On The Move In Texas

  We finished our training at the home office and are now traveling throughout the northern part of Texas, called Region 2, and working on the Texas Camping Guide. We arrived at Mill Creek Ranch Resort on Friday. This RV park is gorgeous....wide sites with lots of green grass. Last night bad storms went through the area and we got over an inch of rain. We'll be staying here, in Canton, Texas, till March 22 and then we'll move to the Tyler area. We work in Region 2 until around May 10 and then we'll be heading to Breckenridge, CO to work an RV resort there that we've done for several years. 
    Our summer schedule changes drastically after Colorado. The team that was going to do parks across Alaska this summer left the company for another opportunity so we are going to take their schedule. Wahoo! We're excited to be going to Alaska for three months. I was there in 1995 but have wanted to take Linda there to see the magnificent scenery so now we get to do that and work while we're there.We'll get back home to the east coast to see our families around mid-Sept. 
    We also got great news from my son recently. He and his

girlfriend are expecting my first grandchild. There's gonna be another place setting at the Thanksgiving table this year. LOL...Kelly's due date is October 29, which is the day after my birthday and two days before my grandmother's. Woohoo ! Exciting times ahead in our work and in our family. 

Busy Time For Us

Once Linda picked me up we started the trip to Texas. I didn't realize it until I did some research but we would be in close proximity to the Crater of Diamonds State Park. This is the only diamond mine in the US that is open to the public where you can go and dig for diamonds...real diamonds. This was something I really wanted to see so off we went...There is a 37 acre field where you can dig, sift, screen, etc to your heart's content. Every so often they plow the field to bring more diamonds to the surface.
This area was home to a massive volcano ages ago that brought the crystal beauties to the surface. You can find clear white, yellow and brown.


The diamonds aren't all that elusive either (although we didn't find any). More than 700 diamonds are found each year and someone had even found one the week before we were there. They have a gorgeous RV park and splash water park there which makes for an awesome family getaway. So if you ever get to Murfreesboro, Arkansas, be sure to go check it out.
Our next stop was Austin, Texas. I needed to do some training with another one of our teams so we joined up with them west of Austin for a few days. Last Friday we left there and went to Montgomery, TX for our annual company meeting. It's like a family reunion as we get to spend time with folks we usually only see once a year. Lots of hugs and laughs from Monday to Thursday. When we arrived, we called a local RV mobile tech because our outside shower was leaking and our inverter was not supplying power to the rig while we were traveling. We couldn't run the water pump, receptacles or anything that usually would run off the inverter. Power was going TO the inverter but wasn't going to the rig. Turns out one of the 12v breakers, under the front steps, was shot. This isn't the type of breaker as in the electrical panel but one that can usually be reset if it trips due to low load when the batteries are low. Junior replaced the outside shower and breaker but it didn't fix the problem. Turns out the solenoid that tells the battery disconnect to turn on and off was not working so the batteries were not charging. We had to stay an extra day till Junior could order the part but on Friday, around 2, we hit the road for Rockdale, TX.
While I was doing my internship at White Violet Center, you may recall that I did my project on aquaponics. One of the farms that is big into aquaponics is located in nearby Cameron, TX and had a farm tour scheduled for yesterday so we signed up. Sand Creek Farm participates in a CSA program but they have four high tunnels and in three of them they do aquaponics. They grow many vegetables outdoors in the ground but they grow a lot of specialized things indoors, where they grow super fast and virtually free from pests. He grows a whole lot of Asian greens that I had never heard of before and he said they grow really well in an aquaponic environment. Onions, that typically take 100 days to grow in the ground...he grows them in 8 weeks. The seeds are started in a vermiculite/coconut coir mixture in little net pots (bottoms have a lot of openings in them to let water in). The pots sit in cut outs in the foam board, that is floating on top of the water in the troughs. You can see the fish tank in the background behind Ben i this picture on the right. He has silver sheets of rigid insulation around the tank and on top of it to keep heat in during this cold snap that Texas is having. The basic concept of aquaponics is that the fish poop, which provides the nutrients that the plants need. The fish poo water is pumped into the troughs where the vegetables grow and the plants extract all the waste products, creating clean water that is returned to the fish tank. Cool, huh ? It's a symbiotic relationship of raising healthy fish and vegetables in a closed loop system. In our country over 60% of our fish come from China, which has sometimes had unscrupulous practices when it comes to food production. Wouldn't it be cool if we could get enough aquaponic farmers in this country so that we could provide our own sources of fish. Ben uses Perch and Tilapia in his tanks but there are many other types that can be used, depending on what temperatures you hold to have in your system. In cold climates, trout would be a good source because they are a cold water fish.
During our tour, we also got to see his cheese room, where he produces Havarti and Gouda cheese. Look at those beautiful wheels of cheese ! The cows that he milks used to be wild, free range type of cows and he would have to round them up and lasso them to bring them in to milk them. They are now accustomed to being milked so it's not a rodeo every time he needs them to come to the barn at milking time. I can't even imagine how wild a time that must have been. He also makes yogurt and had a batch in the oven when we were there. It was a really neat farm and there were 42 people on our tour. It was raining lightly while we were touring and once we got home, it really started to pour and continued through the night.














