Alpaca Snugglefest

This week Dug and I are on vacation, going to visit his family in Illinois, and we decided to leave a day early and go exploring. WHY LOOK, we just stumbled upon this alpaca farm! (Okay, so we had to drive 17 miles out of our way down a gravel road through complicated twists and turns, so it may have been SLIGHTLY premeditated, but that's okay.)
Mid-Missouri Alpacas is a division of Binder's Hilltop Apple and Berry Farm, located in Mexico, MO. Dug and I picked our own apples, cuddled some alpacas and bought us some ho-made apple butter. And some alpaca roving. (Yes, Jennifer, I got you a present.)
HUG THEM ALPACAS! HUG THEM! Here I am hugging a five day old alpaca - and you can see by my expression that I am laughing that horrid cave-man laugh that comes out of me whenever I've regressed to three years old. Huuuuh huuuuh huuuuuh! Mommy alpaca was chatting away at me and sniffing her baby's butt. What a good mommy!

The best thing about this trip (well, after all the alpaca snuggling we did) was that when we walked in the door, Sandy Binder greeted us and we had the Where Are You From conversation in which I told her we had come to visit because I am a spinner, and she said, "OH, look at my SPINNING WHEEL!" and whipped the cover off her Majacraft Little Gem. "Why that's a Majacraft Little Gem!" I exclaimed. Then she said the magic words, "Would you like to try it?" I was in the chair before she finished the question. I have been reading and reading and reading about Majacraft wheels, because they are freaking cool, and almost passed out from happiness at finally getting to try one. I had a big scare when I couldn't make it go, but then she realized that it was set up for plying, not spinning, and once she fixed it I spun and spun! I think she'd have let me spin all day, or perhaps forever, working on her big project for her, but I mustered up enough willpower to make myself stop. I LOVE the Majacraft wheel. It was so smooth, so fast, so responsive. Dug is very lucky that she didn't have any for sale in the shop or we'd have been suddenly very poor and sleeping in the truck tonight instead of in this comfy hotel.

Speaking of which, I probably won't be spending any more of our vacation sitting around in hotels with free wifi, so I might as well make this a longer update and share some stuff I hadn't got around to yet. I finished my Hedgerow Socks by Jane Cochran:
These are very comfy, knit from Knitpicks "Gloss" sock yarn (I think the color is called "Cosmo") which is 70% wool and 30% silk, and crazy affordable. I don't know if it counts as a "designer" yarn, but it is purple and soft and I would buy it again. (But in a different color, because I already knit this one.)

Also, I want the book Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. Those of you who are Dug will note that at www.knitpicks.com it costs $7.00 less than everywhere else and that it is already in my shopping cart and my birthday is soon.

Also, a few days ago, Dug took this picture of my computer desk. It's sad, isn't it? The monitor isn't even ON, and everything is buried in knitting.
You'll see here that I've started swatching for the Nuclear Pumpkin sweater. Dug and I have discussed this at length and decided that, while the colors are not necessarily girly, they are not terribly masculine, either. So I get to keep the NP for myself (woo!) and have promised to make Dug a sweater in a more solid, neutral gray. I don't HAVE any solid, neutral gray yarn in sweater quantity, so that's something that will have to be remedied. Sounds like I've got another big handspinning project ahead of me!