Thank you to Tori from Tennessee for sending this marvelous photo of Champagne Cruz, enjoying his wading pool! He seems to be saying, “Hey, watcha looking at? Never seen a llama in a pool before?”
It is remarkable that Champagne can even get himself in there! Tori says when he hears the hose, he comes running. And won’t share the pool either!
We hope everyone’s llamas are staying as cool as Champagne this summer!
I’ve let a lot of time pass since my last blog entry! We have been unbelievable busy, partially due to Fred’s frequent business travel. We’ve also both sustained bad colds which hindered our activities. I missed the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival, and we’ve had to skip several shows. We did qualify several of our llamas for Regionals, including Got My Vote, Sand Pebble Cruz, Luci Lui and Salom Cruz. Got My Vote also earned his ALSA ROM. We said goodbye to Kailua Cruz, Smokin’ Ebony and Lace, Geisha Cruz and Lennie, all of whom have gone to great homes with wonderful people. Keep those updates on our babies coming! We love to hear how our llamas are doing!
We’ve had our first suri baby, a female by Sassfras Lady. She is a precocious child, and wonderfully playful. We are very pleased with her and look forward to showing her next year. Our two other females who we thought were due, have gone well past a year gestation, and I believe they are not pregnant as anticipated. They fooled both us and our vet!
A head’s up for you suri breeders out there: Star Adonis will be at our farm this fall! This is our first chance to use this wonderful, proven suri producer. He will be available for outside breedings, and we will plan to sell a few selected females bred to him. Adonis is a large male by any standards, and has had super nice babies with loads of presence and excellent confirmation. His percentage of suri babies is very high, and he has the beautiful head and ears and strong topline that we look for in all our bloodlines. If you are interested in stud service or a bred female, drop me an email!
Other than a hot Memorial Day weekend, our weather has been tolerable cool. We are trying to stay on top of mowing and weeding, although my garden, once again, got away from me. I think I can save the tomatoes and peppers, but other than that, I will have to wait for next year and assume I will have more time for gardening!
Shearing got completed this year with personal marathon sessions, while my hubby was in Norway. Fortunatley the weather cooperated. The Farmhouse is once again full of fiber, and I am hoping I can get some time to work on sorting and maybe dying some raw fiber later this summer. A couple of you are waiting on roving from me, and I need to get that done as well! How many hours are there in a day again? Not enough, that’s for sure. Even though it is still light at 9:30 pm, I have to find time to work my “paying job” somewhere between all of this!
You know it must be important when write two blog entries in two days, and it is. I have something I want to share with everyone, especially the avid, and even not-so-avid, knitters. There is a project called the Dulaan project, which will be featured in the March 28 issue of Vogue Knitting. People send knitted sweaters and hats to needy and orphaned children in Mongolia. Below is a link to a site with photos of the kids and their lovingly handmade clothing!
The text on the page will warn you that this is a tear-jerker, and they are right. When I read that, I thought, yeah, well, I am not a cry-baby, and anyway, I had a good cry yesterday already. Driving home, I had the rare opportunity to listen to the Halleluia Chorus of Handel’s Messiah. The music and the subject alone are always enough to bring tears to my eyes, but yesterday all I could recall was when our small church choir accepted the daunting task of performing Messiah one Christmas. My dad was the organist, and as I have no singing voice, I was drafted as his page-turner. Now my father was the regular church organist, and generally had no problems keeping up with page-turning. But this was a special and difficult event, and nothing was left to chance. We practiced many weeks with the choir, and I can still recall the elation when the choir performed their very beautiful rendition of the chorus. There was jubulation all around, and quite frankly, relief, upon completion of the piece. Remembering sharing this event with my father made me miss my dad in a way that I have not felt for sometime. I simply cried. After that episode, I thought I had all the tears out of my system for awhile, so I was quite surprised to be reaching for the Kleenex as I looked at these children’s faces. Visit the site, and if you can, try to contribute! Thank you!
Here is info about the Dulaan project:
http://www.nwkniterati.com/movabletype/archives/MossyCottage/DulaanFlyer2006_color3.pdf
Here are the photos of the children:
http://www.nwkniterati.com/movabletype/archives/MossyCottage/001591.html