Linda eating Red Russian Kale that Ben picked out of the garden. She loved it !








As I finish up this post, we are rolling down the highway towards Waco. We should arrive in Keene around 1:30.  Time enough to get set up, get some lunch and settle in for NASCAR. Tomorrow morning we start our training at home office. We're excited to learn new things and work to develop the northern region of Texas. We feel great things are just over the horizon. Nothing's gonna stop us from going full steam ahead !

Linda Arrived !

It wasn’t a quick fix to get the steps on the rig so they would retract. Nothing, that $425 won’t fix. The motor that runs the steps going in and out was shot. It didn’t have very much power so it had to be replaced. They ordered the new motor on Monday and it came in on Tuesday morning. Linda also noticed that there are several cracks in the fiberglass and the RV guys said sometimes that happens in the cold winter weather. What’s with that ?!? Not happy at all about that and today I looked and there are even more from her drive out here. Not acceptable for a rig that is 28 months old ! I will be contacting Thor about that.
Linda got on the road about 11 a.m. on Tuesday and kept on driving until she arrived here a little after 10 p.m. It was so great to see her. We got the rig settled in the back parking lot and Boomer is staying over in the White Violet Center, in Tracy’s office. She has a dog bed in there and he’s happy as a clam. We go over and spend a lot of time with him in the evening and work on fiber projects.
On Tuesday, Linda jumped right into learning all sorts of stuff. She’s learned how to skirt fiber, how to felt soap, how to wind the yarn I spin and put it into a ball of yarn or make it into a skein. She’s made some felted items, using the cookie cutter molds and is getting three batts of fiber ready (which means she knows how to card fiber too) so Sister Moe can show her how to wet felt a hat.

Felting Soap

Winding Yarn

Winding a skein of yarn

She is a fast learner and says she is having lots of fun. Today we went to the barn and helped Tracy do chores. She learned how to scoop alpaca poop and feed them. I have my last morning alpaca duty tomorrow so she will work with me all morning and then we’re going on a field trip out to the guy’s farm who bought a bunch of White Violet’s alpacas. It’s time to trim their toes and give them their deworming shot. BTW we got the preliminary necropsy report and Mariah did have the meningeal worm. She also had pneumonia and something going on with her spleen. Now they know what they are dealing with as they head into springtime weather and the possibility of lots of slugs this summer. It’s scary that four alpacas here were affected by this and Tracy has heard of several other area farms who have had the same thing with some of their alpacas.

Linda’s trying to learn lots more by the end of the week and then we leave here on Saturday. Coming down the home stretch….5 more work days to go and then we’ll be hitting the road again !

