I wove!

I have a small Harris, sampling loom. It's used rarely, my one and only previous attempt ended in disaster when I attempted to dress the loom with sticky and rough thin silk yarn (cheap in a sale...) That went in the bin. I've always thought that my handspun wouldn't be strong enough for a warp, but I realised that the combined strength of several threads probably would be, something Deborah Chandler pointed out. Plus you can buy knitting looms specifically for knitting yarn, and, finally, I really do have to pull hard to break a plied yarn that I've spun from alpaca, much more so than the equivalent with wool. All this preamble leads me to this!



I am inordinately pleased with it, it's really very ordinary and full of mistakes. Intended as a scarf, I soon realised it wasn't going to be long enough so half way through I started playing with other yarns and patterns. I learnt so much from doing it and enjoyed the learning, rather than feeling frustrated. I think because my errors were typical beginners ones and once I realised where I had gone wrong they were simply solved. I don't think I will ever be a true weaver, I am not one of those people who describe the first time they sat at a loom as finding their true vocation, but I can actually see an alternative use for my yarn now and will definitely do it again.

I will make a separate page of the whole process with more pictures at some point, it will be long and boring but a good record for me, and will give you the option of skipping it!

One more thing,

Dear Blogger (Beta), I've been slow with praise and quick to criticise in the past, mainly because you could be a RPITA most times, but thank you, from the bottom of my heart for introducing the 'automatic save' feature. (((((hugs)))))

I need a holiday

I want a holiday. We haven't had a holiday for 4 years. Okay, I did get to cycle for 10 days with my mate Annette last year so, yes, I suppose that definitely was a break. But I want one of those lie by the pool in the sun and then wander down to the bar in the evenings type of holiday. Without other people to consider (God I'm just so horrible!). But you know what? If someone waved a magic wand and we were off on a holiday to Crete next week, you know what my first thought would be?

Bugger, much weight can I lose in 5 days.....

Introducing ...

Lu Lu. She's a mate for Brian, hopefully they will have eggs together!

The first time she was let out after about 10 days she wandered around for an hour, then flew off. Cursing ourselves for being over confident she would stay, we searched but couldn't find her. All we could do was hope she would find her way to her previous home. Then early one morning a couple of days later, I spotted her amongst the long grass, I guess she'd been around all the time, making us feel rotten. She's a lot more cautious than Brian and kept to the far corners of our farm, but slowly she's become more confident and now wanders around with the rest of the hens. It has had the desired effect on Brian of reducing his deafening call, but it's not stopped completely. And he still sits on the roof of the car and chases us down the drive when we go out!

The Summer Solstice June 21 2007 18:06 GMT

I love midsummer, stone circles, dawn. Perhaps I'm a druid.









Photo by KimM-O

Yup, I'm old

The day before yesterday, Asda (large chain of British supermarkets (now owned by Walmart?)) announced that sales of clothes pegs had risen by 1000%. This was attributed to the increasing awareness of global warming and that, perhaps, you could forsake the dryer and dry your clothes out of doors.

Then yesterday, two separate channels ran items about HOW TO HANG YOUR WASHING OUT. I remember that a colleague once related a story, of how her neigbour turned down her offer to use said colleagues washing line when the neigbours dryer had broken (this was summer) with a snooty "but that's like a peasant". Peasants? Is it me?

The weather here has been wet, very wet. We had a long, grey wet winter, then April was absolutely glorious. We started to make contingency plans for watering the garden, saving grey water, maybe buying a pump for the well. But from May onwards, it's been 90% wet. It's still been getting warmer so the humidity is very high and we get thunderstorms. The hay can't be made, after seeing the grass go to early seed in April, now it can't be cut and dried. And the torrential rain is flattening it.

The little cria, now called Consuela for posh and Connie for short, very soon learnt how to dash for the field shelter. She's doing very very well, the best thing is just to watch her in the evening sprinting at top speed around the paddock, and yesterday she was even pinging, or pronking I've heard it called. It's a sort of effortless bounce on all four feet at once, they seem to just flick their feet, with hardly any movement in their legs, heads and tails up, they do it when they're happy.

Consuela 11th June 2007

 
The picture is from left to right, Sandie, clever mum, Connie and aunty Lissie, who can't help but poke her nose in.

Warning, contains icky stuff.
A brand new cria arrived yesterday morning. I don’t know if I will ever get through a birth without worrying myself silly. The dam, Sandie, has been having practice contractions where a definite bulge appears under her tail for weeks now. A week ago a very large bulge appeared and I grabbed birthing box expecting her to produce a cria then and there. But not Sandie, she continued to do this for several days. In the morning, there would be some large bulging from her rear and then by the afternoon she would go back to normal size. I was beginning to worry, 'is this normal? Is the cria too big? Has she a torsion??!!' I tried to rationalise my fears, she's eating normally and seems completely relaxed, so I should just be patient, but surely it must happen soon? Then yesterday morning Sandie was behaving differently, she was last up to the hay, and didn’t come down for ‘breakfast’ – oddly, the gran of the bunch, Margo, was keeping her company, I’ve never known Margo miss food – mid morning we had serious protuberances from her rear end, her vent was elongated, she rolled, went to the poo pile several times, but still nothing. I was pacing around wondering when, if, I should call a vet. Then at lunchtime I checked and there was ‘something’ on the ground behind her, and yes, a cria half delivered! Now alpaca do this funny thing of walking around for a while with a half born hanging from their rear end, but Sandie didn’t get up, and I could see she was having contractions but the cria wasn’t progressing. I gave a slight pull and there was a lot of resistance so I backed off and waited, Sandie got up, nothing, then she laid down again, dragging the cria’s head in the dust. All of this time the cria is sticking out of her rear end making gurgling noises, it is still attached via the umbilical cord and is receiving oxygen, so it’s okay although it looks damn awkward. The contractions didn’t seem to be doing anything so I caught hold of the cria’s legs and this time very gentle traction got her 90% out, I left the rest for mum to do and another few seconds and the cria was out, very mobile and SHE, WOOPEE, A GIRL!!! struggled up to kush position very quickly. Then the heavens opened and I had to pick her up and carry her to the shelter. Very soon she was up and wobbling around, and feeding within 3o minutes. Brilliant work.
Sigh, now I can almost relax. I did have a brandy, well two, small ones….

But you can never completely relax with newborns around….

Sandie is proving to be a very attentive mum, a very different attitude to the one she had for her fated boy 2 years ago who eventually died.

I think the cria is going to be called Consuela, nickname Connie….