Much to my dad's delight we had kicked around the idea of calling ourselves 12 Bar Ranch. Back when I lived in Wyoming I noticed that every ranch seemed to have some variation on a bar theme -- Vee Bar Ranch, Two Bars Ranch, you get the picture. Being that we love blues and it runs strong in the family we thought it would be cute and funny to name our ranch 12 Bar. You know, as in twelve bar blues? And of course we'd name all our alpacas after famous blues artists: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter...and the icing on the cake would have to be, of course, an alpaca born on our own farm who we'd name Rock n' Roll, and whose mother would naturally have been named Blues.

(That thing about talking about kids and plotting things out way early? Yeah, I wasn't kidding.)

Anyway, the idea is great. But I'm not sold on it. (Sorry, Dad. I know you're disappointed.) It's a stretch. But there is another idea that I'd been kicking around that I thought lent itself more to yarn labels, which honestly is really the main way I'd be using this farm name anyway. That idea was to steal from World War II-era squadron names and nose art.

Nearly every alpaca farm name I've come across has been the same: [Geographic Location] Alpacas. We didn't want to do that. With both of us having experience in advertizing, marketing, and graphic design we knew we could do better than that. I've always, always loved WWII-era nose art and the awesome legacy of squadron names. What could be more awesome than a logo patterned after some great nose art and a cool squadron name to go with it?

I sketched out a very rough version of a logo based on one of the best non-sexy-ladies nose art imagery I've come across (hey, I've got no problem with sexy-lady nose art, it's great; I just don't really think it applies to alpacas, you know?): Maloney's Pony. (My version is an alpaca chomping on a cigar, an alpaca that looks really to lead his boys into battle.)

Now to come up with a name.

I figured a good place to start was to look up a list of squad names. And wow, there's a lot more than I thought there was. Seems like every military group of units had a name for themselves. I gathered up the best of what I found, the ones that seemed like they might spark something interesting, and these are the ones -- real names -- that I saved:

COMMON:

The Crazy Eights
The Dirty Thirty
Broo's Crazy Devils
The Horny Lornies

Haha, the Horny Lornies.

Anyway, this list sparked a few ideas:

Trail Grazers
The Glorious Grazers
Inglorious Grazers
The Humming 51st
The Humming Dozen
The Dirty Herd

I'm pretty partial right now to The Glorious Grazers. Inglorious Grazers is great but it's probably stealing too much from the recent Tarantino movie.

I'm continuing to mull it over a bit before I decide on anything in case any further ideas pop out. You're welcome to contribute, with the caveat that I cannot promise you any shares of massive alpaca farm profits as there will not be any, so ideas should be contributed at your charity and peril.

We decided to begin with him since we knew he'd be the easiest. Going into this, I assumed that all three of them would fight us at least a little bit, with Benz probably being the least difficult. I was wrong. Benz not only didn't even put up a fight, he practically put the halter on himself. Since Matt felt the most comfortable doing the actual trimming we agreed ahead of time that I would hold the boys and he would trim their nails, so I put the halter on Benz and got the fitting right, and then stood there with my arm around his neck, ready and waiting for the moment to come when I knew he'd buck and fight to get out of our grip. It never came. We didn't even have to chase him down to get the halter on him, he just stood there and let us wrap our arms around him. It took about one minute for Matt to trim up his toenails, and during the ordeal Silverton kept searching out an escape route that he was sure he'd missed while Cinnamon hummed up a storm so loud you'd have thought we were going to kill him. At one point Cinnamon came up to Benz and sniffed his nose and face as if to say, "don't worry, buddy, I'll get you out! I swear! We'll avenge this horror!" And Benz's response seemed to be, "whatever, dude, I'm getting a pedicure. Really, it's not that big a deal."

Benz was done and easy, so we thought Cinnamon was our next best bet. We sort of assumed Silverton, being the most shy, would be the most difficult, but again -- we were wrong. We got a hold of Cinnamon pretty easily and managed to get the halter on him fairly easily as well. Once we got it on, however, he really made it clear he wasn't happy. He bucked and fought against the halter, pulling this way and that, before we could even get near his feet. I checked to be sure the halter fit him okay and wasn't cutting anything off but it seemed to be all right. We tried to firmly hold him into a balanced standing position but every time Matt would get his foot he'd buck and fight so badly that he'd throw himself and me into the barn walls. So then we tried walking him around the inside of the barn with his halter on via the lead for a minute or two, hoping to get him feeling okay with it. He seemed fine but then when we went back to trimming he kicked and bucked and nearly knocked me down. And when he wasn't doing that he was cushing (going down onto the ground with his legs under him), which makes it impossible to trim his nails.

We went into this assuming that it wouldn't go smoothly the first time and agreed right off the bat that if we didn't get all the boys today, we'd be okay with that. What we didn't expect was that the boy we wouldn't get to would be Cinnamon. We took off his halter and let go of the idea that today he'd have his toenails trimmed. So we moved on to Silverton, who turned out to be fairly easy to hold on to and halter -- he really didn't resist us holding on to him, and he was perfectly fine with the halter, only humming a tiny bit as I fussed with his fitting. We had some minor struggles with him at first, but after maneuvering him into a space where he couldn't really buck around too much he pretty much stood still and let me hold on to him while Matt did his front legs.

