Fiber "U" & Everything Else

It's been a very busy spring and summer. Our gardening has been taking up a lot of our time! We have six gardens right now. I'm very anxious to start getting tomatoes. We have 64 tomato plants, sweet corn, lots of onions, peas, and green beans that we will be canning soon and lots more. The heat has almost been unbearable! With all the rain we've had this year, it's been hard keeping up with just mowing everywhere! I can't believe its already mid July. All our alpaca boys have just been basking in the sun a lot and taking lots of dirt baths! When I go out to the barn, they love it when I spray their legs and bellies with water from the hose. In the first week of June, we got them sheared. They act like they feel so much better to get that fiber off! I love to spray them down with the hose after they get sheared. We had to take more off their legs and tails this year than we normally do because of them getting into some cockle burrs in the pasture! I think it worked out good though because of it being so hot!

We just got back from attending Fiber "U" in Lebanon, MO., which left us very inspired! Fiber "U" is an event put on by the Midwest Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association. It's everything to do with all kinds of fiber. Especially alpaca fiber! My mother, daughter, and I went and took several classes. We had a lot of fun and everyone was so nice! My mother and I took beginning spinning, which I thought was pretty hard. You have to be very  coordinated! I brought our own fiber to use. We had a very good and patient instructor. I also took classes in preparing fleeces for show and blending other fibers with alpaca. 
Our daughter, Sarah, took a knitting class with my mother, as well as classes in dying fiber and needle felting, to see if she could learn anything new. Sarah now has her own Etsy shop, SarahsCozyCreations.etsy.com. She got lots of attention when people in her classes saw some of her creations. They loved everything she showed them and wanted to know how she made them! She is very creative.  She is such a great fiber artist! She is still in the process of getting her creations posted in her shop. It's time consuming taking pictures of everything and fighting me because I love everything she's made and don't want her to sell it! Every piece is so unique and I love them all!
 

I have lots of practicing to do with my spinning. I am very excited about being able to spin our fiber into beautiful yarn. There is so much you can do with these animals! I feel very blessed to have them.

Next we plan to attend the Sheep & Wool Festival in Bethel, MO on September 3-4. There will be lots to see and learn there. We hope to find some English Angora rabbits to incorporate into our farm. 

Then, we have been asked to be a part of "Picnic on the prairie", at Lakeside Nature Center, in Kansas City on September 11th. There, we will have our fiber and some of Sarah's creations on display. 

In the meantime, our alpaca boys are very lonely and are needing some girlfriends! So, if you're an alpaca owner and need any breeding's, take a look at our boys on "Our Herd" page and consider one of ours. They are all strong, straight and beautiful and all have different characteristics in their fiber. 

 

Happy Easter!

We got our potatoes, green beans, onions, and peas planted right before we got the rainy, blustery weather we've been having this last weekend. It is continuing into this week. All the rain we get should be really good on what we got planted. I also got all the fencing taken down around our chicken house. Hope to put up new fencing as soon as the weather gets better. Sarah finished building our goose and duck house. She did a really good job! 
Our alpaca boys are doing great! We will be shearing them soon. I contacted the shearer last week, to get put on the calendar. 

Sarah has also been busy needle felting little bunnies and lambs for Easter! They are so cute! She has had several orders to fill. Everyone falls in Love with them when they see them. 
We were so happy last month when Sarah won at the Fiber Arts Competition at the MOPACA Alpaca Invitational Show in Kansas City! She won 2nd place for her needle felted Snowman & Penguin, and 1st place for her button heart pin w/needle felted back!! We are so proud of her! 

 

 

Next, we are planning to attend MOPACA's Fiber "U" event in Lebanon, MO. July 9-10th.

There should be a lot to learn there. In the mean time we will be dying and carding fiber, and needle felting more little creations! 

We still haven't gotten our store set up yet, so if anyone is interested in any of these little creations, just email us at mysky@ctcis.net and let us know what you think of them by posting a comment on our blog or going to our Facebook page.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Easter! 

Spring is near!

