mocha’s moments

I have been remiss in writing; the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I did go to Rhinebeck (See entry below), had to get a lot of stuff ready for a conference in California and had stuff at the shop to do. So I am finally able to breath and write. Here is a little story about my Rhinebeck weekend…

We thought we were in for an exciting weekend at Rhinebeck, but I think Greg had the better one!

Ruth said that I should go with my sisters to Rhinebeck (The New York Sheep & Wool Festival) like I had always done in years past. Last year, because of the shop, I worked on Saturday and then Ruth, Fred & I drove up on Saturday afternoon. I really appreciate her sending me off, we had a wonderful time (as usual) and we ate a lot of bad-for-you, but oh-so-good food!

Anyway, when I ran home from the shop Friday night, still needing to pack; I went out to check on Minnie the pregnant llama. Everyone else came running to the gate for their grain, except for Minnie. She was flat on her side in a part of the pasture I never see her in. She got up slowly, but I did say to myself, I bet she’ll have it tomorrow… Now Greg had told Lissa when asked what he would do if she had the baby while I was gone, his reply? No problem, I can handle it.

Promptly at 9am, while we were walking through the gates to the Festival, my cellphone rang. “She’s having the baby!” was the first of very many frantic phone calls. I finally told him to go into the house and call the vet, hoping that when he got back outside, the baby would have been born. Thankfully, that was the case, and he found the baby almost on the ground. More frantic calls, do I blanket her, how do I keep her warm, etc, etc. Well, Greg did a great job taking care of all the details and finally had a chance to settle down, until the following morning when I got another cellphone call that turned out to be a photo of a full hay cart (150 bales of hay) with a blown tire on the side of the road…!

Well, meet Greg’s new baby, named after his mother Pauline, Polly for short.

Polly meets the world

Polly tests out those awkward things called 'legs'!

Part of my focus at Rhinebeck this year was what other indie dyers were doing and charging! So I did a lot of scoping things out. I still like what Ruth & I paint pretty much the best, and that is definitely for the best, as I believe you have to be yourself in creating your art. And while I can appreciate the wilder color combinations and bold applications of said combinations, I wouldn’t choose them for myself. The odd thing about that is I don’t have the same criteria about my botanical and wildlife paintings. Nature does put some pretty wild colors and color combinations on things, and I try to paint them as faithfully as I can; I don’t edit my choice of subject matter because of color, and yet I do edit in my choices of fiber and yarns for myself.

But of course, we always find something to buy…

First to Briar Rose fibers

Left: Grandma's Blessing, right Fourth of July

2 skeins of Grandma’s Blessing to make Knitspot Twinings shawl, 1 skein of Fourth of July for I don’t know.

Botanical Artisan yarns

2 skeins from Colors Inspired by Nature, Botanical Artisan Yarn for a hat. A Natural dye kit, and a needlepunch kit. Very KOOL. I’ll post pics when I finish, it is supposed to be able to be finished in an evening, whose ‘evening’ is that?!!

Chris keeping the drop spindle economy going...

I had meant to post very soon after my last ‘up in the air’ suspenseful ending… and then life, as it has a habit of doing, got in the way. Two weeks ago my Dad got rushed to the hospital for a myriad of things, and then all other ’stuff’ got put aside as my Dad is my Mom’s caregiver. She is confined to a wheelchair and he does a whole lot for her during a 24 hour period. That care has been split between my sister, my cousin and me & Greg. My sister Chris had a vacation to Ireland scheduled to visit our niece, and we pretty much forced her to get on the plane and go. They had a great time, even though it rained a lot. It is Ireland after all. Chris brought me a bag of Aran yarn from Inishmore, enough to make a sweater, I guess I have to design an Aran sweater now.

But I digress…

Things are settling, my father came home last Friday, we were in the middle of arranging for 24 hour a day help for my mother; a service that will obviously benefit my Dad as well. These things take a lot of time and we are grateful for finding an organization in Manchester that has been invaluable in getting things done, thank you Eldercare Consulting. Their live-in caregiver started today. In the middle of all this, our llama still hasn’t had her cria, although I now believe she bred on a later date than I thought and is still within a normal gestation, but she is very large and uncomfortable. Ruth’s llama is due at any minute and she has had a few sick animals that she has to attend to, so consequently we have had little energy to devote to the shop and have had to close a few days while we both take care of our lives! We did managed to dye over the past few weeks, we even have a new bamboo/silk blend that debuted this past weekend.

But to end the suspense… Yes, we did get everything ready in time and showed up at the Coventry Farmer’s Market at 8:30am to set up, booth, Quigon the llama, Percy and Cody the mini llamas, and Duncan and Oliver the pygora goats and all! Here are some photos of a glorious September day…

Some of our new handpainted yarns

Ruth's gorgeous handpainted and dyed mohair yarn

Baskets and mohair, I thought this was pretty

TuckerWood's lace yarn, 50% llama/50% babydoll sheep

And of course, lest we forget, the animals… though we have a small bug to pick with Chris, when sent out to take some quick pics of the critters, she forgot to take any pictures of Quigon. But we will forgive her, it was really, really busy!!! There are some rumors going around that Quigon the llama will be dressed up as a pumpkin for the Great Pumpkin Adventure on 10/26.

