Felting

Ah......... felt that.
Not a particularly good picture of a cushion that I made. It's made with the background of felted alpaca (black) and has a picture of tree, clouds, and "paddock" in the foreground. I'm rather proud of it. Over the past few months I've been doing lots of felting. Felted soap on a rope, biros, bookmarks, bags, hats, leaves, and most recently rolled roses. I've found that alpaca felts just as well, (actually -better and quicker than wool slivers) as long as guard hair and coarser hair is removed when I'm drum carding it. The batts off the drum carder are ideal to lay down "just like that" and makes laying out the felt incredibly fast. I try not to make the batts too thick. Making felt has been an ideal way of using up my huge stache of wool from the shed.

The Wedding............ Celeste and John on 12 October 2006, at Daydream Island.











Chook with a cross "bite" . I've thought about taking her to work and adjusting the bite but she seems fine, and eats well, and is laying.......... I think. The chook establishment has recently grown. I was given 2 bantam chicks. One managed to get out of the cage after Scruffy strategically removed some of the gutter guard, and Poor Chickie jumped into the jaws of one of the dogs. Both Scruffy and Max were severely roused at. They didn't eat the chicken, just mouthed it, to prevent it escaping, and it died. I decided that the other would be lonely, so I purchased three more chicks, which are much younger but much larger than the original chick. All doing well, and dogs have the threat of death if they go anywhere near the chicken cage. Still on the "bird" note....... a few weeks ago, after a storm, a pink and grey galah stood at the gate wanting me to have a look at it. The dogs and cat did too, so they were all banished to the shed, while I picked up the bird. It was really bedraggled, and I wasn't sure if it was really young or really old because it really looked bad. The budgie cage came into play again, and in went the galah. what was noticable about it was that it had a really severe beak problem, with the lower beak projecting nearly an inch past the upper one. Not lateral like the chook above, but in line. I organised to take it to the Vet to have a beak reduction, but put it in a larger cage because it was having trouble scooping food up from the floor of the budgie cage. The rotten thing found a hole in the cage and escaped before I could get it to the vet. I haven't seen it again, but hope that it is managing ................







NOSE WARMERS.......... what everyone should have in winter. Felted from alpaca and embroidered. They fit the average nose. (and smell nice)

Catching up...............Xali and Xyllan

XALI - a lovely story. Little Xali was born 3 weeks ago. She was the first live birth for her mummy, Miss Tunisia (aka Missy) Xali was 5.2 kg at birth, which is relatively small. The problem was that Missy didn't want Xali to feed from her. They bonded well, but as soon as Xali wanted to feed, her mother spat at her, and pushed her away. I gave Xali Impact Colostrum for the first 12 hours and some glucose, and then started feeding her Di-Vetalact (which is a milk substitute). Missy continued to spit at Xali for the next 2 days whenever she tried to feed. When she was 2 days old, I noticed that Xali's left eye was starting to weep and in my words, was a bit "goopy". I was devastated, and phoned up the alpaca gurus in a panic. To cut a long story short, and not mentioning all the tears I shed in the next few hours, Xali was rushed to one of the vets and had a camelid plasma transfusion. The eye had a small ulcer in it, (irritation , I think from the spit from her mother) and so for the next week I had to give her antibiotics, and eye drops, and eye cream, and treat her as an orphan. By Day 4 Missy had decided that this gorgeous baby could touch her titties, and so Xali started trying to feed from her mother. I kept "force feeding " her, and kept weighing her to ensure she was putting on weight. In the past few days, I've decided that she's getting enough milk from her mummy, and have stopped feeding her. The weigh-ins continue. She is the most gorgeous baby, and races round the paddock like there is no tomorrow..... which I hope there are plenty of. She also has an umbelical hernia, but I've decided that this is the least of her problems for the moment.
XYLLAN - This is Xyllan and Jessie, his mother, when he was 2 hours old. Another lovely story. Jessie's first baby was still born 18 months ago. (Yasmin) There was much confusion about when Jessie was due, and indeed if she was pregnant. We had expected a cria in early May this year, but it didn't arrive. This truly has to be an immaculate conception, because the Stud Male has not been in the "girls paddock" for well over a year. Anyway....... something happened, and nobody's telling me! and then one day when I was stressing that she must have had some terrible gynecological condition, I felt what I thought was a cria in-utero. (no ultrasounds available here............) Xyllan was born 1 week after Xali, and was a large boy. Very large shoulders, and so I gave Jessie a hand birthing him. She is the most gorgeous loving mother, and Xyllan too is weighed every second day, but is putting on heaps of weight, and is no cause for concern.