Ahhh! I LOVE the beginning of Spring! Hearing all the frogs, you can practically sit and watch the pastures turn greener each day.  The smell in the air, the daffodils, tulips, iris, and peonies peeking through the ground! We have been busy doing lots of spring cleaning outside. We have been raking leaves out of the flower beds, burning off the pastures, picking up lots of sticks that have fallen through the winter, and getting ready to get our garden started. I always think about my dad and my grandpa the most around this time of the year. They loved to garden too and I learned everything I know about gardening from them. And while I didn't always like working out in the garden when I was a kid, I am so thankful for what they taught me in my life, about the rewards of growing something and giving it away to people that love it or cooking a beautiful home grown meal for your family and friends. When I smell the freshly tilled dirt and hear those frogs singing, it takes me back when things were simpler. This weekend, the weather isn't cooperating very well for tilling my garden. I had hoped to get a few things planted. I was already a little late. Grandpa always would say to plant your taters around St. Patrick's Day! Cold temperatures are back and it was sleeting this evening! Snow is in the forecast also. I have our seed potatoes and peas to plant when the weather gets drier.

We have soooo many eggs right now! My girls have really stepped up their laying since they have been out of their chicken house more, scratching all around the place, searching for any kind of bug morsel they can find under the leaves! Our geese have also started laying. They have layed about 10 eggs in the last 2 weeks. I was hoping that they would sit on them and hatch some baby geese, since they are making nests all over the place! But, I'm not sure yet if they are both females or if I have one of each? They will be 1 year old in April. 

I have been taking care of a kitten this winter that was abandoned by her mother around the first of the year.  She was only about 2 weeks old and I had to bottle feed her. Needless to say, I got very attached to her. I'm her mommy and she follows me around a lot. But, she is starting to get very ornery! She is black and white and very cute!

The MOPACA Invitational Alpaca Show is this weekend, March 25-27th, at Hale Arena in Kansas City. We will be there. Sarah has entered a few of her needle felted items she made in the Fiber Arts Competition. Hope she does well. 

All our alpacas are doing good. I just got our hay tested with very good results. It will be time to shear them soon. We didn't shear them last year, so we will have a lot of fiber to harvest from them.

That's about all for now. Just when I was really getting things done outside, the weather has to get bad. Hope it doesn't hang around long! 

Lara 

New Year, New Beginning?

Hi Everyone!
I want to start out by thanking everyone who made our needle felted snowmen a great success! It has been quite awhile since I've posted anything on here. We recently had some devastating set backs on our farm. I will talk about that a little later. 
I first want to talk about the wonderful success we had last fall starting with our participation at the UCM Holiday Market my daughter and I attended on December 1st. It was our first time displaying and selling our needle felted snowmen and ornaments, alpaca fiber, and jewelry. 
Everyone LOVED what we had displayed!

UCM Holiday Market 2010

 

We had a great time! While there, we were approached by someone from the Warrenburg Chamber of Commerce, asking us if we would like to be a part of the city's " Dickens Christmas - Living Windows Event", that following weekend. She said we were perfect for it, and she had to have us there! And, even though it was short notice, they would make room for us. We were very excited about the invitation. She explained that the event would replicate Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and that we would set up our display and sit in one of the windows at the Java Junction business in downtown Warrensburg and create our needle felted items. It was pretty neat and we were proud to be a part of it.  There were carolers walking around singing Christmas music, and horse drawn carriage rides around the downtown area, and in the Java Junction, they were serving a special latte for the day: an Eggnog Latte. (Which was one of our alpacas names!) Lol! We felt we belonged there! We had so many people come to our table and comment on what we were making and would just watch us work with our fiber. They always had lots of questions about our alpacas. Then, we were interviewed and photographed for the Warrensburg newspaper, "The Daily Star-Journal"!

http://dailystarjournal.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=12848&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&S=1