It was here we noticed that Silverton's nails look a lot different than we'd been noticing. He's got a pretty big crack in one of them on his front foot, and we noticed that as he slammed his feet onto the concrete floor of the barn trying to keep us from trimming them a couple of his back nails split and broke along the sides. While I was too busy holding him to see, Matt said that his nails looked like they were in pretty bad shape. Fortunately their previous owners Don and Jo are always available with questions, so we'll be checking with him to see how normal this is. He's not limping and appears to have no problems at all with his feet so I can only assume that either this is simply how his nails are (how many of us humans have dry, splitty nails naturally? Raise your hands) or that for whatever reason they've split and cracked a little but they're not hurting him.

Matt moved on to his back legs and managed to get most of the nails trimmed on one of his back legs, but the other leg Silverton simply refused to let get trimmed. This one had a particularly splitty and cracked toenail so we're wondering if maybe there was some sensitivity there. We tried all kinds of tricks to get it trimmed but it just wasn't going to happen today, so we unhaltered him, opened the barn doors, and let the boys back out into the pasture.

All things considered it was successful, or at least we felt like it was. For our first time without any supervision or help from other alpaca owners we were able to get them each haltered and get most of the toenail trimming down. Since Cinnamon the Drama Queen was anxious even from the haltering stage my guess is that he's just not comfortable with us haltering him right now, so we're going to begin haltering him a little more regularly without any other things attached to it -- just halter him, walk him around a little bit, make him stand while we examine his feet, and then let him go. Since it's been three months that we've had them we can't let his nails go too far before getting trimmed, but we're going to try again next weekend and we figure we'll just keep trying regularly until he finally figures out that we're not trying to savagely murder him.

We had a bunch of people over for Matt's birthday and his mom and my sister had just come out with me to give some feed to the boys. Cinnamon mows through his handfuls of feed so quickly that he spills more pellets than he actually eats, and every time now he's taken to cleaning up his mess for several minutes after we're done, hoovering up pellets from the barn floor or the pasture (wherever we've managed to feed them).

Naturally you can bet that Silverton took a little bit of umbrage to this. So he turned around and, in a gesture that clearly said, "dude, I do not swing that way and I'd be happy if you kept your advances to yourself" began to growl and wrestle with him. This escalated into full-on up-on-hind-legs body slams against each other, neck wrapping, you name it, with corresponding sound effects the likes of which we'd not heard yet. All of us out there stopped and watched, not really sure how serious it was.

It went on for less than a minute but was definitely the most aggressive behavior I'd witnessed in the boys. I was mildly concerned but also knew that, from Don and Jody's past advice, boys will be boys and frequently they'll wrestle, posture, shove, and generally act like teenage boys with something to prove. And it usually ends pretty quickly -- the only times you have to worry are when you see torn or bleeding ears, in which case the fighting alpacas (now if that doesn't sound like a great name for a high school football team I don't know what does) need to be separated for some cooling off and their fighting teeth obviously need some checking.

Despite my mild concern one thing made me laugh, and that was Benz's reaction to this whole thing. He had absolutely nothing to do with the argument but he half-heartedly joined in with a couple of weak body slams, kind of moving in and out of the fight as if he didn't know whose side he should be on or if he should even be on a side at all, but somehow felt obligated to join in. Benz is clearly a lover, not a fighter.

The whole thing was over in less than a minute. Silverton and Cinnamon stood side by side with their mouths open (after fighting alpacas mouths will frequently be slightly open and sometimes they'll appear to be frothing a bit), with Silverton ahead of Cinnamon. After a few seconds all three boys began walking to the corner of the pasture by the road with Silverton in the lead and Cinnamon and Benz so close behind him and to his side that I wondered if they were kind of pushing him into the corner, which is where he eventually went, or if they were just following his lead really closely for some reason. And then, as if it never happened, they all cushed in their favorite spots under the tree next to each other, and that was that.

When you own dogs and cats it's usually pretty easy to tell who "wins" a domination fight. With cats it's the one who flips the other one, WWE-style, on its back and pins it down. (When Pico was just a small kitten and Sam was a fully-grown adult, Sam thoroughly enjoyed luring Pico in for what seemed like an easy fight, taunting him by exposing her stomach, only to grab him, flip him, and pin him down. Unfortunately for her he seems to love this game...except that now he has five pounds on her, is taller and stronger, and still thinks he's a kitten and that it's his turn to flip Sam over and show her whose boss.)

But Matt and I don't know all the ins and outs of alpaca behavior yet and wondered who won this fight, if there really is such a thing. The dynamics of the boys' relationship didn't change: Silverton and Cinnamon seem to vie for leadership a little bit but they rarely fight at all, and Silverton seems like the "real" herd leader most of the time. Did Siverton successfully tell Cinnamon that he's still the boss? Did Cinnamon actually knock Silverton down a little in the pecking order? How many matches are there in the regular season? Is there a playoff? And more importantly, who has a licensing deal with the sportswear companies? The answers to these questions are pretty crucial as we're hoping we can enter the winning alpaca into Brock Lesnar's division, because that jerk needs a real takedown. Seriously.

