Twilight calm

I really love the calm that comes with twilight on a quiet night. 

It was very much needed after a tough week on the farm. We sadly lost a steer. I had been finding it hard to remember why I was working so hard for our small farm then the little things remind me.

A quiet moment

Quiet moments are few and far between at the moment. So I'm really enjoying that Xavie fell asleep on the trip home from the shops today and we were able to park the car in a nice spot for me to sit with him whilst Andrew takes James for a while to do boy things. The next photo is my knitting and my view!

I'm attempting knitting with the magic loop technique with our official batch 1 of adagio yarn! It's been a long time coming with temperature and humidity causing us dramas. (Who thought it was a bright idea to start a fibre mill in the middle of Orange in winter? Oh dear, that's right... Us... Hmmmm. Anyway...) 

Today is the first patch of sun we have had for a week so the alpacas are thoroughly enjoying themselves sunning their tummies!

It always gives me a bit of a heart attack seeing them in the paddock like that but they love it! The photo is not great quality but you might be able to see Julie, our white alpaca, sunning her tummy in the background. Also in the photo is Ebony and her cria Onyx in the foreground. She surprised us with him last weekend. We had been wondering but didn't really think she was pregnant but clearly she was! He was very small and born in the middle of terrible weather but he is feeding well and seems to be going strong which is a relief!

On yet another snow day this week we even had a lamb born! Also very cute.

Snowing!

We've been watching the weather forecasts for snow all week wondering if the snow would eventuate. It didn't disappoint! When I fed my 10mth old at 3am it was so peaceful and beautiful with the covering of snow, it was a real shame that there wasn't enough light for a photo.

The alpacas weren't particularly impressed about the snow but we had so much fun playing in it!

What better to do now that a spot of knitting in front of the fire with my boys playing around me?

I just love this pattern! (Milo vest by TiKKi Knits)

Knitting a fratello

I love this pattern! Fratello by TiKKi Knits. In amongst everything happening here I've really enjoyed the row or two I've snuck in, in quiet moments. Xavie is growing so fast that I picked a large size but it still looks so sweet! 

Another new arrival, Gedalyn's cria

Gedalyn has done us proud again! Her third black female cria was born this afternoon! I had been watching her all day worrying about her as she was really uncomfortable. In late afternoon I had assumed it wouldn't be today as it was getting too late but when I went to feed them snacks gedalyn didn't come to investigate which was very unusual. She is usually the first to the food! Then I found her on her side and was about to call the vet when two feet appeared! A very short time later the little female cria was born. It was wonderful to watch! We had missed all the other births on our property. It was also interesting to watch the other alpacas greet the new arrival. They each greeted her but the matriarch of the group, Julie, paid the most attention and stood protector over her whilst mum, gedalyn, rested. They form the most wonderful bonds.

The photo is of later this evening just before I caught the cria to check it and put a coat on her. 

New cria at adagio!

Our first new cria in 2 years was born today! By our calculations he is 2-3 weeks early but seems to be doing well. Dark brown, nearly black male, no name yet.

Family photo! New cria with mum and his two older brothers.

Antique car club meet

We are lucky enough to live next door to our local antique car club. They use a council owned building and we agist the land (approx 3 acres). Most of the time we don't see much of them but every now and then they have a meet and this weekend is one of those times! It was fantastic, today more than 60 antique cars were right next door! They were stunning! Here are a few photos that we took walking around and admiring a few that were left this afternoon.

 

The train can be seen in the background. Cars and a train, my 3.5 year old boy was pleased!

We have been doing a bit of hand feeding at the moment so the steers remember that we bring food and follow us everywhere we go! Bellowing at us in the hope that we will bring more lucerne for them. Rather large and intimidating to be following us around like puppies!

Our golden retrievers (Mahler and Bartok) are not so pleased that the steers are in the back paddock at the moment. Mahler runs up and down the back fence, barking, warning them off. The steers don't even bother to look up anymore! They know he can't get through the fence so they just continue calmly chewing their grass.

