Humming Hearts Ranch

Productive Day

2009-03-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Wool roving dyed in the crockpot -
crimson red, lilac, and chocolate

Then spun into a single which was plied with
a single of carmel colored alpaca to make this pretty yarn.

More wool roving dyed in the crockpot -
teal, brilliant blue and chocolate

Here it is as a singles yarn

Christmas gifts

2009-03-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Now that the celebration is over and the presents have all been opened, I can post photos.

Feline approved

2008-12-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

What you don't see in the picture is what they were doing just a few seconds before this photo was snapped. The camera never seems to be available when you need it, huh? Just seconds before they were acting as if the brown rug had catnip woven into it! They were rolling and stretching and rubbing their faces all over the nubby brown texture.

These are two more rugs for Christmas presents. I feel fairly safe posting these as the recipients are too little to be reading blogs. LOL

Recycle Weaving

2008-10-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I was cleaning out closets with the intent to donate to Goodwill. A lot did go to Goodwill but some of the t-shirts and jeans were not Goodwill quality (rips, stains, spilled paint, etc) so I set them aside. I knew I could use them to make throw rugs. Around the same time I was creating my dye samples. I put aside the leftover dye for an upcoming guild dye day. When that day came, I grabbed a bunch of t-shirts and put the leftover dye to good use.

The beauty of this was the lack of precision. A drip here, a dribble there, a splash of this color, a squeeze of that color. I used up all of the excess dyes. The above photo shows all of the dyed t-shirts stacked up ready to go home. I forgot to get in-process photos. Oops. Took them home, tossed them in the washer and dryer and they're ready to be prepared for weaving.

I cut off the sleeves and the bottom hem. Then I cut the shirts into strips parallel to the bottom hem. I cut these strips 2" wide. You get some pretty long strips until you get to the chest section where the sleeves were but even those strips are useable. When I joined the strips to make my weft, I alternated a long and short strip so that the knots were fairly evenly spaced apart.

For the jeans, I used the fabric from the legs. I could have saved the pockets and waistbands for another project but really, I have enough stuff in my house and need to start purging. Jeans are always getting worn out so if I ever do desire to make a project using jean pockets, I'll just start saving then. The jean fabric, because it's considerably thicker, was cut at 1" widths.

For the warp, I used a Pepto Bismal pink 8/4 carpet warp. It coordinates perfectly with the t-shirts and even looks nice on the jean side. The design is reversible by using a double-weave technique. I made some other rugs last year and really like how thick they come out. This rug is coming out even thicker - must be the jeans. It's going to be so cushy under tiny tootsies. This one is a gift for one of my nieces.

How big is your stash?

2008-09-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

In recent posts by Laura Fry, she talks about finishing projects that are using up her stash. If I was as prolific as she is, my stash would be gone after a few projects! Here's every piece of yarn I have:

What does your weaving stash look like?

We have a name!

2008-09-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Our newest cria, the carmel colored one pictured in the previous post, shall be named Darby O'Missy but we'll call her Darby.

I'm still having to go to the ranch daily to give Bliss an antibiotic shot. We got the test results back yesterday and it showed she had a form of e-coli in her bladder causing an infection. So now she's on PenG (a form of Penicillian) and NuFlor. I sure hope this cures her. I feel so bad that she's having to get shots twice a day for the PenG. My fear is she's going to associate bad things with being haltered. I'm just going to have to work extra hard after this is done to keep haltering her and find something that she likes as a treat. She has eaten grain from my hand once so my plan is to give her some of that at the end of each round this week.

Newest, and last for the season, Cria

2008-09-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here she is! We still haven't settled on a name.

She's standing next to mom in this photo. You can see she's similar in coloring to mom. It'll be interesting to see how her coloring flushes out as she gets older.

I need to buy a lottery ticket!

2008-09-15T13:49:00.001-07:00

It's ANOTHER girl!!! That makes 4 in a row.

I'll head down there later today. First I have to collect the kids at the end of school, drop them at their respective activities and then I can head down there. Ethan will come with me so I'll have him take pictures.

Hmmmm.... need a name that starts with "D". Any suggestions?

Speaking of quick

2008-09-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

Just after I posted my last entry, my cell phone rang. It was Wayne - "You have another cria on the way." The torture of having animals 40 minutes away!

That was quick

2008-09-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

This morning I drove down to Hollister to check on my girls. Actually, I had to stop along the way at Costco to fill up the gas tank and buy a cat tree. Yesterday we were at this same store and the kids insisted we get our cats a tree. At $50, it was a steal but we didn't have room in the car for it so I told the kids I'd get it today. Ethan'll be thrilled - he made sure to remind me this morning of my promise to get it.

While at the ranch, I had 3 tasks to accomplish:
1. give Bliss her Naxcel shot for a bladder infection
2. weigh Ciara
3. catch Ciara visiting the poop pile to make sure all the plumbing works properly

I arrived at the ranch around 10:30am. I figured I'd be there a few hours trying to accomplish the third of my tasks. First, I cleaned up the pen. It gave me a chance to watch the girls. Kay (due sometime in the next few days or months) was laying down and shifting from side to side. Bliss is still going to the poop piles and peeing teaspoons at a time. Murphy is a phenomenal mom - she stands so well for Ciara when she wants to nurse, even moving a leg out of the way if it's needed. Ciara is growing like she should be. She was 19 pounds at birth and was a little over 21 pounds today at 5 days old. Perfect weight gain!

I've been giving Bliss her Naxcel shots (4 so far). This is a first for me - giving shots. Saturday we (Wayne and I) attempted to have me give the shot on my own (i.e. without him holding her). It didn't work - I wasn't confident enough. Today though, I caught her, haltered her, tented the skin, and gave the shot. When I was done, I looked at Wayne and said "Oh! I guess I did that all by myself, huh? Cool!"

A few minutes later, Ciara went to the poop pile and did her business. Steady flow of urine and a nice mass of feces. All's well on that front! Guess I'm done for the day! 11:30 and I'm outta there.

Look who showed up!

2008-09-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning I got a call from Wayne to tell me I have a cria on the ground. Yippee!! But wait, it's not October. I wasn't expecting any deliveries until October. Hmmm.... I must have "misfiled" the information the breeder gave me. I'll bet she said she bred in October (which means deliveries in September) but I misheard it as they'd deliver in October. Oops. So while I was at the ranch checking out our new cria, I checked the other mom-to-be and sure enough she's bagged up. That means she'll be delivering soon. Or not - it could be a few weeks from now too. Darn alpacas refuse to read the instruction manual.

Oh - I guess you want to know whether the cria is a girl or a boy? Well, our first two crias were girls so we fully expected to have a crop of boys this year. Not so. It's another girl! We've named her Ciara - pronounced KEE-ra. It's Gaelic for "dark one" referring to coloring as in dark hair and eyes. The name definitely fits her!

Back from Alaska!

2008-08-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

But when do things stop moving?

We spent a week on the Holland America cruise ship ms Amsterdam cruising around Southeast Alaska and the Inside Passage. DH took nearly 2000 pictures and is editing them for posting. I've seen the preliminary shots and he's got some that I'll definitely be getting printed and framed. My head is still occasionally "swimming" - apparently it can take up to a week for your equilibrium to work it's way back to normal.

As soon as pictures are available, I'll let everyone know!

Take Along Toys

2008-07-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

As a mom of 2 active kids, I find myself "sitting" in the parking lot often. Waiting for school to get out, waiting for lessons to end, waiting for meetings to finish, etc. And with the cost of gas these days, I'm much more inclined to park and wait for the one hour lesson to finish instead of dropping off, going home for 40 minutes, and coming back. So I guess that means even more idle time in my future.

At the same time, I've been wanting to find something new to try. I wanted something that was small and easy to bring along for those idle times but I didn't want to go back to things I've tried in the past: knitting, crochetting, tatting. I thought about doing some embroidery but couldn't find something that inspired me.

Then I read in Tien's blog about the beaded beads her mom does. Now THAT sounded interesting. So I checked out the links to the beading sites that Tien provided and I was hooked! I was thrilled when I found the free bracelet pattern! Now I could try this new interest for a minimal outlay - since I already had beads and needles from other ventures, it only cost me a mere $3 for some beading thread.

I started the pattern last night. I knew I wouldn't have enough green beads to make a whole bracelet but I'd figure something out as I went along. I always do. About 4 rounds into this, I stopped and looked at the lovely beaded bead I had made. It was gorgeous! I could use something like this on my next designed garment. Heck, I could have used something like this on my final project a few months ago. I decided I'd continue and use up the green beads I had and then use the final piece in a simple necklace. The next hurdle would be in figuring out how to string a necklace together. I've never done jewelry before. Oh, but then I remembered I have some purple rat-tail leftover from my Draping Class's final project. That would work perfectly!

What do you think?

Trouble in Mac-land

2008-07-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Weaving of the towels is nearly done. But I've run into a glitch with the shafts. It's not a new problem - I've experienced this on every warp with this loom. I'm hoping someone out there can help. To recap - this loom was previously owned by a local weaver who passed on. I suspect the loom was either never used or rarely used. I was given the original invoice - it was manufactured in 1990. If it was sitting idle - that's a lot of years of deferred maintenance.

The problem is that sometimes when a treadle is pushed, one of the shafts (it varies which specific one) that ISN'T supposed to lift will partially lift. I can hand push the offender down to where it belongs - it feels "tight" like it was squeezed by the surrounding shafts into lifting. In other words, it's definitely not a case of something catching and lifting it. It's probably best to show you.

This is what I should see.

The black bar in the background is the top of the shaft that's partially lifting.

When there's a sticky shaft, the shed looks like this. You can see strings from the stuck shaft hanging out there in the middle.

I suspect the loom needs some lubrication. When I first got this loom I asked about that. Some suggested WD40; others suggested actual oil; and one suggested paraffin. Since my loom sits over carpet, I went with paraffin. I suspect it didn't work so well. It's the metal parts that I suspect need some help; I'm not sure wax was the right choice. Or maybe I just didn't do it right.

I have both WD40 and oil. In fact, I have some spinning wheel oil in one of those long needle bottles. Which do I use? And where do I put it?

Wide Warp

2008-07-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

The current project on the Macomber is a 40" wide warp of 5/2 cotton that will use UKI Bamboo (roughly 5/4) in the weft. They're intended to be beach towels for dh's co-worker. The pattern is a modified 5 shaft huck lace. I say modified because I had to put some of the threads from shaft 4 onto a spare shaft (in this case, shaft 6) because I knew I'd run out of heddles. I also put a plain weave selvage onto shafts 7 and 8.

One fear I had with this project was possibly having trouble with throwing a shuttle on such a wide warp. Luckily, I had treated myself to a Bluster Bay end feed shuttle at the recent CNCH conference. Before going to the conference, dh had given me $100 to treat myself. Oh boy, what a treat this pretty thing is!

The shuttle feels so incredibly soft - the craftsmanship is impeccable! And look at these selvages - they're perfect. Another benefit is that weaving goes uber-fast! I'm able to weave up a bobbin's worth in the same time it takes to wind both of the empty pirns I have for this shuttle.

In store for a busy weekend

2008-06-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

Dana's dance studio's annual June Showcase is this weekend. For me, this means a lot of driving back and forth from our house to the Campbell Heritage Theater. For the first time I'm seriously considering getting a hotel room somewhere nearby.

I must say, as hard as it might be on parents shuffling kids to and fro, South Bay Dance Center does a phenomenal job with their showcase. They create wonderful opportunities for dancers to get as much stage time as their experience allows. For example, the very young dancers (3-5yo) are only in one program, put on stage at the very beginning of the show, and parents are allowed to pick them up backstage right away. If you've reached a level 1B (usually 9-12yo), then you perform on stage in at least two programs. If you've reached a level 2A or higher, then you're on stage for all 5 programs. Yes, there are 5 shows over the two-day weekend. And IF you're like my daughter, where of the 8 classes she took this year, 6 of them are "performing" classes and of those 6, 3 are level 2 or higher, THEN you are on stage a whole lot.

See what I mean.

