Busy Day

Today was a busy day at the Groff house! 

First order of the day: to wash two gallon ziplocks of alpaca fibers given to us by our neighbors.  I filled the washer with very hot water and gently submerged the fibers.  I turned the washer off and let the fibers soak for half an hour, then turned the washer to SPIN cycle to wring the fibers out.  I repeated this several times through the day. 

Here is my happy helper:

Dan went this morning to visit a friend.  And I got crackin' on the basement.  I wish I had taken a before picture (it would have made you pass out), but I forgot.  So here is the after picture instead:

I put all yesteryear's goodies on the top, and the shelves are ready for this summer's produce.

I labeled all the bulk food buckets and put them in some kind of order:

Rice and beans over here

Flour, sugar, oats, and cornmeal under the steps.

It took all morning, but it feels so good to have it all tidy. 

Tomorrow I have to work on this:

Well, in all truthfulness, I have to work on THIS:

And so, I came upstairs to check the alpaca fiber.  Yes, it was satisfactorily clean, after six rounds in the washer.  Time to lay it out to dry.

Now I can finally feed everybody.  Only the boys and I were home, so we did things simple:

This morning my mozarella was finally finished brewing. We ate it for lunch with some of Nici's delicious bread. I thought it was the first edible cheese I've made (besides cottage cheese), but it was somewhat tougher than it ought to be, and slimy on the outside from the brine. I probably was supposed to dry it somehow. I'll have to read up on that. The boys told me that it was the best cheese in the whole world, and they hoped Daddy wouldn't like it so they could eat it all themselves.



Dan made it home with a load of goodies.  (We have the most wonderful friends, don't we?  They put us to shame with their generosity!)  Here is one big present-- a box of odd-shaped-and-sized soaps.

In this box were several small molded soaps in the shapes of flowers and hearts, and there was even a shell and a dolphin.  The girls proceeded to decorate every sink in the house with the shaped soaps.

I sorted the soaps out somewhat and bagged them.  I got this idea to crochet a little bag out of cotton yarn, so we can stick soap ends in it to scrub with.  I'll be working on that tonight. 

I set the children to work, too.  Here is Elian helping to shred a bunch of wonderful-smelling soap in order to "rebatch" it, or melt it down and make fresh bars.

And now I must go stir the soap.  Thanks for reading!