Shearing In Seattle

What a great week we had in Seattle! My husband and me decided it was time to learn to shear our own alpacas. We wanted to learn from the 'shearing guru' himself, Matt Best. It just so happened that Matt was teaching a 2-day seminar in Seattle at the above farm, Casa De Arboles, owned by Maggie DiUlio and Jim Klassen. 

I like to call Matt, "the alpaca whisperer' because he has such a was with them! I guess if you've been shearing alpacas for over 25 years, you must really love them. And he does. He is also a very patient and experienced teacher. We learned so much in 2 days!

Matt and Darrell hit it off right away and Darrell took to shearing quickly. We are looking forward to  sharing the knowledge we learned.

Maggie and Jim were gracious hosts and we felt very at home at their farm. By the end of each day we were totally exhausted but had smiles on our faces! We couldn't have dreamed of a better seminar. We feel very lucky to have been able to attend. And thanks goes out to our son for staying home and taking great care of our animals while we were gone. We couldn't have went to Seattle without his help.

This is a picture of me with the first alpaca I ever sheared!! Its unfortunately the only picture of me as I was usually the one holding the camera. lol I plan to get better with more practice, but I didn't do too bad on my first one and the second one was better. I have some more pictures of shearing class I will be sticking in here and there. It is fun going on vacation but it is good coming back home. So much to catch up on....

Talk to you soon,  Tammy