Grand Kitty Fluff

This is one of my grand kitties, Maks :-

Love that bright orange nose!

Maks is an 18-month old Maine Coon, and is seriously fluffy and soft.  Our daughter-in-law has been saving his fur for a while.  Recently she sent me a large box, full of his brushings.  I've spun his brother, Hugo, before, but this was the first time Maks had been spun.

This is what came out of the box :-

There's nearly enough here to make another cat!  I couldn't wait to get started so began by carding and making rolags.  I had to wear a mask while I was carding because this fluff is so light it becomes airborne and lodges in nose and throat!

This spins really easily and soon I had almost a bobbin-full.  Unfortunately I didn't take any more photos until I'd finished, so here's the final ball :-

60g of 12 wraps per inch (which equals somewhere between double knitting and 4-ply).  I'm sure Maks' Mum will make good use of this (she's a brilliant knitter!).  It's going in the post, back to Scotland, tomorrow.

Nice one Maks!!

Pussgora

This is Hugo (hello Hugo!).  Hugo is a Maine Coon who belongs to my wicked stepson, Nic, and his wife, Vika.  Hugo is very very fluffy!!  and just look at those ears!

For quite some time, Vika has been saving the fluff she brushes from him every day, and a while ago gave me a bag to spin.  The spinning was amazing - like spinning clouds.  It was so soft, soft, soft.  But I have to admit, the preparation was a bit of a labour of love!

The problem was, each individual brushing had been made into a neat little parcel (see above) - great idea because they fit in the bag better.  When it came to teasing them out though, lots of them proved to be difficult, and some impossible.  I think in the process of making them into these nice little packages, the heat from her hands (and maybe slight natural moisture in the skin) has felted them.  These fibres are very fine and I think are quite prone to felting.  Lesson learned.  I'm hoping the next lot will be just as the fibres came off the cat brush as that would make my job a whole lot easier.

Anyway, the ones I managed to pull apart (sadly there are some that I've had to discard) were carded on my fine cotton carders and made into punis (thin rolags) and spun quite finely on my Ashford Traveller.

I had hoped to get a full bobbin of this, but maybe next time!

This yarn has a fabulous halo, but I haven't managed to capture it on my photos.  Maybe I needed the sun behind it.

The finished product - 35g of fingering/4-ply weight, and 106yds/98m.  Not really enough to make much except maybe some leg warmers for Hugo!

Baby Love

Look who arrived at Rob and Tammy's on Friday last :-

This is Hope's little boy.  She was a bit bemused at having a little being running around her, but is coping well.  Last year her baby was born dead, so this is her first real offspring.  He's quite small, but perfectly formed!  He looks quite a lot like Bailey (my last alpaca) except for his size - Bailey was a big boy!  Hope's father was Bailey's grandfather, so that probably explains it.  He doesn't have a name yet, but this year's babies all have names beginning with "C".

He's only half a day old here - it always amazes me how quickly they get the use of those long legs!

Hope wearing a necklace in celebration!

Bella still has to produce her baby - fingers crossed it's a girl.

Bailey

More bad news I'm afraid.  My gorgeous boy, Bailey, died on Wednesday after a short illness.  We called the vet out to come and see him on Monday and, to be honest, she wasn't very optimistic then, although she did say he may have a chance.  We dosed him up with all the medications she left and he seemed to be doing OK.  Tuesday afternoon he was running away from me in the field because he knew I was going to be pouring nasty stuff down his throat.

On Wednesday morning I went to give him his medicine (this job was down to me as my neighbours, Rob and Tammy, left on Tuesday morning for a trip to the UK) and he was just lying in the barn, unable to stand.  I think I knew then that he wouldn't be with us for long.  I gave him his medicine anyway in the hope that something might work, and left him some hay in case he felt like eating.

When I went back again, late afternoon, he was dead.  Luckily, Eric had gone with me - I think we both suspected what we'd find.