The Circle of Life

Today was my last evening shift of checking on the alpacas before I leave White Violet, on the 22nd. Sadly, Mariah has not improved and Tracy has decided that it would be best for Mariah to be put down since she can’t live the way an alpaca should be able to live. The vet will come on Monday and put her to sleep and then she will be taken to Purdue so a necropsy can be performed to find out the cause of her illness. Today her body temperature has been low and you can tell that she doesn’t feel well. She isn’t eating or drinking and is pretty lethargic; just laying in her stall and not moving around at all. Tonight I put her on a heated dog pad to try and make her more comfortable and it did raise her body temp a tiny bit from early this afternoon when I checked it. I hope that she leaves this life on her own terms before Monday and will find Schroeder in a grassy field somewhere over the rainbow bridge where they can run and play. She needs to be at peace after being sick for a while now.
This afternoon was the nuno felting workshop. It was a lot of fun. To get started, lay a long piece of bubble wrap (bubbles facing up) on a table. The first step is to take a piece of silk and lay out the fringe pieces on each end, letting about 1.5” overlap onto the silk.





I chose black silk and purple for my accent color. Next, you take your fiber in wispy little sections and cover the silk, extending over the sides of the fabric and onto the fringe (all of the elements need to felt together so that is why you overlap onto the fringe). You want to make sure the whole thing is covered but you can’t lay it on too thick or it won’t felt together.



Then the accent color is laid on; again in wispy streaks on the fiber, making sure to go out onto the fringe to make it all cohesive. Using warm water and a tiny bit of Dawn, in a squirt bottle (see in the foreground), wet down the project using zig zag motions up and down the table.





Lay another piece of bubble wrap (bubbles facing towards the fabric) on top. Wet the top of the bubble wrap and rub gently to start the felting process. Remove the bubble wrap and fold in your sides to make a nice straight edge. Rub a little bit more to help felt it. Gently fold it all up and flip it over. Cover the blank side of the silk with wispy pieces of fiber, not worrying about the edges since you covered those on the front side. Put your accent colors on again to cover the backside.
Wet the top of the fabric and place the bubble wrap over it and wet that down. Start to rub the surface and check again to see how your edges look.
Now you take a rolling pin or a piece of swimming pool noodle and roll your project onto it. After about 150 rolls inside a towel (to catch all the water that comes running out from inside), it’s almost done. Twenty throws onto the table and then you head to the sink to rinse the soap out of your newly felted scarf. Some tying of the fringe and steaming to finish it off and you’ve got the finished product.

It’s hard to see the coloring on mine (on the left) but you can see how pretty Cindy’s turned out. Cindy is a Methodist minister, from Minnesota, who is here until March. She works with the alpacas and wants to go back to Minnesota and create a farm where non-violent offenders, who are released from prison, can learn new skills and become productive citizens again upon their release from jail. She’s learning to spin yarn with me and wants to learn how to weave too.
The scarf is so lightweight, only weighing around an ounce and it makes a gorgeous, wispy accent piece to wear. Our instructor makes material and creates jackets, using nuno felting, and sells them for $900. Scarfs, like we made today, sell for $60. It was another neat craft to learn about and I’m glad I got to attend the workshop since it filled up so quickly. They have enough people on a waiting list to run another workshop soon. Debby, the instructor, currently has 98 alpacas on her farm and she dyes a lot of her fiber and uses it in all of her projects. Wow, that would be a lot of alpacas to care for, shear and deal with the fiber (keep in mind you get two bags of fiber each time you shear. A blanket fleece and the 2nds so that’s almost 200 bags each spring when she shears.)
Cindy and I continue to spin and this week we learned how to ply two balls of yarn together. Here’s Cindy taking a skein and making it into a ball of yarn so it can be plied. I can’t wait to make something out of the yarn I’ve spun. The initial yarn, when you learn to spin, is chunky and often referred to as “art yarn” since we were inexperienced when we did it. Once you refine your spinning skills, you can get the strand pretty thin and much more consistent. I find it very therapeutic to spin but don’t think I’d ever buy a spinning wheel due to the price and space they take up. I’m still hoping to get a loom at some point but want to work with it some more to decide the size that would be best for us.
Time for bed…so anxious for Linda to get here with the rig so I can see her. It’s been 4 long months since I last saw her ! She was going to leave Sunday morning but this afternoon she couldn’t get the steps to retract so she has to take the rig back to the RV shop Monday morning and hope it’s a quick fix so she can get on the road. Hopefully she’ll still get here on Tuesday….please pray that she has safe travels from Pennsylvania to Indiana.

