Oh so quiet!

Always the nosy one. Brencis first and then Freddie. Mind
you, at least Freddie doesn't barge in like Brencis, he just
comes up very shyly with a sweet, inquisitive look on his
face.

So a whole week with no noise from grandchildren playing, no noise of traffic, not much noise from anything really and even then I wouldn't hear so much. My coughing has just about subsided but my hearing is still bad. One ear refuses to pop, although it is giving mini pops now so hopefully it will clear soon. Ian has to face me so I can see his lips moving for me to be certain what he has said. Good job I can lip read -well in a good light and if people speak clearly. Oh the joys! Not as if it is the joys of getting old, because I've always had hearing issues and borderline needing a hearing aid for ages. No point in sorting that out yet though until my hearing is back to normal - well normal to me. Hahaha!

Hmmm! Now is that Amanda or Valeria? I'm never quite sure.
Ian tells me after consulting his photo album that it is Valeria.
Even he can't tell them apart all the time. He is better up close
now though

George looking rather weird after the rain. He looks so
different without his mop of hair.

It has been a weird week trying to find all of our stuff and gradually moving more things back from the greenhouse and caravan into the already cramped apartment. I'm getting there slowly and been sorting some things out along the way. Another weird thing is getting used to the heat. Last year we were lucky if the apartment got above 16C most of the winter, but with our own heating it has been much warmer without even really trying. We have a woodstove that I light about 4pm. We keep it going as low as we can but even so we get rather warm. We do not let it run much past 10 pm and it is still hovering around 17C during the day. Admittedly it is a relatively warm November, but the walls are retaining the heat nicely.

This is Silla, still obviously enjoying the grass and looks like
she's having a good chat about it in the process.

Silla in more contemplative mood. She is a feisty one though

Brencis looking suave with his savvy hair do

I have also been making some scarves. I have been experimenting with using Veronica's raw fleece for two of them and her carded fleece for the other two. One of the reasons it was the last of that particular year's fleece and there was lots of bits in it, which will took a lot of cleaning, so I thought it would be easier to card it first for the second two scarves. Cleaning it was just taking me ages. It is amazing to see how they perform. The raw fleece gives an interesting texture but the carded fleece is smoother. I still have some work to do on them but it's getting there.

Is that George looking for an escape route? Or more grass.
The grass is getting pretty brown now and they are starting
to attack the hay. George has stopped his escape routine
now though, a little electric obviously worked wonders

I have also been getting back to academic work. I looked again through the reviews of the rejected paper and some of the comments are fair enough and can be fairly easily rectified, but some of them I do not agree with at all. It is interesting to see that one reviewer liked to see all the quotes and the other reviewer most certainly did not. I have also been asked to do a presentation at the University and so need to get myself up to Tartu for that.

The welcome and not so welcome visitors. The couple
walking the alpacas were very welcome and we enjoyed
their visit as much as they seemed to. The disturbed ground
shows the not so welcome visitors - the wild boar have been
back again.

We had some fantastic visitors the other day. They emailed the day before to ask if they could take a couple of alpacas for a walk. I decided to tag along. They earned the title of the alpaca visitors who have stayed the longest, we even had to put the light on to keep talking and they joined us for a cuppa to warm up. They said they were going to come back in the spring before they are sheared, which is rather sweet.

They've made quite a mess

And more damage here

Before they came we managed to get the new girls' toe nails cut. It went better than we anticipated but it gave us a sense of who are the feisty ones - the smallest one of course! We are having difficulty what to call the group, as it seems silly to keep calling them the new girls when most of them are older than the other group. We think it will probably be Vanessa's lot and Veronica's lot, since they are the matriarchs of those groups.

This is Josefs looking unusually lazy. Normally he's haring
around like in the video below

We heard about the costs of the chimney and it seems like a reasonable price, so that's good. At least the quote was slightly lower than he said, but we still expect there to be some additional costs in there and budgeting for that - or rather anticipating that, rather than budgeting for it.

The video shows Josefs and Jakobs playfighting. It is best to click on enter full screen to see it properly.   Well that is just about it on this rather quiet week. I'm probably working my way up to some pondering as there is a lot swirling around in my head at the moment.