Some pictures of Marco my alpaca when he was sheared last week. In the past I've said that he's a rather moody creature, but I was very surprised at how well behaved he really was - especially as the shearing process isn't particularly nice for the animals. Marco trotted out of his stall quite happily (in fact prior to him coming out for his haircut you could see him poking his head through the gap in the bars to see what was going on and just what the other alpacas were making such a fuss about), walked over to the shearers and stood quietly while they put him in the restraints and brought him to the floor and he was very quiet and well behaved throughout. In fact I wasn't even sure that I'd got the right alpaca until the shearers confirmed it for me. And there in the after picture you can see Marco looking very smart, and quite happy with his new haircut. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to stick around on the farm and get to find out all about what happens with the fleece once it's been bagged up but I was amazed at how much fleece came off each alpaca.

My gentleman socks are coming along quite nicely, but due to being so busy at work I haven't even had the chance to whip the camera out and take a photo yet. But I plan to have one up sometime over the weekend if not today. So should I not, feel free to slap me silly with a wet fish, or similar.

the lsb very kindly took me to visit my adopted alpaca marco yesterday (you can see him in the photo below, he's the brown one on the left with his head in the ear of another alpaca) i had a really great time and the journey to the farm and back yesterday gave me the chance to get the majority of my scarf finished which came off needles after lunch today.

anyway back to the alpacas, lsb and i got to walk a head collar trained alpaca before getting to meet marco who we adopted, who is a very strong creature made of pure muscle it seems given the amount of sheer force it took to catch him so we could stroke him etc. i'd say it was worth it though as he was so beautifully soft - being a suri alpaca he has fleece that grows in long ringlets that look almost like dreadlocks (which give him a very hippy like appearance) that are the softest thing i've ever felt.

As promised a picture of my alpaca (courtesy of mayfieldalpacas.co.uk) his name's marco and i think he's gorgeous. He's also a suri alpaca so i don't know how practical his dreadlock like coat would be for yarn but i've fallen in love with him anyway. Sadly not that much knitting's gone on lately, the journeys to and from work have mostly been taken up by bouts of revision wherever possible. The ward i work on has been far too busy lately to sit down and do anything besides grab a very quick cup of tea as and when you can hence the lack of updates here (they never tell you just how hard this business of working for a living is, especially on a student nurse wage. But i won't get into the dire financial situation the majority of trainee nurses find themselves in.) All my projects are coming along just currently very slowly, i'm sat right now in fact with the alpacs wrap on my knee which is somewhere between half and three quarters finished, the second silk sock is about an inch off the heel and the second broad street mitten is awaiting a couple more fingers and a shell and that's done. I'm hoping once tuesday's exam is over and done with my rate of knitting might reach its usual levels again. I was quite amused by the latest shreddies advert which shows the breakfast cereal being knitted with love by a group of knitting grandmas (doesn't do much to smash stereotypes, but what the hey) and leeds is having some sort of knitting festival so the local knitters apparently have all manner of odd knitted objects on needles right now including vegetables (if any of that's incorrect i'm sure one of my fellow knitting tykes will correct me)

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.