We got a visit from that neighbor last weekend. We were dismayed to learn from him that Tiger Mountain Alpacas had to sell their animals, which for him meant that his pasture was empty and had been for nearly a year now and the grasses and weeds were getting out of control. He stopped by to ask if we were interested in putting our boys on it — free grass for us, free pasture mowing for him.

After some questions and a quick walk up the road to check out the pasture we decided it was a great idea. Our summer here in the northwest has been terrible for growing anything so our pasture is growing pretty slowly. We figured this was a great way to extend our pasture’s viability a little bit and maybe allow us to give our boys just a little less hay this year. We’ll only be doing it through July and August — after that the bears start hanging around our neighbor’s area for berries and get a little unpredictable, he says.

We figured we’d start with bringing them up for just a day, which we did last weekend, then start bringing them up Saturday morning and leaving them until Sunday evening, and maybe bringing them up before work in the morning and going to get them at dinner during the week. He lives a five minute walk away but it’s somehow far more remote than our place — his pasture has some lovely views of some of this side of Tiger Mountain. I’m a bit too nervous to leave them up there for several days at a time just yet. While we know that our boys are farm animals and serve a purpose they’re also quasi-pets, and not seeing them out in their pasture is still just a little bit unnerving for me.

But that said, we haltered them up and took them up for their first day last weekend. What’s great about this is that it’s giving us a chance to halter them two or three times a week right now, and we’re using that time to also get them used to us trimming their toenails. We feel like old pros now at catching them and haltering them all. Cinnamon still gives us a hard time when doing his toenails and we still find it nearly impossible to get all his feet in one session. But we’re working on it.

Matt and I led the boys out of their pasture gate and headed up our gravel road toward our neighbor. The boys were immediately intrigued by this. Silverton and Benz were walking slightly ahead of us, looking around at everything, and at nearly every driveway or cleared brush area they wanted to visit and check it out. We walked by one neighbor washing her car who burst out in laughter at the sight of two people walking three alpacas. “I just love those alpacas!” She shouted. The boys were too interested in where we were going to stop, though.

We got to the pasture and set them up, and as we walked away from the gate they clustered together and stared at us hilariously from the tall grass. Cinnamon looked at us as if to say, Don’t exile me! I promise to be good next time!

We came back that night after they had about a full day on the pasture. Herding them toward the gate was no problem — they almost seemed anxious to leave. Even while walking home they seemed to trot ahead of us as if they knew that’s where we were going.

We repeated the process today, only tonight they’ll stay up there overnight and we’ll go get them tomorrow evening. This time as we walked they were a little calmer and as soon as they got into the pasture they started eating, so maybe they feel a little more comfortable this time. It was already hot out so we even gave them a belly bath to help start their day, and they immediately settled into cool dirt piles that they or the previous alpacas had started.

So I’m sure they’re fine. Between the pasture owner and his neighbor they have four dogs to scare off anything lurking around there. But it sure is weird and a little uncomfortable not to see them out of my kitchen windows. Part of why weekends are so awesome is that I get to see my alpacas doing alpaca things all day. Matt assures me that we can always take a walk up there after dinner and say hello, just to check in on them. I might do that.

The boys circa July 2009. So skinny.

They’ve finally acclimated to most of the fauna around our place. During the first few weeks in their new home every little nocturnal sound was a potential threat so we were constantly awakened at night with their alarm call (and one of these days I’m going to record it). Now that they’re more used to the place we actually haven’t heard it in a while…at least until winter changed the landscape a little.

The boys a bit more fleeced out in December 2009. And waiting for food.

Finally I noticed something…way beyond the road was the cattle farm across the street. Tiny brown dots moved slowly across the landscape. Dots that would normally be obscured by trees with leaves on them, but not in winter. Silverton was freaking out over the cows that were at minimum a half a mile away. Very dangerous cows, I’m sure. It was hard to tell so we just gave Silverton the benefit of the doubt on that. He’s nothing if not a very diligent and thorough herd leader.

I’ve been working my way through their fleeces from this year’s shearing and have been really pleased with how much fiber I have to work with from my own boys. I used Cinnamon’s fleece up fairly quickly — most of it was processed and turned into yarn within a couple of months of them being here, mostly because that was a period of unemployment for me so when I wasn’t job searching I was processing fleece. I still have a brown grocery bag of the combing waste I saved from making combed top, though, and most of this should work well for some carded preparation. Because his fleece is white it’s perfect for dyeing, and having used most of it up so quickly I now know that when we get a couple more alpacas (eventually) one of them will need to be white so that I have more white fleece to use for dyeing.

