March, a Month of Anticipation.

Buck and Star vying for my attention!

Someone recently asked if the puppies were growing.  I had to reply that while I wasn't sure about Star, Buck is growing like the proverbial weed!  Still cute as heck.  He is very confident and moves among the alpaca legs without a worry in the world.  Star is doing a great job of patrolling the fences and barking, which is their job.  I need to work with both of them on walking on a leash so they can go to the vet for shots, etc.  I have to say it is so nice to have dogs in the barn again.  

Yes, March is a month to anticipate many things.  We anxiously look forward to the arrival of spring, the longer hours of daylight, warmer temperatures, going outside without layering on coveralls and neck gaiters.  It is also a time to look forward to the things that spring brings like shearing season and birthing season.  I was looking over my records the other day and it seems we have 6 crias due starting about mid-May:  Miracle, Tunita, & Micki have all had crias previously  and then we have 3 new moms, Margarita, B'Nita, & Carolina .  New moms are always the ones we have to keep a good eye on.  But as I said, we have a couple months before the crias start to arrive.  Spring also means we will hopefully get rid of the mountainous pile of POO that has accumulated outside the alpaca barn.  Most will be spread on the hayfields, but some will go into the gardens.  When you dig down into it, it is rich and hot and nicely composted.  It makes great fertilizer.  And yes, the garden is another thing to anticipate.  I have already purchased some peat pots to start some tomato plants in.  I wonder how much asparagus our now 2 year old bed will produce?  We only tasted a few spears from it last year, but this year, we should get a decent harvest.

And speaking of production, the sap harvest seems to be slowing down.  Last weekend was our peak, where we boiled down sap Friday (8 buckets), Saturday (6 buckets) and Sunday (11 buckets)!  Remember, those buckets are 3.5 gallons each.  On Tuesday, I boiled down almost 6 buckets.  Once we boil them down to about a gallon of syrup, we bring it into the house and finish it on the stove where it is easier to control the temperature.  Here is the result of Tuesday's boil-down:

filtering prior to finishing

starting to re-heat this is a 5 quart pan

I filter the syrup prior to finishing.  We need to bring it up to 7 degrees above the boiling temperature of water before it is done.

All these tiny bubbles are a sign that the syrup is about done, so we have to watch the thermometer closely.  If we overboil, we end up with a pan full of solid hard-tack, which would be a sad end to several hours of work!

This pan yielded about 3 pints of finished syrup after the final filtering.

There is one word that currently describes the state of my kitchen:  STICKY!



On the other hand, I have the bathroom mostly finished.  Just some touch up work to do and the tub still needs to be painted.  I should finish that this weekend.  It looks much better.  I am
very happy with the color.
 

I have to admit I did NOT finish everything on my February to-do list.  But I got close.  The syrup making has taken up more time than I thought it would.  I plan to finish putting up insulation in my studio this weekend and then I will get the paneling and get it finished. 


I have mentioned in past posts about our compressed natural gas car but have not posted any photos of it being fueled.  Well here it is:  

 It takes several hours to actually fill the tank.  My father-in-law went to an auction last week and purchased a dual-fuel pick-up truck, so he will be able to re-fuel at our place, too.  He can bring his truck to our office and swap it out with our car and pick it up the next day, re-fueled and ready to roll.


As I said, I anxiously await spring's imminent arrival.  I can hardly wait to get my deck furniture out of storage in the barn and clean it up and have dinner on the deck again.  I think the barn cats will miss it though!

Chuck (right) and Grayson (left) have enjoyed lounging on the swing cushion all winter.  They are handsome, friendly boys who came from the Humane Society here.  They are 2 of our 4 barn cats and are the youngest.  Both the other 2 are senior cats. 

March is off to a good start so far, with sun and mild temps during the day.  Of course I know that any and all weather is possible and probable in this month of change, so we'll see how it goes!

February is Galloping to a Close!

New guard dogs hard at work!!

 

 

Yes, February is almost over!  I can't believe how fast it has gone.  My To Do list for February still has several chores on it that I just don't think will get done by month's end, unless I have a very productive weekend this weekend.