A Dickens Christmas- Living Windows 2010, Java Junction

View outside our window at Java Junction

With our incredible happiness and success we had with our felting and the events we had just participated in, came unexpected sadness and devastation with some of our alpacas. We lost both of our beautiful girls after giving them an injection of Lutalyse from our veterinarian. This is what has kept me from updating this blog, due to my unbearable heart- filled grief I have had since this happened. I have totally lost all confidence in the veterinarians around me here. And I have so much guilt, wishing I could go back and never have given it to them, or, that I shouldn't have trusted that my vet would have and should have known that Lutalyse has caused deaths in alpacas. Something I did not know until I researched it the day after I had lost Cafe. It has been a very hard lesson. And it is something that I don't ever want to go through again. In the 9 years that we have owned our alpacas, never once have we had to call the vet out for anything except to check out a newborn cria (baby alpaca) and the mother. We have always done vaccinations, deworming, toenail and teeth trims, etc., ourselves. Something most everyone does in the alpaca industry. We have always had happy, healthy alpacas. This loss was a total shock to us and has brought our breeding program to a stand still. It has left us not knowing what the future will bring. We have had to just sit back and give ourselves time to think and to mourn. It has been difficult to get up every morning to do chores and see their empty pen and suddenly realizing that it's not a nightmare, it is real. All of our male alpacas are happy and healthy. 

Deep inside of me, my mind is telling me to keep going. This has been a tremendous set back, but I believe that what we did last fall with our fiber was meant to happen. It wasn't just a coincidence. It was a blessing. Like I have said before, we have had many set backs in our life. And it was such a happy time for our farm, and for me, working with my daughter who is an exceptional artist. We have 8 years worth of fiber stored and we will have more fiber to add to that come shearing time this spring. I love these animals and can't imagine not having them. Though it's still hard, time is flying by. It is March already, Spring is near and it will get very busy here, repairing fence, getting our gardens ready for planting, lots of yard work, shearing the alpacas and so on. I know I need to get busy washing, carding, and dying more of our fiber for our creations. It's hard to do when it makes you so overwhelmed with emotion. I know there is always going to be some sad things that come with raising animals. It's not easy on your emotions at times. I pray that something great will happen and we will get through this difficult time. Everything that has happened these last few months has made me appreciate and be more grateful for what I do have in my life that God has blessed us with: My family- beautiful and healthy, our farm, our animals. (we still have all our beautiful alpaca boys!) With Spring comes new life, a new beginning.

I don't know what God's plan is for us, but I will put my trust in Him to guide us through this storm and with His blessings, continue on. 

My Sky Alpaca Farm introduces ~ Cozy Creations By Sarah Goins

We are so excited to show you what we have been working on! We have been busy getting ready for the Holiday Market we are attending in Warrensburg, MO this week. Our daughter, Sarah, has been needle felting with our alpaca fiber. She is a full time student at UCM, majoring in Art. She is very creative!  She has handmade some really cute snowmen and brooches. She has been teaching me how to make them. I have been washing, dying, and carding the fiber we need. It's amazing, all the things you can do with this fiber! 

All Snowmen are handmade, needle felted 100% Suri Alpaca fiber!

Penguin & Tiny Top Hat Snowman

Snowman Family!

Here are some of the brooches Sarah has made. She needle felted the fiber to make the backs of the brooches.

More little snowmen!!

Aww! So Cute!

Santa Ornaments!

 

We will be working on having an Etsy shop coming soon! If you see something you like, contact us! Special orders may be placed. 

Raw or washed and hand carded light fawn Suri alpaca fiber also available for sale.  

We will be working on more handmade projects through the winter.

Learning to dye and felt our fiber

My daughter and I started hand-dying some of our fiber last weekend. We tried a couple of different methods. We used Rit and Kool Aid. I thought the Kool Aid way was easier. The colors turned out good. We are dying the fiber for some felting projects that my daughter has started. She is an artist and has started learning how to felt. She has come up with some really cute ideas. She is making snowmen with the felt.

She is also making some really pretty pins with felted backings. I have been washing and hand-dying all the fiber she needs for the project. We are going to have a booth at the annual UCM Holiday Market on Wednesday, December 1, 2010, from 4:30- 7:00pm in the Elliot Union Ballrooms, in Warrensburg, MO. So, if you would like to see some of what Sarah has made, or see some of our fiber, we would LOVE to see you there!

