WanderingFoxFarm

I am sitting at the airport, waiting to board a plane for the UK. I have very mixed feelings about this trip back. I am, of course, really pleased to be going to see my Daughter, Grand daughter and Mother. But I am also going to clear the last things that remain in my UK home as I have now sold it.

I took so much less time that we thought, we had a brief conversation about putting it up for sale when the next rental period came up and then just a week later we got an email to say there was 2 months left and did we want to sign up for the next 2 years.

A quick call to the estate agent to assess the market only to find out that we had a very popular location at the moment. The local school is riding high on the league tables and everyone with school age children were looking to move into the area.

Within half an hour of putting it on the market we had a firm offer just above asking price. Although my head knows this is the right thing to do, my heart is not quite sure what to think. Its been a strange year so far. Really looking for it to settle down a bit.

Anyway as I started this piece I said the thrill of seeing the family will over come everything else. Be prepared to be bored to death for the next week with lots of pictures from dear old Blighty.

It was briefly a winter wonderland here. I thought I would share a few images.

I’ve been busy installing a PacaCam so Miss Lynne can check out her girls while she is in the frozen north.

Update: Pacacam2 is now available!

Take a look if you would like.

Pacacam1: Just go to http://di6249.myfoscam.org:88/ in a web browser.

Pacacam2: just go to http://dl6595.myfoscam.org:89/ in a web browser
user: visitor
pw: visitor

Note the instruction in blue. Click on the link to download the required plugin.

Once the plugin is installed, go to http://di6249.myfoscam.org:88/  or http://dl6595.myfoscam.org:89/ once more

User name = visitor password = visitor

There are also apps for Android and iPhones  –  quite a few of them.

Pick one that handles “Foscam” cameras. The model we have is FI9821W

If you are a techie and using a media player like VLC or Mplayer, you can open this stream:

rtsp://visitor:visitor@di6249.myfoscam.org:88/videoMain

A late flight back Thursday and a quick pit stop at a fast food emporium. Friday after work I settled down to finish off my  alpaca spinning. Still not quite got the hang of plying. its either too tight or too lose. Ah well, practise practise practise!

Saturday I spun up the mystery batt of the month that had arrived. It was called Aurora Borealis and it was really pretty, a mix of many different fibers but it spun up very nicely.

I decided to make some little boots for a friends baby daughter – the suede is a kit but then I knitted the tops in alpaca and stitiched it into them. Very soft, warm and cute.

Mr Rob was very busy as well — he has installed a web cam in the barn, so now i can check in on my little darlings any time I want to.

I can move the camera around from either my PC or my phone so I can see what they are up to. Sunday I had to leave for work a day early but in order to myself buy on the flight I have started off another pair of socks. I love knitting them and they are so easy to carry around.

Tuesday we were told that there was a yes another snow storm coming to Connecticut (where I am currently working Monday to Thursday) sure enough by Wednesday morning there was a good 10 inches of snow with more to come.

Going to the office was out of the question so we all planned to work at hotel. Apart from a quick break lunchtime where we all met up in the lounge for some pizza, i had not left the room. I was going stir crazy.

Then I got an email from one of the team to say he had located a night time ski resort within 25 minutes of the hotel. To make it even more appealing, his girlfriend was the same size as me and was offering salopettes and ski jacket. Woo Hoo, three of us set off and sure enough great ski resort 25 minutes away. I hired skis and boots and we hit the slopes. The guys were both snowboarders but we were all able to get down the slope at about the same time, so no hanging around. The conditions were fab – plenty of powder snow, about 30 degrees and no wind.

For one or our runs we were able to be the first people down after the snow plow – perfect groomed powder. Perfect!

So much fun — thanks both.

So step 1 is to think about what you are going to do with your fleece, there are people out there smarter than me that can give you more details around this. But for us it meant separating the fleece by animal into 2 bags – one with the main blanket, the other with the neck and belly.

Step 2 take your blanket and “skirt” it. Remove any second cuts, guard hairs and large bits of vegetation.  We then pick through it to try and get out as much dirt as possible.

Step 3 and  you will find lots of different opinions on this, but for us as we have white alpacas and good old Georgia clay, so we stuff as much fleece as we can into a lingerie washing bag and put it in the washing machine on woolen cycle twice – we were advised to use Eco liquid detergent from Sams club and have to say, we get great results with it.

as you can see that gives us nice white fiber — but it actually does not come out as fluffy as this.

so Step 4 is to pre fluff the fiber. Our method depends on how clumpy it is, and varies between pulling apart by hand, using hand cards or using our Picker.

Step 5 — We have a Strauch manual drum carder and we like to use that for the first pass. this gives us a batt with all the fibers pretty much laying in the same direction.

Lately I have been then weighing my Alpaca in a 70/30 ratio with some Tussah silk before moving to step 6.

Putting it through my very lovely Pat Green Super drum carder.  If I am blending in the silk I will put it through the carder twice to make sure it is really well distributed. The result is this lovely Batt or sometimes I take it off the carder as roving.

You can either dye it now or dye it after spinning.  I have been spinning on my new mini electric Hansen mini spinner with lace flyer. Here it is as a work in progress and below that some of the fiber I have already spun.

First some nice natrual grey alpaca with silk – 2 ply

Followed by black alpaca, un dyed, no silk and single ply