In Fiber Heaven!

 The reason this blog hasn't been updated so much the last few days, and the posts that have showed up have had little or no explanation is that I (Teresa) am in Idaho with Dena this week.  We haven't had any fun . . . as witnessed by the the photos of the lavender festival, the wine and tatting, and the missing posts.  (Those will come when I get home and can download all the really cool pics from the camera.)  

Today, we visited heaven - at least heaven for any fiber addict and Dena and I (and Mom too) are certainly Fiber Addicts.  The three pictures above are of half of a very large barn.  That very large barn is very full of bags and behind the bags are lots of boxes.  You can see just a few of the boxes in the first picture, but trust me they are stacked nearly to the ceiling (a barn ceiling so much taller than in a house) behind the bags.  In each bag is the fleece of one alpaca.  There are tons of white ones and beige ones and fawn ones and brown ones and black ones and a few gray ones.  Alpaca fleeces come in twenty one recognized colors and I think this particular barn probably has each and every one.  Each of the boxes (and there must have been 30 of them) contains 4 or 5 or even 6 fleeces.  There is enough alpaca fiber in this barn to keep both Dena and I busy for the rest of this life and at least a couple of reincarnations.

We brought home seven bags today.  Those joined the four bags we got from our own alpaca this year and the four we got from last year and the three or four that we already got from the new alpacas that joined our herd this spring.  Yes, we now have a herd of 13 alpaca and one llama and we have almost that many fleeces here in the house.  And they are lovely.  Push your hand in any of those bags and it's the softest thing you might ever push your hand into.  

These are some of the new babies at the alpaca ranch.  No, these are not from our alpaca - we probably won't have any babies with our little herd, these are on the ranch where we got our alpaca.  They are so cute that I just wanted to bring them all home with me - to my house, not Dena's land.

And this is the sign at the entrance to the drive to the ranch.  If you are really interested, you can visit Nancy and Curt and HummingHerd Ranch here.  They have some really beautiful animals (and so do we, now).  I'll show more pics of our little crew next week.