Porcine Paradise?

I guess they'd have to know how to talk to be able to tell me if they thought it was paradise, but I can't think of anything else to make it so.
A week ago Sunday, I was sitting in front of the grocery store, looking at the bulletin board, when out popped a sign that said pigs for sale. We'd been talking about raising piglets for the freezer for six years (we'd done this before and I had not enjoyed the experience, but the results were tasty), and the subject had just a couple of days prior, come up again. This time it had more of a chance of succeeding because of the drastic flock reduction I've implemented here. All we needed was a pen and some pigs.
I'm one of those that lets things happen, I 'roll with the flow' if you will :)
If I have to work hard to over come obstacles in order to achieve my goal of acquiring something I don't necessarily need, I will let it go until fate again gives me an opportunity to do so. This may sound lazy, but its the difference between something coming together smoothly, and working out superbly in the long run, and the frustration of trying to make it happen when 'someone' doesn't want it to, and it turning into if not a complete disaster, then at least something that no one is quite happy with. A lesson I learned from my Texas-raised Dad; he would say "If it was meant to happen, it'll happen."
So with the conversation about the pigs a couple of days before, and how we would work out the pen, seeing the ad 'pigs for sale', it just felt like it was coming together.
I called the number later that day, talked to the woman about where she was, when we could come look at them, and decided on four o'clock. Turns out she also has a couple of sheep, although she's very new to them, and would talk to her husband about trading the two pigs for my last terminal ewe lamb. Jari had decided when she took the rest of the lambs to butcher a few weeks before, that this one was just too small to go yet.
So it would seem that this had been coming together for at least a few weeks, it looked like I was in the pig raising business again.
I ended up picking up three pigs, going to raise one for a friend, and they do better in groups anyway.

Introducing the Three Little Porkers!

 The pen didn't go up quite like we thought it would, but surprisingly it was still a smooth process. I have several sheep panels that I had thought I would use, but the friend who the third pig is for had these panels lying around in her back 40. We dug a trench about 6 inches deep to put the panels in (with the help of my friends son, we couldn't have done this without him!), this is suggested as a precaution against the pigs rooting out under the fence as much as it is to keep dogs from digging in. We wired the corners together, put T-posts up for stability, set the railroad ties up as the walls of the shelter, and laid plywood across the top bolstered by posts to hold up the corners.

We put straw in for bedding. I figured they'd have this scattered all over the pen by the next morning, but apparently, they like it just where it is!

Joy's First Pumpkin!

 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Home, Sweet Home!

I've been back home now for 11 days, seems like three weeks. I've been pretty busy, but not overly so, Jari did a pretty good job at keeping the house up!
I came home to a small box that contained a pretty good amount of Bond Corriedale wool, ordered from Gleason Fine Woolies while I was in Texas. I just can't resist Joanna's wool selection, even though it is much more expensive than most, I can say its worth it. It is very clean, and oh so yummy!

 "Charlie"

"Peter"

I've started work on Peter's fleece, I just love that crimp! It washed up pretty well, although there is still enough grease left in it that my hands feel wonderful when I've been in it for a while. I found this small ball of mohair and wool blend roving that demanded  to be blended with some of this fleece, so I got my carder out and started on it. It looked great! I had three batts done and had started spinning it.
I don't know if I posted about my car or not, but its been out of commission for a couple of months. My daughter hit a rock, she said, and it messed up the alignment so bad that I think we will have to buy two new tires for it. We had to drive it home from town, about 4 miles. So the other day we finally found a trailer that we could use to haul the car to Elko (an hour away) to get it looked at. We were gone all day Monday, came home to find that the new puppy likes Peter's wool too! Oh, by the way, we have a new puppy. he is black lab and blue tic hound. He's a great puppy, will someday make a beautiful and intelligent dog! But not if he keeps doing what he did that day! He doesn't know how close he came to shortening his life span. Not only did he tear up those batts (which were in a box with the lid down) but he got on my table and pulled down 5 ounces of that gorgeous dark chocolate alpaca top I posted about earlier! Sigh!
I picked it all up after chastising my daughter about how its never her stuff that gets torn up and ruined by the animals she brings home, its always my things that get torn up! Why is that? Make you want to gnash your teeth and say bad words! Not to mention kick the dog! (something I learned long ago not to do, unless I wanted a bruised toe, cause I never manage to hurt the dog, just me). So, what to do with this mess? I took what I could salvage of the batts, which weren't as bad off as they had first appeared, and recarded them, they have a few more dog hairs in them now but, eh! Then I looked at all that alpaca. I had not over reacted at the alpaca. It was a mess! He must've enjoyed that much more than my home-made batts, cause it was torn up and slobbered on.
My drum carder is not made for fine fibers; they get stuck in the tines, they get all fly away and aggravating! But, I decided to blend the alpaca with Peter, I just couldn't imagine throwing it all away!
This is how I managed it: I took a small amount of Peter's wool, flicked it, laid it down on the carder, took one of the puppy-fied pieces of alpaca and lay wisps of it against that little bit of wool. Then I took a normal sized lock of flicked wool and lay it over the alpaca. It worked great!