On that list was making maple syrup, which we are doing.  Sam boiled off the first batch a week ago.  He tried doing 11 buckets of sap, which is about 40 gallons (we get our buckets from the local grocery store bakery....they originally held donut filling or icing and they sell them after they empty them for a $1 apiece.  I think we bought about 20 or 25 this year) as each bucket holds 3.5 gallons.  That ended up being a   L O N G day and into the night

evaporator front view

evaporator top view

   I was at the office that day and brought home pizza and took it up to the pavilion and we had pizza, beer (Sam) and red wine (me).

Pizza delivery

 There was a gorgeous full moon and when I went up onto the ridge to collect more sap at dusk, I wished I had my camera because off to the west, the sun was sinking and there was a beautiful pink sky, while over my shoulder, the full moon was rising.  I did take some full moon pics, but I did not have a tri-pod so they came out kind of unfocused.  

Pavilion/Sugar-Shack with Full Moon rising

Pavilion/Sugar-Shack with frozen pond

So, since I was filtering and bottling syrup at midnight that night, we decided to do smaller runs and have since done 2 batches of about 5 buckets or 15 gallons of sap.  That is a much shorter day.  Our weather got so warm over the weekend that the sap really didn't run at all on Sunday, but Tuesday we had full jugs and buckets.  I hope we will be able to do another batch this weekend.



Another chore on my Feb To Do list was to paint our downstairs bathroom, for which I purchased paint back in November and my goal at the time was to have it painted by Christmas!  Ha! Best laid plans and all.  Life (and the MOPACA spin-off) intervened and I just got around to this Tuesday.  Sam tore out the floor and had to replace floor joists and  sub-flooring 2 1/2  years ago and at that time we put in a new vanity and ceramic tile, but we were in a rush and only moved the bathtub out of the living room (where it sat for 3 weeks) a couple days before our Labor Day weekend party, so I just painted with paint we had around the house and have been wanting to re-paint it ever since.  Finally.

Next week hopefully I will have an "after" photo.  I have the walls painted, but I still need to re-paint the outside of the claw-foot tub to match the color of the upper walls (which are not yet painted in the photo).    The window in the bathroom actually looks out into our mud room which we added on in 2006.  

So, I still have finishing up the insulation in the studio and paneling the studio on my Feb list, as well as skirting the rest of the fleeces I have kept back to send in for more rug yarn.  They are all coarser fleeces that I don't use for yarn or roving.  Stay tuned next week to see what I manage to get done!

The new dogs are settling in.  The female, Star, is a Maremma, which is a breed I have not been around before.  Her energy level seems MUCH higher than the Pyrenees.  Pyrs are so laid back, even as puppies, and I am having a hard time adjusting to a 60+ pound dog who wants to jump on me and lick my face every time I go to the barn.  She is a sweet dog and is doing her guarding work and I am sure in time she will calm down a bit.  Buck, the Pyr puppy, just takes it all in stride.  Nothing seems to faze him.  He is just a cool guy. 

Both dogs spent the first few days with us in an 8 X 10 pen in the alpaca barn and I let them out a few times a day to get some outside time and to let the alpacas get used to them.  Then they spent the next several days in the pasture adjoining the alpacas and had the use of the overhang for shelter from the weather.  A  couple days ago, I let them into the main alpaca area, and now that is where they stay.  They have their own place in the barn that they can get into and the alpacas can't.  That way, their food is safe (yes, alpacas WILL eat dog food, they seem to love it) and they can have a place to sleep where they won't get stepped on, if they choose.

They have even figured out how to drink from the automatic waterer. Buck has to put his paws up on the edge of it, but not for long, I am sure.

And while the alpacas will eat the dog food, it is definitely a 2-way street and Buck and Star are already bellying up to the trough at feeding time, just like Cheetah!

 



So as February draws to a close, I do look forward to what March will bring, though I know the weather in March can often be unpredictable.  March DOES bring spring on the calendar and I am looking forward to being able to spend more time outside.  But, we will have lots of MUD as everything thaws out and there is also a lot of poop out there that needs to be cleaned up once it is a little drier.

See you in March!

It Feels Like Spring....But it's STILL February!!