So there's your question, alpaca owner-readers. What exactly happened? Was it just a whole lotta posturing amounting to nothing?

In non-fighting events the boys continue to provide hilarious, cute, and sweet moments. Silverton seems to really be warming up to us, especially me (since I'm the one who's home right now and tend to go out and do the pasturely duties). While doing fly trap maintenance the other day he cushed just a few feet from me, something he's never done before. Up to this point he's usually pretty watchful of me, being sure to stay several arm's lengths away from me. On Sunday I cleaned the pasture and with the sun shining the boys all fell over into Dead Alpaca Pose (lying in the sun on their side, looking for all the world like they'd fallen over dead of a heart attack...except for the flicking ears above the grass). I had to maneuver around them with the wheelbarrow and Silverton barely blinked at me even though I could practically have stepped on him. While all the boys are equally cute and sweet, there's something that's especially nice about watching Silverton -- with his one blind eye, who's always the one being a gentleman off to the side, politely waiting his turn, being a little shy -- start to warm up more.

Even Cinnamon with his willful nature can be sweet and cute. Today I dumped out their water and as soon as I turned on the hose to refill it Cinnamon and Benz were practically on top of me, obviously wanting a belly bath. I turned on the hose for them and they were so close to me that I actually got a bit of a belly bath as well. Cinnamon suddenly cushed right there on the spot, so close to me that he was literally nearly on my feet. It was such a shock to see him do this that I almost thought for a moment that he was sick or something was wrong with him. But then, as if realizing that he's not supposed to be that comfortable with me, he suddenly got up and moved a couple of feet back.

Benz and Cinnamon now tag-team me when bringing out their hay. They know now that it comes from the room in the back of the barn, and when they see me go in they crowd the door so that when I come out I have no choice but to let them pull hay out of my hands as I'm carrying it to their feeders.

Over the past few days I've spent some time out at the table working on fiber preparation, and each time the boys migrate up to the fence nearby, cush, and just seem to enjoy hanging out a few feet away from me, sometimes sunning themselves, sometimes just watching me work while they chew their cud. It's pretty sweet.

Every media outlet has its bias and NPR is no exception, but if the site goes against your political grain and you can get past that you'll be rewarded with a broadcast that said more about the proposed health care legislation than all of the town halls combined, and with none of the distasteful and shameful theatrics that townhall attendees and political talking heads on both sides of the spectrum seem bent on engaging in.

There will be no single payer system.
No matter how loudly people rail on about Obama being a communist or a Nazi (oddly, two polar opposite ends of the spectrum) or how we're going to turn into Canada -- which apparently is even worse to most people than turning into Stalinist Russia if you listen to the townhall attendees -- the US will likely never see a single payer system. While polls show that the American public overwhelmingly wants health care reform, Congress is typically more conservative, even controlled by the Democrats, than the American public. A single payer system is too far out and idea for the US to see as a reality any time soon, if ever.

The public option raises issues that Congress is perfectly aware of and is in the process of trying to address.
The public option isn't being thrown into the bill without massive debate and consideration. The main consideration is that of competition; if a public health plan has what tends to be seen as an infinite well of money to draw on, private insurance can't possibly hope to compete against it. This is a very valid concern and many of the parties involved have different needs and desires when it comes to the public option, all of which Cohn discusses, and you can be sure that each one of the groups -- which runs the political gamut -- has a lobbyist working on Congress to make sure their needs are addressed. Rather than shout "Nazi" or "down with socialism" or any number of ridiculous phrases that don't contribute to the debate at all, people should pay special attention to this segment of the broadcast so that we can have an intelligent national conversation about the very real and rational pros and cons of a public option (if it ever makes it into the bill -- at the time of this broadcast it was still in consideration).

There are parts of this reform being proposed that no one is discussing that are really interesting.
Take doctors and their stake in this, for instance. When most people picture doctors they picture a wealthy guy getting rich off of as many procedures that he can make his patient go through. But the truth of the matter is, Cohn says, doctors graduate from many years of schooling with massive amounts of student loans to pay off. Their practices need to pay off these loans, and it's far more profitable for them to go into a specialty line of medicine than to go into family care since family care pays so little relative to the rest of the medical profession. One of the ideas being bandied about in this health care reform is the idea of giving doctors more incentive to go into family care by offering some kind of student loan forgiveness. Having more qualified doctors in family care can only be better for our health care system overall. And this was only one aspect of how doctors may be directly affected by the proposed health care reform that Cohn discussed.

The best part of the broadcast is when Gross brings up each player in the debate -- hospitals, doctors, the AMA, and more -- and asks Cohn to discuss what that group wants in health care reform, what they don't want, and how the proposed legislation will affect them. It's a fascinating look at all sides of the issue.