I decided I should take his fleece - at least I'll have something of him to keep.  I started off with scissors but that was taking too long, so Eric had a look around and found Rob's shearers.  It went much faster after that.  How sad that the first animal I ever have to shear is a dead one.  He'd become quite a little fluff-pot so I'm confident I'll be able to spin this.

We took him out of the alpaca barn and left him in Rob's workshop for the night.

The next day we buried him next to Impala (my first alpaca).  Eric surprised me with a little wooden cross with his name on it.  It took us a while to dig the hole as we had to do it with spades - couldn't find the key to Rob's digger.  But eventually it was done.  When Impala died we buried him with a carrot and a rose, so Bailey had to have the same, except I didn't have any roses in the garden.  He got a narcissus called Cheerfulness - seemed appropriate.

So, the end of another era.  I still can't quite believe it's happened again - he was only seven and a half months old.  Sweet dreams Bailey.

Babycham

Sad news - Rob and Tammy's baby alpaca, Babycham, died last week.  She'd had diarrhea for a few days, but otherwise seemed totally healthy.

Bailey had had the same thing but got through it after 4 or 5 days.  We put it down to the spring grass - after lots of rain and warm weather, it had grown rather lush and was maybe too rich.  The other reason could have been that the babies had just been weaned from their mothers and were in a separate field.  Stress can often cause symptoms like this.

Poor Babycham was taken for an autopsy, and the laboratory asked for poo samples from Bailey and his Mum, Cerise, who had also had the diarrhea.  When the reports came back, they showed that Babycham had massive amounts of worms in her system, more than they could count.  They were all wormed three months ago, so that was the last thing we thought of.  She also had some sort of bacteria in her bowel and pneumonia. How could she be so ill and not show it?  That's alpacas for you - they hide all their symptoms until they're too ill to treat.

Bailey's tests showed that he also had too many worms, but only a quarter of the amount that Babycham had.  He's now having treatment (anti-bacterial I think) for his bowel problem, and also for the worms.  The laboratory tested the worms to see which drug would cope with them best and came up with Praziquantil.  All the animals on the farm are now being treated - let's hope it works.

Bailey's Mum, Cerise, is really not well at all.  Rob thinks that is a totally separate issue. She was pretty thin after feeding Bailey for six months, but is still not putting on weight. The vet has tried various treatments, but she doesn't seem to be responding.  She's getting very weak and a bit shaky on her legs. When she sits down she doesn't have the energy to get up again.  Rob has to help her several times a day.  We're hoping for a miracle here, but don't really expect it to happen.  We think she may have eaten a lot of acorns in the late autumn/early winter.  The poison could have caused internal damage which can't be cured.  Fingers crossed.  In the meantime, Bailey is back in the field with his Mum and the other female alpacas and is staying very close to Cerise.  It's almost like he's looking after her.

My favourite photo of Babycham and Bailey.  Rest in Peace little one.

Alpacarama

Bailey is six months old today!!  How did that happen?

His fleece is getting quite long now, and messy!  He's changed a bit since this photo was taken :-

Mum, as usual, looks on adoringly :-

. . . or was it the carrots she'd spied?

They're all going to get a bit of a shock next week though as Rob is moving both babies away from their mothers.  They're both still feeding from them, but they really don't need it any more so they're going into a separate field with Aunty Hope.  Both mothers are quite thin at the moment, so it'll give them chance to build themselves up again.  Can't imagine it'll be popular though!

The blog has been silent again for a while.  Mainly because I've had no progress to show you.  My tweed sweater is sitting untouched, and the spinning isn't finished.  That's because Tammy (who lives at the alpaca farm) received an order for 600g of fine alpaca handspun.  That's quite a lot for her to spin, so I offered to do half of it.  So far I've finished three 75g balls, and have just started the fourth.  They're working out at about 16 wpi which, I think, is classed as light fingering weight.

I need to spin some colour after this!

White Stuff

Look what we woke up to this morning :-

It was 3 or 4 inches deep in most places.  This is the first snow we've had for two years, and Bailey's first ever snow.

