Snowy alpacas!

After 2 weeks in Asia, we went straight to CT upon landing at LGA, to pick up Mango and Kingston and to see Sam. Oh, and my parents and brother and sis-in-law, too. Sam is adorable, but I was too tired to even take pictures, so you're just going to have to trust me when I say she gets cuter every time we see her. Jet lag hit me hard last night -- I fell asleep on Mike & Kerry's couch, then on my parents' couch, then again for about 9 hours in bed.

One strange thing is that is it COLD here -- what the heck? It was so warm in HKG, and we didn't even have jackets with us. And when we woke up this morning it was SNOWING and the roads were icy! But when mom showed me an ad in her local paper that said, "Meet the Alpacas"...you can imagine that I couldn't say no, icy roads or not. I roped both parents and Dave into joining me in a visit to Southwind Farms in Watertown. I was talking to farm-owner Penny about her yarn while her husband Jim led my family out to see the alpacas. Soon I followed their snowy footsteps, in through the gate to the barn, and was shocked and delighted to find that my family was surrounded by snow-dusted alpacas, petting them and everything! All the other farms I'd been to had kept the alpacas separated from their human visitors by fences, but these animals were so friendly and so so so soft to touch. There were many babies, too. Jim was great at telling us all about the animals -- we found out that the average cost of buying one is $50K, and that recently someone (not Jim & Penny) sold an alpaca for $610K! But you can get a much cheaper animal if it has a genetic defect that is not considered desirable by breeders -- in case you want an alpaca just for a pet. What a good idea! Dave's absolutely agreeable...some day we'll be back to buy a blue-eyed beauty or two, and we'll love them and all their "defects".

Anyway, of course I bought some yarn -- my mom & dad picked some out for their Christmas presents, and I got some for myself (how could I not?) And I got to touch a baby alpaca! By the way, it turns out that "baby alpaca" yarn is not necessarily from the first shearing of an alpaca -- it just means that the micron content in the fleece is less than 20, and some adults have that, too. The lower the micron in the fleece, the softer it is.

We're back home in NYC now, and Mango and Kingston are happy to be back too. I'm looking forward to going to SnB on Tuesday, and to seeing some other friends this week as well.