The rest of the series is spread out over different time periods, but you can easily find them if you browse the August and July Fresh Air archives. In another engrossing episode, Gross talks to two economists, one on the left side of the spectrum and one on the right, and both discuss the economics of the proposed health care in a rational way.

So please, take a listen. Especially if you're one of those awful townhall attendees. But I personally don't know any of those people. Thank God for that.

At their previous home, Cinnamon and Benz were quite used to each other having grown up together and having spent a lot of time in the pasture together. Silverton, on the other hand, had been relegated to the goat pasture -- despite having been gelded, he still wanted to bed all the ladies and fight all the boys, so he simply couldn't get along with anyone (well, I'm sure he thought he was getting along with the ladies, but it sounded like they were getting just a little tired of his constant advances).

When we decided which alpacas we were most interested in, we knew that Cinnamon and Benz would be the easy choice: as 4-H animals they were highly socialized with people as well as with each other. But we were also interested in Silverton -- his fleece was just lovely and he was so unique-looking to me. But we worried about whether or not he'd be able to get along with the other two boys given his bad boy reputation. So we asked Don and Jody about it and they decided to put the three boys with each other to see how they'd do. And it turned out they did just fine. Apparently Silverton's time with the goats had curbed his bad boy ways and he was learning to get along with his fellow alpacas.

Being that he's the oldest and had the reputation of being the pushiest, we assumed on bringing them home that Silverton was the natural herd leader. And mostly that has been the case: where he goes, the other boys follow. Silverton was also the first to do his alarm call when he saw something suspicious, and Don had told us that that's the herd leader's job.

To our amusement, however, Cinnamon has shown a tendency to be the bossier one and appears to be sharing herd leader duties with -- or stealing them from -- Silverton. We've noticed that about fifty percent of the time Cinnamon will decide to head off to a different part of the pasture and the other boys will follow. Benz appears to always be the swing vote, however. He's the most docile of the boys but appears to be the one who picks who to follow first. If Silverton walks off and Benz follows, the Cinnamon goes. If Cinnamon walks off and Benz follows, Silverton will follow. If Benz chooses to stay with the other one in either case, the first alpaca doesn't seem to go very far. Occasionally it will be Cinnamon who does the alarm call if there's something to be concerned about (like the housecat that they're absolutely sure is going to eat them, although they haven't been alarm-calling in several days for that).

At first Silverton was clearly the loner of the group, probably because he'd been so used to being with the goats before. Cinnamon and Benz frequently spent their time close to each other while Silverton was content to be several feet away. Initially at feeding time Cinnamon and Benz crowded each other while Silverton kept his distance, having to be enticed to come any closer for food. Whenever people came into the pasture Cinnamon and Benz naturally walked up but Silverton would stay away, his head up with extra alertness.

But since they've been here the dynamic has gradually changed in interesting ways. With only three of them I'm guessing that the small herd size has forced them to become closer socially. Benz and Silverton appear to be better buddies now: during their belly baths the other day the two of them stood side by side for a moment and then looked each other and then, to my surprise, touched noses in what seemed like a sweet gesture of social bonding. Being that I know very little about alpaca social dynamics I honestly don't know if that was the case -- it could very well have been a toe-to-toe stand off for all I know or it could have meant absolutely nothing, but it really didn't seem like that, especially since only a week or so before Silverton seemed genuinely concerned at Benz's well-being after Benz laid down in the sun and gently poked his nose into the side of Benz's face while humming. (Benz, however, was quite annoyed at Silverton for disrupting his nap.) Benz also seems to spend equal time sitting with both Silverton and Cinnamon now.

While Silverton has become sort of the hidden sweetheart of the group, Cinnamon has become bossier at feeding time. We've been feeding the three of them by hand so they can get used to us (rather than out of troughs in the barn) and Cinnamon is usually so busy lifting his head and making his pre-spit bossy face, moving back and forth between Silverton and Benz in an attempt to keep them both from eating what he clearly considers to be his food, that he forgets to eat himself. It's clearly all talk and no walk, however, as most days Benz and Silverton simply ignore him and keep eating. Some days Cinnamon gets a little spitty here (not the green cud spit that means he means business in keeping you away, but the puff-of-air spit that comes first as a warning) but we're told some alpacas are simply bossy. It's not genuine aggression -- that would mean biting and attempts at jumping on us, and these boys clearly aren't going to be doing any of that. Cinnamon strikes us more as the playground bully trying to steal your lunch out of your hand. Unsuccessfully, really. He only really shows this bossiness at feeding time and it's always directed at the other two boys, never at us. Occasionally I see him lifting his head and making his bossy face at the boys in the pasture when they're eating closely together or when they're standing close together during belly bath time, but it always looks pretty half-hearted. They don't even wrestle each other, really.