Spinning

Last week I learned how to spin so I’ve been working on trying to get the technique down. Although Candace told us not to look at the yarn we’re producing (Cindy is learning with me too), Candace said that it looks good. Here is a picture of the loom room. My spinning wheel is the one on the left. We moved the spinning wheels into this room because we needed to get them out of the way for an Alpaca 101 class that they held yesterday. They had a great turnout for the class…one of the attendees came from five hours away. So, I continue to work on my spinning technique so I can create my first skein of yarn.
I finished weaving another scarf. Here is where we trim the fringe and lay our items to dry, after washing them. This area is in the same room as the looms.

This is a commercial loom that someone donated to the center although I’ve never seen anyone work on it. The building where all of these looms are located is in the back of the White Violet Center and it used to be the laundry for the sisters. All of the items would come here to be washed in a commercial laundry area. All of the equipment was ripped out and the sisters are now responsible for doing their own laundry. There are two laundry areas on each floor in the building where I live, as do many of the sisters. One of the sisters must be responsible for putting out fresh towels in the rest rooms cause if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, there’s a fresh towel there. I swear there’s a towel fairy that works hand in hand with the tooth fairy, making evening rounds. 

“Seconds” of fiber, from the skirting process that are located in the fiber room.




The skirting table and the bare shelves where “blankets” of fleece are usually kept. We have all of White Violet’s blankets done. We’re now working on some fiber that was donated to the center. We spend a lot of time on snowy days, sitting around this table skirting fiber.

The brick building, on the right, is the White Violet Center. You can see the smoke stacks of the big furnaces for the complex in the background and the steeple of the church in the left corner.

Sister Ruth was hired to do a portrait of a family’s pet donkey. This was done by felting fiber onto a wet felted base material. She did an awesome job making it look just like the photo that they sent.

I’ve entered two photos into the National Alpaca photo contest. Once all of the entries are in (deadline is 2/18), then I believe the photos all go up on the web for folks to vote on them and the ones with the most votes, from each category, will be printed and sent to Harrisburg, PA (how appropriate that the contest will be back home) to be on display at the National Conference this year and a judge will pick the winner in each category. Wish me luck !!
Not much else going on. I’m on “close” duty this week so in another hour I’ll be going out to check the alpacas water, hay, minerals and condition of the animals. We check to make sure they are all set for the night and Mariah will need to have her physical therapy where we hoist her up with the sling and pulley and exercise her back legs while the weight is off them. She didn’t do so well with it this morning, not wanting to stand at all or put weight on her legs. Hopefully she’ll do better this afternoon.
I think it was last week that I had a really profound and powerful moment, as I was sitting in my room. I was working on the pink scarf on the loom and looked over at my bed. When I packed stuff to come here, I packed an afghan that my grandmother had given me many years ago that means a lot to me. I brought it in case it was cold in my room. On top of that blanket I also have a small lap blanket that my mom made recently because I was freezing a few months ago when the weather started to get colder and I couldn’t get warm. I also have the shawl, that you’ll recall my sister made for me that I wear around my shoulders when it gets chilly. I saw all of these things that great women in my family have made for me and it really struck me (it’s making me cry just to write about it). As hard as my grandmother and my mother tried to teach me, as a kid growing up, how to crochet or do “crafty types of things”, I could never “get it”. Back then my fine motor skills were way better than they are now. I seem to be all thumbs and have no coordination at all now and I’m not sure what that is all about. But I have learned to weave and I’m learning to spin and I’ve learned to felt and I felt a really strong connection to these wonderful women in my life that have done this stuff for so long. Pardon my pun but I felt like a fiber had connected all of us with a commonality that I’d never felt before. It was a strong epiphany for me in that moment and something I will always cherish about what the people here have taught me and given to me.
I hope your week is a powerful one and one full of inspiration and love ! May you find a connection to something new or rekindle a connection to something forgotten. Make the most of the week in front of you.

