Follow-a-Fleece Spotlight on Gabriel (Snoop)

A hand knitted jumper or vest is always something made with so much love that you can feel it when you wear the item of clothing. From my experience of having yarn made from my alpacas, I have found that there is something extra special about the clothing that I have knitted for my children with our very own yarn. Knitting with yarn that you know where it came from and something about the animal and its life really is something special.

Not everyone has the space to have alpacas like we do, so part of our vision for Adagio Alpaca Mills is to be able to connect the end uses of the knitting yarn with the grows of the fleece. This is where the concept of Follow-a-Fleece came from. 

If you love the idea of knowing more about the animal that grew the fleece for the yarn and the people who cared for that animal check out our Follow-a-Fleece first run! It is one of the rewards on offer in our kickstarter campaign. If it is popular we hope to run a similar program in future years through our own online store when it is up and running. 

There are 10 alpacas in our Follow-a-Fleece first run. We would like to show you Gabriel (Snoop) today. Gabriel lives at Signature Alpacas in the Central West of NSW, Australia. She is currently very pregnant and if you are lucky enough to sign up to her Follow-a-Fleece you will get to see pictures of her cria (baby alpaca) when its born and you'll just have to sign up to find out why her nickname is Snoop!

A very big thank you to Retromummy who has mentioned our new business on her blog! 

Adagio Alpaca Mills

There haven't been many posts here on my blog over the past few months, however it was for very good reason. Not only was my second son, Xavier, born 6 months ago but we have been working on a new business venture! New baby, new business, all at once, CRAZY!

As you can tell on this blog we love our alpacas and being able to make stuff from their fleece, we have decided to take that to the next level! For the past 2 years we have been working on a concept of Adagio Alpaca Mills and it is finally taking shape. It took a surprisingly long time to develop the business case and obtain funding but we did it and placed the orders on the milling equipment from Italy just before Xavie was born. Check out our website here.

Our milling equipment has now been manufactured and is about to be shipped! We should be operational in about 2-3 months time!

Whilst our bank has been awesome in funding us, there are a few small but critical things they were unable to fund such as our washing and drying facility. This will consist of sinks, a hydro extractor, drying racks and hopefully also an ultrasonic bath. So we have launched the adagio alpaca mills kickstarter campaign 2015. 

Be the first to have some of our yarn or check out our alpaca experiences!

Alpacas lost... And home!

Oh-oh... I got home to find the alpacas in the garden! Luckily they followed me home to their paddock like the pied piper. I was surprised as our lawn is much nicer than their paddock!

 

Happy new year!

Happy new year! It's been a long time between posts here as the end of 2014 has been crazy in a good way! Our baby is now 3.5 months old and still likes to feed multiple times overnight, but that's ok as my toddler has already taught me that sleep is optional!

2015 is going to be an exciting year for us workwise as well, we have decided to start a business processing alpaca fibre. It's called adagio alpaca mills and we will be able to produce yarn and rovings/slivers as well as other items. We will process for others as well as have products of our own. The equipment has been purchased and is being manufactured. It is expected to be operational May 2015. There will be more information here and on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/adagioalpacamills as we get closer. So exciting!

Our little farm is going well too with a surprising amount of feed for this time of year. The steers are almost lost in the grass on these photos! The daisies are so pretty in the garden.

I don't post photos of my children all that often but I just had to share this one!

Spring has begun

Although we briefly returned to winter weather yesterday with hail that turned everything white for a while, spring really has begun here. The weather has been warming up and was just stunning today. The daffodils are flowering and fruit trees are full of buds. I took a leisurely wander around the farm this afternoon (nearly unheard of activity for me but the small boy was otherwise occupied so I took the chance whilst I could) and took a few photos whilst I was at it.

Another baby quilt finished!

Between growing baby 2, looking after our toddler whilst still working part time there hasn't been much time or energy for craft around here! However I am now officially on parental leave so have managed to summon some energy to finish a baby quilt that I started ages ago! The family is coming to stay with us for a few days next week so just in time! I even managed to start cutting out the fabric for our baby's quilt. Hope I finished it before baby arrives!