We do find we need to gently push back on Cinnamon occasionally during feeding time. Sometimes I feed them by myself and sometimes I wait until Matt gets home, and if I'm by myself it can be hard to feed three alpacas with only two hands. I usually grab a scoopful of food and get two handfuls first for Benz and Cinnamon since every time they eat those two act as if they'll never see the feed again. Cinnamon does his bossy face, occasionally spitting air, and then finally figures out that Benz is still eating and so, hey, he'd better eat, too. He's willful enough that he tends to crowd me if I feed them by myself -- the other day I found myself backed up against the barn wall with Cinnamon showing no signs of backing up. So I've started to take a firm but gentle hand with him at feeding time: I take my arm and slowly push back against his neck, forcing him to back up, when he crowds me a little too much. It seems to work for at least a few seconds, then he's back again, making his bossy face. It's pretty funny.

Silverton, showing his emerging sweetheart side, is frequently content to wait his turn. Up until recently I usually had to reach past the other boys to try and get him to eat out of my hand, at which point he'd very cautiously crane his neck, grab some food, and then scuttle back again. If I had to push Cinnamon out of the way Silverton used to get a little spooked and jump back. Lately, though, this no longer fazes him and he uses it as a chance to get closer so he can actually eat. And the other day he even took a bolder step: I crooked the scoop in my right armpit and fed Benz and Cinnamon out of my hands, and then turned to look and saw Silverton with his face buried in the scoop right in my armpit. The little bugger. It's been really fun seeing Silverton get more comfortable with us as he's been the most skittish. He's certainly not going to be letting us manhandle him easily any time soon, but it's been rewarding seeing him -- and really all three boys -- get more used to us being near them and touching them.

Benz is the biggest softie of the group. He's clearly the sweetest and most social, always coming up when new people show up. He frequently lets me walk up to him and stretch my hand out to scratch his chin, mainly because he's hoping there's food in my hand so he'll only let me do that for as long as he needs to determine that there is, in fact, no food in my hand and I have cruelly duped him. (Then he looks at me with those big, black-rimmed cow eyes as if to say, "why must you tease?") But at feeding time he'll usually stick around for a minute or two after the food's gone -- surely hoping for more -- and will tolerate a quick rub of his neck, always looking at us with those huge brown eyes as if to say, "you...wouldn't have any more food hidden in your pockets, would you?"

Because we don't have as much direct reason to physically handle our alpacas -- haltering them and leading them -- as larger operations would, we figure we should take time to do it occasionally for the sake of doing it for a couple of reasons: first, so that we ourselves get more comfortable haltering them for them times we do need it, like vet visits, toenail trimming time, etc., and secondly so that they get more comfortable with us handling them. So later today (when Matt's home to help me) I plan to start with Cinnamon and get him in the barn so I can halter him, check his toenails (they won't need trimming yet but I want to look), and walk him for a little bit on the lead around the pasture. Maybe that will help curb some of his bossy ways. Let's hope I don't get spit on.

There are three of them -- Cinnamon, Benz, and Silverton -- and they are completely adorable as alpacas are wont to be. Those of you who've been following our progress on Facebook already know their origin story, so you can feel free to skip a bit. But for those that don't, we got them from Don and Jody Stanwyck of Jo's Fleece Fields, who've gone above and beyond the call of duty in helping us prepare to be first-time alpaca owners. I'd read and researched for years but the time had finally come to actually get alpacas, because the only way I was going to learn any more was by actually owning them.

The first question I usually get is, "why would you own alpacas?" I own them because I've been a handspinner for a few years now, making my own yarn out of what used to be fiber that was bought and prepared by someone else. Occasionally I'd bought a fleece from someone that needed washing and preparing, but that had been the closest to the beginning of the chain that I'd ever come.

With my own alpacas I'll have a constant source of fiber to spin. Sure, there's effort and cost in raising them, but they're surprisingly easy to take care of and there are lots of other benefits, such as the fact that they're exceptionally goofy looking and adorable and we have a good laugh every time we see them. The amount of money I'd spend in yarn would probably equal their cost of care anyway. And my plan is to eventually sell the yarn I make from them that I don't use -- there will come a day far in the future when I no longer want to work in the games industry and would rather do something like a cottage industry where I make and sell my own handspun yarn.

We started with three knowing that our pasture (which totals about three quarters of an acre) could easily support that without hay supplement (except in the non-growing season), and expect to be able to comfortably expand up to five, but we're taking this year to see how fast three alpacas can munch down the existing grass before we do that. We looked at various farms before buying and bought these three boys because they seemed like the perfect fit for my criteria: they're highly socialized and easy to handle (two of them are 4-H animals and have had myriad kids handling them over time), have lived together on the same farm for a while so they're already companions, and their fleeces have great handspinning qualities. It was a great bonus that one of them, Cinnamon, has mostly white fleece, making it perfect for dying.

Once the boys were settled in I decided that with the time off I currently have I'd start a project that I'd document with photos in which I take one of the boys' fleeces and show everything about taking it from raw fleece to a knitted item from start to finish. I decided to go with Silverton's first -- his beautiful gray and silver fleece was begging to be spun up.

The fleece seemed surprisingly clean. While there's definitely some dirt that comes out during preparation it's nothing like some of the fleeces I've worked with before that were so matted with dirt and VM (vegetative matter) in parts that it was hard work to deal with.