Each column represents one of the programs and lists the order of the dances. The pink highlights are when she has to be on stage. There are a few situations (like program 1) where she has to have her hair half up/half down and then within the span of 2 dances has to change costumes and put her hair up in a ballet bun and then again within 2 dances change and take her hair back down to half up/down. They have lots of backstage help but even so, She's in for a challenging weekend!

Welcome to the world of theater daughter! You'll do great! Love, mom

Annual Shearing Day

2008-06-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

The girls at their new digs. This is their version of "Don't Take My Picture!" Kay on left, Bliss in center, Murphy on right.

Since Bliss wouldn't cooperate and show us her lovely coloring, we had Dana catch and hold her for us. The 'funny' lighting is because they're standing in between the sun and the shadow of a tree. Click on the pic for a larger version.

Shearing day is a bit of a double-edged sword: it's fun but it's hard work. At Foothill Alpacas where our animals are agisted, we use a table for shearing. To shear an animal, you need:

1 shearer
1 green guy (so called because he holds the head and gets covered in green slime when the 'pacas get upset)
1 toe nail clipper who also helps get the animal onto the table
2 fiber collectors - one for prime and another for neck/leg
2 people to catch - one of those two also blows out the animal
and at least 2 extra people.

The shearer is the boss. Everyone else is there to help him/her in any way they can. The fiber collectors also put the names/dates on the bags and, if desired, pull the fiber sample that gets shipped off for micron testing. The catch people also blow out the animal's fleece (while it's still on the animal) to get rid of any hay bits and dirt. While this does disturb the lock structure, if you're shipping the fleece straight off to processing, it doesn't matter. In fact, the shearer will appreciate it because shearing with all that excess dirt dulls the blades really fast.

The two extra people are in case someone gets hurt. We had 2 shearing days at Foothill this year and had injuries on the first one. That left us a bit short-handed so we made sure we had enough help on the second day.

The FUN part of shearing day is gawking at the 'pacas after their shorn. They always look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book! My favorite books are Dr. Seuss books!

Here's the "after":

Designing a garment by draping

2008-06-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

Draping is a method of garment design by where you drape fabric, either a muslin-type or the actual fashion fabric, over a dress form to create the design. Once it is complete on the dress form, the fabric is removed, a paper pattern is created, the paper pattern is trued, and then the final cut of the fabric is made.

I've been sewing all my life. I was lucky enough to have a mom who sewed and taught me at an early age. I've come to understand now that not everyone was so lucky (Thanks mom!). She taught me how to use commercial patterns and over the years I figured out how to mix and match pattern pieces. But designing a garment from scratch was out of my realm.

So in January when I found out the boss I worked for part-time was moving away and I would have some free time, I decided to take a class in the most-excellent fashion design program at West Valley Community College. I had taken classes from the other nearby community college with a fashion design program, Canada College but WVC is muuuuuuch closer. As I'm really a "hands-on" person when it comes to design of any type, FD-060 Professional Draping, really sounded like something up my alley.

In case anyone out there is thinking of taking this class, I won't sugar coat the experience. It was brutal. I expect it would have been less rigorous had I not had prior obligations of chauffeur and chess club coordinator so that I could have gone to lab during the limited hours (that darn Law of Physics - why can't you be in two places at once?). As it was, I could only go on Tuesday and Thursday after class and occasionally on Thursday evenings. Because this class required the use of a dress form, and it couldn't be any ole dress form - it had to be one in the lab, you must get the work done during class or lab. Sewing could be done at home however it consisted of a small portion of the overall work.

At any rate, I can expand on the class's requirements in another post. In this one, I want to skip to the end and show off my final project! But first, let me walk you through the design process.

I wanted to do a jacket. Searching fashion websites turned up these:

The one on the left is nice but not really "me". IOW, it wasn't something I'd normally design. The middle one appeals to my engineering side. I suspect it would take updating all of those skills just to figure it out and frankly, I didn't have that kind of time. The one on the right would look absolutely lovely in a gradient color scheme moving from light to dark top to bottom. But that meant hand-dyeing fabric, and again, not enough time. Then I saw these:

I really liked the shorter sleeves in the one on the left and I loved the collar on the right. The gathered waistline in the left one was going to be a problem though - my dress form was not the skinny-minnie size 6 (which translates to RTW size 0 or 2). I had a size 12 (RTW 6 or 8). All that fabric at the waist would not look flattering. But I could manipulate the fabric into darts (the basic principle of draping). OR..... I could manipulate it into pintucks. Now there's an idea!

The final project required designing a complete outfit: a dress, a shirt and skirt, a jacket and skirt, etc. Since I chose a jacket, it meant I had to figure out a "bottom". Pants weren't covered in this class so I had a choice of a dress (no thank you) or a skirt. I went with a 6-gore skirt as it was something I hadn't worked on in class. It was taught but I ran out of time and never got to that drape. So without further adieu....

The skirt has a flare overlay lined in the same fabric as the collar. That side seam also has piping covered with the collar fabric. I originally put piping in all of the seams but took out all but one because they didn't fit with the overall design. On the other hand, leaving that one seam with piping drew attention to the flare nicely. In the jacket, the sleeves have a "cuff" that has pintucks at the top. If I did this jacket again, I'd leave those off. The collar is folded 3 times on itself - similar to the inspirational design.

Click on the photos to get a closer look!

Long Lost Bamboo Towels

2008-06-04T07:52:00.001-07:00

This morning someone on the weaving at yahoogroups email list asked about weaving with bamboo as warp. Last Fall I did a series of huck towels in bamboo on my counterbalance. It was the last thing I wove on that loom before moving it to the garage for storage. (As much as I'd love to have two working floor looms available to use, there are three other people in this house and they deserve room to live too.) But a search for my post on these towels came up empty handed. I guess it was one of those things "I should write about" that never made it to "Publish Post". I'll have to fix that!

Here is a picture of 2 of the towels. The one on the left has been wet finished but not ironed. It does 'grow' a bit once it's ironed. The one to the right (and half of it is under the one on the left) has been turned sideways and is not yet wet finished.

I used UKI Bamboo (aka Bamboodle) from Village Spinning and Weaving as warp and weft. It's quite thick - listed as a 5.24/4 yarn. I sleyed 16 inches set it at 12 epi. My notes say the warp was 3 yards long but it's likely a bit longer than that - rounding up is a good thing to do with warps so that I have enough room to do some samples. My plan was for 4 towels at 22" per towel plus loom waste. Turns out I got 5 towels out of the warp.

The pattern is a traditional huck lace from Davison's "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" on page 94. I played with the pattern and found I could get a plain weave selvage. I also discovered I could change up the huck pattern by changing the treadling. This was a welcome discovery because it meant I could make every towel a bit different.

So, for the final stats:
on loom: 16" wide by about 22" long (depends on the pattern I used)
off loom: 13" wide by 20" long (for one specifically)
wet finished and ironed: 11.5" wide by 14.5" to 15.5" long

The concerned individual wrote to the group worried about abrasion - would commercially spun bamboo hold up as a warp. My counterbalance loom has wire heddles and in the past has shredded novelty, handspun yarns. Thankfully the commercially spun bamboo was completely unfazed. So yes, bamboo works very well as a warp.

Upcoming posts

2008-06-03T17:35:00.001-07:00

I've got two posts that I'm dying to publish but can't.

The first one covers that Professional Draping fashion design class I took recently. The final project is done, submitted, graded, and returned. It looks just lovely! But since it's a gift for my sister and she's not seen it yet, I have to wait until her package has been delivered to share the photos with everyone else. USPS tells me it'll arrive on Thursday.

The second post is about shearing day this past Sunday. Our girls were shorn at their new home. I always get a chuckle out of the before and after photos. Dh is away on a business trip so I have to wait until he returns and edits the photos to get them for here. The biggest difference is Bliss. Wait until you see her!

All together now

2008-05-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

As of this afternoon, all of my alpacas are at home in one place. For the last 18 months, I've had my girls at one ranch and my boys at another. In summer 2006, I bought a girl from a local ranch. A few months later, the other girl I owned was returning from the breeders. My original intent was to bring her to where our boys are but well, we had some concerns about the veterinary care available at that ranch.

The clinic has several vets - the head vet is very good at camelid care as are two others. But there was one in particular we weren't happy with. And it seemed she was the one they always sent over. In her defense, she was great horse vet. And in the clinic's defense, the vet who used to always work with us, and who we loved, was out on an extended maternity leave.

At the other ranch, where I had the newly purchased girl, their servicing vet has several decades of camelid experience and was even a consultant in South America during the imports. He knows his stuff. So I ask, with whom would you choose to house a pregnant maiden?

Now, some might say that publicly posting that one doesn't care for a vet is bad form. I disagree. It's important for an alpaca owner to have an available camelid vet. I recognize some people aren't so fortunate as to have a choice between vets and must work with whomever is available. But it's also very important to be comfortable and confident in that vet's abilities. I had a choice between two vets for my alpaca care so I made one. While I love my alpacas nearly as much as I do my pets, this is a business. Vets provide a service to my business.

Fast forward to today: the pregnant maiden delivered a beautiful rose grey girl nearly a year ago. The new mom is yet again a mom-to-be with proven mothering instincts. And Murphy, the girl I bought is also expecting. The vet in question has moved to a practice in another state and the vet we used to work with is back from maternity leave. Travelling between two ranches is hard (and expensive given the cost of gas these days). So it's time to bring everyone together.

Tomorrow is one of the shearing days. All the girls get haircuts while the boys have to wait until Saturday for theirs. I love shearing day. It's hard work. But those bags of fiber are to die for!

Google Reader

2008-05-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

I've been quite unhappy lately with Technorati as a means to track the blogs I like to read. So after some research I've decided to try Google Reader. I spent the better part of the morning importing the links I had in my favorites (from before Technorati). I'll have to wait until T is back up and running to get the newest ones because, yet again, their widget for keeping your favorites is out of commission.

I'm also not happy that T doesn't update my list even when my own blog is updated. It listed my last post as over 3 months prior. We'll see if Google Reader works better.

What is your favorite tool to track blogs you like to read?

Blog Claim

2008-05-20T05:49:00.000-07:00

By entering this

Technorati Profile

I hereby claim my own blog so Technorati will include me in their search engine.

Don't look for this blog entry after a few weeks - I'll be deleting it.

Documenting dye samples

2008-03-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

My issue with dyeing is that I can't predict the color ahead of time. No matter how much I try to follow the directions I've found on the web, nothing comes out consistently the same. And that's annoying.

Recently, another dyer while demonstrating shibori dyeing showed us her dye samples. It was a large piece of fabric she "sacrificed" so that she could have a record of the dye colors at various dilutions. Suddenly, it clicked! That was what I needed!

I'm currently taking "Garment Design through Draping" class at West Valley College. Draping not only uses lots of muslin, it wastes a lot too. I have no problem with the idea of needing to sacrifice large pieces of muslin in order to get a beautiful end result; it's just that my heart can't bear to throw the large pieces away. So I've been stuffing the sizable pieces into my bag "for future use". I know, I need more crap like I need a hole in my head but there *has* to be a use for them. Right?

I pulled out 7 of the scraps for this dyeing documentation project. I may not be dyeing on cotton fabric all of the time, but it's far better than hoping the color on the bottle is accurate. And I found out some very interesting things!

For example, some of the colors will bleed out along the edges. Look at the raspberry - it is a very pretty red-purple in the center, but at the edges it turns blue. When shibori dyeing, that's a dye you'll want to use. The bright green had this absolutely lovely yellow bleed-out but it washed away - I'm not sure why but I'm quite disappointed.

Another interesting observation was how some dyes don't change their final color much even when diluted. That's good to know so you don't waste dye powder. The excess gets washed out.

I think I have 20+ colors of this Procion dye from Dharma. I was only able to do 7 colors because I only brought 7 jars with me. Documenting all of the dyes is on my list of things to do. Warmer weather is fast approaching so I expect to be done soon.

So, exactly how did I do these samples?

