End of the Show Season & Other News

Wow, I'm terrible at maintaining this blog!  I promise to get better, now that my life has calmed down a bit. This post is going to be very random, but I wanted to update everything that's going on around the farm!

First, pictures of some of my state fair entries!  Too much stuff to take individual pictures with ribbons, but you get the idea.

Handspun yarn & the pile of ribbons!

Felted & embroidered hat, handspun earband, and felted wreath.

Felted bag & flower.

Handspun shawl.

Next, onto some recent knitting projects.  First is a set of convertible mittens for my boyfriend.  This was the first pattern that I heavily modified, and I really live how they turned out!  Even more important, he loved them!!

The roving below is yak and merino...gorgeous stuff purchased from the Trading Post Fiber Shop in Pendleton, IN.  It is my current spinning project, which I will finally get to finish this weekend at the Pioneer Fair!

***Shameless plug:  If you're in the central Indiana area this weekend, come check out the Pioneer Fair at the Shelby County Fairgrounds.  Lots of people demonstrating pioneer crafts and other activities!  Special kids' activities throughout the day!***

And last but not least, a gorgeous silk/merino shawl that I knit.  It didn't end up as big as I was hoping for, but hopefully blocking will stretch it out somewhat.

 Now we'll move on to some farm news...

LamaFest was a ton of fun over Labor Day weekend.  Ralph and Annie came up to Lansing, and showed for 2 long days.  Ralph did very well for himself in the novice performance classes, but didn't quite place.  He was also last in halter!  Annie behaved very well on Saturday, but decided that a double show was too much stress, so Sunday wasn't quite as smooth!  She placed in halter and adult showmanship both days.

The best news from the show is that I'm adding a new little llama to the herd!  CNS Mr. T is coming from Chip N Seal Farm in Rushville.  He's a yearling gelding, and is going to be my newest show llama!  He already has quite a record in halter...almost has his Champion!  Hopefully I can finish that and his ROM next year, as well as get him used to performance and ground driving.  I have big plans for this little guy!  We're going to pick him up on Saturday evening, so more pics to come next week.  He's been shown quite a bit this summer, so we're going to quarantine him with Duque and Ralph until I can do fecals on him and the rest of the herd when I go home next month.

We also tried getting another farm addition, but it didn't quite work out.  Latte our angora rabbit seemed a bit lonely after her brother Mocha died last summer, so I finally found a friend for her.  We found a breeder of Harlequin rabbits (they are calico!) at the state fair this year, and she sold us a little 4 month old female.  Unfortunately Latte and the little girl didn't see eye to eye.  I think Latte is just too old for such an energetic youngster, so the new girl found another home with a 4-H club in Greenfield.

Well, I think that's enough news for one post!  I promise to post more regularly in the future...  I have back to back craft fairs next weekend, so hopefully I can report great success when those are over!  And I'm looking to add a puppy to my crazy life, so I may have big news in the near future!

Weekend on the farm!

Well I finally got to go home to the farm for a weekend!  It's a good thing too, I had a lot of chores to catch up on.

First and most important on the list was getting little miss Annie shorn for the summer.  She doesn't produce a lot of fleece (it is very fine), and she was shorn mid-June last year, so I wanted to give her a few more weeks of growth than the rest of the herd.  So Saturday I groomed her thoroughly and blew her out with our wonderful Circuiteer blower, and then bathed her.  Luckily it was a lot warmer this weekend than a few weeks ago when I sheared the rest of the herd.  Annie was so well behaved too!  She doesn't like being in the chute (she laid down both when I was grooming her and when I was shearing her), but she stood very well to get groomed in the catch pen and to get washed just tied to the fence.  I was pleasantly surprised!  And now I have a gorgeous bag (well, half of a bag) of black fleece ready to spin!  It is going to get blended with Ridge's fleece (who is Annie's dad) and processed into roving for me to spin.  I'm thinking a beautiful grey (black + white = grey) shawl.

Annie's fabulous fleece before she was shorn last spring.

Annie during her first bath last summer.  She behaved much better this year!

While I had the electric clippers ready, I also finished Ralph's shear job.  He got his haircut at the Hillsdale Hobo Show in Michigan a few weeks ago (standing in a chute just like a llama!), but we couldn't finish the fluff around his face because of his halter getting in the way.  So this weekend we carefully clipped the cheek fuzz around his face so that he looks more "normal"!

Ralph after his haircut a few years back.  His legs are quite a bit fuzzier this year!

And last but not least, my remaining German Angora rabbit Latte needed her haircut too!  Unfortunately my parents had let her go a little too long without a belly trim, so she was quite matted underneath.  But it was nothing that an hour with a pair of dog trimming scissors couldn't fix!  I kept the nice belly fiber to spin into novelty yarn, and the prime (back) fiber for spinning or to sell in my Etsy store.    She's much cooler now!  Depending on how she handles the heat I will shear her again in July or August, along with monthly belly trims.

Latte after her trim a few years ago.

I'm going to try and post an article I wrote about shearing llamas sometime later this week.  I figure it is very appropriate for the time of year, and hopefully it will be helpful.

Looking into the coming weeks, our second show of the season is the first weekend in June (the Allen County Open in Fort Wayne, IN).  I was supposed to go to a show last weekend, but it was cancelled due to lack of entries.  I may add on another short one-day show in June (the Vermillion County Fair in Cayuga, IN June 18th), but I haven't quite decided yet.  If anyone would like information on some great little shows in western Indiana/eastern Illinois this summer, just let me know and I will pass it along!