Apparently, this morning all the alpacas were standing around looking rather bewildered.  I don't think they could work out where the grass had gone!  By later this afternoon it was melting, but in the meantime, Tammy had been and cleared some grass for them to eat.

All the alpacas are looking pretty dirty, but Babycham (in the centre next to Hope) is absolutely filthy.  She's supposed to be white!  The cockerel wasn't too happy about getting his feet wet either :-

Growing Up

. . . and learning to behave (at last)!

Bailey will be four months old on Thursday.  The time has gone so quickly.  He's now eating carrots (see pic above) - this photo looks as though the carrot was painted on afterwards, but it was just a particularly bright piece of carrot!  Cerise looks like a proud Mum watching over her boy - but actually, she's hoping he'll drop the carrot and she can pinch it!

He seems to be calming down a bit now too, and doesn't seem to be pestering the other alpacas as much, probably as a consequence of being spat at and having his ears chewed!  His face has also changed quite a bit in the last month or so.  He started off with quite a light coloured face but it must have been baby fluff because it's a lot darker now.

Before :-

After :-

Dragonfly

Remember this grubby looking character?

Jorrocks

Amazingly, he just turned into a Dragonfly!  Well, a Dragonfly Wings by Boo Knits to be exact.  The fleece was taken from his very first shearing - his cria fleece - and spun with some charcoal bamboo and a bit of sparkle to make this yarn :-

140g, 375 yds, 14 wpi

My camera won't pick up the sparkle for some reason - maybe the light was wrong.

I'd been wanting to make one of these since seeing a Ravelry friend's version, Fran's Chamomile Wings, and thought this yarn would be quite stunning.  You can check out Fran's whole experience on her blog here.

The pattern was very easy - very easy - so why did I make so many mistakes?  It was laid out row by row and at the end of each row the designer had noted the number of stitches you should have.  So why didn't I?  I was usually just one stitch out, but that one stitch would have ruined the whole thing, especially when I got to the lace section.  It ended up taking me five evenings to complete and I think I must have wasted about half of that time unpicking rows and re-knitting them.  Carelessness and not enough attention to detail were probably the reason, and tiredness (it did get quite late some nights) my excuse.

Anyway, here it is, and I'm really pleased with it.

Again, the peacock green flash angelina that I used, doesn't show up at all, so I took a few close up shots and think you may just be able to see it.

I didn't use a lot, but I think it just makes this shawlette a bit more special.

Bailey, Brody, Cotton and Laziness

It's so long since I blogged, you probably thought I'd disappeared off the planet!  I've either been ultra-busy, lazy, or just had nothing to say for myself.  Well, probably a little bit of those with quite a lot of laziness thrown in.

We went for a short holiday to the Costa Brava in northern Spain earlier in the month and managed to not take any interesting photos.  I can show you a little update on my cotton plants though which have been growing like weeds since I put them in the greenhouse.  I have bolls - yes, that is spelled right!

I have three green cotton plants and they're all about this size :-

which probably doesn't mean much, but that's actually quite a large pot.  I've had loads of flowers on these and new ones are opening every day.  I don't expect all the bolls to burst open and provide cotton, but some of the larger ones should have a chance.  It's still around 30 deg C in the greenhouse each day, so I think there just may be enough time for these to mature.

On another note, look who came to stay :-

Brody wearing his kilt in Switzerland last month

Wee Brody came to see his Grandpops and Nanny Chris!

He's been swimming in the pool,

eats all his meals outside,

visited Bailey,

and loves al fresco bathing in his posh new bathtub!!

Jak's really impressed with his new sleeping quarters too!

And, how could I end this post without a few photos of Bailey (who says I'm totally besotted?)

This is one of my favourites, taken with the sun behind him in the early evening.

Ooh, what's that?

Are you quite SURE there are no more carrots?

Hope and Bailey inspecting a strange object in their field.

And finally, I can never get away without Cerise (Bailey's Mum) poking her nose in :-

Cheeeeeeeeeese!