From Dogs to Weaving

Skippy having fun in the snow sliding down the driveway. He is the most rambunctious dog I think we've ever had.

 He's also one of the smartest ones we've ever had.  If only I could trust him out there with the goats and poultry by himself, he'd be almost perfect. Maybe one day...

We are getting a lot of rain the last couple of days and nights.  We are getting the edge of the "atmospheric river" that the PNW is getting.  All this snow in the pictures is now slush and well on its way to being gone.  I think Christmas might not be white this year.  

I finally got the warp all done on the table loom!!  I took a picture of it with my phone, but I can't seem to get it to upload onto my computer like it's supposed to.  I got a new phone a couple of months or so ago, and it's not cooperating like the old one did.  When I get it figured out, I will show some pictures of what I've been doing in the fiber world.  Now to get a warp on the Norwood loom I recently got.  I got all the pegs in the sectional beam installed, got a new reed for it, and now I just have to figure out what I want to weave next!  So many choices.  I think I might weave a little lap blanket using all the partial bobbins that have built up, I'm almost out of empty ones, so it would be a good idea to empty all the partials.  It will be a colorful fun addition in either our house or someone else's. 

I got all the cashmere spun up I've had sitting here from the last time I sent some to the mill to be dehaired.  Now I either have to dehair the raw stuff by hand or find another mill to send it to.  I'd really like to get a dehairing machine of my own.  I really enjoyed using the one I had back in 2010-15.  Too bad it used so much electricity that I couldn't use it except on sunny days, which in the winter aren't very plentiful. It was a slow enough operation that I couldn't make enough money to make steady payments on it, so it went to a new home.  I had plenty of other people's cashmere to dehair but just couldn't run the machine enough to make it worthwhile.  I was scrambling to get my own cashmere dehaired before it left.  Off-grid living has a few drawbacks.  Very few, but a few. I wouldn't go back into the grid world though. 

The weather is wild in most of the country this week.  From polar vortexes and blizzards to rain deluges, there is a bit of everything.  Stay warm, stay safe!  Thanks for reading this!  

A few pictures

 I am pretty sure this is a father son duo. They both have odd antlers, one is bigger than the other, and they aren't fighting. I haven't checked the cameras since hunting season ended this last weekend.  I hope they both survived. 

We now have about 6 inches of snow on the ground.  The mucky goat pen finally froze. Our neighbor has plowed the road for the first time.  He did such a nice job! I did our driveway and the trails around here. Plowed with the atv, snowblower, and shovel. Wrestling with the snowblower is hard work.  My shoulders and back are complaining today, or they were this morning. It's always the 3rd day after an activity that the body is the sorest it seems.  

The 4wd drive went out on the pickup a week ago.  We had an appointment with the mechanic yesterday.  I made it down the mountain and to the shop in 2wd Tuesday evening.  The roads were a bit icy till I got to the highway, then everything was bare and wet.  We got it back today. Luckily the part was under warranty, so we only had the labor charge to pay. Whew!  It's nice to have the pickup back.  It's starting to show its age (1998), but it still runs good.  If it can get to 300k miles, then I will be ready to get something a bit newer.  The body on this one is really starting to fail in places.  Only have about 20k miles to go, so sometime next year I might be getting a different truck.  We shall see.

Since I am no longer posting on Instagram or other social media, I seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth.  I haven't sold a single handmade item all year.  Just some goats.  I do still have my Go Imagine shop, but nothing is happening.  Etsy wasn't working well for me anymore.  I wasn't willing to lower my prices to match all the cheap imported stuff.  I did, and still do, offer free shipping on everything in my shop. 

 Times are changing, people are changing, the whole world is changing!  I do think next year is going to be a whole lot different than this one has been.  A ton of things are happening behind the scenes that we aren't aware of and won't be aware of for a while.  The next few weeks are going to be very interesting, I think. It's rather an exciting time to be alive and witnessing all of it! 

Thanks for reading this.  Have a great day! 

Winter Might Be Here Now

 After a fairly mild autumn, we are getting a dose of winter that looks like it's going to last for a while. Single digits overnight on Saturday!  The ground will finally freeze in the goat pen muck.  I am really looking forward to that.  We got a couple of inches of snow overnight last night.  Made for an interesting trip into the valley to get yet another bale of hay.  We could get at least 6 more inches over the weekend starting on T-Day and into the weekend. Although I've come to expect more than what they forecast. Last night was only supposed to be a half inch, 2" later...