First, the fabrics were soaked in 1/4c of soda ash to 2 cups of water. The fabric weighed 4 ounces. This is straight-off-the-bolt white cotton muslin; I did not pre-wash it. After soaking for 10 minutes, the fabric was dried on the handy-dandy clothesline that the previous owner left and I've now come to appreciate. (Note to self: get clothespins before the next trip up there.)

Next, the dyes were mixed. I started with 1/4 tsp of dye powder to 1/4 cup of warm water. The house has well water which is probably a tad hard. I only used warm water to facilitate the dilution. Subsequent additions of water were cold.

For each piece of fabric, I used a Sharpie and wrote the name of the color, it's number, and "1/4tsp + 1/4 c water increments". After the samples were made, I also wrote 1, 2, or 3 next to the spot for each color sample.

To apply the dyes, I poured a few drops onto the cloth and then used my finger to spread it out. Plastic gloves are a must. It would have been better to use a eye dropper if only for better control of the pouring as well as avoiding the drips along the lip of the jar.

After the first dilution is applied to the cloth, add another 1/4 c of water to all of the jars of dye. Repeat the sample application. And then do it again a third time. Be sure to keep track of which sample is which dilution - I lined them up in a row but also marked them with a sharpie.

Some of the dyes got a fourth dilution only because the jar would hold it. Note to self: make sure to use large jars - small jelly jars don't work for this.

Once the samples were done, I wrapped them up with plastic wrap and left them to cure overnight. In the morning I unwrapped them, rinsed them and tucked them away. I couldn't let them dry - we were leaving to go home. On the red wine sample, some of the blue bled onto the cloth during the transport home. It doesn't look like any of it penetrated the color sample though, so I won't redo it. Also, in the bottom corner of that one, we put a sample of what looks like a brownish eggplant color. As we were cleaning up, we dumped the teal, orange, and periwinkle dye water into one jar. We were going to pour it down the kitchen drain but it looked quite pretty so we took a sample and kept the bottle of liquid. It's waiting for my return to the house in the mountains.

It is worth noting that since this process keeps the soda ash away from the dye, the mixtures will stay quite useable for a few months. Cover them and keep them for future use.

One thing I might do differently next time is to do 2 sample sheets of the same color - one sheet would be dry and the other would be wet. I want to see if it affects the bleed-out.

Want to Start a 4H Alpaca Project but don’t know where to begin?

2008-03-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

What is 4H?
4-H is an organization for youth, ages 5-19, that promotes hands-on learning and is based on parent and volunteer participation. 4-H welcomes all youth and adult volunteers from all backgrounds in all locales.

The United States 4-H program is run through county Cooperative Extension offices, the state universities, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and a variety of volunteer councils and foundations at the county, state, and national levels. In California, the 4H program is run through the University of California at Davis. That’s right! 4H is run by UCDavis - the same university where Calpaca has established a veterinary scholarship.

How do I get started?
To get started, find a club now and go to the next general meeting. Introduce yourself, and explain that you’re interested in starting an alpaca project next year. The CA 4H website can be found at http://ca4h.org/4hinfo/proginfo/delivery.asp On that page is a menu to help locate the nearest club.

For me, someone with absolutely no prior exposure to 4H, it was helpful to go to a few meetings in the Spring to become familiar with the general meeting proceedings. I chatted with other project leaders and learned what to expect while managing an animal project. Showing up at these meetings also helped put the word out that an alpaca project was being planned for the coming year. The 4H calendar runs September to August (similar to a school year).

Each 4H club has a coordinator known as the community leader. This person acts as the contact point between the county-wide coordinator and their own club. He/she handles all the registrations, the training schedule, the monthly calendar, as well as informs the club of county-wide events. Make sure the community leader knows you are interested in becoming a project leader for the coming year. They will add you to the planning meetings which typically take place over the summer.

However, if it’s Fall or Winter when you decide to start a group, you can still start one for that year. The community leader will be your best resource. If you’ve missed the one-time required training session offered in your region, you will simply pair up with a leader from another project.

Becoming a 4H leader is relatively easy. Each leader must fill out an application and get a background check done. New this year is that each project is required to have two certified adults at all project meetings. In my project, my co-leader is a parent who has run the leadership gauntlet but isn’t managing a project of her own this year. California 4H also has restrictions on the age of children joining animal projects. Alpacas are not on the pre-approved list for children younger than 9 (children 5-8 are called Clovers).

What do we do in an Alpaca Project?
The scope of any project is at the discretion of the leader. In my case, I took lead from the kids in my project. The agenda I set at the beginning included visiting one local AOBA alpaca show; explaining basic care, feeding, and anatomy; discussing fiber (attributes of each type, differences in quality, basic processing steps, finished goods, tour of a farm store); and demonstrating obstacle performance. Each meeting began with the educational lesson (maybe 30 minutes) followed by the students catching, haltering, and walking their assigned alpaca. When we began the obstacle performance demonstrations, everyone participated with their alpaca. Of all of the lessons, this was the one that my group of kids this year decided they liked best. I’ve had a few other girls approach me about offering an alpaca fiber project and may do that next year in addition to this alpaca performance project.

In conclusion…
The end of the 4H year concludes with the students filling out a "year end project report" called a Project Report. As 4H students they also have a form called a PDR (Personal Development Report) that covers their entire work with 4H. As this is my first year with 4H and we are not yet at the end of it, I can only say that I’m going to be relying a lot on the experienced leaders to help me help my students get these reports completed! I do know this: I’m very glad I just jumped in. These kids love working with the alpacas! If only we could read the animals’ minds, I’m sure they’d say they love it too!

Honeycomb fabric

2008-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I found a design in Laura Fry's "Magic in the Water" book that I want to do. Project 5 - cotton chenille jacket. I will use fine bamboo yarn and cotton chenille. However, there's been a lot of buzz on the weaving at yahoogroups list about how difficult chenille can be so I was hesitant. Also, it's a structure I haven't worked with before, so I thought it might be a good idea to use a shorter warp as a test. Then I ran across a honeycomb fabric project in "The Best of Weavers: Fabrics that Go Bump" and realized the structures are the same, just implemented a bit differently. One uses cotton chenille yarn and the other uses fabric strips. So gave it a try.

From this....

To this...

The fabric hasn't been wet finished yet. It'll probably pull up even more afterwards.

Likes: I love the texture this fabric has as a result of the draft. I like how it tones down the brightness of the fabric but still is quite colorful.

Dislikes: I feel like I wasted my precious bamboo yarn. This project would have been just as nice with a cotton yarn. I should have gone with the chenille instead of the fabric strips for this warp.

I'm not sure how I'll use the fabric. It's almost too heavy to be used in a garment. If the white yarn were cotton, I'd jump at turning it into a bag but the fact that it's bamboo is leaving me hesitant. Not that I don't think it'll hold up - just that it feels like I'm wasting it.

We learn by doing. I did. And I learned.

Macomber loom tool shelf or....

2007-12-14T09:05:00.001-08:00

cat perch?

This is Luke. He's my shadow. Where ever I go, he follows. And now, if I'm working at the loom, he's up in the tool shelf. It used to be that he'd jump into the tool shelf, sit for a few minutes, and then move to the back of the nearby couch. Given that it's a bit colder these days, I wondered if putting a pillow in there would encourage him to stay and keep me company. It worked!

The painted warp is coming along nicely. I really like the sage green weft in there. The pattern is a 3/1 twill and lifting 3 shafts at a time. Lifting 3 Macomber shafts isn't so bad. Although, I can see how lifting 8 (once I put more shafts in) might result in a true workout. Frankly, I'd rather workout on my loom than some gym's common-use stairmaster or treadmill. Not that I work out, but if I did....

Holiday Humor

2007-12-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

As many of you do, I also read quite a few other blogs. I use Technorati to keep track of my favorites. For the most part, it sorts them by most recently posted.

Today I found this very funny rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas by way of Sara Lamb's blog. It's done by Bonnie Tarsus, a well-known weaver in Seattle.

I could *so* relate.

Painted Warp

2007-12-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

I bought this painted warp from Margaret at Heritage Yarns. The colorway is called Tallahatchee Bridge in 80%/20% rayon silk. I've mixed in stripes of unmercerized cotton in beige and sage green. Under tension, the rayon is a thinner yarn than the cotton but hopefully it will fill back out after wet finishing. I've used another of these painted warps for a shawl and the yarn did do that afterwards. For the warp, I used two turns of the skein starting with the pink. I wish now the ends were either the grey or the olive green as I really like the pink and it's going to end up being thrums. This yardage is going to be part of a jacket for me.

But before I can get started, I have to sample the weft colors. The first (closest to the bottom but not the white - that's toilet paper to spread the warp) is the sage green cotton I used in the warp stripes. It's plain weave. The next is the beige cotton from the stripes in a 3/1 twill. It's okay but I think the colors in the painted warp get lost. Next is the sage green cotton again but in the same twill. I do like that. The last one is a thin white bamboo. I don't recall the size but it's 4000 ypp (yes, quite thin). And again, I think the painted warp gets lost. I could dye the bamboo but that takes time and I really would like to get this going. Besides, the bamboo would make a thinner fabric than the cotton so I'm sticking with the sage green cotton.

You may have noticed the weft isn't perfectly straight from left to right. That's because the tension in the painted rayon/silk is ever-so-slightly different from the tension in the cotton. The rayon/silk stretches more than the cotton. When I beamed it, I tensioned the rayon/silk on it's own weight in hopes it would stretch to its own maximum. This warp may have been a candidate for double-beaming but I don't have a second beam on this loom. Frankly, even if I did, I doubt that I would have been able to get the two tensions any closer than this - they really do feel very much the same. I'm crossing fingers that the wonkiness will disappear in the wet finishing. And since the weft won't be striped, the waves should disappear into the cloth.

Two-sided Rag Rug

2007-11-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Progress on the rag rug found in the November/December 2007 Handweaving Magazine is slow-going. I think winding pirns is so much faster than cutting fabric strips, tapering the ends, and winding onto ski shuttles. And the weaving itself is also slower. I'm under the impression that the strips shouldn't have a twist in them as they lie in the shed. However today, I'm going to experiment with not worrying about it and seeing if it makes a significant difference in the finished weaving. If not, maybe ignoring twists will help speed up the process.

I do like this results of this project. Reversible things always appeal to me. Although in this case, the rug is going to be given to some friends of ours as a thank you gift.

Macomber Update

2007-10-30T09:49:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Melodi Hackett of Maine and everyone on the yahoogroups weaving email list who answered my questions in the previous post!

The large silver thing in the first photo indeed is used with the black handle. It's used to push down a lamm while you are setting the tie-up. The smaller of the pins (in the photo with the silver bar) is used to hook the black handle in the down position so that you can use both hands for the tie-up process. Here's what it looks like:

I'm told the same shorter pins are also used in the old lamms for tie-up. My loom must be the newer version because there are no holes in them to insert the shorter pins.

The spring-string-chain found at the back of the loom near the warp beam is to act as a brake when the ratchet system is released for advancing the warp. Without it, the warp beam will spin like the dickens once tension is released. I'm really glad I found out about this before starting my first project.

The first project is in progress! I measured out the warp and have it sleyed in the reed. I spent time last night moving the heddles and will finish dressing the loom today. I'm going to take a stab at that reversible rag rug in the latest Handwoven magazine. It only requires 4 harnesses in a straight draw but the simplicity will allow me to become familiar with this new loom. I can tackle an 8 harness project next time!

Macomber Mysteries

2007-10-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

A week ago I bought my dream loom. It's a 45" Macomber 16 harness frame with 8 harnesses. The perfect width (not too big, not too narrow). The perfect number of harnesses. And room to expand should I outgrow 8.

Unfortunately, Macomber doesn't have much in the way of documentation. I have the catalogs the original owner received. And lovely catalogs they are! Someone spent a lot of time and energy creating such beautiful marketing literature. I, and probably many other Macomber owners, wish they had put the same energy into providing supporting documentation. So far, I haven't even found someone with a mechanical assembly drawing.

So I come to the community of Macomber owners with some questions. I am fairly mechanically inclined and can figure out most things on my own. I also have some experience with looms (I own 5 not counting the Mac - 2 tables, a floor, and 2 rigid heddles). Sometimes, stuff just plain stumps you.

