The story of Brian

Brian is our peacock. He is still young and hasn't grown his long tail yet - that will come in this spring (wow, can't wait!). He was given to us by some friends who had him and his 'wife' but they have a smaller place which is beside a road and so he had to stay in a large pen for most of the day. One evening they escaped, Brian came back but his companion didn't. So they thought it would be kinder if we had him as E had always said what our 'lawn' needed was a peacock strolling around. When we first brought him home, about May I think, we kept him in the barn. We were advised to keep him in for at least a month, and on one web site - 6 months! After 2 weeks we felt very sorry for him, he'd been watching the chickens wandering around all the time so one evening we let him out, and he just linked up with the chickens and roosts with them each night.



He displays to the hens, and his tail is coming on a treat, he can now rattle it when it's up. He makes a lot of lovely noises, from clucking to hooting like a goose when he flies. He only calls occassionally, but this will probably increase in the spring. It's only loud if you are standing next to him! I would love to get him a hen but they are very hard to some by, I'm hoping by the spring there may be some around.

His treat is dried cat food and he comes to the steps to get some. His only bad habit is sitting on the roof of our car -

Sorry my Flickr Badge has disappeared for a while, they seem to be having problems..

More Animal Pictures

I've made a new Flickr Badge with some pictures of my animals, but this is one of my favourites. Coppper and her mum eating the leaves from the huge pear tree which shades them in the summer.

Animals again

The day before I left for the UK I noticed Max was limping on his near hind foot. I got him into the stable and it looked like a superficial scrape so it got the purple spray treatment and E was instructed to watch carefully. I left for the ferry the following morning in the dark, so it was E who found Max limping quite badly and realised we needed the vet. When they came that afternoon they removed a lot of pus, gave him some shots and bandaged it up well with an iodine dressing which was supposed to come off last Saturday. Well, Max was walking better the next day and he seems to have recovered well, the bandage had removed itself as they do. I think he still very very slightly favours the foot so I am keeping a close eye on it, it seems the same size as it's neighbour but... The Vet's also trimmed his rear toenails - which made me feel bad but I've found as Marty McGee Bennet says they tend to snap off without interferrence from me, I only have one alpaca that I need to trim toenails for.

Betty goat and all the others were fine, their eye infections have cleared but Betty had some cloudiness left which I thought might remain. Then her eye looked mucky again on Sunday so we immediately began treating it again, it improved, but last night there were more signs of discharge although the eye wasn't red. It depends on how it looks this morning whether we take her to the vets again.

Oh, and for good measure, one of the cats, Misty has a urine infection - which required the vets to put her out to get a sample, the current veterinary bill is up to 175€s.

Passed the Winter Solstice!

This year fell on 22nd December at exactly 06.08 GMT so says Mid-Atlantic Geomancy. There is often a bit of arguing in the UK about whether it falls on the 21st or 22nd, now I can see why the confusion. But! From now on the days will be becoming a little longer, and a little longer until that wondrous day when THE CLOCKS GO FORWARD. Can you tell I don't like winter?

Some of my goat's have Pinkeye

At least I think that's what it is, Pinkeye

We have had 3 goats with eye infections. Betty’s eye was quite bad, it was completely cloudy, very red conjunctiva but only a watery discharge, not pus. It happened while I was away and E couldn’t treat her regularly as it takes two to do it, so when I returned we took her to the vets who said she may lose the sight in that eye. She had a couple of injections, one directly into the eye and ever since we’ve been putting ointment into it 4 times a day. This is not easy with a goat which hates to be handled. We asked if it was infectious and were told ‘no’. Then on the 8th day, another goat had a watery eye and it was half shut, no redness and the eye was clear but we got some fresh ointment from the vet as I am sure it would have progressed to the nasty infection Betty had. Then the following morning, another goat was showing signs so he was treated. Both of the latest infections looked fine again after 24 hours but we continued with the ointment. Today is the 10th and final day of Betty’s treatment and she can see out of her eye and it is almost clear, the other two are fine so I’ve stopped treating them, I think we nibbed it in the bud. It’s been quite a hassle, having to separate the goats, cajole the ‘sick’ ones into the goat house to catch them (they do not play ball if you have to do anything to them, food, fine, anything else, no) and keep the rest out of the way. And all in 4 inches of mud.