The 4wd went out on the truck the other day, so it was a 2wd trip down the mountain and into the valley today.  I went diagonal a couple of times going down the forest service road, it's a bit icy with all the hunter traffic on it, plus the people that live up here.  The county road was icy off and on all the way to Kila. A slow trip to the highway.  At least the highway was bare and wet.  Coming home with the big bale of hay was better. All that weight (1200 lbs) made a big difference.  Although I did slip once down near the bottom of the forest service road coming home.  The steep hill that is our driveway was actually ok, I got a good run at it and made it all the way to the top without a problem. 

Skippy's new way to have fun is to take a flying leap into the back of the truck and slide into the front of the bed, then slip and slide back out and do it all over again.  Silly dog.  The first time he did that, the slipperiness caught him by surprise, and he whacked his jaw pretty good on the wheel well when he slipped.  He looked at me like I made him slip and I told him he did that all by himself.  So, he jumped back out and did it all over again.  Goof ball.  He has learned the word "treat" really fast.  Whenever he's starting to take off away from us when we're out working and he's with us, we call out "Skippy, treat" and he comes running.  He gets a little piece of jerky for dogs.  It's a high quality, no chemicals or icky things in it, bag of jerky. He really likes them. Now if I could just trust him not to chase the guineas or the goats, he could be out of his pen all the time instead of just when we are out.  We put up an electric wire around the yard and driveway fence, which he's touched a few times, so he's not getting close to the fence anymore.  

A bit of sad news. Ivory, my ugly duckling goat, died on Saturday.  She was my hard luck goat, always near the bottom of the pecking order, so she was always having to dodge the other goats.  Had both her horns broke off about 5 inches from her head at different times.  Blood on a white goat really stands out!   Her eyes were "bug eyed" so she always had runny eyes. She was 10 years old.  She had the nicest cashmere, fine micron even this year.  She only had one daughter, who also has nice cashmere.  I kept her. She's better looking than her mom. I could never keep a collar on Ivory. She somehow got every one of them off.  I do not know how she did that, unless Miracle (her daughter) somehow unbuckled them.  One less goat here now.  I'm down to 21 cashmere goats.  

I got my weaving and spinning mojo back!  For the last couple of months or so, I just haven't felt like doing much of either, had to force myself to do the weaving. I am going to get that table loom warp done by the end of this month! It's only been on there since May.  Sunday I all of a sudden got the urge to get back to weaving and spinning.  I got one ounce of cashmere singles spun and worked on the loom and actually got a good amount of weaving in.  Ideas for what to make with the cloth I've woven are popping into my head, too.  Some experimenting is going to be happening.  Now that it looks like outside projects are done till spring, it's time to get fibery again!  I will post pictures of the things I make coming up.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day to the folks celebrating it.  I have a lot to be thankful for this year; it's been a pretty good year despite a few interesting times. Stay safe out there, it looks like a wild weather week for most of the country again. 

Checking Things off the List

 It's almost that time of year to start the combing of the cashmere already! I can't tell from this angle who this is, it's an older picture, but they were ready to be combed, whoever it was.  

I got the dairy barn all cleaned out yesterday, new shavings and straw installed. Goats are THE biggest wasters of hay I've ever seen, especially dairy goats.  If it's touched the ground, it's inedible.  It seems the more goats there are eating in the same pen, the less hay gets wasted.  The cashmeres don't waste nearly the amount the two dairy does do. The 5 dairy kids aren't quite as bad. But, since we drink their milk raw, I guess wanting to only eat very clean food is a good thing, less things and flavors to get into the milk.  Since I keep the buck on the other side of the place from the girls, their milk is very good.  Nice and sweet tasting, no off flavors at all.  Back when I entered the fair every year, the milk and other products I entered always got a blue ribbon.  It doesn't taste "goaty" at all.

We have had a very mild fall so far.  We've had a couple of snowstorms, but it warmed up and melted away within a day or two and it's been just occasional rain since. That means the main goat pen is a mucky mess where I come out from the hayshed and into the feeding area.  Next year things are going to get really changed around out there.  I am tired of dealing with the mud and muck.  Luckily the majority of the pen is dry, it's just the flat areas where it's gross.  But of course, the flat areas are where I want to do the feeding and have the feeders set up.  I've had to move those a bit, so they aren't in a swamp while eating.

