We were right old crocks after finishing the 2025 shearing of our eighty five alpacas although we did feel a bit better after a bath (me) and a shower (Chas). The weather, many heavy showers, meant we had to cram all the alpacas into the barn overnight making sure the stud males were well away from the girls. No one wants to shear a wet alpaca but ours, thankfully, were bone dry.
This is the beginning of the very long process to turn the fleece into yarn. The crucial bit at the beginning is to skirt and grade all the fleeces accurately. If that is wrong there is no way back!
This week wasn’t all work though. My eldest son, his husband and two grand daughters arrived to celebrate my birthday, 76, I am very old. Tom made the biggest three tier birthday cake ever decorated with rose petals by the children.
Later that week we went to see The Barber of Seville beamed live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York into the Tivoli Cinema in Tiverton. Great singing and laugh out loud humour too.
