Alpacas!!

In addition all the fun puppy play in Garrett County, our friends treated us with a trip to BlueBell Farm Alpacas.

Our first stop on the farm was to visit the female alpacas. Here are some pictures from the ladies' side of the farm.

One-week old baby.

Sun bathing!

Curious creatures!

Here is the latest addition to the farm: a brand new baby alpaca. Only three-days old! Alpaca babies are called crias. Jo, who owns and runs the farm, picked up baby so we could take a closer look.

I got to hold the baby. She was too adorable and soft to describe.

My visit with baby was short lived though. Mama was nervously pacing and humming at me as I held her little one. After a few minutes of holding baby, I put her down and she and mom ran off to the corner to nurse.



The next stop was the farm shop. I was, of course, in fiber heaven! Even though I was overwhelmed in trying to select my fiber souvenir, I still managed to goof for a few minutes too.



Spinning wheel in the shop. I forgot to ask what kind this is.

Reason 4,387 I love my husband. He spent a couple hours watching me play with the alpacas and then still has a good sense of humor about being dressed up in silly alpaca hats.

I finally decide to purchase some roving from "Smokey" and some yarn from "Cappuccino." Yup, that's right, most of the fiber in the store tells you exactly which animal it came from!

The last stop on our trip was to visit the male alpacas. I took picture (not great ones, since we were in a barn) of the two boys whose fiber I purchased.

Smokey

Cappuccino

Weekend at the lake

This weekend, the mister and I headed up to Deep Creek Lake to visit with some friends and to take a sorely needed mini-break. Our friend Mercedes is the director of HART for Animals. She and her husband are constantly raising money to find good homes for homeless animals. They are hoping to raise enough money to open a no kill shelter in Garrett County.

Needless to say, they have a few rescues of their own.

This is John Kerry, named for being found on the side of the road on election night 2004.

This is Chance. What a perfect rescue name! He's a greyhound/shepherd mix. A 90 pound cuddle bug!



And finally, Nikki. She's a Malamute/border collie mix puppy. She's always in motion and constantly herding the others in her pack.



With all the animal love, we couldn't leave our little buddy behind. Rocky had a fun afternoon of swimming (actually, more like wading waist deep in water and drinking it), stalking spiders, and hypnotizing ducks from the dock.

We took a break from pup play to visit the Penn Alps artisan village. What a charming place! We visited several of the craftspeople, including the soapmaker. I spent some time outside the soapmaker's shop admiring the beautiful flowers before I bought two shampoo/body bars (English Garden and Lavender). Yum!

We had a great time visiting our friends... and we also got to go somewhere for a real treat. Wait until to see my next post!

Elephantine hat-trick, radishes, and a princess lioness

They are done! Three mix-and-match Elijahs. And boy do my hands hurt. I calculate that each Elijah took me 12-13 hours. Nothing like Cascade 220 Superwash on size 4s for that many hours to give you a hand cramp. But they are way cute and I can't wait to give them to the recipients! These little guys are for three little boys, ages 5, 3, and -8 weeks (i.e., still in utero). :) I hope they like them!

Tonight I cut up some radishes from this past Saturday's CSA haul. What beautiful colors!

One more random picture to share. Here's little Miss Chloe, The Princess Lioness. Yes, I put a feathery scrunchy (favor from a baby shower - -not something I willing purchased!) on her head. She posed proudly. Or she was too lazy to move. One or the other.

Design Hazards

In December, I decided to design my own top-down V neck sweater (or tee, depending on the yardage I have left for the sleeves) using yarn leftover from other projects: Valley Yarn Northampton in grey (242 yards leftover) from my boatneck bluebell sweater and Cascade 220 in a grey/white twisty tweed (385 yards leftover) from my satchel project. I did a lot of math to get the top part of the sweater to fit just right. And it does! Once I split the sleeves from the body, I decided to wing it. And that has now cost me 2 froggings of the body. Hmpf. The first go round, I did some bust darts on the front and decreases in the center back. The back looked really bad. Lots of puckering. And the stripes looked horrible in the back with the decreases. I knit almost down to my belly button before I frogged that back. Then I tried to do the decreases on the sides, 2 stitches from the place where the sleeves were split, so there were 4 stitches between the decreases. Two things: 1) The decreases started too late and there was bunch of fabric bagging under my arms, 2) the deceases were too close together (both row wise and stitch wise) creating a weird angular shape... basically the shaping was too dramatic. I finished ripping just a few minutes ago. The picture below is half-way frogged back. Yes, that's right, I made it all the way to the waist shaping before I finally admitted to myself that the bust shaping was NOT going to block out. Anyway, away I go again. This time I am starting the bust shaping right away (2nd row after splitting the sleeves from the body), I am doing the decreases 6 stitches away from the center of the under arms (12 stitches between) and I am decreasing every 3rd row instead of every other row. I'm crossing my fingers that the "third time's a charm."

