Wow 6 months goes by really fast

Hi all,
I know, I know I am the worst blogger of the worst kind.  My barn is done with the exceptions of a few minor things and I cannot seem to stay in the house and out of the barn.  I now have fleece coming out of my ears and I am trying to figure out what to do with it.  Hubby bought me a knitting machine for Christmas and it is going to eat up what little time I have left over, especially since I put it in the barn :P  As soon as I learn how to run the damn thing...right now I am missing a few hairs from teaching myself to knit at the age of 44 pfffftttt.  Will I never learn?
Does anyone else believe that the Ice age has returned?  We have not been above 25 for over a month.  I live in the high desert for hells sake.  We lizards are not used to such fridgidness...is that a word?  It is now.
OK I have to go feed the girls and boys, I now have boys!  I just bought a mom and cria from Michigan (they are also freezing their asses off!!)  The cria is a 4 month old boy and he is awesome...
I had to mess around with my commenting because of my post for droopy (alpaca) lips...I have been bombarded with nasty, nasty comments :{  Pigs.  So you are off the hook for commenting, yay.

Hi All...Remember me?

For those of you who didn't delete me by now...Hey! How the heck are ya?

My barn is done finally, isn't it purty?

We are still putting in electricity but the animals said they were ok w/o power and we moved them in. First thing they did was start a nice poop pile...inside the dang barn :[

I'm trying to convince the cats that they need to move in next...they ain't believing me.

This is my new herd sire Tiburon...aka Mr Tibbs.

I got this little gal in the purchase also. She is Miss Mitra.

I finally got about 39 feet of yarn spun...I will be dead before I can make a blanket!!

Buddha and his girlfriend..Toes the terminator. If Buddha was 8 inches taller we would have terminator baby's :P

I now have a 13 year old. When the hell did this happen? Look away for a minute and they are half grown..sniff.


I was trying to convince him that the smoking candles weren't hot hahaha. He didn't believe ole mom.

And what the hell was I thinking????? He loves them but still...WTH?



My youngest got an award at the end of the year. I thought it was gonna be for the biggest screw off in class. It was the presidential achievement award???????????????????????????? I hooped and hollered until I embarrassed him and then I fell out of my chair.


Because this is him in his natural state.

So there you have it. It's not much but it's all I got.

Droopy lips

I went out to feed tonight and 2 of my girls were standing around with their mouths hanging open. They looked like they had eaten something bad or something that had numbed their lower lip. Scared the crap out of me. Last fall I threw out a bunch of clover seed...some alpacas can't eat clover because they are allergic. I am a nervous wreck all the time that they will eat something that they are not supposed to. So you can imagine my horror to walk into the pen and find this

l

1

1

1

v

They look totally silly!

This is not one of my alpacas, it is a picture from Intrepid Alpacas.

After I closely inspected my girls I ran in he house and got online immediately...

and this is what I found!

The Sulk--When alpacas get upset they will "drop their lip". The bottom lip will become all droopy and fall away exposing the bottom teeth and gums. Some alpacas will take pieces of hay, grass or leaves into their mouths and just hold it there for extra effect. Saliva will sometimes drip from the bottom lip as well. If all this sounds rather pathetic, it is. They are sulking. Don't worry about it. They have probably just come off second best in a disagreement with another alpaca and they will get over it in a few minutes. (Often the sulking alpaca will have a few globs of green spit on their face as evidence of the disagreement!)

Thank goodness I found this explanation!

The silly girls were tiffen ;)

Full of eggs

Hi Guys, I know I have been mia for quite some time now and I'm sorry. I have been really busy having a mid life crisis ;)

I am going to turn my blog into an alpaca blog only. It will still be worth checking out when I do post, however posting will not be everyday, as I was TRYING to do before. I am trying to get this little alpaca business off of the ground. I have been taking classes, watching any videos I can get my hands on and driving the seasoned alpaca farmers insane! I have found some local farmers that are less than an hour from me, whew! I was worried I was going to have to move to Denver lol.

The alpaca farms on my side of the mountain a few and far between and they are struggling to start up a fiber processing mill and a network of local people to help this thing grow. Soooo I am doing my usual knee jerk reaction and jumping in head first! You would think I would get tired of all of the bumps on my head but this is something that is near and dear to my heart.

Alpacas Rock!

Here is what I have going so far: I am signing up for a class in August at some place beautiful in Idaho to become a certified sorter. A sorter can either go out with the shearer on shearing day or have it sent to them and sort out the #1, 2 and 3 parts of fiber. The #1 fiber is worth more money than the 3rds of any fiber.