First, what are these parts?

The middle piece is used to connect the treadle to a shaft. I figured that one out because the previous owner left one still attached. I have lots of those which I assume you need to be able to set up complicated tie-ups. But I haven't a clue about the smaller wire-like piece. There are exactly 10 of those. Coincidentally, the loom has 10 treadles.

Next, what does this lever do?

The photos were taken from the back of loom. I think the black lever is used in conjuction with the big silver hunk of metal in the first picture. Threading the black handle into the slot and lining it up over part of the jack mechanism makes it possible to push down on a single shaft from the front of the loom. Is that how this is to be used? Why would you use something like that?

Last question: what is this for? And where should it be attached?

It hangs off the back beam near the warp beam. It consists of a small spring, some thin rope, and a chain at the end. I know it's not the warp beam brake because there's a ratchet contraption on the other end of the warp beam.

I hope someone can help!

The Curve Balls of Life

2007-10-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

It seems people are always asking me what I've been doing and it seems like I never really have an answer. But I must have been busy with something because I never seem to have time to do the stuff *I* want to do.

This past weekend is a good example of doing things I hadn't planned. Last Friday I was in the kitchen when I heard a crash. It wasn't ....CRASH.... It was more like ....crash, tumble, clink, crash, clink, clink..... Looking around I found the shelves in the pantry had simply given up.

Sigh.... although I've been meaning to reorganize the pantry, I really would have preferred to spend the weekend doing something else. But sometimes life hands you a curve ball. So Saturday the kids and I (remember, dh got on a plane that day so he could visit the Queen) spent time driving around looking at various shelving options. We finally found something that would fit as well as maximize the space. After a few days of reorganizing, we now have this:

Maybe this weekend I'll get to play with the new Bamboo yarn that arrived on Monday. I'm itching to do some painted warps.

JoJo isn't happy

2007-10-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

And when JoJo isn't happy, she let's you know. Meet JoJo

So why is she upset? My guess is that she's mad that Ken is gone. He left for London on Saturday. That night JoJo slept with dd instead of at the foot of our bed like she usually does. Last night (Sunday) she went to bed with dd but came out after dd fell asleep and was hanging out with me and Luke (our other cat) downstairs. After awhile I hard a commotion in the downstairs bath and went to investigate.

This is what I found...

She pulled the roll out of the cabinet under the sink, took off the paper cover and proceeded to shred it. She used to shred rolls that were on the tp holder a lot when she was younger; we think she was mad that we left her alone all day.

And to show that she does miss Ken, she went back into dd's room and slept with her again last night. She'd better learn to deal with it - he doesn't come back for a few more days.

Monterey Pronk's Fiber Art Competition accepts Mail-in and Check-in day entries!

2007-09-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Monterey Pronk's Fiber Art Competition accepts all entries containing at least 50% alpaca.

The premiums are $10 for First place and $5 for Second Place. We also have special awards for Judge's Choice and People's Choice.

If you download Monterey Pronk's forms the instructions have all kinds of deadlines that are looming near. Well.... if you can hand-walk your entry to check-in, ignore those deadlines and bring your exhibit directly on in! If you have to drop it in the mail, make sure it'll get to me no later than September 21st and I'll bring it to check-in for you.

The information on the website is mostly correct - we've changed a few things to accommodate more entries at the last minute. Here are the changes!

Modified Fiber Art and Skein Entry Instructions

1) Go here. Download the appropriate forms. Separate forms are used for entries in Fiber Arts, Handspun Skeins, and Mill Spun Skeins. Don't forget to fill out a “Fee Form” as well. In a nutshell, Fees are $3 per entry.

IMPORTANT: AOBA Show Division Membership is NOT required for a Fiber Arts & Skeins competition!

2) Fill out all forms. If you have any questions, please contact Kimberly Louie at (alpacas at humminghearts.com)

3) Exhibits must be placed in a clean plastic bag, whenever possible. The preferred plastic bag is a one-gallon size ziplock. One item per bag.

4) Fill out the Fiber Arts and/or Skein Entry Tag and place in the bag with the item. If you want the entry mailed back to you, in the "Pickup Receipt" section, please write “Item is being returned by mail”

5a) Place items, forms, and fees in a tyvek envelope or a box. USPS has free shipping materials. If you use a box, make sure that this box is in good, sturdy condition because it will be the one used to mail back your item(s).

OR

5b) Bring item, entry forms, and fees to the check-in on Friday, September 28 between 10am-4pm to the Monterey County Fairgrounds. As of this post, I'm unsure where we'll be doing check-in so ask someone and they'll be sure to direct you. Alpaca show people are very helpful!

6) Pick Up or Return Shipping: Entires can be picked up Sunday, September 30th between 5-7pm. If you want something returned by mail, you MUST include a return shipping label with postage or carrier label in the envelope/box. Since you may win a ribbon and each ribbon weighs 2 ounces, please calculate that added weight for EACH item.

7) Shipping Fiber Art Items To The Fiber Art & Skeins Competition Manager: We recommend that you ship your Fiber Art Item with a carrier which uses a tracking system (i.e. UPS, Fed-ex, etc). Ship to: Kimberly Louie (address found on the forms). The Monterey Pronk ’07 show management is not responsible for packages that are lost in transit or delivered late.

Note for mail-in entries: The actual Fiber Art items, forms and fees should be postmarked to Kimberly Louie no later than September 15th and needs to arrive no later than September 21st. Please make sure that you email Kimberly at (alpacas at humminghearts.com) to let her know that the items being entered in the show have been shipped to her.

Happy Birth Day!

2007-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Today was a long time in coming. 20 months in fact. That's quite a feat considering the gestation for alpacas is supposed to be 11 months. Our first dam, Melody, was bred and set to deliver in September 2006. Unfortunately, tragic events took her from us in December 2005. We acquired a replacement in August 2006 after confirming pregnancy. Her due date, according to her former breeder was May 21, 2007. As you can see, she was nearly a month overdue!

This last month has been incessantly nerve wracking for everyone. There was even a debate this last week as to whether or not she was even pregnant. Um, there's no doubt as of this evening - she's definitely not pregnant! Kissy Missy - aka Kay to us - delivered a 17 pound dark rose grey girl this morning. Textbook delivery; textbook postpartum; textbook newborn antics.

And now we have to give this precious creature a name. I may have mentioned in a previous (very previous) post that we use the alphabet as our naming structure. Our first cria was named with an "A" name (Aria - who sadly died at 29 days old back in 2005). So this one must be a "B" name. We first decided upon Beatrice. While the name does have some family significance, we picked it because my second most favorite 'paca at Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch was named Beatrice. She lived a long life and recently passed away. We also chose Baltane (bal'-tan-ah) which is Gaelic for the month of May. Although I'm not a fan of using names people can't easily pronounce let alone remember, I liked the idea of using a Gaelic word because our family has such an affinity for Ireland. But as the May 21st due date came and went, and then so did the entire month of May, Baltane had to be set aside for possible future use. Wanting to keep with the Irish theme, I looked up town names in Ireland. When I happened upon Belleek, I knew we'd have to add it to the list. Belleek is also the name of exquisite Irish Bone China. I have a few pieces from our trips to Ireland and simply love it. But Belleek china is light beige in color so a cria in any other color would have to use another name. As we were crossing our fingers and wishing very, very hard for a grey cria, I became less and less attached to the name Belleek and put it on our list for future possibilities. I also considered Bisbee Blue (a quaint town in southern Arizona - one of the VERY few that I actually liked in that state and "Blue" is another term for grey).

Then just as we passed the 11 month 2 week gestation point (nerve wracking for some; right on time for others - it just depends on how you calculate the due dates for Spring births), a friend of mine passed away suddenly. While I am thankful for the distraction, I'd like to point out to God that there are a million other things he could have chosen to distract me. My friend was a great mom to three wonderful kids ranging in age from 17 to 6. She was only five years older than me and the other day I realized that when I'm 46, I'll have a 17 year old child too. This whole event hit very very close to home for me. As I was thinking back on Kristine one day last week, I was remembering just how open-hearted she was and how happy she always made others feel. She was practically blissful. Blissy Krissy. Yes, I'm being silly - Kristine was fond of doing that too! Ah, but then that very pregnant dam 'o mine's name popped in my head - Kissy Missy. And Blissy does start with "B". (Starting to see the gears turn here?) How wonderfully silly it would be to have Kissy Missy give birth to Blissy Krissy! While I think Kristine would actually get a kick out of having a cria named after, I'm not sure her family would feel the same way.

So without further delay, let me introduce you to Bliss. She may at some point in the future get a more formal name, but she'll always be Bliss to us. In fact, we're quite blissful Bliss is with us and here to stay for a very, very, very long time.

Click on the photo for a larger version

Overdyeing - a kids' project

2006-05-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

One of the "jobs" I have these days is being a substitute teacher. For now, I limit my subbing to the school where my own children attend. Since my oldest has gone through almost all of the grades there, I am quite familiar with all of the routines and curriculums. That helps to eliminate some of the stress a sub goes through when faced with a classroom of children eager to convince you "Mrs. X really does let us work together on math worksheets."

Last week I subbed in a 3rd grade class. This was a pre-arranged two day assignment. I love multi-day assignments because it allows me to plan ahead a fiber project for the kids. This time the kids overdyed light brown wool with food coloring. Educationally, it was a science experiment, in case the principal came in wanting to know how food coloring and wool were related to the students' instructional time. The presentation only took about 10 minutes. Putting fiber into their cup took about 20 minutes.

First, we talked about different foods that can cause stains. Putting this in the context of "has your mother ever gotten upset that you got strawberries/hot chocolate/juice/ketchup/mustard/etc... on your clothes?" we talked about natural dyes (strawberries, chocolate, mustard), fiber types (cotton, wool, synthetic) and the process of staining, aka dyeing.

Next, each student was given a strip of light brown wool roving about 12 inches in length. We used Wilton's gel cake decorating colors, which sadly I've recently learned is not light-fast but it served its purpose for this experiment. Each student picked a color. In cases where more than one student picked a color, we made an effort to make different strength solutions to get light and dark shades. Note: Ahead of time I made a list of possible colors on the board limiting the number of students per color lest we have all the boys pick blue and all the girls pick violet.

We put water, a glug of white vinegar, and some of the Wilton's gel into cups. The kids put their roving into the cup, use a spoon to submerge it (we didn't pre-wet the fiber) and place the cup in the sunny windowsill. My intention was to dye this using a modified "sun tea" method. Unfortunately, the sun wasn't cooperating. I knew by the end of the day that I had to speed up the process. I made use of the microwave in the teacher's lounge after school. Three of the cups were left un-finished on purpose so the kids could see the difference.

On the second day, I showed the kids the un-finished cups with the rovings. The fiber did have some color change but the liquid was also still colored. Then I showed them the exhausted cups. They were amazed to see the colorful fiber but even MORE amazed at the clear liquid. "Where did all the color go?", they all exclaimed! I used the two liquid examples to emphasize the need for heat as an integral part of this particular dyeing process recipe.

We also looked at some of the violet and black rovings up close. These food coloring colors tend to split - meaning they'll separate into their main colors and strike fiber unevenly resulting in splotchy dyeing. Some fiber artists call that a "feature" and rely on it for effect. I used this feature to remind them how colors are made (violet = red + blue, green = yellow + blue, black = many colors) and explained that in this case the colors didn't stay mixed once in the water and after separating, the fiber dyed with the separate colors. In our experiments, one of the violets was pink streaked with blue and one of the blacks was green.

The colors we used were:
Christmas Red
Red, Red
Leaf Green
Kelly Green
Yellow
Orange
Violet
Royal Blue
Brown
Black
The strip of light brown roving at the top just above the purple-violet and to the left of the red is a strip of the original colored roving.

Things to do differently next time:
1. Use glass jars instead of plastic cups. It lets the kids see the contents from the side instead of having to stand over the cup to look inside.
2. Pick less colors. Period. I let each student "own" a color but this meant that as I was working with the one student, the rest sat there unoccupied. This particular class is wonderful so there weren't any problems but I wouldn't count on that being the case in the future. From now on, I would work in groups (this was a class of 19 so perhaps groups of 5) and give the others a worksheet to occupy them until it was their turn.