I decided at the start that the knitted item I'd make with it would be some kind of shawl. I wanted to make this 100% alpaca so that it would be an all-Silverton preparation in the end, and 100% alpaca doesn't have the memory that a wool or wool blend would have. This means I need to knit something that can have a little stretch in it and not stretch out of shape, so a sweater wasn't the best idea. A folk-style shawl knitted in roughly a sport or fingering weight yarn seems like the perfect idea.

Looking at the fleece made me initially decide to try flick-carding it. Flick-carding is a preparation technique in which you simply take the locks out and, holding them by their butt ends (the end cut by the shearer), you flick the lock ends with either a special comb or a dog brush (a dog brush is essentially the same thing) to open them up. You then flip the locks around and do the same with the butt ends. From here you can either spin them like that or pull it into a roving. I didn't actually think to do this last part, so I flick-carded a bunch of locks and set them aside for spinning.

The next step was deciding if I wanted to spin on a drop spindle or my wheel. I have a Louet S10 spinning wheel, and it's been a great wheel over the years. But as I've been able to refine my technique I've found that it's less suitable for finer yarns, which are the yarns I've been spinning more of. It's single treadle, Irish tension, and has few ratios, which means the take-up is very strong and you have to treadle like mad to get any reasonable speed. Any spinning I've done in the last year has mainly been on a drop spindle and I tend to reserve the Louet for plying, which it's really perfect for. I do plan to upgrade to another wheel (keeping the Louet for plying) but until then, it's a drop spindle mostly for me.

So I picked up my favorite spindle and spun up a test skein from the flick-carded locks. The resulting skein was very cloudy and fluffy, far cloudier than I thought it would be. I'm pretty sure that flick-carding locks should result in a semi-worsted preparation because the fibers are all aligned, but this skein was far more like a woolen preparation. Which wasn't bad, mind you, just not quite what I expected.

So I decided that since I'd recently sprung for a swanky new set of St. Blaise wool combs that I would try making some combed top from the fleece and spin a worsted skein to test against the flick-carded skein and see which I liked better. I'm really loving the preparation I'm getting from my combs -- I'll be hard-pressed to want to hand-card anything again unless I specifically want a woolen yarn -- but I also know that there's more waste when you make combed top. But given the size of the bag of fleece -- and the fact that the fleece producer is out in my pasture eating grass to make more fleece for next year -- I'm less worried about waste than if I'd just bought a small amount of rare fiber. So, combs away!

Again, I spun up a test single, used an Andean bracelet to ply it back on itself since it was a small amount, and washed the skein. When I compared it to the skein from the flick-carded locks I was pleasantly surprised to actually notice a difference: the combed top produced a nice, smooth, more lustrous worsted yarn that still had some cloud to it but was less cloudy than the other skein.

Now, any experienced spinners reading this are probably laughing. "Well, of course that's what you're going to get with it, silly." This is Spinning 101 stuff for those that don't know; woolen yarns are fluffier, have more air pockets between the fibers, and are generally cloudier. This is because the fibers aren't spun parallel to each other -- they're in a more random arrangement, producing a yarn that will be warmer and fluffier, suitable for garments that you want to be warm and fluffy. Woolen yarns are usually produced by carding fibers, which arranges the fibers a bit more randomly and usually perpendicular to the direction in which you're going to spin them. Worsted yarns, on the other hand, are produced by combing the fibers so that they lie parallel to one another. Spinning them produces a more compact and lustrous yarn that has a stronger tensile strength and will pill less. The yarn would be less suitable for a garment you want to be warm and fluffy -- or a garment that you'd want to retain its warmth when wet, like a fisherman's sweater -- but would be perfect for something that's going to get a lot of wear, such as a pair of socks. It's possible to spin a semi-worsted or semi-woolen yarn that has a little of both properties to it by varying your spinning technique on combed top.

So getting an actual worsted yarn from fleece that I turned into combed top isn't exactly a revelation. But this is the first time I've ever actually approached my spinning in any kind of scientific way, producing different preparations and analyzing what my own hands actually produce from start to finish. Being able to see that yes, I actually do produce two different types of yarn when I do two different types of fiber preparation, and that those preparations turn out as the books tell me they should, is very gratifying.

Now I had to decide which preparation I wanted to use for my finished item. I knit test swatches with both skeins and was surprised to find that visually there was almost no distinction between the two. The worsted skein produced maybe a slightly less cloudy and more even swatch, but you had to really look closely to see that. How they felt, however, was completely different. The flick-carded yarn produced a much loftier swatch; it felt thicker and squishier. The worsted skein produced a thinner swatch that felt like it had better drape.

Shawls typically are soft, cloudy, and don't need to be made from worsted yarns as they're unlikely to be worn to the same degree as, say, a pair of socks. The logical conclusion, then, is that I should go with the flick-carded locks and produce a semi-woolen yarn. But when I looked at both swatches I had to admit that I simply liked the feel of the worsted yarn and its resulting fabric better. It still had a lot of cloudiness to it but had a drape that would fit a shawl nicely and had a much more even look to it. It also helped that spinning the resulting combed top was exceptionally easy -- it just spun like a dream. Spinning the flick-carded locks, on the other hand, resulted in a slightly less even yarn. The combed top produced a more consistent yarn that was easier to get close to low sport weight or fingering weight than the flick-carded locks.