Polar Vortex

These are two words that I have come to hate recently. Last night was my first night back in my room since last Wednesday. I have been house sitting for my boss since last Thursday night and this bitter cold (wind chills in the –15 to –25 range) are really tough on older homes. I awoke Tuesday morning to no water in the whole house even though I had been letting the water drip to try and prevent a freeze-up. I got to spend time with Thea too, walking her and feeding her. She is a very sweet and obedient dog and about the same age as Boomer. Since I haven’t seen Boomer in three months, she was a nice stand-in for a few days to give her some lovin’.
The cold and ice is tough on the alpacas and they don’t like to come out of their shelters when it’s bitter cold or snowy. I had alpaca duty Monday morning and as I was opening the gate so Cindy could pull the Kubota into pasture 2, I slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard on my back, whacking my head a little on the ground. Cindy poked her head out of the Kubota and asked if I was ok and after getting up and moving various body parts, determined that nothing was broken. I had a headache for the rest of the day and my low back and hips were achy but it seems that the many layers of clothing that I had on, absorbed the shock to my body. As Cindy said, “ You fell really even.”
Mariah’s physical therapy is progressing and yesterday she stood for about 20 minutes on her own. The sling and pulley are working great to take the stress off of our bodies to pick her up. She will need to get to the point of being able to get up on her own to have any quality of life, as an alpaca, so that remains to be seen if she can regain enough muscle strength to do that.
Finished more mug rugs and a scarf. I love the colors in the scarf, purples and pinks (although I’m not a pink person). It’s made from alpaca yarn so it will be super warm and soft.
We have a bunch of workshops coming up in the weeks leading up to my departure. Today is our spinning workshop. Friday we have a alpaca showing workshop where we learn how to prepare your alpaca for the show ring, what the judges are looking for and ring etiquette. Next weekend is the nuno felting workshop, which I’m looking forward to. It was part of the three day workshop last weekend but the whole event was cancelled due to low enrollment. Lots of fun, educational events coming up.
Linda dropped our rig off at an RV repair place, near her, to get some items taken care of before we hit the road again. When I was home for a few days end of October, I had put some Stabil in the gas tank to get it through the months of sitting. As soon as I did that, there were really strong smells of gas in the rig; so much so that it was setting off the carbon monoxide detector. I chalked it up that maybe I had gotten some fuel on my clothes but I had been really careful and it’s not a sloppy job to take a little container and pour it into your fuel tank. Turns out a mouse had chewed a hole in our fuel line, right near the manifold,in the engine compartment. The guy at the garage said that Linda was extremely lucky that it didn’t catch fire on her way driving to their shop. I will thank the cold weather and short drive for that miracle and Linda having an angel on her shoulder. The reason that our furnace hasn’t been firing is that the computer board is shot so that’s another $295. I hated to answer my phone cause every time the guy called from the garage it was ka ching – ka ching. I guess that the final bill will be close to $1000 but our home will be safe and ready to hit the road.
The car, with its’ new engine, is acting up and is in another repair shop in Chambersburg. It’s getting 10 miles to the gallon and skipping and bucking so that needs to be checked out. We are really hoping that it’s a little tweak and not a big repair. Keeping our fingers crossed. Say a prayer to the god of all things mechanical for us, if you would please.
For more positive news…Today it will be in the 20’s, which will feel immensely warmer than it has felt in the last two weeks. Hope everyone is staying warm and safe. Enjoy the rest of your week, wherever it may find you.

Winding Down…

It’s hard to believe that there’s just a few more weeks left to my internship. My project is done and I presented it last week. The director said I did an excellent job and is actually going to present it to the Council this week. She believes that there is merit to many of my recommendations and would like to see them implemented. It will be interesting to see what response she gets from the council members. I spent several months putting the report together….it took tons of research. Glad it’s off my plate.
Yesterday there was an herbalism class at the White Violet Center. We covered teas, infusions, decoctions, herbal oils, tinctures, salves and creams. We were told what they are, how they’re used and how to make them. It was really neat info. We plucked the flower petals off of calendula and echinacea so Robyn (our instructor) could make a tincture with them. Tinctures are so expensive to buy ($15-20 for a tiny bottle) but are so easy to make and they last forever. Tinctures extract alkaloids and resins from a plant that a water infusion won’t extract. Robyn made a salve from comfrey, lavender and calendula and we each received one to take with us. It smells wonderful and I’ve been using it as lip balm. There are a variety of uses for it, based on the several different ingredients that are in it. We also made a rose water based skin cream that had cocoa butter and shea butter oil in it and it turned out great. We used lecithin as the thickening agent, which is derived from eggs. All of the workshop participants, except the interns, got a sample of the skin cream to take home. Fun class…learned a lot and hope to do more of it. For any herbal tea drinkers out there, cover your cup and let it steep for a few minutes to capture all of good stuff that is otherwise escaping. It will do your body good !

