Peep peep

May 28, 2010.  Robin's nest in the rose bush next to our back door.  Guess our back yard is still wild kingdom:

Mrs. Robin flies out of the nest and looks mad every time we go past to get in and out of the door. 

Oh joy, it's Harry Potter weekend on Family HD!

Full moon

May 27, 2010.  The full moon this month is called the flower moon.

Bonus round

My goodness, it's been a week or so since I posted.  We have a lot of photos to catch up on!

First, the back of my sweater is finished and perhaps, 1/5th of the front. 

I have been knitting on this seemingly forever (yes, I am whining now).  I'm sure it will be a nice sweater to wear, but I am ready to knit something else now.

Paulette and I were busy yesterday.  We both took vacation (Paulette only in the morning) to protest one of the candidates for governor.  He is riding his Harley motorcycle around the state, supposedly to promote tourism.  We're not buying that.  Anyhow, here are some pictures:

My creation to help protest.  The dollar store was my friend for this occasion.

I had a pleasant afternoon yesterday.  It was 80 degrees outside, so I sat in one of the adirondack chairs in our yard and knit for about an hour.  I also finally put my turtlenecks away and got my summer clothing out.  It's about time too, since it's supposed to be 87 degrees on Sunday.  Time to crank up the A/C!

I took pictures of the flowers in our yard:

One of the peonies in the front garden.

Iris along the fence.

Anemones along the fence.  Please ignore the grass.  Yes, we need to weed here.  It's a never-ending job.

And, finally we end with a picture of Churchill taking a nap:

Nummy

May 13, 2010.  Pretzel M & Ms.  Way. Too. Good.

Pictures

Gotta get back on track with my picture project.

May 8, 2010.  Picture of the lamp in my bedroom that I made from a painted metal vase I found at the South Park art fair in Oshkosh a few years ago.  I also hand beaded the shade and took apart a beaded fringe to apply those beads to the edge of the shade.

May 9, 2010.  Mary statue at church surrounded by parishioners garden flowers.  It smelled really good there because of all the lilacs.

May 10, 2010.  Today's entry is a two-fer.  This is Missy the cat, taken at my mom's house on Mother's Day.

May 10, 2010.  Mona the cat, taken at my mom's house.

And now, back to more knitterly topics

On Saturday Paulette, Tracy from our knitting group, and I went to Patty from our knitting group's alpaca farm (Apple Orchard alpacas) just outside Oshkosh to help shear the alpacas.  It was a fun time.  Because I had been there helping last year, I understood more of what they needed help with and what was happening.   This weekend, we helped with the white ones.  Patty had friends of theirs who came with their suri alpacas to shear them as well.  Here are pictures!

View of the farm.

Tracy helping hold down an alpaca's head.  You don't really want them moving around while they are being sheared.  The animal could get hurt.

Patty's friends shearing one of the suri alpacas.

Tracy and Paulette in the background.

The angora bunny got a haircut as well.

Paulette holding the angora bunny after his haircut.

Nekkid alpaca!  I'm always amazed at how small they are once they are sheared.

Patty skirting a fleece.  All vegetable and other matter needs to be removed before processing the fleece into batts or roving for spinning.

My jobs during the shearing were to hold the animals heads still and try to keep the animal calm, taking before and after pictures of the animals so that any potential buyer of the animal can see what they look like pre and post shearing, and helping herd some of the animals into a smaller holding pen so that they could be more easily caught to be sheared.   They are pretty skittish animals and mostly run away from humans.  It was interesting helping herd them.  Who knew that they could be controlled by just using a long nylon strap to corral and guide them?