What will become of the rovings? Check back in a few weeks because I've volunteered (i.e. no pay) to go back to the class in early June to finish up.

It's the little things....

2006-05-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

that can make a chore so much easier. I've done toenail trimming before and it is such a big job for me that I could only do a handful of animals before being tired and plain worn out. I couldn't understand how Wayne (of Foothill, where we agist) could grab a foot, snip, snip, snip, move on to the next foot and be done with all four in no time flat.

A few weeks ago I was at 101 Alpacas for their shearing day. I went so that I could see how others do it and pick up on any tips for my own use. Well..... Vicki was using this tool that looked very much like a gardener's pruning shear to trim up toenails lickety-split! As I watched, I didn't see her doing anything particularly different from my method. She's considerable smaller than I am so I was pretty sure strength wasn't a factor. It had to be the tool. She said I could get a pair through Useful Items for around $20. I figured if they worked that well for her, it was worth it to me to get my own pair. And if they didn't work any better than the nippers Wayne uses, oh well, at least it's a write-off. I ordered myself a pair and they arrived Tuesday.

So today I went down to Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch with my new toenail clippers in hand. Wayne and I rounded up the boys where my two hang out. We caught BB who wasn't too keen on being restrained, let alone having his feet touched. I was a little worried about poking myself or the animal with the ends of the clippers so I proceeded very carefully. Wayne held BB's head and I "wrangled" a foot. Well, I must say I was VERY impressed with my new instrument. It cuts through black toenails like a hot knife through butter! Wayne and I trimmed up 5 boys in about 30 minutes (and weighed a few while we had halters on) and when we were done, I wasn't tired. More significantly, my back wasn't killing me from bending over. And of course the boys seemed to be walking a little prouder now with their newly manicured toes!

The tool is made in Japan by a company named Saboten. The blades are teflon coated and the handles are orange. I've been told there's a green-handled version out there that has stainless steel blades but the person said they bought those in Canada. Those are easier to re-sharpen. For now, I'm simply in love with my bright orange snips!

The next tool on my list: the Tooth-A-Matic tooth trimmer put out by The AlpacaRosa.

Alpaca Fiber Everywhere but not a yarn to knit

2006-04-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

Shearing time will soon be upon us and with that comes the decision of what to do with all that fiber. There’s the good: most people know what to do with that. There’s the bad: some owners may have a few ideas but most are open to new suggestions. And then there’s the ugly: I would bet that this ends up in the trash or compost bin at every ranch. What if there were other ways to deal with the Bad and the Ugly? What if you could actually make some money off that trash? Trash to Treasure? Well, maybe not treasure, but a few coins in the pocket are better than none!

Second and Third quality fiber make up a significant enough percentage of most alpacas’ shearing that it can, and should, be creatively put to use. The question most have is “how?”

Felt it. Okay. Now what?
Flat felt can be shaped into a hanging plant basket liner. Price these less than the popular (and expensive) coconut shell liners and you still get a tidy profit. A quick trip to your local garden shop will provide you with price points. Use your nastiest thirds for this product and you can even promote it as self-fertilizing! Go one step further and dye some of the fiber creating colorful inserts. Much better than those blah brown coconut ones!

Shoe inserts. Cut flat felt in the shape of shoe inserts to keep feet toasty warm in the winter.

Slippers. Flat felt can be cut to make slippers. Most fabric stores carry a slipper pattern.

Seat covers. Simple rectangles work well at keeping the driver’s bum off the car’s cold winter seat. These can also be used underneath children’s car seats to protect the car’s original upholstery.

Jingle Felt Balls. Cats love these toys. Make a larger version, insert several jingles, and babies love them too! Priced at $2-$5 each they are a popular sale item with ranch visitors. Again, add color and they sell themselves!

Felt Covered Soap. Wrap fiber around a bar of soap and felt it. Once rinsed and dried, it kind of looks like your soap bar has a sweater on! The best part about this product is that the coarser thirds exfoliate as the soap cleans.

Paperweights. Find a smooth rock large enough to be a good size paperweight. Felt over it just as you would the bar of soap.

Bag it.
Did you know ballet dancers use lamb’s wool in the toes of their Pointe shoes? Did you also know that the dancers complain about the scratchiness of this wool? Save those second cuts from the blanket and you have a softer AND more durable alternative for dancers. The wool product usually runs $4 for one ounce. A quick visit to a ballet studio with an offer of free samples to the studio director might just generate a long-standing, if small, revenue stream.

Fly fishermen love to tie their own lures. A small bag of alpaca fiber containing a variety of colors and micron counts can be marketed to locally owned sports goods stores.

Doll makers are always looking for long locks. Suri fiber that you consider too coarse might be perfect to a doll maker. Be sure to keep it in lock form.

Create a felting kit. Typically neck fiber is soft but short. That lends it perfectly to needle or wet felting. These kits can be sold in your ranch store or market the wet felting kits to local preschools or home school groups. Add a few packages of unsweetened Kool-Aid and you have a “Dye to Felt” kit.

Draft stoppers. Stuff the fiber into a long fabric tube along with some rice or pebbles to make a draft stopper for doors or windows. A quick Internet search will bring up some creative ways to decorate them.

Blend it.
Keeping in mind that the end product will only be as soft as the coarsest fiber, blend your seconds and/or thirds with a fiber of comparable micron count and staple length. Some examples are sheep wool, llama fiber, adult mohair, and dog brushings (another free ingredient). One ranch even blends with fiber from their Curly Hair horses and another uses hair from their Highland Cattle. Fiber people love to buy exotic blends!

The blends can be made into roving or spun into yarn. As these products tend to be coarser, they are perfect for rugs, tapestry weaving yarns, or non-garment items like bags.

Barter it.
There are several businesses that sell alpaca fiber products and take fiber in trade for credit towards your order. Recently AOBA published the “Directory of Fiber Resources” listing many of these companies. All AOBA members received a copy of this guide.

Over the next few months I'll post specific instructions, or pointers on where to find specific instruction, on all of these projects. Right now, you can find Felted Soap instruction in my March 2006 post. Check back here often for other instructions! And if there's a project you do with alpaca fiber of less-than-prime quality, leave a note in the comment section. I'd love to get more ideas!

Do you enter fiber art competitions?

2006-04-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

I like to. At the very least, I receive feedback on my workmanship. Of course, I like seeing how I stack up to the other entries. In other words, what I should be striving to accomplish. The very best is getting a blue ribbon and some prize money.

Most of the time, I'll enter the local county fairs. Several around here get enough of a turn-out that you feel like there's actually a competition. There's nothing worse than entering only to find out that you were the only entry. It just takes away all pride you want to have in that blue ribbon.

Someday I want to enter one of the many privately run fiber arts shows like Black Sheep Gathering or Dixon Lambtown or maybe even Maryland Sheep and Wool Show. I'd love to get to Black Sheep again this year but our calendar is looking mighty full even though it's still April.

Entering local county fairs and even the private fiber art shows is fairly inexpensive. I suppose some of the reasoning takes into account that most fiber artists are really "starving artists". The county fair I entered last year had a fee of $1.25 per entry. Black Sheep's entry fees this year for yarn skeins is $1 and for fiber arts it's $2. Hmmm... I just noticed they take mail in entries through June 15th. Now I have no excuse for not entering! And neither do you!

Question to the public: What fees have you paid to enter a show? It can be a local county fair or a full-blown juried art show. Use the comment section to tell me. Include the name of the event. And if they offer cash prizes, tell me that too.

Kimberly

Thrums

2006-03-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

There's always warp waste in weaving. The only way to use nearly 100% is to use a dummy warp for tieing on to the warping beam. In September, I wove a shawl using a painted warp and solid-color rayon for weft. It came out beautiful largely in part to the painted warp. So when I had to cut off the ends of the beautiful painted warp, I simply had to save them.

Today after seeing an innovative idea of rug weaving, I tied them together end to end, wound it on a bobbin, and started weaving.

I've used three components in this fabric: the thrums, medium brown rayon yarn, and half-inch strips of fabric. Each component gets a few shuttle passes and then I move to the next one.

What will I do with the fabric? I don't know. It hasn't told me yet.

Felted Soap

2006-03-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

You couldn't ask for a more simple, enjoyable, and fun project! And I'm not just talking about something for the kids.

To use these fuzzy creations, you simply get it wet under running water and rub the fiber to lather up the soap. When you're finished, wipe off the excess soap suds and let it sit to dry.

Felted soaps are a gardener's best friend. Their fuzzy texture with its built-in soap dispenser makes cleaning fingernails a breeze! In fact, these soaps are better than a loofah.

So how does one make felted soap? Read on!

Step 1
Using a bar of soap, you're going to wrap it in fiber. I've used roving made from alpaca neck and legs that I dyed green (and in later photos it "magically" turns purple :-) but you can use any carded clean fiber. I wouldn't use uncarded fiber because it tends to create a lumpy fiber covering.

Step 2
Using a gentle stream of water, wet the fiber and soap. As you are doing this, scrunch the entire thing to work up a soapy lather. An alternative is to add some soap foam from one of those hand soap dispensers that put out foam soap. This will get things started faster. Be careful not to shift the fiber in a way that creates holes. I've found the fiber felts pretty quickly so be sure to cover any bare spots right away. If you do end up with bare spots, you can try adding some more dry fiber. Sometimes this works, and sometimes this doesn't. It seems to depend on the type of fiber used.

Step 3
Felt. To wet felt (and not all fibers will felt - be sure to start with a feltable fiber like alpaca), fibers must be exposed to soap and agitation. Another component often found in wet felting is extreme temperature changes. Thankfully, we don't need that component in this process. So once you have a soapy lather, rub the bar of soap along its edges. The more you agitate the fiber, the more it will felt making a strong covering for the bar of soap.

Step 4
Rinse off the excess soap lather.

And you're done! Let it sit out to dry.

Finished Projects

2006-01-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

In an effort to start the new year off right, I've finished two projects I started last year. The first are the felted slippers I mentioned in a previous post. For the felting process, I washed them in our washing machine with a load of clothes using hot water. Because we have a front loading washing machine, things don't usually felt well so I took them out and hand felted them some more in the sink. Then they were popped into the dryer for the final step. I'm quite pleased with the felting and fit results, although admit they'd work better on someone's feet who lives in a fully carpetted home. I find they're a bit too slippery for our linoleum and wood floors. These were made using handspun Lincoln wool.

My second completed project is one I'm quite proud of. It is a dressy jacket made using dupioni silk and my hand-spun, handwoven yardage. The story of the woven yardage: I bought some black alpaca roving while at our very first alpaca show in Southern California around Fall 2003. We weren't showing - we were just interested in alpacas. I took home the roving and spun it but wanting to make it go as far as possible, I plied it with an Ashland Bay wool roving in fall colors. Beautiful yarn! In April 2004, I entered that yarn into a fiber arts competition at the Monterey Pronk, an alpaca show in Monterey California. It won a blue ribbon! The yarn then sat in my stash for a while as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Every spinner out there knows what I'm talking about - we have many yarns that sit until they "call to us". Well this one spoke to me when I had a black cotton yarn I had put on the loom to "play" with. That warp's purpose was specifically so I could experiment with different treadling and different tie-ups. But after I was "played" out, I found I had lots of warp left over. In a simple twill, I wove the 48" of fabric.

Back to "let it sit until it calls to me". In September 2005, I pulled out my pattern stash. I wanted to use the fabric to make a vest but didn't find any patterns I liked. Instead this dress jacket called to me. I made a "muslin" using the pattern pieces, adjusted it to fit me, cut the pieces apart to accomodate the handwoven fabric width and made my jacket. It helps that I've got a lot of pattern drafting experience (see the link for Kings and Sages Apparel, my line of boy's clothing) but it really was quite easy. My next project is a black corduory winter (well, California winter) jacket using some of my other handwoven stash.

