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.
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 !
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 !
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 !
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’.
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. 
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.