The family who is coming to visit has two older boys as well as the baby so it will be rally nice for my toddler to have some small boys about his age to play with for a few days and hopefully give him some frame of reference when we keep talking about him having a baby brother!!!!

Winter wonderland

About once a winter we get a good snowfall... We woke this morning to a winter wonderland! The boy was fascinated! The alpacas just looked cold...

Grandma's Banana Cake in the Thermomix

We are having a quiet day at home today so perfect morning for a banana cake! My Grandma's recipe for banana cake is a lovely one that always gives good results so I decided it was a good first cake to try in the thermomix. We weren't disappointed! I'm usually terrible at icing but I'm really happy with the results for the icing in particular. As you can see, the mice (namely one toddler and pregnant mummy) couldn't wait for the cake to cool enough to ice before we tasted!



So here is both the thermomix and normal versions of this cake. I have no idea where this recipe originally came from so no idea if there should be further credit for this cake apart from my Grandma and Mother.

Grandma's Banana Cake in the Thermomix
Ingredients
2 eggs
100grams butter
220g sugar
310g SR Flour
2 bananas (approx 200g)
2T boiling milk
1 scant teaspoon bicarb soda
Method
Pre-heat oven to moderate fan forced (180degC on my oven)
Prepare baking tin
Place bananas in the bowl and mix for 5 seconds on speed 5. Set aside.
Place butter and sugar in bowl and melt 50secs/70degC/speed5.
With blades rotating on speed 3 add eggs one at a time, scrape down sides of bowl.
Add SR flour and mix 10-20 secs speed 3, you might need to scrape down bowl in the middle.
Return bananas to bowl and mix 10 seconds speed 3.
Lastly stir in 1 scant teaspoon bicarb soda into boiling milk (I put the milk in a mug and heat in my very old microwave for 30-40 seconds on high). This should froth. Add to bowl and mix 5 seconds speed 6.
Pour mixture into baking tin (I find it works best in a ring tin) and bake approximately 25mins.
Leave in tin to cool for a while before turning out onto a cooling rack.

If you can wait long enough for it to cool to ice it… I made lemon icing.
15g butter
200g icing sugar
1 lemon
mix speed 5 for 15 seconds
add lemon juice a bit at a time whilst mixing for on speed 5 about 15 seconds, you may need to scrape down and mix again. The lemon I had wasn't particularly juicy so I ended up using most of it.

Grandma's banana cake without a thermomix
Ingredients
2 eggs
100 grams butter
1 cup sugar
1.5 cups SR Flour
2 bananas
3T boiling milk
1 scant teaspoon bicarb soda
Method
Preheat oven to moderate,
Line the tin,
Cream together butter and sugar,
Add beaten eggs,
Stir thoroughly,
Add SR Flour
Mash bananas and add to mixture beating well,
Lastly stir in 1 scant teaspoon bicarb soda into boiling milk,
Bake approx 25mins in moderate oven.
Works well with lemon icing.

homemade hand cream in the thermomix

Recently I purchased a thermomix and I'm slowing learning how to use it and what I can use it for. I have terrible troubles with skin allergies and even the hypoallergenic hand creams seem to have something in it that makes my hands worse. So I decided to find out if I could make a hand cream in the thermomix and found a recipe on the Quirky Cooking blog. I gave it a go and I love it! 

The variations I chose were beeswax from a candle from the beekeepers inn, macadamia oil, avocado oil, room temperature boiled water (rather than the scented waters) and about a teaspoon of vitamin E oil. It has a slight greenish colour from the avocado oil and a beautiful honey fragrance. I'm glad I didn't put any other scents in. The photo is terrible as the light in my kitchen at night is terrible but you get the idea!

fabric cards for matching

It's been very quiet on the blog lately as we have been very busy at home! I'm pregnant with my second child and have been very tired and quite sick but starting to feel better now! 

So I'm starting to get back into some craft at nights... 

A friend of mine has a little one who is turning 1 this weekend so I wanted to make him something. My boy adores the fabric matching cards that I made him, he started out just loving the colours, then the pictures of animals and now likes to match them up. So hopefully this 1 year old will love them too.

And I decided it needed a drawstring bag! Looks so sweet as a gift now!