Alpaca shearing.

So it turns out Mr Cloudy and Mr Meatballs, our resident alpacas, aren't so good at doing their job as chook protectors after all. They are great lawn mowers, they add biodiversity to our farm, their poo is fertilising our paddocks, we think they are doing well keeping the foxes away and we really do like having them around and watching their funny ways. But they are hopeless at protecting the chooks from the resident eagle family and there are feathers all over the olive grove to prove it.

But having the alpacas with us over the past six months has made me realise something about myself that I didn't really know before. Visiting them and watching their wool grow and being amazed by how thick and deep it got, made me realise that I want to expand my love of wool craft further. I want to go back a few steps in the yarn chain. I want to produce, process, spin and then knit and crochet our own wool. Our own certified organic, Daylesford Organics wool.

Let's face it, if we are trying to make and grow and preserve as much of what we eat and wear and use ourselves, then it's the logical next step for me, don't you think.

Last Friday afternoon a lovely alpaca shearer called Tim came over to shear our woolly friends.

In the past I had heard awful stories of terrified, bucking alpacas being tied down on their backs so I was a bit nervous before hand, but I was also excited never having seen an animal being shorn so close up before.

But as it turned out I had nothing to worry about. Tim was gentle and calm and our alpacas were too.

They struggled a bit at first and I'm sure they didn't exactly enjoy being restrained, but they seemed to understand and respond to Tim's actions and the whole thing went smoothly.

And it was wonderful to watch Tim at work. After years on the job he knows the alpaca anatomy so well and the wool came off smoothly as the razor glided over their skin and under their fleece.

And that wool was so thick and there was so much of it and it was so clean underneath next to their skin.

We kept the wool off their sides and neck in one bag for spinning, and the rest, the shorter more scruffy wool, in another bag.

And after he was done and our alpacas looked like scrawny goat like creatures, he clipped their toe nails, checked their teeth, gave them a vitamin D injection and spoke to us about what to look for in case of sickness and how best to look after them.

I feel like last Friday was a great day in my life as a wool lover. My next step is to find myself a drop spindle and to watch a whole lot of YouTube clips.

I have butterflies in my tummy when I think of knitting something with my own hand spun. I can hardly wait. Eeeeeeeeeeep!!!!


I hope you've had a bit of excitement in your life too.

I hope you've felt passionate and inspired and excited.

And I hope if you have any spinning wisdom to pass on, you'll do so. I want to know everything.

Yay!!

Have a happy week my friends.

xx

Oh and I apologise for my lack of interneting lately. We've had all sorts of issues that have only just been resolved in the last day or so. Hopefully we are all back online drama free now. If you've emailed me and I haven't replied, maybe try me again.