I am teaching myself to spin the fiber into luscious yarn.

I am teaching myself to dye the yarn.

I am teaching myself to weave, I may give up the "teaching myself" and go find some help on this one!

I went to a neonatal class a few weeks ago. Very informative...and I'm terrified now! When an alpaca is birthing and by some sort of bad luck she has a distosia (sp?), you can lose your cria, I will just die if something happens to En Vogues cria :(

Speaking of En Vogues cria, I had to take little miss Rita in to have her teeth trimmed...that was a freaking rodeo. When you are holding an alpaca for someone....stay close to them...I mean like bear hug close! I thought she broke my collar bone when she decided to jump out of the chute. It doesn't hurt them she was just a little freaked out by the hour long ride in the horse trailer and weird people sticking weird things in her mouth.

I learned something right after I had her teeth trimmed that day and I trimmed her toenails on another day and had the traveling vet up to give them their vaccinations and to do fecals on another day. I FIGURED OUT THAT ON SHEARING DAY YOU DO ALL OF THAT.... WHILE YOU HAVE BIG STRONG GUYS HOLDING THEM DOWN!!!! Hahahahahha that was a good one. Ouch my head hurts.

But as you all know I wanted to go to school and learn something that I could do and love until the end of my time....well I have been to the school of hard knocks before and they were missing me so I decided to enroll yet again!

It's a good thing that all animals are pretty forgiving, especially when I'm in charge.

I have been playing around with and learning the different fibers out there in the world and I have decided that I want to raise angora rabbits.

Have you seen one of these?

Is this the cutest damn thing ever!?

Their fiber is like sticking your hand into a cloud. I'm sure all of you have had an angora sweater at some point in your life...right? I think I had a hand me down when I was 12 or something but I had forgotten how heavenly it was.

If I could mix angora and alpaca....mmmmm it would be yummy!

My niece just found out that she is preggers and I would love to make a baby blanket out of the alpaca/angora mix....well someone else will make it cuz I ain't learning how to knit. Too much on my plate right now.

...I went to San Diego for spring break and it was cold and windy the entire time I was there...pffft. The beach..any beach is still beautiful any time of year, but cold and windy just for me??? Why???

I took Buddha and he was not welcome anywhere. I thought Californians were the dog lover capital of the world.

OH Well.

~Under Construction~

Warning...This may make you sick!

I got nothing today, it snowed AGAIN...5 inches this time. It seems to melt off in one day, but still! It snowed again!

I haven't been posting my workout times because...I haven't been working out per say. I pick up pounds of alpaca poop and ounces of Buddha poo, does that count?

I shoveled snow for an hour this morning trying to find my truck???

Anyway...

Google or Wildblue are giving me fits today so I can't play on the computer if I want to keep my sanity.

So I leave you with this really, really bad Irish Joke!

BANK ROBBERY
Excerpted from an article about a bank robbery which appeared in the Irish Times on 2 March 1999: Once inside the bank shortly after midnight, a gang of raiders' efforts at disabling the internal security system got underway immediately. The robbers, who expected to find one or two large safes filled with cash and valuables, were surprised to see hundreds of smaller safes scattered throughout the bank. The robbers cracked the first safes combination, and inside they found only a bowl of vanilla pudding. As recorded on the bank's audio-tape system, one said, "At least we'll get a bit to eat," The robbers opened up a second safe, and it also contained nothing but vanilla pudding. The process continued until all the safes were opened. They found not one pound sterling, a diamond, or an ounce of gold. Instead, all the safes contained covered bowls of pudding. Disappointed, the robbers made a quiet exit, each leaving with nothing more than a queasy, uncomfortably full stomach. The newspaper headline read:

IRELAND'S LARGEST SPERM BANK ROBBED EARLY THIS MORNING.

Cancer insurance saleswoman?

I received an email this morning about a lady that is going door to door in my town selling different kinds of insurance.

It's pure bullshit, what she is doing is getting all of your personal info so she can steal your identity AND she is coming back when she thinks your gone.

Several peoples dogs have already tried to munch her, too bad they missed.

Remember I live 10 miles out of town and If you can find my house, you can steal everything in it. It's a joke of course, don't come looking for me...you will get lost.

But wouldn't that be funny if she did find me up here all alone and pissed off, cuz I have no life and all I ever do is clean, and I'm pms'ing? She might need some of that insurance she's selling. I could tuck her away somewhere and let Buddha chew on her till the po po's got here.

He he..I'll take entertainment however I can get it on this retched mountain.

Mwhuhuha