Mariah isn’t doing very well. She is the focus of our attention for the next month to see if we can get her legs working. Tracy will be rigging up a sling and pulley system so that it will be easier to get her up on her feet and leave her there for a period of time to see if she will regain strength in her legs. If she has support to hold her up, then when her legs are fatigued, she won’t fall down but will be gently held up till she feels she wants to try and stand again. Plus, it will be easier to do some range of motion exercises on her while she is being held up. The alpaca standing outside her pen, in this picture, is Finesse…the matriarch of the herd. She’s the oldest female in the herd and as you can see, a caretaker of the herd. If she is hanging out with an alpaca, at the outskirts of the herd, we need to see what is going on because she is a good barometer for the overall health of the alpacas.
The weather has been goofy this week. The other day there was only a 20% chance of snow and no call for accumulation but it snowed all morning and we wound up with about 4” of snow. Yesterday we got a little bit more so it’s white and crunchy around here again. The chickens don’t like it and tend to stay in their coop and the alpacas don’t graze when the ground is covered so all the animals get a little cranky. Speaking of cranky, last night was my last night on alpaca “close” duty (I’ve been on it for two weeks straight so now I have two weeks off till it do it one last time) and Mariah got a little testy last night when I went to pick her up. She spit and got me on the side of my face, hat, and sleeve of my coat. When alpacas spit at each other, it’s really foul smelling, green stuff. If an alpaca gets spit on in the face, it locks their jaws and they can’t close their mouth for several minutes. It’s kind of funny when it’s feeding time and one gets spit at and then tries to eat but they can’t close their mouth and the food falls right out. They sort of look like alpaca zombies standing there with their mouths hanging open. I don’t think Mariah had time to get all of the stomach juices pulled up into her mouth before she spit at me cause it wasn’t near as foul smelling as it usually is….it just smelled like she barfed on me. It still required washing everything I had on and a shower for me when I got back to my room. The joys of animal husbandry!
Still working on some weaving projects. I made three mug rugs and another scarf, although one of my warp threads broke and the tension got really weird and it didn’t turn out well. My yarn order arrived so I’m trying to experiment with some things while I have a loom to work with. We have Monday off, for Martin Luther King day, so I will put that to good use weaving and getting our tax info ready. Oh joy !
Hope everyone has a great week !

Snow and Cold

The snow started early this morning and it’s really coming down. I went out walking cause the whole campus is so pretty, although the snow is a little deep once you get off a sidewalk or roadway. The temps are tolerable today but overnight the temps are supposed to plummet and the wind chill will get really brutal. They are saying that tomorrow’s wind chill will make it feel like 35-45 below zero. It’s gonna feel like we’re living in Alaska. I’m prepared though….I went to the office and bought an alpaca ski mask and gloves. I am on alpaca “close” all week and work tomorrow morning with the alpacas. I should be able to get everything but my eyes covered up so that should protect me from the bitter cold. This snow is a really wet snow, unlike what we got the other day that was super dry and fluffy. We already had about 5” on the ground and they are calling for 6-12” by the time it’s done. It was mid-way to my knees in the fields when I was out earlier. Just got a text from the garden manager that we need to go out periodically and brush the snow off the greenhouse and high tunnels so the weight of the snow doesn’t make them collapse. That will keep us busy till the storm is over.
I put the finishing touches on my scarf. I had to tie off the fringe and weave in the loose ends where you start and stop with different colors. Then you soak it in hot, soapy water….being sure to not agitate it because that will felt it. After it soaks for 10 minutes, you pull it out, change the water to clear, hot water and let it rinse in the water (still no agitation) for 10 minutes. If it still has soap in it, repeat the process again. After it’s been washed and rinsed, you blot it between towels and then lay it out flat to dry. I’d love to get a small rigid heddle loom and continue to weave. Will wait till we get back on the road and have some income coming in. In the meantime, I’ll use a loom here for the remainder of my time here.
Well, time to get ready for lunch and then go outside to work in the snow. Hope everyone has a great upcoming week. Stay warm and dry !

