I was recently working on a hand-spinning order, and reached back for some additional roving from the bag.  Low and behold, here is our Maine Coon Cat, Toes, cozily napping in the roving bag!  Not sure how much he is helping, but he sure looks happy!

This weekend we finally had an end to the seemingly endless Indian Summer here in Indiana.  Weeks of lazy warm days lasted all through September, and October was warm and dry.  In fact, the leaves did not take the hint and really change color and drop until Halloween.  They carried that tired, dull look of a summer too long and an autumn too late, as though the trees were weary of growing and supporting all that green.  But they just couldn’t find weather cold enough to make them change into their bright fall colors.  All of a sudden, it seemed, our trees turned gorgeous and then lost all their leaves in what looks like leaf snow-storms, burying our lawn more quickly than we could keep them vaccumed up.  Yes siree, leaves are beautiful, but they also suck…up into our lawn vac, or else the shear quantity will matt on the lawn and kill the grass.  Believe me, we have tried leaving them and we know how that turns out!

Yesterday the weather turned suddenly quite cold, with a sharp wind and sleet later in the evening.  As I was busy plying yarn, I could hear the ice pellets pelt the large windows in our 4-season room.  It was rather nice having all the chores done and nothing more to do that evening than fool with my handspun.  In a way, we have been waiting for the break in outdoor chores that only winter can bring.

This morning was cold and sunny.  I went to the barn for the morning barn-cat feeding, a ritual that started when Mamacat gave us four beautiful kittens last July.  They were all there waiting for me, with the silver tabby twins Gipeto and Pretty Kitten (give me a break, I ran out of names!) running through the cold wet grass to greet me.  They were not all that interested in their dry kibble, which has been cleaned out, as it was every night, by the roving tom cat that has been stealing naps in our dry and warm hay storage.  What they wanted was their treat of canned cat food.  I popped open two cans, but was dismayed to realize how cold the food was; since we keep the cans in the most convenient place: the barn.  They ate at the congealed mass in their dishes as best they could, and it reminded me of the hungry licking of ice cream or a pop-sickle.  This must be salmon-flavored Friskie-sickles to them.  We brought the remaining cans into the house so that we can serve up at least room temperature meals on the cold mornings that will follow over the next few months. 

I was a little slow to notice, but I have to thank Orata from FeatherAndFan for her nice photos of the beautiful scarf she made out of our Lily Super Silky Llama yarn.  I think I need to learn that pattern and try it myself!   Take a pause from here and head on over the FeatherAndFan and check it out. 

Have you ever had an activity that you did not really like to do, and then, when you found you could not do it, you missed it? Our extreme winter weather lately has posed one of those dilemmas for me right now. I have been trying to get my stash of llama fiber either processed at the mill or ready for hand-processing. Step one is washing the fiber. Since I am now set up with two wash tubs, hot water, and a recycled washing machine to spin the fiber dry, my washing efficiency has improved considerably. Still, it is hard work. On a work day or weekend I can generally wash two to four fleeces per day. Fortunately I run out of drying racks about that time, so I usually have a couple day break between batches. Late in the fall and even on Christmas break from work I have been able to push through a few loads while the weather was warm. If it is at least in the 50’s, things go pretty well, but the 40’s are tolerable. Once I got caught when a cold front moved in and the fiber was freezing to the tubs! That was miserable, and even wearing liner gloves under my rubber gloves failed to keep my hands warm. I was glad to be done with washing fiber for awhile…maybe even until spring!

We had a brief respite from the weather in early January, which of course was touted as a global warming event. A couple days even broke records and reached the mid 60’s. You are darn tootin’ that I took advantage of that. But since then, we have been flirting with zero degrees at night and winds that have begged me to close the westward doors on the llama barns. Marlene from Timbre Ridge Farm, who supplies the kid mohair and angora bunny for the Lla-Moh-Bun yarn, is ready with another lot to ship to the mill. But I still need to wash the llama fiber before sending it. I look longingly at my wash tubs, laced in icicles, and wish we’d have a break in the temperatures so I could get busy. Just a little touch of that global warming would be welcome right now. I might even dare to try some fleece if we get into the 30’s this weekend; that shows how desperate I am! And to think just a couple of weeks ago I was secretly happy it had gotten cold enough that I had to stop washing fleece. Like a cat on the wrong side of every door, it seems we always want what we can’t have.

—Laura

Winter has been a little late coming to Farmhouse Fibers but it came in with a fury yesterday. Yesterday morning Laura and I headed to Bloomington, Indiana (about 20 miles away) to pickup bread and bagels from Panera Bread. We thought we had a few hours before the weather hit, but by the time we arrived in Bloomington it was snowing heavily and the roads were already covered with a slippery layer of snow.

We were both surprised when I turned into Panera’s parking lot and the car got half way through the turn and decided to continue in a straight path toward the mediun divider. I was only going a couple of miles per hour, but it was still pretty scary. Needless to say, we were having second thoughts about our Saturday morning road trip.

We walked through the heavy snow into Paneras and loaded up on coffee, bagels and bread and headed back toward Martinsville before the roads got much worse. Once we had the car tucked safely back in the garage we ate a quick breakfast and headed out to the barn to check on Lewis and the other llamas.   They were obviously much smarter than we had been because they were all snuggled in the comfort of  the cover of the barns.