So at this point I'm combing the fleece into combed top birds' nests, and those will be spun on my drop spindle into a 2-ply yarn that will be plied on my Louet wheel. More pictures to come as Project Silverton continues.

Enjoy more Fiber Arts Friday posts!

It looks like I made that goal -- earlier that I thought, even -- because my belly dance instructor has asked me to join her troupe, Skin Deep. I guess this means I'm a real belly dancer now.

It seemed that as soon as I joined the troupe we started getting a slew of performance dates alongside Skin Deep's student troupe, and since I've got a lot of family and friends local to the area, I thought it would be useful to point out where we're performing.

We'll be performing next at the Mediterranean Fantasy Festival on Saturday, July 19th on the indoor stage at 12:44 pm. Yes, you read that right -- 12:44, not 12:45. We'll be performing with Ishq, the live Middle Eastern acoustic band we've been working with, and I think it's such a great dynamic to perform with live musicians, which means it should be a great show.

In August we're the half-time show for the Rat City Roller Girls roller derby bout on August 16th. Now this show I'm really looking forward to. Our set is wicked fun, and how can you beat roller derby and belly dancing? You can't. Don't even try. No, seriously. Don't.

We also just found out that we have an hour on the Education Stage at the Puyallup Fair, again with Ishq, at 7 pm on September 11. It may be tough to follow the sheep and milking competitions, but I think we can pull it off.

I've been putting a lot of effort into my costume pieces, with my biggest effort going to the coin bra you can almost see in this photo. I'll post more detailed photos of costuming creation, especially since I plan to do a lot more.

So if you're in the Seattle area, you have no excuse. Find a show to come to and zagareet us on.

But all of that has changed, my friend! On a complete whim last year I decided I was going to try belly dancing. I figured if there was any kind of dance I might have a remote chance of being decent at it would be something that utilized my more than ample junk in the trunk. Sure, they call it belly dancing, but that turns out to be a bit of a misnomer.

The first style I tried out was Egyptian Cabaret with Alexandra. She teaches the class at Bally Fitness in Redmond on Thursday nights, so I figured there would probably be a good cross section of types joining in, and I was right. I was simultaneously hooked and dismayed right from the first class: we were doing hip circles, a super-cool belly dance move right in the first hour, but I watched in the mirror and thought, "I'm hopeless. How the hell do I do this? I look like an elderly snake with a broken back trying to get it on."

But I stuck with it. Alexandra is such a great teacher and so patient, with a really vibrant teaching style and sense of humor that makes you really want to stick with it. So I did, through two more sessions, and eventually moved into her Intermediate class where we learned zils, those little finger cymbals. Now those will make you feel like a real belly dancer.

But I'd been looking up belly dancing styles on the net and I kept finding these belly dancers all dressed up in the most incredible outfits -- jingly coin bras, huge skirts, tassel belts, coins everywhere -- and I had to know what it was. I was shamelessly attracted to a style of belly dancing based solely on the costuming, I admit it.

The style turned out to be American Tribal Style, a form of improvisational belly dance that focused on the group all performing synchronized moves based on a leader/follower method. Despite looking completely choreographed, the moves are actually done improvisationally, with the leader queuing the move so the followers will know what to do next.

I knew right away I wanted to try this style, so I looked up Katrina of Skin Deep, a local troupe of two and a dance studio that teaches the style. I began taking her classes in Issaquah on Friday nights alongside my Cabaret classes on Thursday until I found myself doing both level one and two in both styles.

Having been working on level two for a few weeks now in my ATS class, I know for sure that I want to actually stick with this and find people to perform with. Fortunately, my teacher Katrina is looking to expand her troupe and has added a level three class specifically for those who want to move into performing. These students will either form a student troupe or move up into Katrina's Skin Deep troupe, so I've made it my goal this year to do either of those two things, whichever comes first.

And I think I'll do it, too. Somehow I managed to be halfway decent at this whole belly dance thing, and at a weekend workshop recently, the Cues and Tattoos Festival in Seattle, my teacher introduced me to her dance partner as the student she'd been "raving about." I still have a lot of work to do to be performance-worthy, but I'm definitely getting there.

And of course, being the fiber and sewing geek that I am, I've already gone way too deep into the costuming. Fortunately we wear this stuff in class so it doesn't go to waste. The tassel belt you see in the photo is one of a couple of items I've made for my belly dance costume. The belt uses an old Uzbekistan pillow covering that I added a belt to and homemade tassels with beads to. It's layered over a green fringe belt, which is in turn layered over a silk sari petal skirt and a blank floor length skirt. I've already made a headpiece that I have yet to take some pictures of (coming soon) with flowers, shells, and more, and I'm working on some tribal hair falls with cowrie shells and wild colors to add to the headpiece.

So wish me luck on this whole plan to perform this year. If it all goes well, I may have some videos to post.