Buck, a 2 1/2 month old Great Pyrenees & Star, a 7 month old Italian Maremma have joined the Straightfork family!

Yes, we have LGDs again here at Straightfork.  That is short for Livestock Guard Dogs.  They are technically still in training mode, but since they were born and raised on alpaca farms, they already have a good start.  We look forward to many happy years with them.  Please.  The alpacas don't seem bothered at all by Star, because she looks like what they are used to, a big white dog.  They don't seem to sure about the little fuzz-ball on legs, though.  He IS kinda funny looking in a really cute way!

My goodness the weather has made a spectacular change here this week!  It is beautiful and sunny out there and I believe the highs are supposed to be in the 60's the next 2 days.  What a wonderful spring-teaser!

The warm weather has made the sap start to run in the maples.  Sam and I put 22 taps in trees this past week and as of yesterday our buckets were all full.  About 44 gallons collected so far.  As I sit at the office and write this, Sam is working on the first boil-off of the year.  44 gallons SHOULD yeild about 1 gallon of syrup.  You may recall that we ended up with 2 gallons total last year, so this is a change for us.

Some of our taps

 Since we plan more production this year, Sam has built an evaporator on which he will be doing our first run today.  I hope to get some photos of it in operation , but here it is as it stood waiting for sap pans.

 This is up at the pavilion at the pond which is close to our "sugarbush".  A Sugarbush is an area with a great concentration of maple trees.  It is nice if they are close together as it makes collecting the sap easier.  We have many, many nice maples and marked a lot of them last fall.  We will not be tapping all those we marked.  This is only our second year doing this, and we are not up to commercial production!  Last year, the weather did not warm up enough for the sap to run until March.  If the weather cooperates, we could be collecting sap for 3 weeks.  It would be nice to get 5 or 6 gallons of finished syrup this year.  Everyone wanted some last year!!  I'll keep ya posted here.

I mentioned our Compressed Natural Gas car and all the work Sam had to do to run a new gas line and electric service to the garage for the compressor.  Here is the compressor unit.  It's about the size of a washing machine.  

It actually takes several hours for the car to fill up once it is hooked up to the compressor.  We are getting about 150 miles to a fill up, which is great for our daily usage.  So far, so good!


I haven't done much knitting this past week due to my cataract surgery.  It was difficult to try to knit because the eye was bothering me, but seems almost all better now.   I did finish up a skein of yarn I was spinning from some of my hand-dyed roving.  It is a colorway that always sells out whenever I go to a show, so I purposely held a few ounces back for myself, but I only have this one skein now, about 165 yards

I can use it in some mittens or a hat or maybe a cowl.  I love the colors.  


I have also been working on the sock yarn for Michelle and should have that finished up by the end of the weekend, although I have a busy few days ahead.  


I have the warp all measured out for my next rug and plan to start putting it on the loom today.  I will have today and tomorrow to get that ready to go and can do the actual weaving next week.  By the way, I put a link to my Alpacanation Farm Store on my list of links on this blog and I have my rugs listed there in case anyone is just dying to have a hand-woven alpaca rug!


I visited my mom and my brother and his family this past weekend in Dayton and this Saturday I hope to run over to Pittsburgh and spend the afternoon and evening with my aunt and 2 cousins and my cousin-in-law.  Pittsburgh is about a 2 hour drive, so unless something comes up, I should be able to make it.  Sam and his dad will be away at an auction that they go to every year up in Kidron Ohio.   It is a huge auction of all kinds of construction stuff and woodworking stuff and just general "guy stuff".  I never know what Sam will bring home.  Some years it is a truckload, and some years not very much.  But it's always fun to see what he brings home!

Still in Winter's Grip....

The cold just doesn't get through that heavy coat Rowdy has on!

repair work!

