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 !

Wet Felting

Today was my wet felting class. What great fun. A while ago Sister Mo had asked me what type of hat I wanted to make and I said a ball cap (are you really surprised ?). They didn’t have a mold for that so I found one on-line and they ordered it for me in my size. There were three other people in the class. A mom and her son, who own alpacas as a therapy program for war vets (he’s a vet of the Afghanistan war and was injured over there) and a woman who drove 2.5 hours and is a special ed teacher and lives on a small farm with about 100 different animals (goats, chickens, Alaskan Iditarod dogs, rabbits, alpacas, etc.). A great group of people to spend the afternoon with.
So you start with a pattern. It’s just a thin piece of plastic to form the shape of any type of hat you might want to make. Then, you take carded fiber (batt of fiber) and put three thin layers of fiber down, just as if you’re putting shingles on a roof. A little bit of an overlap and you go two inches beyond the pattern on all sides. We work on a sheet tray because the whole process gets kind of messy. On each layer the fiber runs in the opposite direction. Once you have that done and it seems to be even all over (you don’t want to wind up with any holes in your hat or thin spots), you make a second tray just like the first. Then there’s hot soapy water that is applied to the fiber under the pattern, but leaving the outside area dry. With gentle massaging, folding in, and flipping you ultimately wind up with this.
The hot water opens up the fibers and the massaging and rubbing bind the fibers together. Amazing how you can take a fluffy ‘ole pile of fiber and have it come out in a solid mass like this. Once the two sides are joined together, with lots of massaging, then the plastic gets taken out from the middle. The hat gets turned inside out and worked some more. You put it on a washboard and rub the heck out of it or you can roll it inside a wooden mat to get it to tighten up and start to shrink down. Fast forward to where it gets put on the mold. Using more of the plastic screen, as if it was sand paper, you work the outside to make it toughen up even more. Remove from the mold and rinse the soap out several times and this helps the fiber to have “memory” to keep its shape.
My cap is going to stay on the mold until Monday, when we’ll check it and trim it if it looks like it’s ready.(I took this picture early on in the process – the wrinkles are all worked out now) Wet felting is very easy to work with. You can walk away, cover it with a wet towel and come back to it or if you don’t like the way it’s shaping up, take it and rewet it and mold it again. Here are the hats that other folks made in the class.

Debbie’s hat (ironing it to dry it out and make it more rigid)







Joy’s hat (she’s trimming it to match the brim size of the mold)





Tanner’s hat (still on the mold, using the screen to firm it up)






The hats that the others made would look great accessorized with a scarf, belt around the hat or flower on it. The colors are so distinctive and with alpaca fiber it will be light but very warm. I used Chauncey’s fiber and I get to watch him in the pasture near the gardens as I work. A fun day spent learning new things. I will post pictures of the final result early next week when it comes off the mold…excited to get it and wear it.