Duncan get's his animal crackers, where are the people crackers?

Duncan LOVES animal crackers, but I think he loves his Dad, Greg, better. He calls for him when he can’t see him, and when he finally catches sight of Greg, he madly wags his tail, calling all the time!

Percy & Cody check out the 'alien', something they have never seen.

Catching sight of the 'aliens' for the first time...

We had a great day at the market, our hand-painted yarns were well received, even selling out one line of yarn, Jewel, our superwash merino/bamboo blend. I have re-dyed and re-stocked Jewel and I am now turning my attention to getting our on-line shop up and running. But we encourage everyone to come out to the market on the 26th, as it will be the closing day of this year’s market with lots of great stuff to buy, see and do. Of course, we have everything at the shop as well.

Even though the we are in the season of endings; leaves falling, gardens giving up their last gasps of tomatoes, squash and peppers, we are surrounded with reminders that this is all part of the big cycle of death and rebirth.

Almost two weeks ago TuckerWoods Farm had our first fall cria (I know, I just couldn’t find the time to post about her until now). And she was a bit of a surprise. Although the two moms-to-be we were watching were bred on the same day last fall, Minnie is just so HUGE I couldn’t help watching her like a hawk, and just glancing at Mink.

The pregnant girls taking a rest in the rock circle

Minnie is in the foreground and Mink is behind her. (The other two off to the right are Joya and her spring daughter, Sapphire. That evening, during feeding time I checked on both, seeing that Mink seemed to have bagged up a little. I said to myself as I went into the house “I betcha Mink goes before Minnie”. The next morning after I took the above photo, I went out at 6:30am for the first check. Back for coffee and to start the dyeing of yarn for the day. Two more checks by 10:00am were uneventful. Greg came home from an overnight visit to his brother in New York and said he would go out and finish feeding hay. Up to my eyeballs in dyeing yarn, one painted skein on the counter, and one painted roving in the steam pot (see rest of post below!) AND still in my jammie pants, I hear Greg’s shrill whistling. I panic; that’s the whistle that usually signals the goats have escaped and chaos is ensuing!! I drop what I’m doing, shove my feet into my barn clogs, and run. He is yelling, come see your new baby!

Sure enough there is a little tiny cria, kushed in the run-in, so covered with sand, that I can almost not tell what color she is! And no mother in sight! Everyone booked to go eat hay. First time mothers! Greg almost missed her, because she was tucked up against the wall where our gate hooks into the barn. He only saw just as he was almost out the gate. Well, seeing that she was chocolate brown, odds were that she was Mink’s baby. I scooped her up and went to where all the llamas were eating to see who might be a little concerned. Mink started humming, so we took her and the baby into the stall, where I could see that sure enough she had just given birth. It took a little time to get her to nurse, but she is a very healthy and feisty mini llama, weighing in at a whopping 17lbs at birth.

Happy Birthday, Mia. 9/12/08, 2 hours old

Mia, on Day 2

And at almost 2 weeks later, Minnie is still pregnant, growing bigger and bigger, spending her days eating and resting. And Ruth keeps asking me “do we have a baby yet” And Fred & I keep telling her she has one to start watching now too.

Back to Dyeing

Ruth & I were trying hard to introduce our new lines of handpainted yarns at the Coventry Farmer’s Market’s Fiber Twist day which was last Sunday. (You will hear about the day in my next post…) That is why our kitchens have been a mess for awhile. To my chef and cook husband, Greg, it probably seems like I have commandeered his kitchen for a lot longer. But I took some pics of what my dyeing days look like.

4 oz balls of pygora/babydoll roving ready for painting

The magic dye bottles

See? Poor Greg, dyeing & steaming pots on the cooktop

Try to remember to write down your colors and how you painted them…

Taking notes...sometimes

Rinsing out the dyed roving

Painted rovings and skeins on the drying rack

More painted skeins on the drying rack...

Wow, what a mess… and the market was only a few days later. 

With re-skeining to do and labels to design and print, did we make it? Did we get everything done for the market? Tune in to tomorrow’s post to find out. I promise I will write it tomorrow, that is unless Minnie has her baby…

And oh by the way, this is what I was afraid of seeing in my yard when I heard that whistle… the goat stampede.

The leaves are beginning to turn, the nights are getting cooler, but there is still enough sunshine for a little sunbathing on the beach…

Can someone pass me the sunscreen?

