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!

Alco-tourism in San Francisco

Actually, we went to San Francisco (probably one of my fave cities ever!) for a wedding. But why not turn it into a little mini-break for us, right? My only regret is not bringing more knits. It was cold! I could have used some more wool!


I really love San Francisco.




A pair of hand-knit socks came in handy on a particularly windy day.








Here's a mini-sampler at Beach Chalet (stout, red, wheat).







We found the Rogue Brewery in town. Surprisingly, the walk to the brewery seemed much longer than the walk home. :)







Our favorite brewery was the Magnolia Pub on Haight, which featured some awesome cask conditioned brews.



Knitting a few rows of my jaywalkers in between sips of my Blue Bell Bitter. (Sadly, since arriving home, these socks have ended up in the frog pond because they fit terribly. I'll use this yarn for another pair of socks.)





Of course, there was yarn to be purchased! Here's a new little buddy I met at Imagiknit. What a fantastic store.




And here's the purchase from Imagiknit. One skein of Malabrigo merinocash for me and one for a friend. Lettuce and Smoke.








And a little souvenir from Bluebird Yarn in Sausalito. Paca-Peds HT from the Alpaca Yarn Co. It's superwash Alpaca Hand-Dyed Sock Yarn with 360 yards of the colorway and 90 yards of a coordinate solid heel/toe color.





And on a food related note... two exciting finds! First, I tried some fresh-caught bay abalone. So cool! (Yes, that's my swallowtail shawl keeping me warm!)








And, a kumquat tree in our cousin's backyard in Sacramento. These beauties came home with me.

I met Ysolda!

Two weeks ago I went to a business conference in Charlottesville, VA. I didn't expect to report anything exciting, but I was pleasantly surprised.

On Wednesday of the trip, I stopped by The Needle Lady, a LYS less than 2 blocks from the conference location. Mimi, the owner, was very friendly and has a fantastically stocked store! I told her I was in town for a conference, and she invited me to join the store's knitting meet-up the following evening. They were hosting a special guest: Ysolda Teague, designer extraordinaire!

Knitting with Ysolda was lots of fun, as was dinner afterwards. She is a treasure trove of knowledge on knitting and design. I hope I can retain some of her pearls of wisdom!



Check out the "Enable Me" button! It was given to her by one of my fellow Enablers and Ysolda still had it in her knitting bag.

Read more about Ysolda's visit to Charlottesville on The Needle Lady's blog, Ysolda's blog, and Vilde's blog.

Ah, the Pacific Northwest

Last summer the mister and I traveled to the Pacific Northwest (western Washington and Oregon, and also Victoria, BC to be more specific) with a couple of very close friends. We deemed our trip "Beervana," as our goal was to sample as many fine brews as the Pac NW would offer us, while still remaining coherent enough to see the beautiful sites this region has to offer. Or actually in the reverse order: sites first, beer later. Right, so that was pretty much the trip: walking city streets or hiking paths/trails during the day with a breaks for meals at a local brewpub.

Last year, I blogged about some of my favorite beers from the region. Here are some of my favorite non-city sites.

Multnomah Falls, OR.


Sunset over Puget Sound.


Falls at Mount Rainer National Park.


Mount Rainer.



Crescent Lake, WA.


Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park... who doesn't love snowmen in July?


Mount Hood, OR, as seen from a vineyard in WA just on the other side of the Hood River.


The Gorge Games in Hood River, OR.


A scenic overlook on the Pacific Coast Highway. Look at the weather front! Sunny on the left, stormy on the right. Amazing!



A view of WA from the ferry between Victoria and Port Angeles, WA.


So, why the trip down memory lane? Well, I just finished knitting up the yarn I bought from a small shop in Cannon Beach, OR. STR (socks that rock) is actually local in Oregon: that's where the stuff is made! What a great way to purchase my first skein!

I spent a long time deciding what to do with this yarn. It's 380 yards of medium weight superwash 4-ply merino in the colorway "Montley Hue." Very appropriate as the sky was pretty much this shade of bluish grey on the day I made the purchase. The tanish flecks remind me of the sand on Cannon Beach. Perfect. Anyway, I decide to make the Shetland Triangle by Evelyn Clark. I did my research on Ravelry and saw that other knitters that used STR for this project knit with size 6 needles. So I decided to do the same. No swatching for me!! As a result, I ended up only having enough yarn for 7 of the 8 body repeats. I should have known better and gone down a needle size from everyone else because I am a loose knitter. The shawl blocked out to 27 inches in length and a 55 inch “wing-span,” (which is larger than what the pattern called for). So, as you can imagine, my "leaves" are pretty big. But I'm happy with it. I can't wait to wear it to a wedding we're attending in March!