Close-up of woven fabric:

More socks - this time from alpaca

2006-01-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

Handmade Christmas presents are fun to make and give. Part of the fun is the challenge of making the gift without the recipient knowing! I made these socks for dh. Actually, the gift he opened Christmas day were the socks on the needles 75% done. It took a lot longer to knit his socks than it did to do mine because of the secrecy. Once I could knit them in the open, they were quickly finished.

I used the same pattern as before using the large size this time. I actually knit both socks in tandem. I wound the yarn into a center pull ball and worked one sock from each end. When I ran out of yarn, I switched to plain white and finished them up. The colorations aren't an exact match because it was hand dyed roving. I handspun the yarn after dyeing it as well as some of the undyed white. The roving is alpaca neck and leg fiber. It's not something I'd want to wear on *my* neck, but it's absolutely perfect for socks! The durability is supposed to be incredible. Ask dh in a few years what he thinks. His initial opinion is positive with a dash of "could you make the leg longer next time?"

I have another alpaca neck/leg roving project to post about but as that's a present for someone, I have to wait until they open it lest it spoil the surprise!

Socks, the first success

2005-12-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Last year I tried knitting socks. Half way through the first one I knew something was wrong. It was big enough to fit King Kong. Oops. So I put it aside in the UFO basket. A few weeks ago I picked up the same pattern and tried again. Swatching really does help. ;-) This time around the sock actually fits. Even the second one fits! I learned the basics from this website.

My next version will address the "drat, I ran out of yarn and must go spin some more but the green is gone and all I have left is yellow" issue that cropped up right after turning the heel in this pair. The yarn is handspun Lincoln wool dyed with commercial dyes. My feet stay toasty warm but not too-warm. Important now that our ~~penny pinching~~ budget tightening has forced the thermostat down to 61 degrees during the day.

Socks are fun. I'm not a big knitting fan but socks go pretty quickly. Now I'm doing a pair of slippers that get felted when done. Check out the free pattern here.

Alpaca related info: Wayne and I go to pick up our girls on Saturday from Derwydd Alpacas. My female Melody should deliver us a cria in September 2006 and Wayne's girl, Pink Champagne, will be close behind with her own cria. It will be interesting to see how the crias compare as they have the same sire.

On an additional fiber front: I'm preparing a grey Lincoln wool fleece to send off to a mini-mill. I have a big bag of alpaca seconds that I want combined with the Lincoln. This wool fleece is exceptional - it was a ribbon winner at the Monterey Wool Competition. The locks are too long to combine with the alpaca seconds so I'm slowly chugging through lock by lock cutting each Lincoln lock in half. (Don't fret - I have 2 other ribbon-winning Lincoln fleeces.) I want to use the roving for an Australian Locker Hooking item (either a rug or a wall hanging) and spin some of the roving to make more socks.

Cria photo

2005-11-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

I downloaded photos from my digital camera today and found this cria picture.

This is FTHL Regal. His dad, Regal Escubo, is an award winning rose grey alpaca. Although all of Regal Escubo's other crias bear his signature rose grey spot on the side of the blanket, this one has his mom's silver markings. I suppose we should really wait until Spring when he's shorn though. It's always interesting to see what the true markings are after cria's first shearings so we may indeed find Regal Escubo's marking on this boy as well!

Doesn't he just live up to his name? He's truly the most regal of the summer crias. FTHL Regal lives at Wayne and Eileen's ranch.

Kimberly, off to find more cria pictures...

Saying Goodbye is a part of life

2005-11-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite alpaca females was delivered to her new home recently. Aurora was owned by Foothill Llama and Alpacas and now lives in Idaho. You can see her in my March 2004 post on ranch chores. She was one of my favorites because she epitomized the "huggable investment" alpacas are touted to be. I don't know who coined that phrase because if you've spent any time with these beautiful animals you know that they really don't like to be hugged. Really, they don't even like to be touched. But once in a while, you find one who takes a liking to people. Aurora always greeted people in the pen. The first thing she would do is inspect your feet. Then she would follow you around like a puppy dog soliciting pets and back scratches. If the herd "witch" tried to harrass you, Aurora would put herself in the middle, and even one time turned to spit at the grump as if to say "hey, mind your manners around my friend".

Now even though Aurora liked people, there was a caveat to that: she had to not be pregnant. When she was pregnant, she was your typical "don't bother me, human" alpaca. I remember being pregnant and I can't say I blame her.

As an alpaca rancher, saying goodbye is part of the business. Sometimes it's hard because the animal sold is such a lovable animal. Aurora's new owner is no doubt enjoying her. We wish them both well. I am happy to say though, that we at Foothill Ranch already have a candidate stepping up fill Aurora's shoes: Jamie.

North Fork renovation work

2005-11-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

Right after DS's baseball game on Saturday, we drove up to North Fork to do some more work on renovating the house. It was chilly when we arrived so we set about starting a fire in the wood stove. Our first discovery was a long-dead bird in the cavity of the stove. As I shoveled that out, I then discovered the level of ash was, oh, about 6 inches deep. When was the last time this stove was cleaned out? 1898? Sheesh. Back in June when we were cleaning up the property, we wisely saved any tools we came across. The all-metal axe came in handy as Ken chipped away from a log to create some kindling. It was awfully hard on the hands without any handle padding. (I've added "axe" to the list for next trip.) In about half an hour, we had a roaring fire going. The amount of wood we went through that night and the next morning was a bit surprising. Even though we have what we thought was a good size wood pile, it's clear we're going to have to cut a lot more for future trips. (Adding chainsaw to the list too.)

Another discovery is the winter temperature. Boy oh boy does it get cold at night INSIDE the house. And there isn't even any snow yet! I kept waking up because my nose was freezing. I had already planned on adding whole house cooling to the renovation but after this past weekend, we'll be sure to be looking into heating solutions as well. The wood stove needs to be replaced anyway (not up to code).

The last time we were up there working, the kids discovered a scorpion. I didn't even know there were scorpions up there! I figured it was too high of an elevation. According to another rancher up in the area, there are small and large varieties in the area. Lovely.

Renovation work is going along slowly but surely. We've removed all of the wallpaper the downstairs rooms except the bedroom we slept in. On our next trip, we can tackle that and be ready for texturing the walls downstairs. The current job is getting a contractor to replace every door in the house. All of the interior doors except for one have a hole(sometimes holes) in them. The front door has been busted in one time too many so the jam is nearly useless. The back door is exposed to the weather and looks it. Nearly all of the surface has flaked away. The back French doors were destroyed by the previous owner's dog. I would have like to repair those because they're really nice doors but a woodworker says they're too damaged. And the master bedroom door is missing. Gone. It wasn't even among the junk we disposed of this summer. I'm hoping we can get this work done before Christmas.

Major Update

2005-09-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Life has been quite demanding these past 6+ months. Here's a quick synopsis:

North Fork House and Land
Right around my last post we started having trouble with the tenants/former owners of the North Fork house. They stopped paying rent and by mid-March, I had to start eviction proceedings. We finally got possession of the house in late May. But oh my, what a mess! Nine trips to the dump later (the trailer we used was 10' by 5' by 6' and we piled it higher than the 6' walls) and we have a house we can start remodeling. Anyone know of a way to clean 30 years of smoker's soot from a pine tongue-in-grove 21 foot high vaulted ceiling?

On the herd front...
We were expecting two crias this summer - one from our own female Melody, and one from a female we don't own but chose the stud for breeding. Melody graced us with a beautiful white female cria on June 26th. We named her Aria to start us off with our alphabetical naming tradition. Sadly, Aria only lived 28 days. The necropsy showed her intestines were just not working and any hay she ingested sat in C1 (the first stomach) fermenting to the point it released toxins which shut her system down. So $2908.00 later we are back to square one. The second female, Halley, slipped her pregnancy at some point because a blood test taken a month before her due date came back negative (she's now months beyond her due date). The stud we chose to use with Halley died about 2 weeks ago so we can't try that match again.

After all that's happened this summer, if I was in this business for breeding, I'd have thrown in the towel. As much as I love the animals, this was just a heartbreaking summer. Thankfully, I also love alpaca fiber and thoroughly enjoy spinning, weaving, and felting. Running a fiber ranch of males is looking more and more appealing. But we're not quitters, so it's off to Derwydd Alpacas to breed Melody and get ready for Round 2 next summer.

Fiber Arts Competitions
My daughter and I both entered things in competitions the last few months and Dana even competed on several Sheep to Shawl teams.

The first judged event was in April at Monterey Pronk. My woven suri scarf won a first place! Every yarn I entered also got a ribbon. Dana entered a knitted pencil holder necklace and got first place. Hers was the only entry in the kids category and she said she wishes more kids would enter so it would feel like a real win. Her lace weight suri yarn competed with the adults and she got second, only because she didn't set the twist. (DH chided me for not doing it for her.) The judge was very impressed that a 10 year old spun such fine yarn.

The second competition was the Alameda County Fair. The same woven suri scarf got third - and when I saw what got first and second, I understood why. First and second were very complicated weaves that must have been woven on 16+ heddle looms. They were very pretty and very well done. Dana's pencil holder necklace got second - we never did find first place (They display entries by themes, not by category.) Her yarn got third - again competing against adults. Pretty awesome!

The Alameda County Fair is where one of the sheep to shawl competitions Dana participated in was held. She was on a kid's team against four adult teams. They placed third!! Dana will get to keep the shawl they made - for now all of the shawls are making the rounds of the guilds.

Dixon Lambtown (July 30th) was Dana's second sheep to shawl competition this summer. The same kids from Alameda participated along with two adult teams. This time they came in second!! The organizers of this event solicit prize donations from the vendors. All of the kids were awed with the prize table and took home oodles of goodies.

Fun fiber stuff

2005-03-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

My dd and I made some neat yarn yesterday morning.

A few months ago I won an ebay auction for 24 pirns that were loaded with string. I only wanted the pirns to use in a shuttle I had bought; I had planned to throw away the string. Once the items arrived, the string was actually kind of nice. And since I had a warp on the loom already that needed to be used up, I went about using the string and made some nice placemats. They were so nice that I used them as a Christmas gift to my sister, who said she loves them and is using them as doilies and end table runners. Even after I ran out of warp (remember my floor loom came pre-warped with white string), I still had about a dozen pirns filled with string. But these were not in as good a shape as the others - the string broke when pulled on with medium tension. I'd hate to make something and have it fall apart because the weft is too weak. So to the garbage these fibers were headed.

filled pirn

But it killed me to throw away all that string. And it was taking forever to pull off the string. Rotary cutter to the rescue! One quick pass over the length of the pirn and I had most of the string removed.

cut pirn

But wait! The removed string actually looked just like that stuff in the eyelash yarns. Oooooo!!! Card it into some wool, spin it up, and Viola! Eyelash Yarn

eyelash yarn

Layout change

2005-02-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

Time for a change here. As much as I like the option of letting people leave messages when they visit our blog here, I detest the pop-ups that the tag board people subject my visitors to. So I'm taking the tag board down.

I'd like to change the look of the blog too. Get a new layout and background. I checked out the freebies offered by blogger and none of them worked right: the two columns wouldn't line up properly. I don't have time right now to fiddle with the code, so I'll save that change for another day.

In the meantime, enjoy reading without any of the annoying pop-ups!!!

One by one...

2005-02-07T17:24:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that if everyone who likes fiber - that would be knitters, crochetters, weavers, etc... - tried alpaca fiber, that they would never go back to anything else. To that end, I do my best to expose as many people to the fiber as I can.

I carry a drop spindle with me where ever I go. I always let people "pet" the fiber and the yarn when they ask what I'm doing. Someone always asks. :-) They are always amazed that it's so soft. My current carry-around is some of Boot's suri fiber.

Sometimes I substitute teach at my children's elementary school. I always bring a bunch of wooden toy wheel spindles and fiber so that if we have some free time I can teach them. It doesn't matter what age the kids are, they LOVE learning. I've even done presentations in the kindergarten classes to coincide with the cowboy section they study in January.

I sent my cousin a small skein of dyed alpaca yarn at Christmas time. I had just found out she's a knitter. She spent time this weekend at a Superbowl party knitting some wrist warmers. Aren't they great!!

