I'm Back!!!!

I thought I lost my blog! I am finally able to access it after jumping through lots of hoops. So here I am. Where is that?

Alaska!

I moved here to live with my sisters family.

Sadly we had to sell off a lot of the animals. I shipped 6 of my rabbits.

Sent my books media mail, and other favored possessions in flat rate mailers. I became a master packer. Some bulky items got squeezed into mine and my moms suitcases. Yes, that's right, I took my mommy too. But I had to return her a week later :(

I love it here. Everyone keeps telling me "Wait till winter....". I'm not scared. I'm an expert bundler *smile*. When I woke up this morning it was 14 degrees outside. I pulled on my jacket, gloves, Mucks and crunched across the snow to give warm water to the rabbits and geese. Thats right, SNOW. The night before we got our first snow for the season. Snow! I was soooo excited! Growing up in California, I always felt cheated that we didn't get snow. I'll get plenty of that now.

I got here the end of June, so have had time to adjust to the climate. They have a drizzly summer. I love drizzly weather, fog, mountains, ocean air and the smell of rivers. Thats sort of Alaska all summed up, but its so much more. Someone needs to make a perfume and call it "ALASKA".

I was actually not feeling well when I got here. I had not been well for a while before I left, because I had several teeth start to fail, but was really busy with getting everything taken care of that I put it off till it was to close to moving. Well, between that and my great fear of dentists or even the word "dentist". So flying on a plane didn't help either. Once I finally got my ducks in order to get my teeth taken care of my mom decided to come back up. She loves it here too. But it worked out great, because she was able to take care of me while I recovered. I had my 3 remaining wisdom teeth, and 2 evil molars removed. I was sedated for it. They also did a root canal while I was out. Graves Disease has NOT been nice to my teeth. My mom took such good care of me, she even made me egg drop soup when I was sick of canned soups, and protein drinks. She also helped me install a electric fence on the new fenced in area for the rabbits and geese. We don't want them getting eaten my bears!

I had to built boxes for my rabbits hutches, so they would have a warm place to get out of the weather. That was quite a project. My niece loved helping. She loves helping me with EVERYTHING. She even asks to wash out the rabbits poop pans when I'm cleaning cages. She's a sweet little thing, and I'm glad she has taken a liking to the rabbits. I also built a hut for the geese. My niece also helped me with that. Then we painted them. If the weather dries back up, we will give them a second coating. Kinda got our painting done late. And did you know that the thought of using a roller paint brush is really exciting to a 10 year old? Well the weather just has to dry back up, so she will get to try it out. She can roll her little heart out.

Living in the same state, same town, same house my entire life I sure had quite a change moving here. It took a while for things to feel like home. Especially since I didn't know where anything was. Whether it be in the house or going places. But I have adjusted. I've been allowed to decorate my space in my taste (say that 10 times fast).

I got a couple pictures, but haven't decided on where to hang them yet. I brought my spinning wheel and fiber art stuff. I now have space to keep it out in the open.

I plan to do lots of spinning this winter and teach my niece to spin, crochet and we are going to learn to weave together. Who knows, maybe my little nephew will be interested in learning also.

The end of summer we climbed down the hillside and gathered fireweed blossoms for making jelly.

The kids had a lot of fun. My niece and I made the jelly and it turned out delicious. It has a floral, spicy, fruity flavor, and is a beautiful dark pink.

The snow has melted a bit, but I heard on the radio that we should get more on Sunday. I hope we get a good bit, because I want to play in it with the kids. I told them I want to sled down the driveway, and make snow angels, and make snow men with glow sticks in their eyes hehehe. They might think I'm a little off, but hey I finally got snow. I love it!

Kimberly

Family, a Violet, and Tulle

We finally had a long awaited visit from my sisters family. They were supposed to visit last year, but they had a lot of uneventful happenings in their trip and never ended up making it out here to see us. One year later THEY FINALLY MADE IT! I missed them soooo much! I didn't want them to leave : (  It was so nice having family around.

Last year I won a beautiful tulle skirt from Kellie Arndt at http://kelliefalconer.blogspot.com/  . Click here for the link to her Etsy Store. My wonderful niece, Jolie, had promised to take pictures with her fancy shmancy camera when they came out, but of course there was a one year delay......

And it finally happened.

Yet we had such a hard time finding a good background. Its kind of impossible here, so we made do. Which resulted in very few good pictures. But here goes.

Then we ditched the garden (it had a giant rat running around in the plants) and headed out to Violet, our LaMancha dairy goat. She is the sweetest, but required lots of figs to stand still or she was going to abandon us, so she could find her own.

Violet making fish lips haha! She wants to look glamorous. 

There were lots of pictures of me talking to her. They are actually my favorite. I think they reflect me the most, because I am ALWAYS talking to the animals.

Violet talking back!

And my favorite of all.

Then it was Vivienne's turn. She was the greatest little helper while here. She didn't want me to take care of the rabbits and guinea pigs without her. She happily rinsed and filled all of their water bowls for me. Getting her dressed up and taking pictures of her was like playing with a little Tinker Belle.

And last but not least. After I was done taking pictures of Vivienne, Christian wanted to try one of these little citrus fruit that my mom has in the front yard. He has the best sour face!

 He is a sweet little dinosaur, who loved to bring pine cones from their hotel for the rabbits to chew on.



~A big thanks to Kellie for the wonderful skirt.~

Kimberly

how to blade shear a sheep

A couple months ago I bought Burgon and Ball sheep shears at the local feed store for a hefty price, and ordered a blade sharpener off of ebay. I had it in my head after reading our sheep book and looking at the drawings of how to hold a sheep for shearing, that my 128 lb. self was actually going to be able to hold a 100 lb. sheep in those positions. HaHa!