January is past, but February can be every bit as much of a challenge.  Often, we get our coldest weather the first week or so of February.  So far, that seems true this year.  My thermometer read -0.9 this morning which is as cold as I've seen it this year, though the neighbors say we had some deep cold while we were away in the Caribbean.  Probably why our kitchen/bathroom drain is STILL frozen, despite Sam's best efforts.  He had dug a trench, if you recall, in early January to run the new gas line for the compressor for the CNG car.  He never really totally filled it in since the ground was so frozen and our best guess is that there was not enough insulating earth over the drain pipe and we have a slow drip in the kitchen sink, which over 10 days of non-use was able to fill and freeze in that trench area.   I have to give Sam lots of credit for trying to thaw that out, but as cold as it is, it ain't gonna happen soon.  Maybe next week.  Things are supposed to warm up.  But in the meantime, he got out the backhoe and tried to dig down to the pipe and managed to hit an old gas line, so the gas went out and of course he did not have the proper repair parts for that, so I think maybe today as I am at the office, he will get that repaired properly!  It's always something!!

 

I had my camera with me last Thursday as I was coming home from the office just at sunset (which is happening later and later!!) and managed to get a beautiful sunset photo on the road down to our house.  We live in a "hollow", or holler as some like to say, so we almost never see a pretty sunset.  It goes behind the hills way before the sun actually goes down, so I was quite thrilled to see the beautiful display over the top ridge of our property as I came down the hill..

 

And then I caught some naughty boys in action when I got to the bottom of the hill......I noticed some romping and running of young alpacas through the pine trees and stopped and grabbed the camera to photograph the antics.  Of course, instead of continuing with the play, everyone came to see what I was doing.  Now in this pasture, we have the 6 young'uns we weaned in December, so they are all about 8 months old now.  2 are males and the other 4 are females.  We usually separate them by the time they are a year old to avoid any unplanned adolescent pregnancies.  I realized when the 2 males came up to the fence that they had been chasing the females and biting at them.  Can you guess how I figured this out?  The 2 males are the ones closest to the

camera and they each have a mouthful of black fiber! There are 2 pretty black females in the field behind them (one is hard to see).  What ornery little fellows!

This past Monday the weather was warm enough for some light rain most of the day and then it turned to heavy wet snow about sunset and we accumulated about 2 inches of the type of snow that looks like wedding cake icing.  Tuesday morning dawned without a cloud in the sky and that gorgeous coating of snow and was incredibly pretty.

I had an appointment in Marietta to have cataract surgery on my left eye, so we were up before the sun to do chores so we could be on the road by 8 since we weren't sure what the roads would be like.  I took a few photos, but it was really too early to do justice to the beautiful day it turned out to be.  My surgery went well and I am now 20/20 in my left eye, which I have had poor vision in for years.  I hope I do not have to go through it again, though.  

Our weather forecast shows a warm up starting this weekend and I have been on some sugaring sites online and folks are saying we should have a good sap run starting this coming week if we can get some taps in.  Yikes, we are really not ready!  We do have the trees marked and the wood cut, but we need some more taps and buckets and gallon jugs and Sam has to build the "arch" for the evaporator.  Last year's season started so late I guess as newbies to all this we figured we'd have some more time.  I'll keep ya posted!

This weekend I am going to western Ohio to visit family and also to pick up 2 new dogs.  A 7  month old Maremma and a 2 month old Pyr.  Watch for news on them next week as well.

I have not had much time to work on fibery stuff, though I did send off some fleece to be carded into a 3 colored roving at Zeilinger's.  I sent 7 pounds and dyed part of it teal and part in purple/pink and left 4 pounds undyed light fawn.  They do a "3-way swirl" roving where the colors are not blended and I hope it comes out nicely.  Time will tell.  I probably won't get it back until sometime in late April.  

My chore list for February includes: making syrup, painting my downstairs bathroom, finishing insulating and then paneling my studio,  and skirting the rest of the fiber I have set aside for more rug yarn, among other things.  I plan to warp up my rug loom in the next week (count warp today?) to do a 3' X 5' black, grey and white rug for our computer room.  I better get busy!

 

 

I'm Back!

Rowdy enjoys the snow, even when we don't!

I know I kind of skipped the whole second half of January, so now it is time to catch up.

Sam and I celebrated our 25th anniversary on Jan 25th, so we went on a 10 day Caribbean cruise to the Panama Canal.  We left Ohio on Jan 21 and the days prior to our leaving were so full of planning and preparation for being gone so long that the blog just had to be put on the back burner.  We had a great time and we are home and very happy to be back!