My mother, daughter, and I went to Columbia, MO last Saturday to The Columbia Weavers & Spinner's Guild Holiday Exhibition. We saw demonstrations of weaving, spinning, and fiber art. Also, hand-woven clothing, hand-dyed 100% Suri alpaca scarves, hats, gloves, and shawls. We had a really nice time. It really inspired us and was really nice to talk to people that work with and appreciate alpaca fiber.

I will be continuing to card the fiber I dyed, and then will be learning to make yarn using my Turkish drop spindle. Wish me luck!

We have been busy getting ready for winter, there is wood to be cut, bedding to be put down for the alpacas, some husbandry on them as well. Making sure all the animals are snuggly warm for the winter. I even string up Christmas lights in the barn during the holidays!  Our chickens have cut back on their laying since it has turned colder.
We have lots of baby kitties right now! They are so cute! The mother wasn't taking very good care of them, so we had to bring them into the house and hand feed them. They are doing much better!  

Thanksgiving is almost here,  and I have so much to be thankful for. God has truly blessed this family so much. I pray that everyone has a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! I will share our progress as we learn more about processing our alpaca fiber ourselves. Although we have been raising alpacas for several years, we've never done anything with their fiber. So, we have been busy washing and hand carding it, and WOW! It is beautiful! I can't believe we have waited so long! I feel that we have a lot to learn about this wonderful fiber. I feel very blessed to have our animals and the fiber they produce. I think that this is going to be great for our farm! We've had our share of setbacks over the years, and are excited about pushing forward in this newest adventure!  I'm very excited to share with you what we are doing and hopefully make lots of new friends! To be honest, I'm also new to things like blogs, facebook, etc.. so bear with me as I learn to be more technically savvy too!


With that being said, I want to welcome you to My Sky Alpaca Farm! Our farm is a mother/ daughter partnership of Sandra Botts and Lara Goins. We started raising alpacas in the fall of 2002. We were looking for a peaceful and fulfilling lifestyle, along with a healthy way to raise our children and grandchildren. Specializing in the beautiful suri alpaca. The suri, elegant and graceful, has lustrous locks that feel like silk. The fiber, once reserved for Incan Royalty, grows parallel to a suri's body hanging in long, separate, graceful locks. As a smaller farm, our animals receive personal attention, care and love. All of our alpacas are ARI registered. Our goal is to breed for the finest in quality fiber, superior conformation, and healthy crias. We are 45 minutes east of Kansas City in Concordia, Missouri.


We have been busy washing batches of our fiber with just hot water and plain Dawn dish soap. We pretty much went by a book called, "Start Spinning, Everything You Need To Know To Make Great Yarn", by Maggie Casey. The only other thing we did is we got a large salad spinner to get the excess water off of it. And watched a few online videos. My husband made an excellent big skirting table! We just lay the wet fiber on the table to dry.
We are starting out small and slow, so my mother bought a set of handcards. I was so excited when we made our first rolags! They were sooooo soft!! I also have a Turkish drop spindle. Haven't learned how to use that yet! I know we will be busy all winter working with all the fiber we have. We also decided that maybe we should start selling it. We sold some of it for the first time a couple of weeks ago! The woman who bought it is a spinner. My mother- in -law knows her and I sent some extra with her that she is going to spin for us. Very anxious to see how that turns out!

Here are our first rolags we made with Eggnog's fiber! She is a light fawn alpaca.

Here is baby alpaca fiber from one of Eggnog's crias: Washed

 Here is one of our "boys", Theoden, he is one of Cafe's crias: Washed and (below) carded.

                                                                  Faramier & Theoden

So, now we need to learn how to spin!

I love being a stay at home mom! I love being home with my children, gardening, cooking and being surrounded by animals we love! Along with our alpacas, we also have 2 big dogs, kitty's, chickens, ducks, and geese.