I have about a quarter of the bag of Silverton’s fleece left to wash before processing, and I think his fleece might be largest in quantity of all the boys’. This is great because his fleece is just amazing (all three of the boys have really great fleece, but the color and hand of Silverton’s is definitely at the top of the list). I’ve been very selective about what I do with his fleece so that I don’t run out of it so quickly on small experimental projects like I did with Cinnamon, and so far this year I’ve hand-combed some of it into top (this will likely become a small aount of yarn for the lady who does Uber’s accounting, who saw Silverton’s picture and fell in love with his color and has commissioned some yarn from him), processed a few ounces for a fellow spinner who bought some and apparently enjoyed it quite a bit, and the rest I’ve been drumcarding, combining it with a little bit of merino wool that I’ve dyed in various shades of blue and some silky white Tencel. I’ll spin these silvery batts with a tiny hint of blue in them into a sweater for myself, which I can’t wait to make. I don’t know how much of his fleece total that will take up but I’m anxious to know so that I have a mental measure of how many various knitted items can be made from my boys’ fleeces.

I’ve processed and spun about one-third of Benz’s fleece so far for another commissioned project for a coworker, who wants some scarf yarn (a two-ply yarn with one strand red and one strand black). This project shouldn’t take much of his fleece, and once it’s done I’m going to hoard some of his black fleece because I have plans for it: handspun sock yarn for myself. My feet are always cold and I’ve worn most of my handknit socks out (although they did last a number of years) so it’s time to make myself some new ones. Alpaca is three times warmer than wool so this is a perfect resource. I’ll be combining about 40% of his black fleece with 40% of some Falkland wool I have and 20% of some blending nylon for durability. This should provide some really resilient, durable, and warm winter socks.

And speaking of spinning, this has been a landmark year in that regard for me as well. I learned to spin sometime around 2001 and for several years I spun yarn unintentionally — that is to say that I bought fiber that I thought was pretty or felt nice and I spun it however it decided to come out and then figured out how I wanted to use it later. In the last year or so I’ve been refining my technique so that I spin more intentionally, creating yarns with a specific end-goal in mind, and I feel like I’m actually achieving that. I feel like I’m achieving it so much that I can’t remember the last time I bought yarn for a project (save for a souvenir skein that I bought in Cannon Beach last year) because now when I think about something I want to knit my very first thought is, “okay, let’s see…what do I need to do to create the yarn that I need?” I don’t even think about walking into a yarn store.

And that feeling is actually more awesome than you’d think it would be. Like sitting down to a plate of veggies that you grew yourself, you get this incredible sense of accomplishment and self-sufficiency when you want to knit something as useful and utilitarian as a sweater or a pair of socks and you’re able to control every detail of the resource you’ll use to make it. The batts I’m making from Silverton’s fleece are a great example: I’m blending in just enough merino to add the memory of wool, and I’ve dyed it in a couple of shades of blue that blend well with his silver fleece, giving it a silvery-blue hue. I’m adding Tencel for silkiness and durability, and I’m adding these things in amounts that I get to control. Because I’m making drumcarded batts and because I plan to spin the yarn long draw, the resulting yarn will be woolen (rather than worsted), giving it loft and warmth. And finally I plan to 3-ply it so that I can work cables into the final knitted sweater and have them pop. I could search yarn stores all over and never find a single yarn with all the properties I want in it to get the result I’m looking for.

And now for a final unrelated note: if you’re reading this on my actual site you’ll notice that I’ve completely changed the design and I’m now using a simple, minimalist WordPress template. I converted my blog tool from Moveable Type to WordPress and decided that the over-designed look I had before just wasn’t very easy to work with or extensible. I really only use my site as a blogging tool anyway so rather than dropping WordPress files into an over-designed site it’s simply easier to use WordPress all the way. I plan to add a module to show my Etsy shop offerings and, oh! This is a great time to show off the logo I’ve been working on to sell our handspun alpaca products:

The Glorious Grazers! Inspired by WWII nose art and Looney Tunes.

I’m happy with how it’s turning out so far and it’s been a terrific stretch of my artistic abilities — I can’t draw at all, but Matt was able to gently coach me through the process of getting what he knew I wanted out of my terrible initial sketch. He would check each of my iterations and then make suggestions on things to try on the next pass, and this is the final form pending some feedback I’d like to get from two awesome Uber artists I work with, Eka and Raf. We’ll see what they say.

Happy New Year, everyone!