We have a neighbor who comes in and takes care of our animals for us when we go away.  We have never been gone so long before and I try to have as much taken care of before we leave as possible.  I make sure there is ample hay for the time we are gone in each building as well as feed and I have to leave instructions with emergency phone numbers and what to do if this happens or that happens.  Needless to say, by the time I leave, I am usually quite stressed.  And on top of that, I don't really like to fly, and it's a 2 hour + trip to the airport and who knows what the weather maybe like in January, so I get myself in quite a state. Once we are at the airport and through security (which was a big nothing both ways folks, so don't sweat it) I can start to relax a little bit.

So here are Sam and I in Costa Rica after going zip lining.  I won't post any other photos on this blog of our trip because that's not what this is for, but one pic of us should be ok.  Besides, we rarely get a photo of the two of us together!

The week before we left, we had a minor woodburner crisis.  It seems there is a wire mesh "cage" around the top of the new chimney liner to keep birds out and this clogged with creosote and consequently, the house filled with smoke.  Of course the roof was covered with ice and snow and I do wish I had taken pictures of Sam up there cleaning it out.  He had a rope thrown across the lower part of the roof and tied to the tractor on the back side of the house and then once he got up there and needed to get on the upper part of the roof, his rope was not long enough.  So I had to find another rope and throw it up to him and then he had to throw it over the house to me to tie to one of the cedar trees which are right in front of the house.  Now, you know a man trusts you when he assumes you will tie a knot that will not come loose when he is on an icy roof in January.  I was never a boy scout, but I've spent some time around boats and horses, so I CAN tie a decent knot.  But I was still glad when he got the problem fixed and was back on solid ground.

Otherwise, I have not had time to work on my studio or weaving or much else.  I did take some knitting with me on the cruise.  I finished up a sock I was working on and decided I am going to frog ( rip it, rip it this is a technical knitting term for unraveling) it and re-do it on smaller needles.  I also took some commercial alpaca yarn and started a purple lace shawl, which I will be gifting.

Here is a photo of the first skein of yarn I spun for Michelle.  If you are reading this, I hope you like it because I intend to finish up the second skein and get it to you by the end of the month!   it's not as green as I had intended, but it's quite colorful.

I went into my hairdresser to get my hair and nails (nails only EVER happen prior to a vacation!) done a couple days before we left and I came home with this awesome bench:

 Of course it's kind of hard to see with Rowdy sitting on it and one of my hand woven rugs thrown over it, but it is made from an old whiskey barrel.  The father of one of the hairstylists made it and I could not resist it.  It will go perfectly in my studio and will be great for spinning or even for sitting on when I weave on my smaller loom. 

I also felt bad about leaving the shelter for so long.  Shelley, who runs it with me is great, though and we have some other great volunteers as well.  But the morning after I returned home, I had to show up in town at the courthouse at 9:30 for the arraignment of a local man who had shot his former tenant's dog.  The local news was going to be there and there was a possibility that one of us would need to speak to them on camera because we have contributed heavily to the dog's considerable vet bills.  But as it worked out, I did not get interviewed.  Saturday we are having a benefit bake sale for this dog and the "Secret Angel Fund" we have that the money has come out of.  I think I will be baking Steeler's cupcakes and dog biscuits all day tomorrow. The cupcakes should go over well since many residents of this area are Steelers fans and of course the Super Bowl is Sunday.

Just going to finish off this post with a couple photos of a very cool tree that I call the Octopus tree which is on the border of our property and the next one.  I took these photos a couple weeks ago.  Maybe next week I will post a photo of what we just call the "big tree" which is an incredibly immense poplar tree that is on our farm.  

Octopus tree from our hiking trail

 

 

 

 

This is the view we see every time we hike by the tree and below is from the other side, where you can see it is a semicircular formation of popular trees.  I think it's pretty cool that they have grown this way!

Rowdy in the center of the "Octopus Tree"

 

BRrrrrr, It's Cold!

Rowdy and Tigger are making the best of the cold weather in front of the wood stove.  