We still have a container of flowers blooming by the front door!  I have a bed of spinach, Swiss chard and lettuce that I'm still harvesting from.  The plants aren't really growing anymore, but the leaves are still green and edible. The spinach and chard, and maybe the one variety of lettuce, should come up in the spring and take off, enabling us to have early greens to eat next year.  

I seem to have a never-ending warp on my table loom.  I keep thinking the end should be coming over the back beam every time I advance it, but it still has a ways to go.  I don't remember how long it was when I put it on, but I didn't think it was this long. 

The only thing I have left to do on my outside list is finish trimming all the goat hooves.  I'm about halfway through them.  It sure is taking me a long time to get back in shape after being injured and not able to do a whole lot for over a year!  I just don't bounce back like I used to.  I'm getting stronger, though, slowly but surely.  I must say, except for the mud issue, I am enjoying the relatively mild fall we are having.  It's nice being able to get things finished up outside and actually be ready for winter to come. 

The outside world is pretty wild these days, but around here, life is going on as usual, more or less. This year is going by at a rapid rate; it's almost Thanksgiving already!  Seems like it was just Christmas a month or so ago. 

Well, it's time to go out and feed again.  The days are getting quite short; the sun is setting before 5 pm these days.  Hope you are doing well and enjoying life, it's an amazing time to be alive!  

Weaving

 Now that the gardening is almost done, and the goats are almost all trimmed, it's about time to get back to weaving again.  I can see the end of the warp on the table loom, the same warp that's been on the loom since May. After I get that done, I am going to get the Norwood all set up and get a warp on it.  

I've been making just long lengths of cloth with the last few weaving projects.  Once I get this latest one off, I am going to experiment with sewing up a top or two, or maybe a ruana, or even just a poncho or two.  Then I am going to start weaving with the cashmere yarn I've spun up. I think I have enough to actually weave a shawl.  We'll see.  

I've been contemplating getting a mini Nubian dairy goat buck so I can breed the two doelings out of Toffee and Sprinkles next year.  That will make quite a mixed breed baby!  Sprinkles and Toffee have about 1/3 meat goat breeds in them, so they aren't the greatest of dairy goats. Their kids are out of a mini Alpine buck, so they are more dairy than their moms. I could just get a couple of purebred dairy does and have a lot of milk again, but I'm going to do this the long way around.

Since today was Veterans Day, I would like to thank all the veterans out there for your service. I have a couple in my family, some friends that served in various branches of the military, and John's nieces' husband is in there now.  

With all the solar/cosmic energies coming our way, the earthquakes and volcanos building up for big things, I think life as we know it is about to change.  Be prepared for anything going forward.  We are living through the most amazing times that our planet has ever been in.  Exciting times for humanity!  

Hope the weather is not too drastic where you are.       

 A deer checking out the trail camera at the beginning of this year.  I've got a few pictures of curious deer and their noses right at the camera.  

This is Simon, my Alpine/Nigerian Dwarf dairy buck. He is the hardest thing on fences and his houses.  He loves to butt things, and his horns are about twice as big as what they are in this picture now. He hasn't hurt me at all, he's actually a well-mannered dude, but he sure is hard on his surroundings.  We've rebuilt his house twice now, and I told him this time if he tears it down, he's just going to have to live with it. Dang buck.

 I am truly at a crossroad in my life.  I still love spinning and weaving.  I still love working with the cashmere, both the fiber and the animal. Cashmere goats have the silliest personalities of any of the goats I've ever had, whether that is dairy, meat, or fiber goats.  The kids are the cutest, too. This time of year, I love going out and just petting them, feeling their soft cashmere fleeces and seeing who has the softest fleece this year.  But, after 24 years, I'm kinda getting tired of all the upkeep and feed buying, hay hauling, pen cleaning, etc.  We don't have a tractor, so pen cleaning is done one pitchfork at a time into the atv trailer, hauling it to the compost mountain and unloading it. Living on the side of a mountain is rather scary for using a tractor.  Over the years I've had friends with tractors come up and clean out the pen, and they've all almost tipped over at least once.  I'd like to get a bucket for the ATV, they do make all kinds of implements for them, but they are rather expensive for us, so as of now, it's not happening.  It is on my list of things to get one of these years. I get in a good workout cleaning the pens by hand, but it's getting old, and as I get older, I can't do as many loads a day as I used to.