Happy New Year

I have a relaxing day off so thought I’d get caught up on our blog. Yesterday, we had a weaving workshop with Robyn, the intern coordinator. There’s a couple more specific things I want to learn, while I’m still here, and weaving is one of the them. This is a rigid heddle loom, which when you hear someone say it to you for the first time sounds like rigid kettle. That’s what happened when Sister Ruth said I should start out on a rigid heddle loom to learn about weaving. Since I heard “kettle”, I’m thinking what kind of a silly name is that….of course a kettle is rigid. It wouldn’t hold water otherwise. After she spelled it for me, and I stopped laughing my head off, I got it. So Robyn taught us how to weave. A really cool thing Robyn said about weaving is that when you think way back to stone age times, weaving is like the earliest form of artistry or craftsmanship that existed. The men were hunters, the women cooked and someone did weaving to provide the basics of clothing (loin cloths would have been a really easy thing to weave….like a mug rug on a string…LOL.
I found that little history lesson really cool…all primal and such. There is a whole language that goes with weaving. Warps and wefts, heddles and shuttles. And the terminology has stuck since those stone age days….no evolution into newer words. It seems to take more time to set the loom up than it does to actually weave something but it’s really fun. The rigid heddle loom comes in different widths and the smaller ones, like this one, folds up and goes in a carrying bag. It sits on your lap when you use it and you see results really quickly, unlike crocheting. I started weaving this scarf around 3:00 p.m. and had it done by bedtime, with several breaks during that time. Now, I don’t know how to take it off the loom or finish the edges yet but I had a blast doing it. There is a workshop coming up at the end of this month, called Fiber Frolic and it’s a 3 day event. You can choose to learn spinning, weaving or Nuno felting. I will probably participate…just not sure which one I want to focus on. I can learn to spin from Robyn or Candace and most definitely want to before I leave here. I might do the Nuno felting because no one else does that here and it looks really cool. Here’s a short video so you can see what it’s about. I’m not sure I care to learn how to weave on the huge looms here cause I don’t ever see myself getting something that big if I wanted to do it on my own. The rigid heddle size of loom seems to be my speed.

  Right before Christmas, White Violet Center had an Open House for last minute shoppers. At 3:00 p.m. the drawing was held for the alpaca rug and alpaca teddy bear that raffle tickets had been sold for. I was really hoping to win the alpaca rug but I did win the teddy bear. I had felted a bracelet for Linda so I packed up the teddy bear, bracelet and the felted soap I had made and sent it to Linda for Christmas. She loved it and named the bear Hootie….my nickname. Hootie is keeping her company until I get to see her again in about 7 weeks time. She sent me a great tree of life necklace, along with a care box of all sorts of things.
Speaking of alpacas, Mariah is not doing well. About a week ago, she got so she couldn’t stand up on her own so we have to help her get up. That’s driven my back a little crazy, which I’ve been surprised that lugging hundreds of pounds of veggies hadn’t hurt it up until now. The weekend that I was on duty I had to move her (pick her up and help her keep her balance) to a new part of the pasture a couple times throughout the day so the ice pack I have with me, was my best friend for a couple days. Tracy has ordered some different vitamins and such to see if that will help improve function to her rear legs. Anything is worth a try at this point !
Not much going on in the greenhouse or gardens. The pea shoots, micro greens, lettuce mix, chard and kale are growing great in the greenhouse. The indoor farmer’s market starts this Saturday, in Terra Haute, but I’m not sure if we’ll have enough stuff to take. We shall see….
Seven weeks to go till Linda comes to get me. As a full-time RV’er, we spend 24/7 with each other so when we’re apart for 6 months, it’s really hard. We try to Skype when our devices are working ok (her tablet hasn’t been taking a charge lately) but having a conversation that way isn’t the same as sitting across the table from each other and not having interruptions and talking about “stuff”. It will be great to see her and share all the details of what I’ve been doing and show her how things are done with the projects I’ve been working on.
Linda had a great time at her son’s house, for Christmas, in spite of our car breaking down on the way up there and the fact that she was sick. Turned out the battery needed to be replaced in the car (way better outcome than the alternator we thought it was) so that has now been replaced. Linda is still sick but it may take a while for her to kick this viral infection she has. There’s nothing she can do for it….it’s just gotta run its’ course.
Well…that’s all the news that’s fit to print for this go round. Wishing a blessed 2014 to all our friends and readers of our blog. If you’re reading this and we haven’t met you yet, we’ll see you “down the road”. Happy New Year !

