Heart of England Spring Alpaca Fiesta

We attended the Spring Alpaca Fiesta last weekend. As well as showing the alpacas we took scarves, shrugs & cardigans to show what can be made from our gorgeous alpaca fleeces.

There were some lovely alpacas in the ring & I am very happy to say that Ani our beautiful junior black girl came 4th & also won a Best of British rosette for having 2 British parents, Skylark her mum & R2D2 her dad. Comet had moved up classes from the last time he was in the ring in Thirsk & is now an Intermediate black male, he came away with a 2nd rosette, very pleased with him as he's such a handsome alpaca with a lovely nature.

We also sheared 26 alpacas yesterday so now I have lots of fleeces to clean to take to the mill for this years colours.

My 4th Designer

My 4th designer is Nicole Feller-Johnson, her website is www.notwosnoflakes.etsy.com & we are just about to start to knit one of her beautiful patterns Katrina Ballerina Lace Layering Cardigan. It is going to knitted in Lana who is light fawn & this will make it a lovely very versatile soft coloured cardigan.

Very busy here at the moment lambing still going on, will have more photos of the lambs & our other very special arrival later in the week

Lambs in hiding

Just a quick blog tonight, been busy all week lambing & another in labour at the moment. Thought I'd share this photo with you. Last week we only had 5 mums with their lambs in the nursery shed, I checked on them just as it was getting dark, counting them 2 were missing so I went into the shed to search & there they were in the middle of the feed ring fast asleep!

Goldie & her beautiful lamb Imogen

Goldie is one of my favourite sheep, she was so tiny when she was born we didn't think she would survive. I got to hold her while an emergency pen with a light was rigged up for her & her mum Ruby. She was small all her first year but has now caught up with the rest of the girls & produced her first lovely lamb Imogen who is a carbon copy of Ruby & Goldie.

Mrs Sheep's Easter Lamb

Our last Lincoln Longwool lamb of the year was born this morning, his mother is affectionately known as Mrs Sheep, she is large, pretty & always the one to watch when herding as she'll be going the other way! Our sheep all have Pedigree names & birth certificates & when we bought our first sheep we had an Eve & Eva, so Eva became Mrs Sheep. Our new lamb is just under a month later than Imogen who we expected to be last. All our lambs & their mothers are out in the fields now except Goldie & Imogen, Daphne, Inaya & her brother who have been keeping Mrs Sheep company.

Our Suffolk cross mums are now in their shed awaiting the arrival of their lambs who are due from Thursday onwards, busy couple of weeks I think.

My 3rd Designer

My third designer is Siobhan from www.stitchology.co.uk. Last year we decided that we would like to have something a little different & I found Siobhan's gorgeous gloves. They are so different, quite holey but of course being alpaca amazingly warm. I have 2 pairs, 1 in Skylark of course & 1 in Logan who is black, wore the Logan ones to most of my events last year, when everyone else was complaining of cold hands I was warm. We decided to knit along & a short version, the long ones are the ones above, both sizes come in Logan, Lana, Kasper & Bond but we can of course knit them in any of the colours.

We also have a lovely shrug from Siobhan which is so light & pretty to wear & of course warm.

I have managed to get a place in the Etsy Showcase today & my featured items are the shrug above in Kasper & Lana & gloves in Logan.