Sudden thaw

[altivo]

Probably most of you noticed it. We got way above freezing today, things turned slushy, it may not even freeze tonight. I expect fog in the morning.

Weaving progresses quickly. Almost two yards done already, that's a third of the whole completed. Glad we found the electric bobbin winder where it was hidden in the garage. It takes five shuttle bobbins of weft to make a yard of cloth in this design. With the hand crank winder, it would take me nearly as long to fill the bobbins as to weave them back off.

Little black lamb is doing fine and perky. No sign of missing kitty cat. With each day, hope dwindles. :(

Comments

[hartree.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was rather odd. At the same time I was walking around in a t-shirt, I was also wading through 2 foot plus deep snow drifts.

Mid 40s is indeed shirtsleeve weather for me. This comes in handy when working in coolers and freezers. :)

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

I thawt I thaw it getting warmer! Supposed to get that too finally. Geez, we get a day above freezing and it's a heatwave.

I'm glad the lamb is doing well..I'm sorry to hear the cat hasn't come back...I know what that's like. :(

[kamo2paws.livejournal.com]

My father is trying to get me to start a business in Alpacas... He said its very profitable.. only thing I know is that they are super smooth.. have you ever used their fur?

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Cats are strange creatures, there was a stray my Uncle looked after, gave it wonderful bedding and food, and it stayed for months, then one day he went away for a few weeks came back for a day then was gone again.

I have similar behaviour with internet forums, I used to be on IRC a lot then one day I just stopped, same with mucks and a few other forums I used to belong to.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Alpaca wool is excellent stuff. However...

At the present time in the US, alpacas are a pyramid scheme and a scam. The animals are being ridiculously overpriced at $10K and more apiece. An alpaca cannot produce enough wool in its entire life at current market price for the fiber to pay for itself. Instead, the money is in breeding more and more alpacas and selling them at the same outrageous prices to gullible buyers.

The alpaca is cute. It looks cuddly. But it doesn't like humans and at best will just tolerate them. Unlike the llama or even the camel, both relatives, the alpaca rarely develops any attachment or affection for a human.

A similar pyramid scheme was tried with llamas about 20 years ago. As with all such scams, the market eventually saturated and collapsed. Now you can get llamas for almost nothing. The game is based on stopping imports and insisting that the only "real" alpacas are those bred and "registered" in the US. It plays on the yuppie notion that a thing is always better if it costs more. They are to the point now where people are trading "shares" in alpacas. Individual animals are owned by syndicates. It's totally absurd and I'd advise against getting involved.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Eek. What do you do when it gets into the 80s and you've run out of clothing to take off? ;p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The cat was just a stray who appeared in our barn one day, but he has so much personality that he really wormed his way into our lives. We're going to miss him if he doesn't return.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's a cat all right. No connection to reality. XD

What do I do?

[hartree.livejournal.com]

Suffer! ;)

In truth, I'm only this way when well adapted to outside cold. Once it warms up, I can take some heat. But, I'm much more a fan of cool than hot. Oveheating will nail me much faster than getting too cold.

Re: What do I do?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, in the winter I always think I'd rather be sweltering, and in the summer I wish it were snowing. I guess that's more or less normal, though.

[kamo2paws.livejournal.com]

Thats what I thought.. I just hope I don't wake up to alpacas one of these days.. my dad tends to do exactly what I tell him not to..

Thanks!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's essy to explain in simple business terms. Alpacas have only one marketable product, the wool. No one in the US eats alpaca meat. (I guess they do eat it in South America.) Other than that, the only money to be made in alpaca breeding is by selling the offspring.

Prepared (cleaned and combed, not yet spun into yarn) alpaca sells at retail for no more than $2 an ounce, $32 a pound. Note that this is cleaned and prepared. Raw wool will go for a lot less.

An alpaca produces no more than 8 pounds a wool a year, and you lose a percentage of that in the cleaning and combing. But even without that loss, assuming that you could sell all the wool at full retail price, that's $256 a year income per animal. If you pay $10K for the animal, it will take you 40 years to get back the purchase price. Obviously, you never will, because they don't live that long, plus you need feed, shelter, and vet care for them each year. Obviously, there's no profit to be made on the wool, at least not in the US.

Alpaca wool does sell in great quantities. It makes lovely garments, takes dyes nicely, and is less allergy prone than sheep wool. Virtually all the alpaca yarn and fiber sold in the US is produced in South America, though, where production is much less expensive.

The only way you make money on alpacas is by breeding them as fast as you can (they only have one baby a year) and selling the babies off at ridiculous prices, which means you have to become fully engaged in the scam marketing process. I've watched this happening right here in Wisconsin and Illinois. People who have been suckered into the scam soon are engaged in hard sell marketing, offering to sell animals on terms or in shares, as well as processing their own wool all the way to end product in order to try to make a profit on it. That means investing in cleaning, carding, and spinning equipment as well as knitting machines unless you have a slave labor pool... Oh, and pregnant or nursing females don't produce good wool, so if you are into the breeding scam, you only get wool from males that you keep around for the purpose, having to feed and vet them of course.

[kamo2paws.livejournal.com]

Yikes... I was reading www.alpacainfo.com and of course they make it seem all easy and cuddly. I did not realize it was such a big scam..

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. A few years ago I inquired about alpacas from that organization. They sent a packet of free literature that cost them $5 in postage and probably $15 in printing. I didn't have to read much of it to see through the surface of the scam. Among other things, they sent a 200 page directory of "breeders" in the US, printed in color on glossy paper. So I checked out my area of Illinois and found people listed as "alpaca ranchers" with addresses deep in the yuppie ghettos of urban Chicago. No way anyone in there is keeping alpacas. They just have money invested in the pyramid.

Re: What do I do?

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

all year long i perfer the heat :P

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I am a cat, worship me XD

Actually I feel very uncomfortable with the notion of having servants...not very catlike at all really.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

go little lamby!

*hugs her*

We got some warmth too, the ice damn on the roof broke before
it got inside but now, if it gets cold again that water is
going to need serious flamethower time on the front steps. c.c