Wisconsin Signs

I spent the last couple of days in Wisconsin with far flung friends, and these signs make me laugh or cheer.

Found in a parking structure in downtown Madison. Not funny, until you turn 45 degrees to the adjacent wall and see this.

Who puts a tornado shelter in an area prone to flooding? You might not get blown away, but you might drown!

Apparently you do not need to obey all other yield signs.

This one makes me cheer. Preferential parking for hybrids or car pools. We were four people in a Prius, so qualified on both counts. Woohoo!

Freshly shorn

Yesterday I realized what a freshly shorn alpaca reminds me of. The sculptures of A. Giacometti.

I summoned the energy to snap a few photos last evening. The light was incredible. Check out Pizazz. He is glowing.

I let them out into the yard to eat (mow!), and Aries promptly laid down to eat. Maybe he was cold?

Shearing Day

My shearing crew (sister and BIL and 5 year old nephew, he was great at holding the fiber bags for us!) just left. The roofer (the uninjured one) came and helped for a couple of hours too. We got the whole herd done. A huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.

We started around 8:45 or so, and finished around 4:30, pretty much working straight through. A professional shearer would be apalled at that rate, but I sort of skirt as I go, and am not a professional shearer. Wait until you see the pictures, you will laugh. Sorry, but I'm too tired to go find my camera to download the ones we took. I don't think we got any after shots yet. I don't have the energy to go do that either.

It is a good kind of exhaustion though. The exhaustion of a hard day's work. Yep, feels good.

Pallets!

I love them. Especially when you can get them free from Freecycle(like I did these) or for a buck a piece at an auction.

I built this fence yesterday for nothing but a couple of hours of my time. It is just a corner designed to block the view of the compost pile/junk pile from the house and driveway. I know that the boards aren't all going the same way. I thought it would look better to have the height halfway the same, than to have the boards all going the same direction.

Even the boards that I used to tie the pallets together were free.

I put a little arrow so you can see what I'm talking about. The roofer was going to put these in the dumpster, but I saved them. Yay, less for the landfill! The boards still had nails in them, so I didn't even have to buy nails, they were free too!

That's Tieck up there, by the way. She was posing as Queen of the Dirt Pile while I was snapping these.

I can't tell you how tickled I am by this fence. One man's garbage is another's treasure, and all that.

The debate raging in my mind now is: Do I paint it?

Red sky at night

Taken last night within a few minutes of each other. All straight out of the camera, no photoshopping. It fascinates me how the sky changes in just a few minutes.

(First ones looking west/northwest, last one looking south/southwest)

The Adventure Never Ends

The day started out like any other. While Mom slept, I made a beret. She liked the purple one, and kept putting it on her head, so I did a blue one for her.

This one is wool and silk, no alpaca. What a difference that made in the felting! This one took much longer to make.

I did some dyeing.

Can you believe I was out of blues and purples? I have been doing some carding/blending.

Then, I looked out the kitchen window. The herd was bunched in one corner of the pasture, looking at something. Wait, there was something stuck in the fence. I grabbed my camera and went to investigate.

How did it manage that? I figure it must have been running away from something, and got caught. I first grabbed it behind the ears so it couldn't turn around and bite me. I don't like getting bit by wild animals of any kind, let alone a rabbit. ("It's got fangs! Run away, run away!") Then I gently got the hips loose, and let it go. It promptly ran through the fence with no problem.

Fiber fanatic that I am, I gathered the fur that the rabbit had rubbed off in its panic, and spun it up.

It didn't go far, but it was fun to experiment.

Then, when I walked back into the house after taking the yarn photo, I saw an indigo bunting at the feeder. It flew away as I took the shot. Dang! After uploading the photos though, I found it flying off the frame. What a beautiful color!

Yep, just another day.

A Purple Beret

My first attempt at making a beret. Or a hat of any kind actually, using wet felting methods. This is 100% alpaca, from Peach Boy.

A friend issued the challenge. Or maybe I just took it as a challenge, anyway this is what I came up with. Now he won't freeze his head off when he's carving. Speaking of which, go see some of his work. This one shows some of his stone carving, and this some of his mosaic work. Gorgeous, yes?