Alpacas!

We went to Sid and Susan Crane's home in Chico for an Irish session on August 18th. They raise Alpacas. I took some photos of these comical, beautiful animals.

Doesn't this one look just like it came out of a Dr. Seuss illustration?

Susan said their care is not very time consuming. She spends about 20 minutes each morning, composting their droppings, which look like deer droppings. And then she throws hay around for them in the evening. That's pretty much it. She has nine animals in all. Two of her females are pregnant.

They don't require brushing. In fact, it's bad for the coat. Susan says there are two ways to go. You can purchase breeding animals, which are more expensive, or you can purchase non-breeders, and simply harvest the fleece. Susan sends hers off to a mill to be processed into yarn. They hire people to shear them once a year. These animals were all shorn in April. Their coats will get much thicker by next spring.

Alpaca yarn is very, very soft. Wonderful fiber. I wanted to buy some from Susan, but it was all spoken for!


The stag pillow is finished. Blocked, stuffed, and all sewn up. The widdershins socks are finished, too, but I neglected to get a photo. I sent them to my son, Andrew. He actually wrote a lengthy email (3 paragraphs!) thanking me for them. Now THAT was worth the effort.

Here's the way our parlor used to look.

And here's the parlor with the addition of the beautiful new round rug from IKEA.

Saturday was session day. We had a nice turnout and made some great music. For more details, go to loughhaven.blogspot.com

The Auburn house becomes a Home

Slowly we are turning the house into a home. Here's the bedroom. There's not much in the bookcase yet. Because all those boxes are still in the big room, waiting to be unpacked!

We decided, that since we are using the big room for live music and dancing, we would put the E-NOR-MOUS home theatre in the master bedroom. There's plenty of room for it back there, and it's nice to snuggle in bed and watch a movie.

If I'm too tired to stay awake, it's more comfortable to fall asleep there than on the couch. I do need some large pillows to use in here, to make sitting up in bed more practical, and staying awake a little more possible!

However, purchases are going to have to wait awhile. Moving expenses were substantial, so we'll have to fill in the extra's gradually.

Our big room is still crowded with boxes. We did not get it cleared out this weekend as planned. But we did get the office set up.

There is too much furniture in the office right now. But we are moving some out to the massage room as soon as we rent a hand truck.


And the kitchen is all unpacked and even semi-organized. At least the part where the pots and pans go. The pantry is still quite haphazard... I will need to spend several hours getting that in shape. But it's big enough that I can still find what I need, mostly. I made cookies today and it took me ten minutes to locate the brown sugar!



It's fun cooking in the kitchen, but it is a bit spread out. Not that I'm complaining, but I haven't found the most efficient way to do things yet.