boyfriend very kindly took me to a llama and alpaca farm this morning and that's obviously where the pictures came from. luckily there's one about an hour or so's drive from us on a working farm near sheffield. llamas have always been one of my favourite animals and i really enjoyed being able to see them up close today, even though most of the animals were being a little shy (this may have had something to do with the herd of rather vicious looking and sounding geese that seemed to want to claim the perimiter of the paddock as their own and honk if anyone dared to get too close to the fence, visitors and residents included). and being the big kid i am i came away from the farm with a cuddly toy llama (i'm sure this had nothing to do with the fact i've promised to marry the man who buys me a llama, but anyway as the actual animals themselves weren't for sale i had to make do with the stuffed fluffy variety). i was also quite impressed to see that some of the alpaca's wool had been spun and was for sale in the gift shop, somehow though i managed to resist making a purchase this time around, or at least until i can find something to do with it and so justify my purchase (i'm still very much of the mentality that stash purchases need to be justifed, i can cope with having numerous balls of yarn hanging round the house when i know what i'm doing with them. i can't quite get away with numerous balls of yarn with no set purpose. partially because i still feel the need to rationalise my knitting addiction to my other half) ok so i'm not quite a stash fiend just yet but give it time and i'm sure i'll be up there with the best of them.

i also managed to finish another scarf in the car on the way home (picture to follow later when i feel like getting the camera out again), that brings my total of finished objects to three in the past week, which i don't think is too bad for me, the girl who had a sweater on needles for over a year and a half (and it's not even truly finished now, still waiting for the inclination to block and sew it all together) oh how i do procrastinate! but i digress, three finished objects in a week is very good for me, and serves as a good distraction from having to do any actual work. it's been wonderful actually, it seems i can get out of gardening duties not just because my hay fever's playing up, but by simply picking up needles and wool. i tell you, the art of knitting gets more and more useful each day. made an attempt to teach my boyfriend how to knit as well seen as he's been expressing a genuine interest in the craft, the only problem is he's a lefty. now being of the ambidextrous persuasion myself teaching a left handed person to knit shouldn't be such a problem. except all the other knitters in my family are right handers and so i've only ever been shown how to knit in a right handed manner and i find it impossible to learn to knit from a book, the diagrams always seem to confuse me, i think like most people i learn better when sat with someone and observing what they do. my only option i think may be to show him my way to knit, or pack him off to someone able to demonstrate a left handed method. i like this business of imparting knowledge, it makes me feel useful.