Here is the yarn from the mohair blend

 This is the alpaca blend in the morning sunlight... I really couldn't get the color right...

It is so much prettier than this picture, I will post another when I'm done spinning it up. I managed to save most of that alpaca! I only had to throw away the most slobbered on bits.
And the car? Found out today that the frame is bent. Musta been some rock!

Motel convenience and puppy problems not withstanding, its great to be home!

In Rememberance.... Picture Heavy

The day I got to Texas, my daughter called me to say that our faithful 14 year old dog Zip had passed away. I wanted to wait till I got home to share this, because I wanted to share these pictures as well as the story of how he came into our lives 14 years ago.
I went to the store one day and there were some kids out front with a box. There were little black puppies peeking out, some jumping others just looking around. I walked up to the box to get a better look, and in the bottom of the box in the corner was a silver, tan, grey and black ball of fur. I of course took that ball of fur home. I wanted a truck dog. I wanted a dog that would be exited every time I said "wanna go for a ride?". I wanted a bosom buddy, one that would go with me every where and be my best friend. This seemed like the perfect dog! According to the kids with the box, the mother was a golden retriever, the father was a blue merle Australian Shepard, he had a different sire than the other puppies, they were golden and black lab.
As he grew, we realized he was going to be a good blend of the two breeds; the size and mellow attitude of the golden, with the colors and hair of the Aussie. He was smart, and beautiful, and after going through several dogs over the past few years, none of which really fit us, its seemed we'd finally gotten lucky.
I brought this little silver fluff ball home, thinking I'd found the perfect dog. Well I did, I had a dog, but he didn't have me. It was about ten minutes after bringing him into the house, that this little fluff ball had found his boy. If Tad and I sat on opisite sides of the room and called Zip, he would always go to Tad, but if I said lets go for a ride, he'd dump Tad in a second! So I had a truck dog, but Tad was his Boy.
Tad named him Zip, after the Australian blue healer in the movie 'Last of the Dog Men', Tad's favorite movie of all, but as he got older, we realized he wasn't all that zippy. He was very laid back, but he did love to play with sticks! He would chase anything you threw but would only bring sticks back.

 Not much room left for Tad....

 This was taken about halfway up Mt. Lewis, looking out on Reese River Valley, where we live.

 Tad was teaching Zip to catch treats off his nose.

Derek's mother was very sick with stomach and intestinal cancer, so we all packed up and went to visit her in April of 2004, she passed away on June 4th that same year.

Zip rode in the back of the Suburban, while Tad had the back seat to himself. At one point, Derek had went off the road just a bit and hit the rumble strip, scared Zip so bad he jumped into the back seat where Tad was stretched out. Zip landed feet first in Tad's groin. We all laughed at Tad's discomfiture. Neither he or Zip thought it was too funny at the time :) 

 Zip loved horse grain, and didn't really care that Jasper loved it too....

 That same trip to Arizona to see Derek's mother, we came home by way of the Grand Canyon. Wonderful memories!

 Me, Jasper and Zip, ready to go for a quick ride.

 This is on Mount Moses, just me Derek and Zip on this trip, just wandering around the mountains.

 Tad and I used to do this a lot, he loved looking at the stars.

They are together now, I think. It is a comforting thought.
Rest in Peace Zipper!

Time! I have None!

I have some... but not much. I didn't end up going to Greenville on my days off. In reviewing the website I realized the cotton museum is not really what I was looking to see, more about the industrialization of cotton production and its history than the spinning of cotton.
I did go to see a very nice woman who answered my pleas for a fiber fix on the Spin List who invited me to her home, she was very nice and although a relatively new spinner had some beautiful fiber! I do believe I've made a new friend!
I went looking for a picture of this breed, but all I found were little tiny, so I will let you look it up :)

This is wool from a small sheep in New Zealand, called Arapawa, it is super soft and somewhere between a down wool and a romney wool. She gave this to me! So very generous! I will be sending her some of Gracie's fiber after I shear when I get home.
I also went to Rose Path Weaving and got some goodies!

They are moving their shop, so everything to do with spinning was 40 to 50% off! The white stuff is Merino/Mohair, the brown stuff at the top is Arapawa from my new friend in Louisiana, the brown in the wraps is alpaca, with the McMorran Yarn Balance at the bottom. The books, the new Spin-Off, the Intentional Spinner and another 101 One Skein Wonders book  rounded my purchases off. Amazingly, this was all just over $100.

We're calling this my birthday present :)