Exciting news! A production company from Oakland was here on August 26, 2009 filming a show for Animal Planet!. There is a show called Weird, True & Freaky, and this fall there will be a series on people with phobias of different kinds of animals. They had a girl who was terrified of llamas and had been having nightmares about them! They brought her out with a psychologist who was trying to help her get over her fear. They spent at least an hour in the driveway before she was able to come up by the animals. She sat in the car most of the time, and finally was able to get out and start to walk over to the llamas and alpacas. Then she saw Poncho and said that he did something that scared her (from about 50 feet away!) and got back in the car. Next, they tried having RT bring Amaryllis, the 2 month old baby alpaca, over to the car. When he approached she covered her eyes and screamed! So, that pretty much ended her visit here and off they went. The production crew enjoyed petting Amaryllis and taking their pictures with her, and also went out and met the other llamas and alpacas. Should be an interesting show. The series begins in the end of September and this will be week 13.
The Animal Planet show has aired!! (See below for details) It was on tonigt, April 22. We heard it would be on in May, but we just happened to catch it. The episode is titled "Animal Phobias", and they countdown the 10 weirdest phobias. We are #2. We didn't get a whole lot of airtime, but Pancho is on quite a bit, along with a couple llamas. I tried to record it, but still can't figure out this darn DVD recorder! I'm sure it will be on again, and we will learn how to record by then.
My spinning wheel is up and running, and I have made my first batches of yarn! Take a look!
This is Crown Jewel's fiber that was sheared in April. I washed it in my kitchen sink with Dawn dishwashing liquid. After it dried in the sun for an afternoon, I spent many tedius hours picking all the bits of hay, foxtails, etc. out of it.
Next step is carding. Carding straightens out all the fibers from the big clump they are now in. This can also be done with hand carders, but a drum carder can do much more fiber a lot faster. I got this drum carder last summer on my trip to Ohio..
Fiber is fed in at the bottom, and you turn the crank on the drums while the teeth comb out the fiber.
After it comes off the carder, I wound it up in a ball to keep it together until I was ready to spin it. This is called a roving.
Now the fun begins! Fiber is fed in a little at at time. As the wheel spins it twists the fiber, making it very strong. Then, 2 strands are plyed together.
And voila! We have yarn!
SHEARING DAY 2012
We will be shearing this year on April 21-22. Steven & Christopher Mortimer from Sandy Acres Alpacas will be here, working hard to cool off all the alpacas and llamas for summer. Come on out and join in on the fun!