I am still plugging along with the Spin-Off for the Missouri alpaca show.  I plan to have it done and in the mail back to the coordinator by Tuesday the 18th.  I'm getting there.  Meanwhile, I have not had much time to work on things I'd like to work on, like finishing up the bindings on my rugs and painting my downstairs bathroom, for which I purchased paint around Thanksgiving time!

Sam bought us a new car a few weeks back.  It is a dual-fuel car and runs on compressed natural gas and gasoline.  So we are now (or I should say Sam is) working on installing a compressor so that we can park the car in the garage and hook it up and fill it with gas from our wells.  The compressor is on its way here from California as I write this, but its installation has required that Sam run a new gas line over to the garage since the compressor has to be inside and easily convenient to the car and have a source of electricity.  So I came home the other day to  this.

 This is a backhoe dug trench from the back deck through the yard to the corner of the garage.  I have to cross it every time I go to the weanling pasture to feed, but it's not hard to remember it's there!

I think if this works out well, we will have other natural gas vehicles in our future.  The nice thing is, they are relatively inexpensive to purchase used as the availability of compressed natural gas is very limited.  That's a shame because it it much cheaper than gasoline.

Sam also cut the window opening in my studio.  We just used part of a window that we already had  from when we remodeled the house and it's not real big, nor does it open, but its purpose is light, not air at this point.  I had purchased a nice stained glass of running horses a couple years ago and it fits in the window perfectly!  I still have a lot to do before the studio is done, but I won't have time until next month to really get any work done out there.

 
January is a pretty quiet month around the farm as far as the animals go, mostly limited to feeding and scooping and the monthly worming (boy was it hard taking my gloves off to vaccinate 53 'pacas this past Sunday morning!).  February is quiet as well except we will hopefully be tapping trees for sap again.  This will be only our second year of maple syrup production and we hope to produce enough to sell a little bit.  We are going to set up our evaporator up near the pond, which is close to where the trees are we are using.  We have already put in a supply of wood, but I am sure much more will be needed to keep a hot fire going for 12 hours or so at a time on boil days.  I will get to put my new chainsaw into action!  The wood is stored under the pavilion at the pond and you can see the cement block we bought last summer at an auction to build the new evaporator with.                                                      

 Our pond is still down almost 2 feet.  The current snowfall we have should remedy that when it thaws.   The open area you see in the photo is where the windmill powered aerator bubbles up.

 I have managed to finish up 1 of 2 skeins of yarn for Michelle.  It is pretty cool, I think, but I forgot to take a photo, so maybe you can see it next week.  I also finished up a pair of mittens I started way back in November and realized partway through mitten #2 that I was going to run out of my hand-dyed variegated yarn.  So since it was multi-colored anyway, I went through my "stash" and found another hand-spun hand-dyed yarn I could use and I think it looks ok.  The white is my mill-spun yarn.

Keeping warm has been work.  The cap on the new chimney liner we put in managed to get  clogged with creosote and the whole house filled with smoke.  Last night and this morning Sam took the woodburner out and cleaned the chimney and climbed up onto the icy snowy roof to clean the cap as well.  Kind of a tense job requiring ropes tied to tractors and treesfor him to hold onto.  We were burning some elm that I think was not dry enough and hence the problem.  Dry wood only from here on out!

Ringing in 2011!

Check out what I got for Christmas!  It just goes to show a girl should NEVER tell her husband she wants to learn to use the chainsaw.  Next think ya know, he's buying one in her size!

Seriously though, it is nice to have one that is smaller than either of the ones Sam uses.  I don't plan to be cutting down any trees, but it will be nice not to have to rely on Sam when a tree is down on a fence or across a path.  Plus, I got him a MOP for Christmas! 

So it is now  2011.  Do you prefer to say Twenty Eleven or Two thousand eleven?  I myself prefer the latter.  twenty eleven sounds goofy to me.

After a downright frigid December, 2011 has arrived with very warm temps and rain.  Of course to the alpaca farmer this means MUD and suddenly thawed POOP!  Two of my least favorite things.  It's kind of nice when the ground is frozen because all the mess is also frozen and I have better things to do than chip at frozen poop with a shovel, so my theory is that it will still be there once it thaws out.  Boy do I regret it then!  This is when I am thankful to have lots of sawdust to spread in the barn to sop up the wet stuff which was previously frozen. 

