A couple of wild days

Saturday night there were no clouds - except for where the moon hung.

Sunday we got 1.25 inches of rain. The animals looked like drowned rats. Winter and the other alpacas and llamas did not even look for shelter. I did notice that Thanksgiving's fleece is slowly turning the same shade as her mother's. It was quite obvious when she was wet.

I knew we were getting a lot of rain when our wash started to run. It did not overflow the banks, but the rain sure made a mess of the animal pens.

I just added these skeins to the home shop. The coiled yarn is my favorite.

Above and below are the two sides of material that I made during Saturday's felting session. I started out with the idea of making two dowry style bags, but have decided to actually use a pattern for one of them and line it with fabric as another sample of what can be done with felt. One of the felters has agreed to demonstrate flat wet felting at the Spring Shearing festival.

Today started out very quietly. I took pictures of a few angora goats resting early in the morning. I was out in the area for a while, since I knew I had a school group coming and I needed to rake. It is a good time to watch animals and check for signs of imminent delivery, hair stuck in the mouths, etc.

This is Ready. He is very curious and not overly afraid. He always checks out my legs and boots.
He had a huge day today, because he was the star attraction for the school group. I carried him out, so the children could hold him - and he got held a lot! About 90 children showed up to tour the ranch and get a spinning demonstration. A few more than I had planned on, but they were very well behaved, so they got to hold Ready and feed the alpacas, llamas, and angora goats. The children had some good questions and I need to answer one that a boy asked and I never got a chance to answer.

He wanted to know, if the tags in the animals' ears were price tags and why did all of them have one. Animals are required by law to be marked in some way, so the farm they come from can be identified. I have a ranch ID on each tag, as well as a number indicating the order in which the animal was born here on the ranch. The lower the number, the older the animal. I will be tagging my lambs and kids this year starting with 320. With 4 lambs already (1 born this evening), I am already up to 323 as of tonight. And no, they are not all for sale!

The children came on 3 buses. This was the smallest one and the only one that dared to park in my driveway. I have had the larger ones in the driveway, but they parked on the road this time.

Flowers had a baby girl this evening. Another Jacob cross out of a Shetland. I am going to have a lot of black fleeces this year!

I am going to name her "Content." She was kind of cleaned up and had a full belly within two hours. She was fast asleep the last time I checked.