If you are interested in learning how to turn your alpaca fiber into hand made products you might want to check out our alpaca fiber felting weekend planned for Oct 13-14th. The cost is only $200 for the weekend and everything you need to make the products is included in the cost! You can visit www.madavemialpacas.com/fiber and follow the link to pay online or you can go to www.madavemialpacas.com/fiber_theworks to see pictures and read comments about the last marathon fiber weekend that was held at Bear Garden Farms in WV. If you have questions just email me at Dawn@MadaVemiAlpacas.com ~ Dawn

June 30th- July 1st www.BearGardenFarms.com in Capon Bridge, WV hosted my Turn Your Fiber Into Finished Products weekend workshop. What a blast we had! We kicked the weekend off with a new addition to the farm...

I got there Friday night and spent the evening with Terrie and Greg having a lovely dinner on their deck then checking on Terrie's horse who was due to give birth any day. We did our last check at midnight and found that "Summer Time" had waxed up which apparently means "due within 48 hours" in horse talk. Since I know very little about horses I found the idea of Summer going into labor during our fiber workshop rather entertaining. I carried myself off to bed sometime after midnight thinking of questions to ask about horse babies in the morning.

At 4am the house phone screamed. I immediately thought, "Who the h*** would be calling someone at 4am!" I didn't realize it was Terrie calling from the barn phone to signal Greg the baby had arrived. Terrie came flying into the house to wake me up saying, "we have a baby!"

In my PJs and flip flops, I followed Terrie out to barn to see the latest addition to her farm. He was so darn cute and huge compared to an alpaca cria! Since Summer was a maiden we had to milk her a little and then feed the baby from a bottle at first. After about an hour or so he figured it all out on his own and Summer turned out to be a fantastic mother to him.

When the sun finally came up we had our coffee and made frequent checks on the new colt. It was Greg's job to pick his name and he finally came up with Summer Time's Outlaw.

I set up the fiber workshop stuff while Terrie set up the breakfast stuff. Everyone was supposed to be there about 8:30 for breakfast and the workshop was supposed to last from 9-4 each day.

When we began our felting weekend none of the 6 ladies knew how to do anything with their fiber other then send it out to a mill to be made into yarn. I began by showing them all the things I'd made and told them I process all of my fiber right here on my farm. I showed them how I skirt the fiber for processing and let them try out both carders to get a feel for carding fiber. Then I started our first project...

We wet felted a ball and finger puppets. We wet felted ropes, braids, and belts, then a purse with a resist. After they'd gotten the hang of making flat pieces of felt and some shapes I let them explore and experiment. The idea was to let them try out various projects to see what they might like to make from their own fiber at home. What a creative group of ladies this turned out to be!

They spent all day Saturday felting and no one wanted to stop for food or the 4pm "end" of our first day. It was well after dark before most of the ladies headed off to the hotel or back to their homes. I sent Tara and Robin back to their hotel with needle felting kits in case they got bored. Misty was still in the garage felting well into the night while Terrie and I were in her soon to be "store" skirting a show fleece that the shearers had scrambled up. It was well after midnight before we headed for bed.

At 6am Sunday morning we were up and getting ready for another marathon day of felting. Misty was already out in the garage felting and carding fiber before I even got my first cup of coffee. Tara and Robin came back from the hotel with their needle felted items to show off. Ann and Elaine joined in for a quick breakfast then we headed off to the garage to begin the days projects.

I wanted the ladies to make a nuno felted scarf, a wet felted hat, and a needle felted project before the day was finished. We managed to get our projects done and it was pretty clear to the ladies what things they were going to pursue further. We took all our finished products into Terrie's yard near the alpaca fence and Greg took a picture of us showing off some of our goodies.

All in all, I think the ladies got a good glimpse into the world of fiber arts and they now have a few ideas of what to do with their fiber now. By the end of the marathon fiber weekend workshop the ladies barely stopped for food and everyone agreed we should make this a yearly event. I had such a fun time with this group of ladies that I would love to return next year and do it all again. Ok...maybe not the 4am start thing... but the rest of it would be great!

If you want to see more pictures and read what the attendees had to say about this workshop go to www.MadaVemiAlpacas.com/fiber_theworks

My next felting class I'm scheduled to teach is August 11th at www.AlpacaPasturesVA.com and we'll cover mostly projects you can teach to kids groups or demonstrate at your farm events. This one is designed to help people promote their farm just in time for the National Alpaca Farm Day weekend scheduled for Sept 28th & 29th.

This is highly unusual for a 6 month old because the judges rarely give a young male the championship because they often lack the presence to pull off a win that big. The judge started off his commentary saying, "I know it's unusual to give a juvenile a color championship but in this case it's well deserved... If there is one fleece to see this weekend THIS is THE ONE!"

We couldn't be more pleased with Legends winnings and he's taking it all in stride. He was approached by well over 200 people this weekend all wanting to take a look at his fleece. He handled all the hoopla very well and we were quite proud of him.

On to the next show... The Carolina Classic Dec 1-3 - Wish us luck! ~ Dawn

These were actually 18 eggs from two different clutches and their mother is not really their "real" mother. :) What happened was rather amusing at the time so I'll share it with you. Waddlesworth, their foster mother, was sitting her own eggs but they weren't fertile because at the time she laid her eggs we didn't have a male duck. This is a little complicated here but hang in there with me... We had a male duck for a short 15 minutes when he decided he didn't wanted to live with us anymore so he flew off  and hasn't been back since.  We think he was seriously insulted at the name we chose for him. The kids decided he was so ugly that he reminded them of Freddy Kruger. Five minutes later Freddy was gone. There was a remote possibility for some of the eggs to be fertile so we let Waddlesworth sit her eggs for about 10 days to see if we could candle the eggs and check for fertility. They were all clear so we tossed them.

About that time, we got a new male named Java Joe and two other female ducks were laying/sitting eggs in the duck house next door to Waddlesworth. She was so mad at us for taking her eggs that she kicked Alfalfa off her eggs and stole the nest. She also stole the eggs in the next nest over and rolled them into her newly stolen nest. Because Alfalfa had been sitting her eggs about a week and the eggs that were in the next nest over didn't have any female sitting them yet we ended up with two different hatch dates for the same nest of eggs.

In other words, 12 ducks hatched this week and IF the other stolen eggs are fertile they will hatch next week. I'm very sure one of the 6 remaining eggs is not fertile but I've left it in there anyway.

The dozen chicks are following mom around outside their duck house now and eating off the ground. We had one chick go on "walkabout" yesterday by escaping through the 1x1 fencing I used. Oops. Who would have thought they could fit through that? When we counted heads and found only 11 babies we feared the worst. Then we heard little chirping noises outside the fence. Here comes this baby duck running from about 25' feet away outside the fencing. It ran through the fencing, through lots of female alpaca's feet, through the 1x1 and back into the safety of it's mother's care. We've had to add a 2' tall section of 1/2"x 1/2"  fencing until they get a little bit bigger and can't squeeze through the regular fencing. ~ Dawn

~ Dawn