Then this afternoon, while collecting alpaca poo (it wasn’t raining and the sun was out so I made the most of the opportunity), I noticed that Max was slightly lame on his near hind leg, I couldn’t see any blood, or swelling and he was weight bearing, just limping a bit, so he can wait until tomorrow for catching and a really close look, I really really hope there’s nothing wrong. Meaning, I hope it's something that doesn't require a visit to the vet and treatment as I am off to the UK again for 3 days on Tuesday. I can't stand the stress!

Nothing for weeks then 3 come along at once

Pod Casts.

Discovered them about a month ago. Franklin Habit mentioned Brenda Dayne's Cast-On pod cast so I went to listen, and was hooked. Brenda talks about knitting, life, includes music, and essays from herself, friends and listeners who contribute. This weeks episode included a piece entitled "Grandma's Book", it was lovely, made me cry and wonder if I will leave anything behind that my grand daughters would treasure. I've caught up on all the previous episodes, and now there is another pod cast I subscribe to Weave Cast by Syne Mitchell. As part of her show, Syne interviews other weavers, and while I'm not a weaver, I do enjoy listening to others talk of their crafts. Both pod casts are produced to a very high standard using decent microphones so the sound quality is good, something which put me off the very first time I tried listening to one a year ago and I hadn't tried since. I didn't know what I'd been missing.

The weather here has been horrible for a month now. Not cold, but very wet, windy, very dull and grey most days, and mud mud mud in all the paddocks. Dark until nearly 9.0 am and lights on in the house nearly all day - I hate gloom.

Sunnier times in the south of France just 2 months ago.

Stash Reduction

After sorting my stash into proper colour groups - that is, trying to see whether the reds were more bluey or orangy, or the greens, bluey or yellowy - I wish I'd gone to art college and knew how to describe them properly! Is it hue? I was pleased with my efforts, and once packed neatly into zipped plastic bags maybe I would actually get around to using some of them. The biggest problem is I love spinning and I like dying, and sometimes I'm very pleased with the results, but I just want to keep these lovely bundles. Part of the problem for me is the fabric that they knit into doesn't look as lovely as the hank, the other obvious problem is I just have - a hank, I haven't kept records, always believing I will remember what I did, silly me. I'm toying with the idea of perhaps weaving some of it, maybe I would be happier with the result. The other idea I have is to use a varigated yarn as an enhancement to a plain one, say a black cardigan with gold/green/brown/yellow additions, either as edging, or up the front, they would be fairly small and smart! I have actually swatched this - shows promise. I just need to do it.




What I have started is this pattern Morning Surf it's a much chunkier version but I like the texture a lot.

It's not going to be a very long scarf - just look at the size of the ball that's left! But I won't rip it yet, it will fit into a coat neckline.

Crawls out from under a rock

I don't know if it's my fault (most likely) or Blogger, or Opera or Blogger/Opera/Beta/what-the-hell, but I had no indication of comments posted on here, even feeds failed to update. Plus it seemed to take hours to log on and so I haven't for about 2 weeks! Oh, and I've been to the UK on emergency child care again.

Anyhow, I've got the comments up and a big thank you Cledry,
Littlecritterkeeper and Julie

At the moment I'm working my way through 8 sacks of alpaca fleece. This year's shearing was a nightmare and now I'm having to deal with the results of frantic, stressed shearing. This means, bundles of fibre poorly sorted, loads of second cuts and they are sticking because of the excess of oil I used on the clippers. I am not stressing over it this year though. Now I don't feel I have to save every last scrap of fibre, I ditch anything heavily contamintated. I pull out what I can while pre-picking, before washing, I find using a flick carder helps break up any mud sticking the tips together. For the remaining bits of hay, seeds, dried up beetles, 99.9% of it drops out during sorting and carding, and while spinning you can pick the last out. All of the leg fibre, and rougher bits I reserve for felting. Felting what I don't know, but Cledry is an inspiration! The second cuts are more of a problem this year, and those that I haven't been able to pick off, I've just left very tiny lumps which again, disappear into the yarn and it just looks 'ethnic'.

Diane has been looking for a carder - that can be difficult. I ended up buying an Ashford because I couldn't get one second-hand that wasn't nearly 90% of the price of a new one. It had the 'fine' cloth, - actually not that fine. It was okay for fleece with a medium staple, but the 'licker-in' drum would get loads wound around it and I'd have to stop and pull it off regularly. And it couldn't cope with alpaca, even more wound onto the first drum and it didn't do a very good job at all. I search several fibrery forums and there was nothing but praise for the Strauch, so I got one. My only regret is not being able to afford one with a motor, I can only dream of a Pat Green!


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