Weather Roller Coaster

The cold frosty mornings seem to bring out the energy in the crias.  Some times the adults even join in.  I never seem to have the camera at just the right moment to capture all the action.

We have really had some weather variation this week.   Once again the weekend was wonderful with blue skies and high temps in the low 70's.  Perfect outdoor weather.  I even sat outside on the deck and knitted on Christmas gifts for a while on Saturday.  I had to drag a chair out since I had stored away the deck furniture last weekend.  It never fails!  Monday the cold front came in bringing rain and much cooler temps.  These last couple mornings I have woken up to low 20's and heavy frost as you can see from my early morning photos. To the right here you can just see the sun starting to light up the trees on the west ridge as it comes up over the ridge on the east.  

 Look at these faces.  What a pair.  That's Star on the left and Buck on the right.  

On Friday, an AT&T technician came to the  house to fix a problem we had reported the previous week.  He had to replace a box on the outside of the house where the line comes into the house.  I'm not sure how it works, but now we no longer have a 25' phone cord running out the window and both phone jacks and the internet work again.  He and I got to talking about many things and it came up that he was wanting to have some blankets woven from alpaca and he had been looking for some fleece.  He was here from Michigan to help out in the area and he  just happened to be sent to an alpaca farm.  Well we loaded up his van with fleeces and I got some money in my pocket.  He said he would send me pictures of the blankets once they were done.  I hope he does.  But I sold him a lot of my prime skirted fleeces that I had earmarked for yarn or roving.  Now I guess I don't need to worry about sending that stuff off, and honestly, I made as much money as I would have if I had sent it off, paid for shipping and processing and then sold the finished product. 

I am still waiting to hear my 16# of fiber I sent off in May to be spun into yarn is ready.  It should be soon.  Meanwhile, Christmas knitting continues.  I think I am down to my last item.  My loom is fully warped and I have one rug woven on it.  2 to go.   Here to the right you can see the finished rug wound onto the lower beam and the warp waiting to be woven is across the top.  I did my warp in 4 colors and the first rug is all white with a matching color block/strip at each end.  I have not got the other 2 patterns I will do planned out yet, though I do have an idea for the one I will do today.

 This photo is looking down through the warp at the finished rug rolled onto the beam.  Once I do up the pattern I plan to weave, the actual weaving of each rug takes only a couple hours.  Once all 3 rugs are woven, I still have to take them off the loom and cut them apart and finish the ends of each rug, either by sewing the binding or tying fringes.  That part takes about as long at the weaving!

I may not post next week as it will be Thanksgiving, so our schedule will be way off.  As usual, we will spend Thanksgiving day with my family in Dayton and the next day is usually shopping at Jungle Jim's in Fairfield Ohio.  http://www.junglejims.com/  It has kind of become a tradition.  They have a fantastic selection of beer and wine, among other things.  My brother Larry usually purchases fresh seafood there and then he cooks it up for us at his house.  He is a wonderful cook.  So Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who may be reading this!

trees in November