Since I dropped off social media, this is my only form of it now, and I closed my Etsy shop and moved to Go Imagine, I haven't sold anything for quite a while.  I don't really want to get back on any of the platforms right now.  With the costs of everything going up and up, discretionary spending is going down for most people. Buying something made from cashmere isn't high on anyone's list right now, I don't think. Watching the old systems crumbling is very interesting.  New systems are in the background waiting to come on board, but it's a slow process.  I am very glad we live where we do, and we don't have a huge mountain of debt to deal with.  A few years ago, we did the Dave Ramsey method, and that has worked pretty well, even if we didn't follow it exactly.  We're a long way from being millionaires, but we are comfortable now. I am grateful for everything we have and the way my life is. Most people couldn't live the way we do, but that's ok, I couldn't live the way most people do now, either. :-) It's all good.  I like going and visiting our friends that have big, huge houses, but I couldn't live in them, I'd freeze to death.  I like my little, warm house.  Although all the weaving and spinning (mostly weaving) tools are kinda taking over the place right now. :-)

This fall has been a bit different than usual.  We go from somewhat warm and rainy, to a colder spell and snow, back to warmer and rainy. We got three inches of snow the other day, but now it's calling for rain again. Makes for a mucky, yucky mess in the goat pen. Luckily, it's only in a small area of the pen that is mucky, but it happens to be right where I have to pull the wheelbarrow through to get to the feeders. I will be glad when the ground freezes and the muck is gone for the winter, to be dealt with in the spring again.  Next year we are going to change things up a bit around here, so this isn't an issue anymore.  

Well, that's enough rambling for now. I do hope you all are having a great day, and things are going well in your lives.  Take care everyone!  

Randomness

 Here's a picture of Bitterroot Lake by Marion, MT. A friend has a cabin there and we go visit every once in a while.  The energy of that lake is very peaceful and calming.  At least on their section of it. I don't like going in the summer, too many people on it, but in the Spring and Fall it is wonderful.  

With all the craziness in the world now, the bad weather, hurricane Melissa being the biggest hurricane to ever hit Jamaica, all the storms in this country, it's pretty wild! I am very thankful we live where we do. It's relatively calm most of the time. 

I just had a weird experience with this computer while typing this blog.  It all shut off mid-sentence, then when I turned it back on, it's all sized differently and looks very strange. It's not proportioned properly.  Not sure what's going on now.  It seems to be working ok.  It's a fairly new computer, so there shouldn't be any issues. Very strange...

The dairy does finally came into heat the other day.  Next cycle they will get bred.  April babies will be good.  It's warming up a bit by then. I haven't seen any of the cashmeres come in yet.  Which is fine, since none of them will be getting bred this year.

I got my new loom all set up now.  Yesterday we spent the afternoon re-arranging the living room/studio so everything will fit, kind of.  I seriously need a real studio that is big enough to hold all of the fiber tools and things related to this endeavor.  I got a new reed for the new-to-me loom that came today.  It's nice and shiny and looks good on the loom. Now to figure out a project to weave on it!  

We had another bit of snow on Sunday.  It's mostly melted away now.  I just have a couple more sections of flower beds to clean up before winter and I'll be set.  Then I have to do goat maintenance like hoof trimming. Some of the goats have faster growing hooves than the others.  They are all past due for a good trim. 

 We also put up an electric fence just inside the perimeter fence to see if that will keep the dog at home.  So far, so good.  He touched it once, yelped and doesn't get too close to it now.  We'll see what happens when he hears the neighbor boys out and wants to go play.  Now that Skippy tried to kill their cat, they aren't as keen for him to come over and play. Before they didn't mind him coming, they liked playing with him, but when he didn't listen at all to the mom and went after the cat, that kinda changed things. Which is good, I don't really want him going over there. I don't want him leaving this place at all. 

Well, that's it for now.  I have a lot more I could say about a lot of current events, but I won't.  Sending prayers for all the people affected by the weather events around the planet.  Things are getting pretty wild now, and it will probably get even more wild before it calms down again. Stay safe out there!