Of course, my children being California babies asked why someone would want to make something to keep their wrists warm. LOL!! I reminded them about our trip to the snow in Tahoe last year. *Then* they understood!

Puss 'N Boots

2005-01-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

And Boots makes THREE!

Technically he's not part of Humming Hearts Ranch. Boots belongs to our daughter. She fell in love with him from the day she first met him. He's an incredibly friendly (but not too friendly - the tail stays down) and curious alpaca. He's first to the fence when visitors arrive and loves attention. In fact, he was recently photographed for an article in the local newspaper. The Hollister Freelance came to Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch (where we agist) to do a story on the business of alpacas. Boots was so friendly that he was featured on the front page of the Community section where the article was published.

The ranch who owned Boots gave us his last fleece. DD (dear daughter) has been cleaning it and spinning it. So have I. It's really incredible. So soft and shiny!!! Suri fiber really "shines" best when it's combed and spun worsted. I only have a drum carder and haven't learned worsted spinning really so I doubt I'm doing this lovely fiber justice. Nonetheless, it's making some really nice fine gauge yarn. I've kept most of the chocolate fibers separate so far but I'm not worrying about the bits that do make it through. It just makes for a more interesting yarn.

Meet Melody

2004-11-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

She's the new member of our herd. We bought her a few months ago. She's a 2 year old pregnant female who should deliver in mid June. On the other hand, as a maiden she might not deliver until July or maybe even August. As you can see, she's a tuxedo. We bred her to a true black male. Should make for a dreamy cria! Then again, is there any other kind? :-)

AlpacaFest West 2004

2004-11-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

Halloween Weekend at Firestone Winery is when and where SoCalpaca holds their annual alpaca show. This year's events included halter classes, agility/obstacle classes, and the most fun of all, costume classes! Check out the purple octopus on the right.

My personal fav is the Girl Scout with her S'More. " Cause everyone knows when you've had one alpaca, you'll want s'more!"

"I tried to tell you!",

2004-09-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

said the pregnant female alpaca.

Today was more breeding and testing for pregnancy. The very first female on the list was Halle, a rose grey female who throws very nice babies when paired with Regal, another rose grey. Both alpacas are mature, experienced animals. Halle has had several crias and is a phenomenal mom. Regal is a stud the Auslands have used for quite a few years. Actually, he was retired until I came along. Because Halle is not for sale, I requested this mating because their crias are so nice. They were bred earlier and now it was time to behavior test her.

So we caught Halle, haltered her up and Wayne walked her out to take her to the breeding pen. Halle's first step outside her paddock triggered a spitting right at the back of Wayne's head. "What did you do that for?" Wayne rhetorically asked Halle. Being more cautious now, he made sure she walked next to him so he'd not be in the line of fire should anything else bother her. Well, something was bothering her because she spit again. And again. And again. She spit the entire walk back to the breeding pen. Why? She *knew* where she was going and was trying to tell us "I'm pregnant." She didn't feel the need to wait until in a pen with a male and spit him off. Did the dumb humans catch on? I didn't. But I'll be smarter next time, you can bet!

No 'paca time this week...

2004-09-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

It's too hot. Today I was going to work with our boy, Autie, on obstacle training. If there was time, I was also going to try out the youngsters, Arnold and Anthony. In late October, we're going to AlpacaFest West, a show in Central California that has performance competition. Alas, we'll have to work another day. Summer has finally decided to show up here in the Bay Area. The last few weeks, we've been having highs mostly in the 90s with a few days over 100. With temperatures like that, it's best not to work with the alpacas. I'm kinda bummed - it's been a week since I've been out to the ranch and was looking forward to some 'paca time. Sometimes ya gotta let Mother Nature make the decisions.

Property update...

2004-08-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

We did close escrow on the property in North Fork. Woo Hoo!!! At some point in the future, Humming Hearts Ranch will reside within 11.3 acres just off Road 221. Here is a BEFORE picture of the house.

We plan on doing some serious changes to the house before we move in ourselves. To the exterior for example, the roof will be replaced. The house will be painted white with green trim. We'll add a proper porch to the entire front that you see in the picture. You can't really see the front door because it is directly behind the tree. For now, the house is being rented out to a very nice local family.

Anyone want to come and help put in fencing? :-)

Kimberly

Vaccinations

2004-08-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Bad News: West Nile Virus is a very real threat to alpacas.
Good news: Camelids can be protected by a series of vaccinations.

Ohio State University and Oregon State University have both done extensive studies with an equine WNV vaccination and found it to be effective in camelids. Their studies showed a series of three shots will provide protection against WNV infected mosquitoes. The study results can be read here: http://www.icinfo.org/Pages/wnvreview.html

Something worth noting: Several WNV vaccination serums are on the market. If your animals are vaccinated using one serum, all booster shots must be given using that same one. If for some reason you have to switch to a different vaccination serum, all animals must start from ground zero and begin inoculations all over. Make careful notes in your vaccination documentation which vaccination you or your vet is using.

Today we spent time giving the young boys and the young girls their second WNV vaccination. It's days like today when you really appreciate a well designed ranch. The girls and boys are in the front of the ranch. The boys are at the end. The girls are next to the boys but there's a catch pen in between the two with gates from both paddocks leading into the catch pen. We had to first round up the boys into the catch pen. Easy. Just open their gate and they run right in. Could it be that they know they'll be closer to the girls? :-) Close the catch pen gate. Next, we caught a boy, haltered him, I held him while Wayne vaccinated him, and finally I released him back into his own paddock. Same routine for the girls.

Sometimes they are less eager to go into the catch pen so I use a long PVC pole (probably 12 feet long) held at waist height to guide them where I want them to go. We have also on occasion used a long flat woven rope with one person holding each end. I prefer the pole because I can do it myself. Alpacas rarely challenge barriers (they'd rather flee to an open space like through an open gate), so they never come in contact with the pole or rope.

Halters aren't always necessary for these vaccinations. We used them today because most everyone was a bit on the feisty side. It is simply safer for them if they are haltered and tied up even though you have one person holding the animal while the other innoculates. For the truly feisty ones, we can walk them back to the barn and use the chute. It contains them very well. Thankfully, we didn't need to do that for anyone today.

Kimberly

Weaving: making something from nothing

2004-08-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I drove to Southern California to pick up a LeClerc floor loom I bought through eBay. Thankfully, we have friends who live in Porterville, a town about halfway between where we live and where the loom was located. Our friends kindly offered to be a waypoint for me and the kids on this excursion. Here's my new treasure! I've even got a bit of my own weaving showing on it.

Here's a close-up of the weaving. I unrolled it off the front beam so that you could see more of it than is pictured above.

Now, lest you think I've been rather industrious since the arrival of the loom, let me say that the loom came warped with some-once-white cotton string. The previous owner had started a project but never finished it. I rolled the old project onto the front beam and started my own project using some of my icky* handwoven yarn. For yarn I considered garbage, it worked up quite nicely. Maybe if I full it (felt the fibers with soap and gentle agitation) the remaining paint flecks will come out and it'll make a nice placemat.

*"icky" because I dyed a wool roving using dyes that mostly sat on top of the fiber. It was an experiment gone bad. When I spun the roving, I got tons of paint flakes all over me. But could I throw away the yarn or roving? Of course not. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Location Update
As you know, we don't have a ranch of our own yet. We have been taking time this year to scout out various locations. To make a long story short (and I'll elaborate on it in a later post), we're in escrow on a nice 11 acre property in North Fork, California. We're supposed to close escrow tomorrow. I'm a firm believer in "nothing is yours until the deal is done" and there is one glitch that cropped up on Monday so who knows what will happen in the next 48 hours. Cross your fingers for us. I'll post more as soon as the title is (or isn't) in our hands. For now, I'm going back to weaving - it's been a huge stess reliever for me this week.

Fiber Competitions

2004-07-13T17:51:00.000-07:00

My 9 year old daughter, Dana, participated in fiber-related competition this weekend. She was a member of a kids team in a Sheep to Shawl contest. That's where a team of 5-8 people (all kids in her case) take a clean sheep's fleece, card it, spin it, and then weave it on a pre-warped loom. Because their team was so young, they were allowed to weave a narrower piece. So I guess you could say they did a "Sheep To Scarf". The competition was held at the Alameda County Fair on Sunday.

There were a total of 6 teams: 4 womens teams, 1 kids team and 1 mens team.

Here's the scarf they did lying on the edge of a white table.

The warp was a burgundy wool along with a few grey strands of yarn. The weft, which is what was spun during the competition, was a grey Romney fleece.

The Results:
the kid's team tied for 3rd!! They were estatic!!

The Basics of Alpacas - an email conversation

2004-07-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've posted. Life off-line has been quite busy with the kids end-of-school-year events and our own short vacations to Eugene Oregon and Oakhurst California.

I received an email from a friend who has been interested in getting alpacas for awhile now. After writing up the reply, I thought it would make a good post. So here it is....

At 11:12 AM 7/5/04 -0400, Georgene wrote:
>Hi Kimberly,
>I love your web site!!! We're actually not sure
>exactly what we want yet. We want them first as pets,

I'm very glad to hear you refer to the animals you're considering in the plural sense. As you know, camelids MUST be with their own kind. You can not have just one. Their sense of herd is very very strong. There are documented cases of animals who died from complications of being alone (stress is the biggest contributor).

>and we want the smaller sized -- but we're starting to wonder
>if we might as well shear them and sell their wool?

All of the domesticated camelids have to be shorn once a year. You don't have to keep the wool but shearing them yearly (usually in May) is an absolute act of kindness. It'll run less than $25 per animal (I pay $15 but it varies regionally) so it's not a huge charge. I'd suggest making sure you can do this at the ranch you buy the animals from. Have them put it in the contract just to be sure.

What if they need vet care? Who's going to give shots? You can give them yourself with a small amount of training.

Do you have a way to transport them? Transportation is actually not so daunting. A simple mini-van with the seats removed and mats on the floor will suffice. If it's a short trip, they won't soil the floor. An SUV works okay too but I'd do that only in an emergency and only with an alpaca.

>We also know that their manure is excellent for the garden
>and that people will pay well for it.

Maybe your market is different than it is here in California - where organic gardening is big. We can't give away the manure for free! LOL. But that's okay -we use it ourselves and what's left goes out in the unused area of the lot.

>They are such clean animals. We have a few llama farms here
>in our area that we visit, but the crea's are excellent bloodlines
>and coats costing upwards of $20K each! We love llama's and want
>to add 2 to our menagerie.

Wow. I'm not familiar with the llama market but I didn't realize it was still that high. I know many places you can get average llamas which serve very well for pet use for under $1k - probably even less. I wonder if what you're talking about are the new (and expensive) "Suri Llamas". Their fiber is like pencil curls instead of the puff-ball wool-like fiber of common llamas.

>If we decide not to sell their wool then we will likely go
>for the multi-colored black, white and tan, I know that the
>multi-colored would not desirable for selling it's wool
>therefore they are less expensive. Maybe you can tell me
>exactly the kind that would be best for us as pets!

Multis, aka patterned alpacas, are starting to be the new "fad" in alpaca ownership. As a handspinner, I'd prefer a multi colored fleece because then I get several colors in one wool where all of the other characteristics are identical. What I mean is even though the item I make will have several colors, it will all feel the same softness, have the same crimp, be the same lock length, etc.. I've made a scarf using two colors from 2 different animals and you can feel a distinct difference between the colors. OTOH, some people want all one color. White would be a popular color animal because you can dye the wool. Some people like the darker color animals. My point is: get what *you* want. You can do something with the wool if you decide to but that's such a small part of owning the animal that it shouldn't be a major part of the decision for a pet quality animal.

Pet quality animals (llamas or alpacas) will be gelded males. Owners will geld males they don't need in their breeding program and are not suited for anyone else's program (flaw in conformation) and then they sell them as pet quality. It works best for everyone that way.

Have you seen any blue eyed white animals? They are almost always gelded due to the blue eyes but they can have some of the softest fiber. BEW camelids typically end up being born deaf or will have crias who are BEW and deaf, hence the reason for culling them from the breeding programs.