Summer kitchen soon-to-be Fiber Studio

The warm weather also means I was able to finish painting the shelves in my soon-to-be fiber studio.  I may have mentioned previously that I am renovating what was once a summer kitchen into a studio.  Actually, it was a summer kitchen when we moved here 12 1/2 years ago and then it became a catch-all, mostly filled with bags of alpaca fiber waiting to be skirted, sold or processed.  I spent a whole weekend cleaning it out and going through all the fiber and deciding what would become rug yarn and what would be sold to spinners, etc. 

This little building sits just outside our kitchen door and the studio part of it is about 10 X 12.  The far left side is actually an outhouse Sam added on a couple years after we moved in.  It is right above the line to the septic tank and since we had only 1 bathroom, it seemed handy to have a second.  It flushes and everything.  It is "seasonal" however.  But it is great not to have to go into the house in the summer when you are outside working and have muddy shoes on and nature calls.  

Anyway, back to the studio.  2 walls inside were lined with shelves which the former owners used for canned good storage (there was NO storage in my kitchen when we bought the place).  These shelves were narrow, about 8" wide.  Not good for storing fleeces, etc.  So, I tore out the shelves along the long wall and moved them over in front of the shelves on the 10' wall and while there is a gap between the 2, I now have shelves that are almost 20" deep.  Perfect for fleece storage!

Under construction

I have also put up 1" foam insulation on 2 walls and put it in as a drop ceiling after Sam installed 2  6" X6" pine beams.  I will be able to put pegs or nails in the beams and hang small baskets or herbs or whatever.  And they hold up the insulation.  Once Sam puts in a small window in the front (where the wreath is in the photo) I will insulate the front wall as well and then I plan to use old barn siding as panelling on the front and back walls.    Sam has already put in a small gas heater for me.  I haven't really decided what to do with the floor yet. 

I will have room in here to skirt fleeces and I will move my drum carder out here, as well as a lot of my fiber tools which currently share the sunporch on the front of the house with the winter's firewood.  My wheels will stay in the house.  I would like to put in a countertop on hinges that I can use when I am dyeing so I don't have to make such a mess in my kitchen, and maybe even a small microwave.  The possibilities are limited only by the 10' X 12' space!!

Krista with Tigger:  I can't believe I still have this cat!

Speaking of dyeing, I had a nice visit after Christmas from my mother and she brought along my 2 nieces.  Krista, my brother Mike's daughter is in college and likes getting away at the farm.  Haley, is 11 and is my brother Larry's daughter and this was only the second time she has been here without her parents.  We are both hoping she can come for a longer visit this summer.  

To further the efforts of all fiber-holics to keep the addiction alive, I introduced Haley to  dyeing and then felting.  I had some carded batts of 75% alpaca/25% blue faced leicester (breed of sheep) and I had her pick 4 colors of dye and away we went!  

Haley with her dyed batts

After the batts were dyed, Haley felted around a bar of goat's milk soap and I sent her home with the rest of her batts and a few bars of my friend Tari's homemade goat soap.  It was  a great, fun, easy and clean project.  Awesome to do with kids.

Haley with her felted soap.

Haley's color choices were so good I decided to use the leftover dyes to dye some of the same batts to spin some sock yarn for Michelle, Ian's girlfriend.  I had sent her a skein of my white mill-spun yarn for Christmas and she said she wanted to use it for socks.  I told her it was probably not a good choice since it was a very soft 2-ply and it would wear through in the heels and toes in no time.  So I told her I would spin her up a 3-ply sock yarn and she said she likes jewel colors.  I had hoped for more green, but ya just never know how these colors will come out!   This is the single prior to plying.  I have a pair of socks made from this blend and they are wonderful!  I hope Michelle likes the yarn.  

I have also been weaving more rugs.  I have 2 finished on the loom and enough warp to do one more before I take them off the loom.  I think the next one will be a 3' X 5' in black and grey and white for my computer room which has a gorgeous hickory hardwood floor made and installed by Sam from a tree on our own property.  

Happy New Year to All!