No animals were injured.......

That's right....once again no animals were injured during shearing this year.  Although both the shearer and his handler sliced a finger while cutting fighting teeth that had grown back on one of our older boys.

We had amazing weather on Wednesday, just the right amount of help and animals that behaved well.  Who could ask for more.

We started with our white animals..........

then moved up to the darker ones....

Here is a before and after of our one any only Huacaya born from two Suri's.  His name is Dude.....

Look at all that awesome fiber!   Now you see it......

........now you don't. 

This is our youngest, Jimmy Boy, born May 26th, 2012 right before a terrible storm. 

He's such a sweet boy

Beautiful, shiny black fiber....mmmmmm.

Now look how tiny he is!

Happy Girls

Happy Boys

This year we used Easy Alpaca Shearing and had a wonderful experience.  They were helpful, humorous and best of all allowed us to move at our own pace.....slow and steady.  Great Day!

I'll leave you with a picture of my husband's favorite goat.  He was so stressed out with all the alpaca's not being in their proper places, he spent the whole time in his house.  After everyone left, Jim let him out to play.  He loves the leaves on our apple tree.

Lil One

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.  If you get a chance, say Thank You to a veteran.  Although I didn't like the times we were apart, I'm very proud of the 33 years my husband served.

Knitting+Beads=Jewlery

That's what the book Betsy Beads is all about.   When this book arrived at our LYS I knew it had to leave with me.

I used my left over sock yarns for this bracelet. Solid blue 100% alpaca by DROPS but can’t remember what the variegated is.  The I-cords went fairly quickly but it took quite a bit of time to sew together. I used my June Taylor quilting board to hold the I-cords in place while stitching.

Loved how the blue alpaca worked when stitching the variegated sock yarn I-cords together. Smooth, even stitches as if using thread.

I was supposed to use the variegated yarn to stitch the blue I-cords together but because the alpaca was so much softer it looked very messy. I looked through my stash and found the yellow/green alpaca thinking it would look okay.

I do like how it stitched up but when the bracelet is worn reversed, that side is not as striking as the other. A lot of stitching to go through to not wear the reverse side.

Pattern called for size 8 seed beads to be used to sew up the sides but I didn’t like how they looked. Tried several different types of beads and in the end used 1 size 8 seed bead, 1 size 8 fringe bead and then another 8 seed. By using the fringe bead in the middle the beads pulled closer together so you couldn’t see as much of the thread between them.   I also didn’t care for the look of the yarn showing between the beads so I used beading thread instead.

Then I decided to make this choker using Duet yarn in black with beads called River Moss.   The yarn has a satin and matt look but when the necklace was complete this difference did not show.  I chose to use only one color of beads through out instead of using accent beads as the directions suggest because I just love the color of these beads.

This truly is a choker and turned out to be to small for my liking. I extended the length by adding about 1 3/4 ” of beads at each side and used a toggle claps.  I used 1 strand of yarn and 1 strand of beading wire when I added the extra beads at the ends. I felt this would add a measure of security to that section. I left long tails and wove them back into the finished knitted section of the necklace.

Loved how quickly this knit up and the final result.....can see more of these in my future.

These earrings are what really excited me when I first looked at this book.  I don't know why....don't wear hoop earrings.....loved them anyway.  Maybe I'll have to give them a try.....their just so sparkly and take about an hour and half to make.

That's it for me today.....hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and don't forget to check out all the other exciting posts at Wonder Why Alpacas.