Car Update

Got her back from the radiator place today, $402 later and we have a brand new radiator.  The old one was so gunged up they couldn't even get the cleaning rods down the channels!    He replaced the crackling hoses as well and at this point thinks that the water pump and head gasket are both ok.   Hope he's right.   At least it means in the meantime that we don't have to replace the car and as I said to the chap at the shop "it cost more than I'd hoped, but less than I feared".

I think I'll move onto nicer things now.   My second patchwork sock is now up to the heel flap, so I'm hopeful I'll get it finished by the deadline, which is the end of the month.   Then I can start my second Garnet sock so that'll be all finished before my next test-knit.   I'm testing a rather gorgeous sock for Val of Wandering Cat Yarns; the end result will be for my husband and she's sending me some lovely sock yarn in a colour called Peter Pan, it's a greyed tealy shade and will look fantastic in this sock.   If you want to see the sock you can go here.   Val has been incredibly generous, as well as the yarn to knit the pattern she's also sending me a beautiful red in her tabby cat yarn that I fell for.   I think I like being paid in yarn!

I'm partway through shifting my fabric stash into the new hutch dresser, most of my Lilliput Lane is already in the top after a good dusting.   Now the need for dusting will hopefully be closer to my inclination to dust; previously they weren't behind glass and they were very dusty.   Once the quilting fabric is in there I can fix the piece of furniture that most of it was in.   I will need some plastic storage containers to keep the fat quarters in, but that's not high on the list of priorities right now for some reason (car).

And now, some photo's from my alpaca weekend:

Cria, aren't they cute?

Feeding the girls

One of the stud males

This is a blanket that got wet before shearing, all that tippy looking stuff will wash right out

Another male stud, beautiful in black.

Queen of the castle

The last photo was taken from inside which is why the reflections.   I don't have photoshop or anything to get rid of those.   Each of the females took a turn on the hillock though, keeping watch.

Aside from the car thing it was a wonderful weekend.   Anne Field took the class which was on various ways to spin alpaca and showed us some of the differences in how alpaca spins compared to the sheeps wool we're used to.  We spun true worsted, semi-worsted, semi-woollen and woollen.   My semi-woollen looked like something I'd pulled out of the drain, but the rest were actually pretty good.