Well, lots of hi jinks around here last night... before I tell you about cashmere I'll tell you all about the prison break last night....
We have been renting movies from Videomatica (which is an online video rental place) since Christmas and about every 5 days we get a movie in the mail which we watch that evening and then send it back the next day. Lately we have been watching the series The Tudors and we have been really enjoying it... (though Daughter #2 gets grossed out at all the stupid sex scenes.... totally unnecessary for the telling of the story.) It's just too bad that they are not really sticking to historical truth. I am a bit of a history buff and my favorite era is that of the Tudors. I know a bit and so the family keeps turning to me and saying, "is that true? Anyway, we were peacefully watching the tail end of season 2 episode 7 when Teapot glanced out the window where a prison break was ensuing. LLama, alpaca, and sheep were everywhere. They had been looking out of the paddock and I guess they were fed up with the fact that they were in a dry brown paddock
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| Dry brown paddock. |
and there was tons of green grass outside...
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| Lovely green grass just out of their reach. Wish we could afford to fence more property... maybe next year. |
one of the buggers had pushed at the gate until it popped open. They wouldn't even look at a bucket of oats.... not with all that green grass now in their reach. Teapot had a few choice words... and then promptly put up some fence wire all around them between the house and shed, the shed and the the trees, and all through the trees, and then around the end of the cistern and down to the alpaca pen.
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| You can just see the fence wire with the red ribbons dangling from it in an effort to let everyone know not to decapitate themselves on the wire. |
We herded the animals into the pen slowly by making them realize that they were fenced again though only with one wire and they could have gotten through quite easily if they hadn't been so dumb.... but thank God they were dumb. By dark we had them all back in after chasing two sheep around the yard about ten times. I hate prison breaks... but Teapot has decided to put up a temp fence so that we can let them out on the grass. It will be a four strand fence that can come down easily but, with supervision, the animals will be alright. And the best part is they will get grass and I won't have to mow... how awesome is that.
Now as for picking cashmere... I spent the whole day indoors, picking hair out of cashmere... not a pleasant job I assure you... but necessary. Today I will be getting the fibre ready for carding. My baggies are ready.... so it is just needing carding and then spinning. Today I will be working outdoors which I am looking forward to. Yesterday I even managed some knitted samples for the 150 hour project... it is looking good and shaping up quite nicely.
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| Cashmere before being picked... |
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| What gets picked out.... |
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| Cashmere after it has been picked... |
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| Cashmere in baggies ready for carding.... in 10 gram allotments. 2 grams of silk, 3 grams of cashmere, and 5 grams of merino. |
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| My spun yarn ready for knitting. |
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| Two knitted samples.... the one on the left was knit with a 3.5 mm knitting needle. The one on the right was knit with a 4mm knitting needle.... I will be using the 3.5 mm knitting needle... the gauge will be slightly off but I will make adjustments for that. |
Teapot is away and off to FSJ for a day of meetings and won't be home till very late tonight... so we are on our own today, and with Daughter #1's arm in a sling, Daughter #2 and I will be working doubly hard feeding those animals and making sure there is no other break out.
So there you have it... I'm glad I will be carding today... I'm positively sicking of picking disgusting hair.
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