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Preparing my Alpaca fleece has a number of stages to go through. The first thing I need to do is get as much of the vegetable matter out of it and as I was starting with my older girl, I also needed to pull out some of the guard hairs. Mr Rob built a net insert into my table with chicken wire so that the debris falls straight through.

Next step is to wash the fleece. On the plus side there is no lanolin in Alpaca fiber but my team really likes to roll in the good old Georgia red clay. So multiple washing in medium hot water with a touch of Dawn interspersed with rinsing in clean medium hot water. In the last rinse i put a little white vinegar. I use a salad spinner to get the excess water out.

 

Then I lay it out on drying tables so that it can dry out without any need for extra heat.

 

Next steps will be the picking and carding — but that will be another post

 

 

Let's start with some of my favorites more fungi I the garden, I love the way that they come and go over the course of the day.

 

 

We also have a giant flowering tree, I thinks its Magnolia

 

And last but never least, how about these for zucchini. That paca poo compost truly is a great growing medium.

 

 

 

I love the color and variety of fungi that we see when we go hiking in the woods. So I was really intrigued to see that we had quite a few varieties growing in our front yard. Clearly I do not know enough about them to ever risk eating them. But I continue to admire them from afar.

Here are the ones I found yesterday

 

 

 

We have had a new young friend visiting for the last couple of days. He’s not too shy and sits on the fence to the old paddock. Not sure what type he/she is.

It was a very rainy day here and not a good day to be out tramping in the wet Georgia clay. Not to worry, there is always plenty to keep me busy in the house and in the barn. Firstly Miss Lynne had asked me to deal with a broken flush mechanism in the bathroom. I quick trip to the hardware store and we were back in business.

After lunch it was time to shift the hay up into the loft. 50 bales down (or up) and 100 more to go. I could do with a long handle pitch fork or perhaps one of these.

In the evening we attended a meeting of the Coweta Beekeepers Association. Honey bees, it seems, are the next step to “The Good Life”.

 

 

We picked some of our home grown veg today, our zucchini are growing like crazy. So large they looked like squash. We were also able to pick our very first tomato.

Tonight for dinner we had Swiss Chard Omelette, our eggs and our chard, with zucchini cooked in tomato sauce.

Followed by homemade banana loaf

 

 

 

Today we were expecting a truck load of Hay, first thing we needed to do was tidy up the barn to make some room and then we needed to move the RV so that they could get access.

 

Hay arrived, we had decided to get the Bermuda grass as the Orchard grass had a lot of stems in it because of the wet weather.

150 bales to offload, I did my fair share and carried in at least 35, there were the two of us plus mother and son from the farm.

 

We will move them all up to the loft soon. The girls clearly like the smell and taste as they were quickly nibbling at the bits they can reach.

 

Flew back home last night bit of a bumpy ride, some of the effects of tropical storm Andrea. Everyone was pleased to see me although  looks like some of my chickens have gone broody. You would think with 6 nesting boxes to choose from that they really don’t need to be squeezed into into the same one.

 

I was thrilled to find that my new Chiagoo Lace needles had been delivered. Nice and smooth and just the right size needle length and a wire that does not get in the way.

 

I have been keeping up with my knitting retreat while I was away. It will look a lot better once its been washed and stretched.

I also have some weaving on my rigid heddle. Good to have options 🙂 No chance of getting bored.

 

 

Well today has been mostly mowing, weed whacking and cleaning up tree debris. It’s been quite a productive day.  I’ll spare you the details of what I said when the fuel cap came off the weed whacker and poured petrol all down my leg.

I’m sitting here listening to the thunder claps get louder. Perhaps we’ll get some rain to clear the air and help the new grass to grow strong.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a picture of the raised beds to share. I got waylaid and the blog never got updated.

I was quite pleased with the way they were going then. Just three weeks later and thing are really moving.

The kitchen bed has already given us spinach, herbs, swiss chard and strawberries with lots more to come.

 

Well sort of, there is a yarn shop that I sometimes buy from called the Loopy Ewe and every year they have a virtual knitting camp. For each of the next 3 months they nominate a project, for June it was lace weight item of 350yards or greater. There is a Ravelry group that is set up for it and because there are so many of us, they have 5 virtual campsites. On June 1st you start knitting and share your progress on line with everyone else who is part of the event.

Its a great opportunity to see what others manage to think up doing with the yarn that they bought. I also got an unexpected benefit, Sally from Rivendale farms in Colorado, spotted that I have Alpacas and reached out to me and we have been conversing by email ever since.

So I decided to knit a dusky rose shawl in Alpaca and silk my first challenge was that of course I had every size needles except the ones I wanted. I decided as it was a lace shawl that I could get away with one size smaller.  So sat down to cast on knit about 40 rows then spotted my deliberate mistake and had to undo them all. Good job I am on a retreat or I would have got mad and confined it to the UFO basket. I put it away for the the evening and then started again on Sunday morning. Managed to at least pass the spot that i got to the day before and decided to take it with me when I went to meet the Sunday Spinners. I was not able to do to much more as I am still at the point of needing to concentrating hard and I could not do that and talk to the other spinners.

I am on my way to Minneapolis today with work and will take it with me so that I can knit in the hotel in the evenings. I will update the progress when I get back home on Friday.