Sunday, April 21, 2013

Shearing day at Great Lakes Fiber

                                  
It was sunny and brisk in northern Ohio today. Shearing at Great Lakes Fiber for the llamas and alpacas took place beginning at noon.
 
The girls were out in the corral and the boys were in the shed. As we waited for the shearing team to arrive, Ron and I strolled around the property and enjoyed seeing signs of spring.
 
Our attention turned back to the Marine style haircuts underway behind the barn. It was surprisingly quiet. Some were shorn in the chute and some were done on mats.
 
 
The girls look on as Blake gets a buzz cut. 
 
Meet Blake. He was quite stoic about the whole thing and happily bound out into the pasture after his cut. Amy gathered the fiber into carefully labels shopping bags marked neck and blanket with his name on the bag. In a few weeks, we're going to help sort the fiber for the mill. It take a lot of work before this fiber is ready to spin.
 
 
 
Dressed for the part, Ron participated by preparing injections for the animals.
 
Amy and Ron worked together for several years at Stein Hospice. Last summer we met Amy and her husband, Chris, during Ohio Bike Week at the Harley store.  Dressed in full Harley gear on their awesome bike, it was hard to imagine Amy and Chris's alpaca farm life, too. Very cool couple.
 
I've enjoyed teaching knitting in Amy's studio to women eager to learn a new art. It's a great location, with fiber on the hoof, looking in at our progress, and beautifully dyed skeins of alpaca lining the shelves, I can't think of a better place in which to learn to knit.
 
Ron and I have decided to spend our 25th wedding anniversary as new campers, I'm looking for a fiber festival to attend during our road adventure. Or, maybe we could ask Amy if we could just park the trailer in her back 40, so to speak, and gaze at her flock. After all, we are more arm chair travelers than road warriors at this point. Stay tuned.
 
 
After the shearing, we headed over to Osborn Park to see the Earth Day fair in progress. Back to the Wild has several owls with them. These have all been injured and cannot be returned to the wild.
 
 While they don't appear to be real, it was actually hard to get a photo of them looking straight ahead, their necks swivel 180 degrees quickly, looking for prey.
Lindsey and Samantha were braving the winds outside at the Library's booth. Lori, when this photo was taken, was taking her turn warming up inside the barn. She loved the owls and claimed she could stare at them all day.

 
After this much outdoor time, we headed back to the house for Sunday afternoon naps with the pups! All in all, a great Sunday in Sandusky!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Star Trek imprint




 
 
Kate turns 2 this week. I thought she was going to be 3. I was just sure of it. Actually, I'm thrilled that she'll only be two. This explains  puppy behaviors recently, such as chewing every piece of leather in my purse last week, and, her cavorting all over the house with some prize item in her mouth!  In the photo above, she's just a baby. The photo below was taken a few weeks ago. Notice the maturity.

 
 


 
So, then I started thinking about AllieCat. Here she is last July, at about 8 weeks of age.
 
 
 
Only 6 months later, she looks like a mature cat.
 

They say that dogs age 7 years to our 1 year. I imagine that the cat ratio is similar. Rapid age was the theme of a Star Trek episode that I have never forgotten, and, in fact, it comes up in my mind pretty frequently. The command crew were exposed to radiation that brought on rapid aging. It was a race against time to find the antidote as Kirk, Spock, and the others began experiencing memory loss, arthritis,etc. I was only 13 when the second season episode aired in 1967, and it really made an impression on me. Here I am,  age 58,  and I can't seem to slow down the aging process. In the episode, entitled, The Deadly Years,  Doc discovers that adreneline slows down aging. Might be something to that. Maybe I should jumpstart mine a little bit more often.

 I've found that Facebook confuses the issue, too. I see my high school friends looking much older than I think they should be and here we are, conversing after 40 years like it was only yesterday that we were talking about Girard vs. Fairview, and where we were going to college, etc.

My nephew, Kacey, just turned 16 and I still remember the day he was born as if it were yesterday.
All of this musing about my beloved Kate can lead to only one conclusion. I need to concentrate on enjoying every moment because I don't have a Star Trek anti aging antidote handy. So, as Kate turns 2 ( I mean 14) we're going to head out for a walk and start the adrenline going.