Merry Christmas from Indiana….

It’s Christmas eve and it’s very quiet in the convent. The other two interns left on Friday to spend time with their families. Linda was hoping to come out here right after Christmas to spend some time with me but couldn’t find anyone to watch Boomer. It’s tough enough to be apart for the holidays but now she is sick with something that resembles the flu. She has body aches, a high temperature, and a sore throat but decided to go to her son’s house anyway so she can spend time with them over Christmas. It would really suck to be home for the first time in the seven years, that we’ve been on the road full-timing, and not be able to spend it with family. Should make her feel better.
I work with Ann in the morning, on alpaca duty, so it will help her get out of here sooner. I’m on alpaca close all week (takes me about an hour each afternoon at 3 p.m.) and watering the new seedlings in the greenhouse. Somehow all of these critters and plants don’t understand that it’s a holiday for people….they just know that they need to eat and be taken care of and those activities don’t take a day off. Tomorrow, after I do the close routine, I’ll go to Sister Maureen’s house to have dinner with her and Sister PB.
Last week we moved thirteen alpacas to their new home, about 30 minutes from here. It wasn’t too bad to halter that many animals and load them up. Two of the thirteen were put in the mini van for the ride to their new home and the rest were loaded into a horse trailer. There is a large lake near their new pasture. When we got them into the new area, they took off for the fence and just stood there looking at the frozen lake. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a body of water like that before. I don’t know if it was either the smell or sight of it that intrigued them so much but they thought it was the coolest thing. There are several more crias to be moved but they won’t go until they’ve been weaned from their moms. Peanut is one of the crias that will go to a new owner. That will be a sad day….I’m hoping that it will be after I’ve left in February.
Yesterday I finished skirting the last blanket of fleeces from our alpacas. Wahoo ! Sister Mo thinks that this is the earliest that they’ve ever finished with the skirting. Now we will start in on some of the fiber that another alpaca farmer gave us from his farm. The goal always is to get each year’s fiber processed before it’s time to shear again. The fiber that has been skirted can now be shipped to the New England Alpaca Fiber Pool to get processed into hats, gloves, scarves, boot inserts, etc. for our store in the White Violet Center. I’m still hoping to learn how to spin and weave before I leave here in eight weeks. There are some workshops coming up in January and February that I should be able to take that will teach me those things.
I’m putting the finishing touches on my project for my internship. Each intern is required to do a project while they are here. My project is on how the dining units can benefit more from the produce raised in the gardens here as it ties into the land ethic that the sisters have created. It’s a twenty page report that I’ve been working on for the last three months so it will be great to see that done and turned in.
It was really cold here this morning. With the wind chill, it was –5 degrees. Once the sun comes out, the temps in the greenhouse really heat up. When I went to water the seedlings at 3, it was 80 degrees in there. Everything is covered in the high tunnel….nice and comfy. The thing that we have to watch is that when the sun comes out, it can create a lot of condensation on the roof of the high tunnel.

If it gets too drippy in there, the plants will start to rot so that is when we need to open the sides or ends to ventilate it and get the condensation out of there. We haven’t had to do that in quite a while because it’s either been really cloudy or cold. We keep an eye on it though.
Guess that’s all that’s going on here. We’ve missed some of the recent snow and ice storms, which is fine by me. Hoping everyone has a blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Until next year, be safe and have fun with friends and family this holiday season.