I'm sure there's tons of other things I could share with you but let me leave you with this one bit of advice. Camelid ownership isn't like buying a dog - you don't pick it out from the litter, wait 6 weeks for it be weaned and then take it home never to speak to the breeder again. When we started researching alpacas, we were told to find ourselves a mentor. Ideally, this mentor will be the person you purchase your animals from. They need to be the person you feel the most comfortable learning from. They should show you ALL aspects of camelid ownership and continue to guide you after you've taken your animals home when questions arrive. And they will.

Best wishes with your search!
Kimberly

Monterey Pronk 2004

2004-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Competing in a show is exhilirating
yet nerveracking
and also exhausting
but most of all, awesome!

This weekend was our first show. It was held at the beautiful Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey California. Our yearling male, Autumn Heat, competed in a full fleece halter show. Here we are walking in the ring as the judge (in red) looks on.

In addition to the halter competition, they also had a Fiber Arts Competition. I entered 3 handspun skeins of yarn and my daughter entered 1 handspun skein. Between us, everything we entered won a ribbon. I won 2 First places and 1 Second place and my daughter won a First place on her skein. Here's one of my First place skeins with its ribbon.

It pays to work.

2004-04-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

All the time I've spent with Autumn Heat is starting to pay off. I went to the ranch today for a few hours. The first thing I always do is get Autie's halter and lead and go into his pen. In the pen is a mulberry tree just starting to grow leaves that the 'pacas love to eat. They'll stand up on their hind legs to try to reach any of the lowest leaves. Of course by now they've eaten all the ones they can reach. I, on the other hand, can reach farther up than they can. So I pulled down a few leaves and the boys came running over. You'd think I had candy!! Autie was the boldest. He would eat his leaves standing right there in front of me - the other boys would take the leaves and move out of arm's reach. After Autie took the last leaf, I reached out, told him "stand", put my arm around his neck, and put his halter on. How easy!!

The chores of a big herd - part 1

2004-03-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

Alpacas have toenails, of a sort. Sometimes those toenails need to be trimmed. Of course, convincing the animal that what you're doing is best for them is a lot like trying to convince my five year old son that eating his vegetables is in his best interest. The big difference is that while you can't force-feed a five year old his vegetables, you can strong-arm an alpaca into letting you trim the toenails. It just takes practice.

Each visit, Wayne and I catch at least one animal in his herd of 70. We look over the animal's basic condition, weigh it, review the shots records, look at the teeth, and check the toenails. I should note that each and every animal get the same mini-exam during shearing days. We do this with just a few animals each visit to help me 'learn the ropes'. I've watched enough toe-checking and trimming now that I felt comfortable trying it out on my own. We caught Aurora, an older female with a very sweet disposition. Here's me trimming a back foot as Eileen holds Aurora's head.

Working with Autumn Heat

2004-02-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

Now begins a bit of work: halter training Autumn Heat. It sounds easy. At least it did before I started working with him. I mean how hard can it be to get an animal to let you put a halter on? Well, guess what? The joke is on me.

I worked with him yesterday for about 2 hours. First Wayne (owner of Foothill Alpacas) and I herded the boys into a catch pen next to their paddock and separated out each boy until Autumn Heat was by himself. Then we cornered him and got a halter on him. The point I'm trying to get to is not having to use the catch pen or cornering him. I should be able to tell him "Autie, Stand" and he'll stay until I can get close enough to ease the halter over his nose. At the end of yesterday's two hour session, while still in the catch pen, he would let me walk up to him and tell him to stand. He would stand and then I could touch his wool or lift one of his front legs. As a general rule, pacas don't like to be touched. But if he's to perform well in a show ring, he needs to be comfortable (or at least not skittish) with being touched.

How he performs in a catch pen is one thing - I need him to do these things while in the paddock with his buddies. Unfortunately, his buddies are definitely skittish so I was concerned that once I let him back into his paddock, he'd be skittish too. Turns out I was right. He's what happened:

I led him back to the paddock using the halter and lead. Once inside, I unhooked the lead. Drat, I forgot to remove the halter! Double drat. Next I had to spend about 10 minutes trying to corner him so that I could take the halter off. In the end, Wayne helped me isolate him back in the catch pen.

I'm pretty sure that if Autie is going to be comfortable with me approaching him to put on the halter, I or Wayne will have to work with all of the boys in that paddock. Thankfully there are only five of them!

We'll see how Autie does today. I'm off to work with him again for a few hours.

He's ours!

2004-02-05T07:45:00.000-08:00

We are now the proud owners of FTHL Autumn Heat, a yearling male. You can see a picture of him in the January 13, 2004 post. He's being agisted at Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch until we are ready to move to our own ranch.

The search for a viable ranch location continues. This month we'll be scouting out parts of Oregon and Washington. The kids have a week off from school in February so we're driving up and staying with friends and relatives. (The kids just had two weeks in December and they get another week in April. I don't remember getting that much time off when I was in school!) Given that dh is a California boy and I've become spoiled by the temperate CA climate, it's going to be interesting to see how we fare for a week of February weather up north. DH is spending this week on Long Island New York, where the winter has been especially tough this year. We'll see how he feels about snow when he gets back. For me, I guess I'd be okay with a bit of snow each winter. When I say a "bit", I mean inches. Shovelling feet of snow just to get out to feed the animals is out of the question.

This week I'm spending my evenings sorting a dark chocolate baby alpaca fleece for cleaning. So far, the fiber is quite nice. This one doesn't have a lot of crimp but it sure is soft. I think I'll spin it a bit thicker than I usually would and then ply it with itself to make a chocolate yarn. I've already mixed a bit of this fiber with some white baby alpaca fiber and it made an interesting white with chocolate flecks yarn.

Is it real?

2004-01-30T10:53:00.003-08:00

Check this out -

That is a tower of Cahir Castle in Ireland. Didn't know they had alpacas in Ireland, did you? Hee hee. They don't, that I know of. That image is a merge of two digitial photos. The alpaca you see there poking his head out of the tower window is Anthony, a cria at Foothill Alpaca Ranch. I took the photo in November. The castle tower photo was taken by my husband, Ken, during our trip to Ireland in February 2003.

To create that image, I used Paint Shop Pro ver.8 to crop the photo of Anthony, then cut and pasted him into the photo of the castle.

Technology meets livestock

2004-01-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

Look what I found! I can spy on alpacas at farms all around the country as I sit here at my desk. How? Web Cams! It's best to visit these during daylight hours.

Ann Arbor Alpacas Paca Cam in Michigan

Lone Juniper Ranch AlpacaCam in Southern California

Stargazer Ranch Alpaca Cam in Colorado

It has been my experience that while many people choose the "alpaca lifestyle" to escape from a busy life in the city, they still want to enjoy the gadgets and toys created by the technological advances of our generation. At the AlpacaFest West show I went to in October, I have no doubt that everyone had a cell phone. One ranch used a computer to run a media presentation using PowerPoint. Digital cameras were being used everywhere to record the blue ribbon winners. I even saw someone "beam" his e-card to a PalmPilot when a fellow ranch owner asked him for his email address. So it comes as no surprise to me that web cameras are installed in key locations so that owners can keep an eye on their animals.

Enjoy!
Kimberly

A visit to Southern Cross Farm

2004-01-24T16:21:00.000-08:00

Just outside Gilroy California, off Highway 152 -- in fact, right across the way from Bonfante Gardens Theme Park which is one of my children's favorite summer hang-outs -- you can find Southern Cross Farm and their 30 or so alpacas. Tom and Robyn Houts breed and raise a very colorful herd of alpacas. In fact, they have some of the most beautiful black females I've seen. I may just have to get myself one for my herd....

Meet Annikka and her male cria Carmelo (who is only 9 days old in this picture). These gorgeous animals are owned by Wendy MacBain of Shekinah's Alpacas. Wendy agists her animals at Southern Cross while her ranch in Colorado is being built.

So what is agistment?
Agisting an animal is kind of like boarding but with extras. For example, when you board a horse at a ranch, it has it's own stall. You, the animal's owner, are responsible for feeding your horse, mucking the stall, and maintaining its health care. When you agist, the feeding and clean up are handled by the ranch owners. Alpacas are herd animals. They are kept in paddocks with usually 3 or more animals of the same gender and age. Because of this grouping nature, it would be impossible to require a boarded alpaca to be fed and cleaned up after separately. As for health management, I'll have to double-check on that and get back to you. I don't know if that's included in the agistment fee. Many alpaca herd owners administer the basic meds themselves - yearly shots, worming meds, things along that nature. I would expect the ranch owners to keep an eye out for any health problems and pass along any pertinent information to the animal's owner. Although I would certainly expect that owners have to pay for any vet bills for their agisted animals.

-Kimberly

Spinning Guild Day

2004-01-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

I love today. It's the third Saturday of the month. I look forward to today all month long. Today is the monthly meeting with the local spinning guild. I get to hang out with fellow fiber enthusiasts. I always come away from the meetings having learned something new. Part of what I love is the time that I get to spend, doing something that I find very relaxing with other people who are doing the similar things and chatting about everything under the sun but usually about fiber stuff that just puts me in a place of comfort. Another part is the fact that I *always* come home having learned something new. And yet another part has to do with this activity being something I do just for me.

The guild I belong to is called Serendipity Spinners and they are located in San Jose, California. Their web site is

I borrowed someone's Lil Herbie wheel to spin up a yarn sample. Just yummy! Okay, you're going to have to trust me on that because this is a really bad picture.

Tomorrow we're headed to Southern Cross Alpaca Farm in Gilroy. Robyn Houts is a nationally known alpaca fiber judge so I'm eager to see what's she got available in her fiber store. We're also curious about the layout of the ranch they have since it sits on only 5 acres - a plot size we may well end up with ourselves.

Photos

2004-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

At Kristine's request, let me introduce you to Autumn Heat, our first alpaca.

Technically he's not ours yet, but that's only because money hasn't changed hands. We have notified his current owners of our desire to buy him so they're holding him for us.

Now I know I said we'd be buying females so why are we buying Autumn Heat, a yearling male not even old enough to be a stud? One word: Dana. Back in the fall, the kids and I went to an alpaca show in Santa Ynez, CA. At this particular show, they had obstacle course competition where most of the participants were kids. My dd, who has ZERO livestock experience just like everyone in our family, decided then and there that this was something she wanted to be involved with. At the time, I didn't take her serious figuring it would be yet another item to add to the list of "long forgotten desires" by the beginning of the New Year. Not so. She's still very much interested in showing alpacas. When you travel to shows you typically bring males (because females old enough to work with would be pregnant and you don't want to endanger the pregnancy), so we decided on Autumn Heat. Hopefully when he's old enough in two years, we can use him as our stud. He's got perfect conformation and a shy dispostion, not to mention buttery-soft, ultra-dense fiber. I sure hope he passes on those traits to all of his crias.

Welcome!

2004-01-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

Humming Hearts Ranch is the our dream for the future. My husband and I are in the planning stages to escape the big city rat race of Silicon Valley to the quiet peace of an alpaca ranch. Perhaps we'll even have chickens (for fresh eggs - yum!) or sheep (to feed my wool habit) or angora goats (again, to feed my fiber needs).

Currently, the only decisions we've made include 1)we will start an alpaca business this year and 2)we would like to own property for said ranch by Summer 2009. We don't know where we'll be doing this ranch so we're spending about one weekend a month scouting out various parts of California. We are planning on selling our (IMO overpriced, thanks to the Silicon Valley real estate market) 4 bedroom / 2.5 bath 2186 sf house after we decide on a locale. In the meantime, we will buy 2 females a year and breed them so that we may grow our herd. All of our animals will be agisted in Hollister, CA at Foothill Llama and Alpaca Ranch. More about Foothill later.

Oh, there has been one additional decision: the name of our ranch! As I mentioned earlier in this post, we are Humming Hearts Ranch. Why that name? Well, you know how sheep "baa" and goats "bleat"? Alpacas "hum." And even your heart will hum when you see our alpacas.

Happy Day to You!
Kimberly