Minnie (lower right) is close to her due date, we start watching her next week. I think she was using her big pregnant belly to balance on. Tick Tock, Mink and Mocha are enjoying themselves as well! We are pretty sure that Mink (dark brown at left) is also pregnant. She would have the same due date as Minnie. Our only other possibility for a cria this fall is Cleo. We are watching her. That will be an exciting cria for us. Cleo was the first llama born on our farm and she is bred to our full argentine Just Perfect. It would be our first JP baby on the farm. JP sired some beautiful offspring for Lynda Carothers of Carothers Country Farm in Minnesota, including a Grand Champion mini. We really excited to see what he can do for us.

Ruth has a few possibilities as well. We are both of the school that if they have a cria then they were pregnant! Some of the girls are really hard to decide if they really are pregnant; blood tests and ultrasounds could tell us, but those procedures can stress them out too much. So we just wait and see.

The turning leaves have us turning as well. We are busy testing yarns for our own lines of hand-dyed and handpainted yarns.

We found a lace winner, 80% merino, 20% silk. Ruth grabbed the samples as soon as they came in and went home to paint. Here are her results…

  

Olivia lace yarn, rose petals colorway

Olivia lace yarn, summer meadow colorway

We are playing with new sock yarns, a cool twist yarn, and a few more silk blends. I will post them when we get some samples done.

Other shop news
We just got a new order of books into the shop, we have met with a few of our reps to order some new fall/holiday yarns. We have updated our Kraemer Mauch Chunky colors to include some great new fall colors. My sister Lissa & I are busy working up some Christmas stocking designs using our yarns. When we get our designs perfected we will be selling them as kits. We’ll keep you posted.

We still have a good selection of yarns on sale for the remainder of September so that we can make room for the new stuff.

Our next Coventry Farmer’s Market is the Fiber Twist day, September 21st. I am busy getting rovings painted for the Market, including some pygora blends. You just have to see (and feel) pygora to believe it!

Vermont Sheep & Wool
We have decided to treat ourselves and take a road trip to the Vermont Sheep & Wool. This is one festival that we haven’t attended yet. We are going to go on Sunday so we are hoping we can avoid any of the rains from Hannah. I am always up for a good road trip. We will try to be good but of course I’m sure we’ll find some goodies we can’t resist.

I promised myself that I would post every week, preferably on Fridays. I started writing this entry and when I went to view site, found out that my header photo of our hand-dyed yarns had disappeared. I started looking all over for help, and did a few things but couldn’t get the header to show up, until I found a post about going back to the default colors because if you changed the original colors than you couldn’t overwrite the original header. Well, now it’s back, but there is still the blue of the original behind it… and I want to change the background color altogether. Back to the time drain of trying to fix that. But on to more exciting things!

We will be at the Coventry Farmer’s Market again this coming Sunday, August 17th with our natural farm yarns, hand-dyed and hand-painted farm yarns and rovings. We just got a big shipment of Bolga Market baskets that are handmade in Ghana, West Africa.

We got a nice write up in the Market’s e-newsletter so we hope to have a good crowd. Ruth has a horse show to go to so Quigon the llama is getting the day off. We are bringing our hambone llama, Zeus and two of the goats, Duncan and Oliver.

I have been busy with the crockpots dyeing our own Mocha’s sock yarn. I call my technique crock-painting (for lack of a better description!). Here are a few examples:

Ruth & I just need to put our heads together to come up with names for our yarn lines; we have ordered more undyed yarns to sample to see what lines we want to introduce next. I will be working on getting our website set up as an e-commerce site so that we can sell our own farm yarns and handpainted yarns online. I’m thinking that we may be able to tap into the names of all our critters since that is how Mocha’s Fiber Connection came to be. Ruth had a llama named Mocha born on her farm who then died in a freak farm accident soon after Ruth sold him. So she named the shop in honor of him. When we went into partnership, it was a fitting name to keep. One of my first three llamas name is Miss Mocha Latte, and we are all connected by the fiber and the animals, so it stuck! 

Hope to see some of you at the Market on Sunday!

No fanfare, no horns blaring, no drums rolling, just words. I don’t know why I just didn’t start writing when I got this whole thing set up months ago. No, I do know why, because it meant that I had to learn yet another computer program and protocol. And I was having such a hard time figuring out the ‘add photo’ thing. So I just happened to be cruising another blog and said to myself, okay time to get your act in gear…! So here is a test for adding a photo.

YEAH!!!! Okay, so this is a photo I had on my laptop because I did a B&W ad. I still can’t figure out how the heck to get a Flickr photo to show up….

Can anybody help me in layman’s terms? And I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working through computer programs as a graphic designer, why can’t I figure this out?

And while we are on the subject, can any fellow blogger (see, I am now considering myself as a blogger…) tell me how to get our header photo in the proper position?? It just needs to kick over to the right a few clicks…

Oh, just for the fun of it I have to add another photo…

Our mini Buffalo Bill Cody

Talk to you soon,

Kelly