Saturday on the Farm

If you scroll down in the blog to older posts and find Aug 19, you'll see the photos of Luke and Leia, our Anatolian puppies, being held by Gregg.  That was just 3 months ago.  Look at them now.  I think Chet actually has to help Gregg hold Leia up.

These guys are not quite 5 months old.  Luke is close to 60 pounds and Leia isn't far behind.  They are going to be very big dogs.  Luke has a big serious bark already, but only barks when something unusual comes into sight. We really haven't heard Leia bark much, she kind of hangs back and lets Luke scare the intruder away.

Gregg and his friend, Jay, are here from Ohio for a few days and Chet's putting them to work doing some fixin' up around the place.

The chickens are thinking about climbing to new heights while the alpacas just enjoy the grass.

And...we think we have a young rooster.  This chicken is starting to get curved tail feathers and a couple of them are shiny and green.  We haven't heard any crowing yet, but it won't surprise me when we do. 

Spinning Husky

This is Nikki.  Nikki is a 10 year old Siberian Husky. 

Nikki hasn't had much formal training.  She's been a natural "teacher" dog for lots of fosters and puppies that have boarded with us.  The thing Nikki is best at, though, is shedding.  She's a natural at that, too.

She's got a beautiful reddish coat and she leaves it behind wherever she goes.

Since I don't have carpeting here in the new house, Husky-fur dust bunnies blow around everywhere.  I guess in the old house, the carpeting caught it all.

I've been itching to spin something directly off of an animal and my alpacas won't be sheared until springtime.  So, I'm spinning dog hair.

This box from one brushing session that lasted about 10 minutes.  That's all she would put up with.  The fur is about 6 inches deep in the box.

Before it can be spun, it has to be hand carded to get the fibers to go all the same way.

These are my brand new hand carders.  I've never worked with carders before and there's been a definite learning curve. They almost look like dog slicker brushes.  Next to the carders are the finished "rolags" of Nikki's fur.  These are what come off the carders after you've run the fur through a few times.

Once I got some rolags ready, I couldn't wait to start spinning.

So, here's what it looks like on the spinning wheel.  It almost comes out looking like twine.  I'm not sure what I'm going to make out of it yet.  Hopefully I'll have a better idea when I get a couple of bobbins of yarn spun up.