels will be part of what I have to sell.


Having done a little tidying up of the studio, I thought I'd make a record here of how it looks now, 6 months after I moved into it.  This is the front to the right of the door as you come in.  








 


Continuing around to the right is my storage shelving and the alpaca rug where Rowdy likes to spend a lot of time.  He was not out here when I took these photos however.

On the back wall is my sewing machine, and my drum carder for processing fleece is under the window.  The big empty spot to the left of that will be where I eventually put the large cabinet that is currently in the loom room at the office

And here, before we get back to the door, is where my loom is set up.  This loom will eventually be moved to the other side of the space (first photo) and my big rug loom will go in its current location.  I need some more lighting, particularly over my sewing area, but in general I am very happy with this space.  And I should be.

Grover and I have been taking a fairly regular morning walk of about a mile.  This morning I had my camera with me and took a photo from the "flat" we walk across looking down toward the house and buildings.

Now that the leaves are off the trees, the alpaca barn (red roof) and studio (white door, green roof) to the right of the alpaca barn are somewhat visible. The sun is just coming up over the ridge behind me and you can see it on the ridge on the other side.  Our valley or  "holler" is quite narrow.

 I have been knitting a sweater with my handspun alpaca/shetland yarn.  It has interesting construction, starting in the center of the front and then the right sleeve.  I am also doing some Christmas gift knitting, so this is going slowly.  

 We have had a lot of rain, so the creek is running.  The 3 hens on the far end of the bridge are the old hens.  The new ones seem to be watching them in order to figure out how to get to the other side of the water.  All the new hens are laying eggs now.  We are getting 10 eggs a day, so we once again have eggs for sale.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

November Arrives

I promised a chicken photo.  Well here they are.  The somewhat lighter colored hen in the foreground is one of the 3 hens remaining from the 8 I got a little over 2 years ago.  It is nice that the new hens are a different color so I can tell them apart.  I started letting them out to free range a week ago and only had to herd them back into the yard and coop two nights and then they figured it out.  It has been a week now and everyone has returned home safely at night.  We have always lost one or two in the first few days in the past.  And now that I have put that in writing one will go missing for sure.  I am pretty sure one of the new hens has started to lay eggs as there was a small perfectly egg-shaped egg in one of the nest boxes both Monday and Tuesday.  We had only been getting 1 oddly shaped egg every couple of days from one of the older hens until that point.  We will be overwhelmed with eggs before too long.  Just in time for holiday baking!

In family news, my son and daughter-in-law learned the gender of their expected baby.  My grandchild will be a boy!  Everything is looking good, so now we just wait for the arrival in April.  And of course I can knit and weave for the little guy while I wait.

In my last post, Grover and I were preparing to attend an agility trial in just couple days, and we had a great weekend, Q-ing in 5 of our 8 runs and getting one more QQ toward our goal of 20.  We also were the only 20" dog to Q in standard premier on Friday, earning us a blue ribbon.  You can see that run here:Premier Q 
Be warned, there is a lot of barking.   And now 2 weeks later, we are once again looking forward to a weekend of agility at Incredipaws in Pataskala, Ohio, which is just east of Columbus.  This is also a 3 day trial.

The weekend of our last trial we had real Indian Summer weather.  It was in the upper 70's with sunshine all weekend.  Since then, we have had light frost several times, including yesterday morning.  A week ago Sam cleaned the chimney and the woodstove and it has been cool enough that we have kept it going pretty much ever since.  Chimney cleaning is one of Sam's least favorite jobs and it needs to be done at least twice a year, once before starting the stove in the fall and usually once again mid-winter.  It involves pulling the woodburner out from the chimney and taking the stove pipe apart.  The difficult part is putting it all back together.  But to avoid a chimney fire like we had in 2010, it needs to be done.  And while we have a gas furnace that burns natural gas from the wells here on the farm, we really prefer the radiant warmth of the woodstove in the living room.  

Rowdy is doing pretty well.  He is now 12 1/2 and he is dealing with both arthritis and Cushings and doesn't move around a lot, but I can tell he is happy cooler weather is here.  He loves the cold.  I was feeling bad about leaving him behind when Grover and I take our daily hikes, but now he gets a Kong stuffed with Zukes (yummy treats) and peanut butter when we leave and I think he forgives me.

Grover looks like he is sitting guard while I am in the alpaca barn in the morning feeding the 3 alpacas and our livestock guard dog, Star.  But in reality, he is waiting for a cat to make a critical error in judgement and come out of the barn on the other side of the creek.  The barn cats have his number, however, and will do no more than sit on the bottom of the half-open dutch door and taunt him.  Especially since they know that their area of the horse barn is my next stop to put out food.  They will exit the barn and go off and do whatever outside cats do during the day once Grover is back in the house.  The cats know the routine.

I did a little sock knitting in Socktober, which is now over, so I can move on to other things.  Although I need to start another sock to take along to the trial this weekend.  Socks are great for travel as they are small and do not require me to carry a pattern around.  It's all stored away in my head (unless I am doing fancy lacy/cable-y socks).  I also have a couple of sweaters I am working on, one of which I completed last February and decided I did not like, so I ripped it out back to the underarms and am re-knitting the body.  I would not have worn it the way it was and I love the color combination, so hopefully I can make something I will like better.




I also finished a couple of alpaca rugs

These are 25"  X  46"  and I am very pleased with them.  I will probably be listing them for sale in my Etsy shop  later today.

I also finally finished 2 scarves I wove with some of my alpaca.  There was very little finishing that needed to be done.  I'm not sure why I didn't do it sooner.

These are 100% alpaca from my farm and are each approximately 60" long and 8" wide.  

Otherwise, I have warp for a new to me weave structure on my big loom that I have yet to start weaving.  And on my small loom I started some holiday towels that were not going to be successful, so I am now just using different tie-ups and treadling patterns and making towels that are different than originally planned.   

Early morning light on the hilltop