If you're an atypical gaming female like me, it's easy to let a knee-jerk reaction get the best of you and make you want to call him a misogynist or sexist, but if you have that reaction then you need to remember one thing: Magnus Bergsson isn't talking about you. He's talking about your average woman, and you know what? He's right.

Bergsson's statement might initially come off as a sweeping sexist generalization, but it's a generalization that has some basis in reality, and the immediate assumption that it's sexist is more our own projections on what we deem to be "girly" and "manly" in video games. Women and men are different creatures, and on average, excepting the odd few like myself, most women prefer their games to be centered around one or more of the following gameplay mechanics: exploration, simulation, socialization, and evolution.

Of these mechanics, only socialization has an inherent gender bias. When we think of "girly" games we tend toward a visual representation of the term: cute art, pastel colors. Evolution, simulation, and exploration, however, are all mechanics that are commonly enjoyed by players of both genders. The difference is that women on average tend to place more of their enjoyment on these mechanics as the main gameplay, while men tend to see these as a means to an end that usually involves other goals: visceral action-oriented gameplay, strategy, or stats-centric roleplaying.

So the question isn't, "is this generalization true?" The question is, "why does this generalization ring true?" I'd like to put forth three possible answers to that question.

1. It isn't the gameplay that prevents women from enjoying hardcore games, it's the art and presentation.

Pick any game off the shelf and you can reduce it to an abstract set of gameplay rules in a generic environment. Shooters aren't shooters because they're bloody and violent; they're shooters because some kind of projectile weapon is fired at a target to eliminate it. Nerf Arena Blast is just as much of a shooter as Soldier of Fortune; the former is a far more abstract form of the genre than the bloody and more violent latter.

The most common reaction that women have when asked if they want to play a game like Soldier of Fortune is distaste for the level of violence, the gore, and the clearly testosterone-driven tone of the art. If, however, the shooter were made more abstract, its violent imagery removed, would women then be able to get past the barrier the art style put in front of them and enjoy the game for its adrenaline-driven, hunter-and-prey gameplay?

2. Women are not introduced to these types of games at the early age that boys typically are.

The most common method by which women are introduced to video games, it seems, is via a college boyfriend or a husband. By then the concept of the video game as a strictly male pastime has been ingrained, and if they've been introduced to them at all it wasn't until they met boys who owned them. It seems that girls are rarely seen by their parents as a primary user of video games, only ever coming to it as a secondary user through a brother or a male friend. Kid's video games offer a wide range of styles and gameplay that, for a young girl, could very well provide a better basis for an open mind about experiencing different types of gameplay that they've been told fall into the "boys' game" category.

3. Women are simply hardwired for social- and exploration-based entertainment, and men are hardwired for visceral, adrenaline-based entertainment.

As much as modern society tries to rank the sexes as the same in ever category, let's face it: men and women are different. Our brains approach problems and puzzles in different ways; why not accept then that women and men tend to enjoy different types of gameplay experiences with different reward paths?

This last question points to the heart of the issue. Too often we resort to trying to figure out what a "girly" game is, and both men and women have an immediate negative reaction to the label "girly game" -- both genders view it as separate and unequal.

But the type of games that women on the whole tend to enjoy don't have gameplay that is inherently inferior; it's merely different. Again, women tend to enjoy games that involve exploration, socialization, simulation, and evolution. This is a perfectly valid set of gameplay characteristics that have no inherent gender bias, we've simply associated games that have them (like The Sims) as being "girly."

The industry is finally moving from a position in which women weren't worth catering to at all to a position in which they're at least interested in finding out what makes us tick gaming-interesting-wise. And so if you're a woman it's a good time to be a gamer. But let's hope they deepen their focus and start looking into the whys as well as the hows.

This isn't entirely new to me. Back in high school I was in Marine Corps. Junior ROTC where I was not only a good shot on the air rifle team (I had a sharpshooter medal), but I was able to spend a week in full immersion at Parris Island, Marine Corps. boot camp. Part of the boot camp experience was the M-16 rifle course, and I'm proud to say that I didn't do too badly, but that experience is a distant memory...

While visiting my family in Washington state, Matt took me to a shooting range in Ravensdale and let me fire a rifle and a couple of pistols that his dad, a gunsmith, actually made himself. We started with the rifle, which Matt assured me had no kick to it. Let me warn you about something: if a guy in a flannel shirt hands you a rifle and says that it "kicks like a squirrel through a pillow," do not believe him.

But regardless of the bruise the gun left on my clavicle and the deafness despite the ear protection, I didn't too badly (after we spent some time adjusting the sights). Then we switched to the two .45 pistols. I don't know why, but this is where I really started feeling like a bad ass. My shot groups at first were abysmal -- the pistols had a bit of a kick, and they were heavier than I thought they'd be. Matt would shoot a group and then I'd shoot a group, and then we'd compare our side-by-side targets. I'm a highly competitive person, and it irritated me that my groups weren't as good as his. So I'd tell him, "again!" And we'd each fire another round. And then another. And another, until finally we put the guns down and checked the targets and I heard Matt say, "damn...your groups are better than mine."

"Now we can leave," I said.