(Also pictured: my breakfast of cream of wheat with cocoa and sucanat and a mug of earl grey in my Washington DC mug. The inauguration is only 2 days away!)

I received a hand-me-down food dehydrator over the holidays, so I'm giving it a go with 4 naval oranges. The kitchen smells divine right now! The only trouble is that the dehydrator didn't come with any instructions, so I'm not sure when to stop it. I guess I'll just keep checking. I'm planning to use these oranges with some rosemary from my herb garden and maybe a few pine cones for a potpourri in the living room.

In other news, Rocky seems to have cabin fever. He's been moping around the house for a few days. I think I know why. We haven't been for a run in a week because of the very cold weather and a bad head cold that I had. Here's the depressed pooch. (I'm not sure why he sits on the stairs like this... it must be comfortable.) Don't worry, buddy, we're going for a run today. I promise!!

I went into the basement this morning to start blocking the basketweave baby blanket, and found Chloe and Cheshire sleeping their heated cat bed. Chesh woke up for the photo op, but Chloe was having none of it. Must have been a long night of pouncing on each other and wrestling.

Ramping up for knitting down

December 1st marks my participation, along with several other Ravelers, in a knit-down-a-long (KDAL). We are playing through May 2009 (MD S&W purchases don't count!!). Each participant must knit more yards than she acquires each month to stay "in" the contest. If she breaks even, she can stay in. But, if she acquires more yards than she knits, she "out." The winner gets a free skein of yarn, paid for by the other contestants. In the event of a tie (i.e., more than one contestant standing when we get to the end of May), the person whose "yards knit" minus "yards acquired" is the greatest, wins.

So, as a result of this "contest," and even though Stitches East was just a week ago, I felt the urge to buy. more. yarn. Must. get. more. yarn. before. 12. 1. I picked up a few goodies today and I'm officially ready to hunker down and knit down. Here's what I got today. And now that I've got it out of my system (I hope), game on, ladies!

Here's my new skein of Shalimar Yarns (hand dyed superwash sock, 405 yards). I love this semi-solid colorway! It will be perfect for a baby knit!

I also purchased 4skeins of Manos del Uruguay Cotton Stria in beautiful neutral and green colorways today. 116 yards in each skein. The two greens are the same "color" (203), but they don't match identically, which is fine. I can alternate rows and give the knitted piece a rustic look!

Rocky got a special treat today too. His doggie friend Luna turned 2 last week and was kind enough to share her banana cake with Rocky. Happy birthday, Luna!

Patiently waiting for a bite.

Wait...


Yum!

In other knitting news, I cast on for a pair of socks on the way home from the hockey game last night. I bought this yarn (Spirit Trail Fiberworks "Alexandra") at the Takoma Park yarn party in the spring. It feels heavenly knitted up, and I'm happy with the way the colorway is looking as well. I chose a simple pattern (Charade by Sandra Park), since there's a lot going on color wise in this yarn.

Speaking of the hockey game, it was too warm to need our Koolhaases last night, but we snapped one shot with them on anyway. Once we got through the traffic to get to the game, a good time was had by all!

Mr. Rocky Dog.

Name: Rocky (also known as Rocky-doodle)
Breed: a mix between a Rottweiler (look at those teeth!!) and a black and tan coon hound
Age: 9ish (adopted him 4 years ago)
Hobbies: going for runs in the woods, tug of war, getting his teeth brushed, whining at anyone that passes by the bay window
Favorite Food: anything that's dropped on the ground
Special talent: catching snowballs in his mouth, acting cute to get his way, drooling



"Look what Santa brought me!"


"Stop taking pictures, let's play catch with some snowballs!"



Sleepy puppy.

jungle kitties

my little jungle cats

Name: Chloe
Age: 9ish
Hobbies: kicking the dog out of his bed so she can take a nap, using throw rugs as scratching posts
Favorite Food: the spider plant in the kitchen
Special talent: napping



Name: Cheshire
Age: 9ish
Hobbies: begging for cheese at the dinner table, sprinting towards trees to climb half way up the trunk before hang on for dear life for a few seconds and falling
Favorite Food: whatever is in Chloe's dish
Special talent: drinking from the toilet with 2 paws in the bowl and two paws on the seat