It Just Felt Right

  I’m new to Alpacas. I’m not sure I have ever met one outside a petting zoo, but when I met Cindi Webber of Airborne Alpacas at the Clarksville Downtown Market selling gorgeous natural colored yarn in a rainbow of soft browns and creams I was intrigued.  I had been playing with felting wool for a couple months and when I asked Cindi how well Alpaca fibers felted, she felt confident they would felt well. (say that 5 times fast!).  I’m an artist and crafter that loves working in salvaged and “leftover” materials and when Cindi mentioned she had bags of fiber too short for spinning my heart fluttered.  She brought me a couple bags of this “leftover” leg and neck fiber to work with the next week.  I was amazed at how soft the fibers were and how easily they felted. 

  After the tedious process of skirting, washing, then carding the fibers, it was pretty straight forward to wet felt balls from the fiber using plain soap and hot water.  And once felted, these balls are tough.  I sell them as dryer balls as an alternative to chemical laden dryer sheets.  A few balls to a load are perfect for softening and helping to reduce static with no harmful chemicals or scents. They are great for people with allergies to dyes, chemicals, artificial scents or just for people looking for a more natural way to soften their clothes. And for those that just have to have good smelling laundry you can add a few drops of essential oils like lavender or rosemary and the balls will deliver the scent easily as they tumble.  And as anyone who has ever used Alpaca fibers knows, with use they will last years (maybe longer than your dryer itself!).  

  These felted Alpaca balls also make a great natural alternative to rubber and plastic balls for kids and dogs.  If it gets nasty and dirty from fetch out in the mud, just throw it in the wash with the rest of the laundry.  They won’t pop like a tennis ball and they casually brush a dog’s teeth as they bite down on the ball. With studies being done every day on how chemicals in our everyday lives can affect us negatively, it makes me proud to state exactly what goes into my felted balls. The list for the ingredients is short and sweet: 100% alpaca fibers. 

  Currently I am only selling my felted alpaca balls at the Clarksville Downtown Market because I don’t have many leftover to sell anywhere else!

Another snake in the skimmer

Today I went down to check the skimmer on the pool and found two frogs, a dead lizard, and a tiny newborn black king snake. The little king snake was curled up in the recesses of the skimmer out of the water. It startled me at first. But after a quick rundown (no yellow tail like a moccasin, no rattle, and no copperhead, skinny body and head not triangle shape) I settled down and got to observe him. He sat like a ribbon that had been dropped on the ground. My dog came over to investigate and the tiny thing reared up and shook his skinny little tail and even snapped forward to try to scare Quincey. Of course Quincey just sniffed and wandered somewhere else. I took a couple pictures and let him slither off, whispering my mantra that I say to all rat and king snakes in my yard, "go kill the poisonous snakes!"
I still get a little skin crawl looking at a snake, but if it's not poisonous, I don't kill it. I would rather have a hundred king snakes in my yard than one rattler or copperhead! It hasn't made my city friends very happy because they think the only good snake is a dead snake. Se la vi. I have come to love the wildlife in my yard and if they don't want to share it with me that's their problem!

Huaraches- Why I love them

Last summer, I got into a conversation with my husband's cousin about running. I don't run much: he does. I want to try, really I do, but my entire life my feet have hated shoes. I'm not much on the style of running shoes and never had a pair that were super comfortable, so I never ran. Then I saw a documentary on some tribe in Mexico that runs barefoot or in minimal shoes. I thought, "I could do that."  So I did research and decided that the minimalist shoes didn't look so hard to make. I ended up making about 5 pairs from scrap leather I had in my studio, cutting the leather to fit my feet neatly. I used a leather punch from my craft supplies to make the holes for the straps and suede lacing. Each pair got better than the ones before. I got good at lacing them so that I could slip them on and off. And my feet started loving me for it. 

 For 10 year I was a flip flop wearer in summer. But at the end of a long day of walking in flip flops, my toes would hurt and my heels and arches too, sometimes even my calves. With my new simple leather sandals, dubbed "Jesus sandals" by my students, I walk an entire day on concrete or grass and I can hardly tell any difference in how my feet feel from the beginning of the day. My feet are so much stronger and more balanced!!  I LOVE them. It really is like walking barefoot. 

As you break them in the leather cups to your toes and heels as you wear them and becomes almost a second skin. 

The only problem I have is that when I walk in puddles, they get a bit wet and floppy,  but just walking on damp ground doesn't do it. The leather is fairly water resistant on the smooth side but on the suede part it soaks up water. 

As for running, I have no idea how they work running because apparently I lack the willpower and time to be a runner, but if you see me this summer, odds are I will be shod in two straps of leather and some suede string.