Andrew's creations!

As part of the start-up of our mill, we have sent Andrew to train in America with one of their top mills, Lynn from Olympic Yarn and Fibre. He has learnt so much and part of what worked through whilst he was there was some of Lynn's alpaca fibre as a bit of a test! This is what he created!

Alpaca fibre has such beautiful colours and blending the fleece from a few alpacas can create something really unique. When choosing the colours to use for my training here I thought it would be interesting to capture the change as the fleece was blended through the process. So here is the starting point, some brown, black and white huacaya alpaca fleece blended with a little suri grey, lets see what it creates!

Fleece on sorting table waiting to be processed

Into the opener

From some brown, black and white with a little Suri grey, you can see the stages of blending ready to go through the carder for the first pass.

First stage roving/sliver after carder

Rovings from the carder ready for the pin drafter. The pin drafter takes 4 slivers and combines them as well as a drawing it out for the first draft. This will "average" out the sliver and will both continue to blend the colours and reduce the imperfections.
Stacks of rovings/slivers ready for the spinner below!

Second stage roving after pin drafter

The sliver/roving is then fed into the spinner.

Rovings/sliver going into spinner

Plyed yarn still on the bobin.

Yarn 1 - Andrew 0!

Here's a picture of me hand winding back to the bobin from a skein after I managed not to completely close the gates and had a run of slightly short skeins... argh!!

The final product, simply gorgeous!

On skeins!

Craziness in abundance here!

Sliver produced from the blending, isn't it just gorgeous!

Its crazy here at Adagio headquarters! My dining table is officially sinking under paperwork and James has kindly painted a few important documents. Ah well, I had to laugh when he proudly came and showed me, my fault for leaving the room for a few moments!

Andrew is currently in America, training in one of the top small scale mills there, Olympic Yarn and Fiber. He is learning so much and has been putting together a story about the yarn he has processed there. It has been posted as a few chapters on our facebook page but I think I'll try to condense it into a story here in a few days time. The slivers he has been producing look amazing!

Blending of alpaca fibre into carder

I had one of those days the other day. I couldn't talk about it at the time but lets just say it involved chasing sheep around the paddock for 1.5hrs (and not getting them where I wanted them!), a sick baby who just wanted hugs and the loss of car keys for about half an hour which was just long enough for me to panic as to how I was going to collect James from preschool. Not to mention the few adagio disasters averted! Lets just say there wasn't enough chocolate in the house to make up for it that evening.

We have confirmation that our milling equipment should arrive in the country on the 3rd of May so I'm really hoping it will clear customs quickly and be on our doorstep early May. To be counting its arrival in days rather than months is equally exciting and scary. So much to do and so little time. I'm getting a very good lesson in working on what I can and not worrying about the rest! 

Follow-a-fleece new candidate Smokey Dawson!

Our lease on our premises officially starts on 4th May however we negotiated early access for planning purposes so we will get the keys this Monday. Our kickstarter campaign has gone quiet for the last week or so but I'll have to restart the conversation early next week as we have only 9 days left to go. In celebration of making our minimum target we added two additional follow-a-fleece candidates Smokey Dawson (pictured) and Kali (a young black female).

For anyone in the neighbourhood, we will be at the Royal Bathurst show this Sunday, we are sponsoring our first show! 5kg processing vouchers will go to the Champion Huacaya Alpaca, Champion Suri Alpaca and the first placed Huacaya fleece. Hope to see you there!

Oh and I love this rain we are having, so thankful! If only I had known that all I had to do to get it to rain was for my dryer to break and to buy feed for the stock... I would have arranged that months ago!

Adagio in the news!

Its really exciting, we're in the news!

I'm enjoying our project coming to life and news articles are just one way its gaining momentum. I feel like a kid who had their photo in the paper!

We've had articles in the Central West Daily but I really love the one in the Dubbo Weekender! Kim Goldsmith (@kvgoldsmith) came to our place and interviewed me. She was lovely and has written a great story!

Dubbo weekender article here.
CWD article here.