Well I got my shears, piece of plywood to shear on, a broom, plastic bags, and a cart to set the wool in. My Mom joined me in this venture to assist me, and we both quickly found out I am NOT strong enough to hold a 100 lb. sheep in any sort of position, but laying it on its side.

My Mom helped hold the sheep down, while I sheared. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get her done, but I didn't cut her once, and I had very little second cuts (undesirable short cuts of fiber from shearing over the same spot twice). Her fleece is beautiful. We had thought that these two ewes we have were some sort of Suffolk cross, but we got to looking through our fleece book and the breed that they resemble the closest is the Dorset Down, both in body and fleece. Which is really funny that they are identical because they came from two separate breeders.

 What happened to you?
We also noticed after shearing these girls, that they were not pregnant. So I guess we won't be getting any lambs from them till next year, but as to why they didn't conceive? I don't know. Maybe they were to young. I didn't ever notice them to come into heat, but I did see the ram breed them. So thought we would be getting lambs. Oh well. There is always next year. 

 

Isn't that some gorgeous crimp?

I washed some of the fiber, dyed it with food coloring, and set it out to dry on a rack on the lawn.

Then I spun some of it into a thick and thin crazy colored yarn.

Kimberly

Just Kidding

Jetta's Daughter (we never named her) decided to surprise us with a darling little girl. We knew she was pregnant, we just didn't realize that she was due yet. When I was out doing the evening feeding, I was watching them eat their grain, when I spotted something inside one of the pallets lining the fence (make do or do without). I saw black with a white stripe down the center. It's a baby skunk! I called my Dad over to come look at it.Then I noticed something just didn't look right, and thought "I wonder if one of the goats had a baby?". My Dad had called my Mom on his cell to ask if she wanted to come look at a cute baby skunk asleep in the pallet. I scanned the backsides of the does, and sure enough Jetta's Daughter had just had a baby. I squealed "It's a baby!". I was so loud that my Mom heard me, hung up the phone, and by the time I got into the pen and pulled the little one out from behind the pallet, she was standing at the fence admiring the gorgeous markings. We were all so happy to find out it was a little girl. She was quite a nice surprise.

A few days later Joyful (finally named Joys Daughter) had a big black and white boy. So Jetta's Daughter's Daughter : ) now has someone to play with. We really need to name that goat, its getting too confusing.

Kimberly

August 2013

No the date isn't wrong. 

Back when my Sisters family was out here for my Brothers wedding, my Niece brought her fancy, newfangled camera along. My Niece is the only one who can take a good picture of me. I don't know what happens to my face when someone pulls out a camera, but it isn't what I see when I look in a mirror. All it takes is for someone to pull out a camera and say "smile" and it just morphs. Scary.  I just had two teeth pulled out, so my face had some swelling, and every time I smiled it caused my face to go totally lopsided. Has your tea come out of your nose yet? My Niece is very patient, and takes lots of pictures till something turns out right. She is the best little photographer. Well my Niece really had to work hard this time, and she did such a good job : ) . I think she should go into photography. BUT I never did get around to posting the pictures. I'm a terrible Aunt. 

I found the dress at a flea market for a dollar. I wanted to use a couple of the pictures for making one of those picture bar headers for the top on my blog, but couldn't ever figure out how. Maybe someone could explain that to me?

So here are some of the pictures. Over a year late.

Kimberly

Sweet Shetland Sheep Times Three

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. 

My sweet Myrtle died. She got bottle jaw, and we tried everything, but she died anyways. Unfortunately that's part of raising animals, and it always seems to be my favorite ones.

Welcoming my Brother and Sister-in-law's new Son Ashton to the family. Notice the onesie. My Brother is a mechanic, so their getting him started early.

I crocheted this hat for my Sister-in-laws baby shower. It's made out of Satin Angora from the rabbits I used to raise years ago. The problem with crocheting a hat for a baby that's not here yet is you don't know how big of head its going to have. So I went by the measurements I found for a newborn hat, but when he was born, it was to small. He was 7 lbs. 13 oz. I guess our family makes big babies. So now I'm going to redo it, hoping I have enough yarn left.

Sophia taking a nap on me while visiting. She's such a little doll. I love having babies around.

If you saw my last post from the National Heirloom Expo, I posted pictures of the sweet Shetland Sheep they had there on display. Well.... My Mom got a trio of them.

 The goats were afraid of the newcomers at first. It was kinda funny. Eddie (the ram) was just trying to check them out, but they acted like we had just turned a monster loose in the pasture.

I cut down all those thistles the next day, but I still have a lot scattered through the pasture calling my name.

We sold Maestro (the bottle ram we raised) a couple days later. He had rammed me once. (Hey he put my back back in place for me!) That was to be expected being a bottle ram, and I was willing to deal with having a bottle ram, but since he had already done his job this year, and we got the new Shetland ram, we just didn't need him. Before we made the decision, I looked into crossing the Suffolk ewes with a Shetland ram, and it seems to be a very desirable cross. Since Shetlands are small it greatly reduces the lambing problems, and Shetland meat is supposedly much better than the commercial breeds of  lamb meat. I'm curious to see if the lambs will come out with short or long tails, since Shetlands are naturally short tailed, but I will have to wait till Spring 2016 to find out.

Sir Locksley died a few days ago. Lucky for me, his wife is pregnant. So hopefully their will be a boar in the litter. They are a really hard breed to find.

 I found this yarn I spun many years ago from Kool-Aid dyed mohair from the Angora goats I raised. So I crocheted a hat out of it, but haven't taken a picture of it yet.

 On one of my recent visits to my favorite doctor, we arrived early. So my Mom and I checked out the local thrift store. I found this book for $2 that I have been wanting for a long time.

 And these boutique cotton yarns for $1 each.

 And a totally hippy skirt. I love it!

Kimberly