busy with making soaps for the summer markets

Well as always, I seem to have a thousand things to get done and never enough time to do half of them. LOL
I have been busy lately trying to get all the handmade soaps ready for the markets this summer.
We have our first trade fair coming up in April.
I will be attending the Didsbury Trade Fair April 10-11 for the first time this year. Hopefully I will be able to show the local population some of what we do here on the farm.

I am hoping to have a complete line of my soaps and bath salts and bombs ready for then as well as having a nice display of the alpaca roving and yarns produced right here on the farm from our own alpaca.

After that we are prepping for the Mother's Day market in Strathmore Ab.

We will once again be selling at the Red Deer Market on Saturday mornings from May long weekend through to Thanksgiving weekend.

White alpaca roving

I have just processed one of my young males white fibre. WOW

He is fantastic. I am so impressed.

Mill is working

Well it certainly has been a bit since I wrote anything on my blog. I am bad....

Anyway, I have been busy working at getting the mill operating a bit.
I have a neighbour who works with this type of equipment and he came and we took the carder completely apart and sharpened all the rollers. We also made sure that all the speeds were correct and that the timing were correct.
I think he is going to replace the clothing on the fancy for me as well.

We are still working on figuring out what is wrong with the pin drafter. Hopefully it will be working soon.

I have been getting a lot of enquiries for processing wool to roving for people for the spring. I am thinking I may be fairly busy. *S* That is a good thing

More about personal goings on around the farm.

As many of you know Bob E and I committed ourselves to each other as life partners almost 11 years ago now. Over that time there has been many trials and tribulations as is normal in life.

Bob has asked me to once again say our vows to each other and reaffirm our committment and this time with many of our new friends we have had the honour of getting to know. I have agreed. He has gone and purchased a beautiful engagement ring and wedding ring for our spring wedding. I will try and get a pic of it posted soon for those who are not near us. After almost 11 years we are going to stand before God and our community and re-state our vows to each other.

Well the Christmas season in starting

We missed the last 2 weeks of the Red Deer market due to the very cold and snowy weather we have been having. It is a wind chill of -17C here today and not pleasant at all.

The fibre processing equipment is up and running for the picker and carder. The pin drafter is still awaiting a new relay switch and then it will be able to go full out as well.

I am processing grey alpaca at present.

I am going to attend 4 Christmas this year. We will be at
Crossfield Christmas sale November 1, Linden Christmas market November 7, Strathmore sale November 28, and then the final sale for 2009 will be at the Red Deer Craft Sale Dec 5.

Equipment is here!!!!!

Well it has been a tiring drive but the picker, carder, and pin drafter are home.

We left early Friday morning and drove to the island to pick up the equipment. Everything was going smoothly until we stopped at the scales to get our permit to transport through B.C. They have a reputation for being hard to deal with, and I can see that they have earned it. DH went in to buy the permit and they started trying to find faults. 1/2 hour later permit in hand we left.
Everything was going well and then we hit the scale outside Kamloops. They red lighted us and when showed the permit they were quite rude about the fact they didn't care if we had the permit that was required or not. They put DH through the hoops for another 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour. They threatened to shut us down but for what we have never figured out. They were quite rude about the log books, even though in our line of work here we are not required to keep them. They wrote him up for not having something quite right in the log book.

On to the next scale. Thank got they were closed and we made it to the ferry docks. We were there the night before our reservations but we spoke with them and we got on the 10:45 pm sailing for the island. We arrived at about 1 am Saturday morning and had a few hours sleep in a turn out before heading over to the town where the equipment was being kept.

Loading went amazingly well. We had all the equipment loaded into the truck in about an hour or so. We were able to have a nice visit for a few hours with the people I purchased it from.

We decided that with all the hassles coming over we would head back on the Saturday afternoon and not take the day to relax as we had planned. We were able to get get on the 3:15 ferry back to the mainland. After driving for approx 5 hours or so we pulled over and slept at one of the truck turnouts until Sunday morning. The drive back was painless as the scale that gave DH the hassle was closed when we went through. The scale at Golden just waved us through and we were basically home free. Once back in Alberta we were able to relax and enjoy the last few hours of the trip.

Today we are going to unload it all into the new garage built for this equipment. Right now I am waiting for the guy to show up with the bobcat to help us lift down the pindrafter.

I will keep you posted how it all goes. ...........................