Am I the only one?

This is instead of my Monday Funny this week. If you click each picture it enlarges it.

I went to volunteer at the Nativity Celebration that the local stake of my Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) sponsors here every year. I only took picture of a fraction of all the Nativity sets, that people brought in from all over our stake (a stake is just an area that so many wards and branches are in, a ward is a certain number of people and up that meet in a building and branches are less people than a ward) off topic :P. I was told people brought in 997 Nativity sets to show, not all were members of our church and we loved having them participate, all were welcome (they take their Nativity sets home on Saturday after it closes.) We only asked the visitors to bring in a can of food for the food bank we chose. We had different choirs and bands and orchestras from different schools and Church choirs that came in to perform on Friday and Saturday. Member of our Church made refreshments too, no charge for the refreshments (hot apple cider and cookies, etc). It was fun. I wish the picture could be enlarged of the bottom left, it had roads and stairs to look realistic, so nice.

I was only there on Friday afternoon because I had to help Saturday on the alpaca farm. This Saturday will be his Christmas celebration with the alpacas. He will have some of the alpacas with costume reindeer antlers, refreshments and Santa for the kids to have pictures with (that one is a family member and they charge for the pictures) but like normal no charge for feeding the alpacas up close and personal, and chickens and peafowl, and he hopes they will buy something from his farm store to help with the cost of feed, processing the fiber into yarn, etc. I’ll try to remember to get pictures! Last year people were standing in line from the small pasture where the alpacas are, to the end of his driveway (which is about 6 car lengths). This year he got a very big connect 4 game the kids can play while standing in line to get into the pasture with the alpacas because he can only let so many people into the pasture at a time. It’s to keep the kids busy so their parents don’t go crazy, lol, hope that works out :P.

I had a hard time fitting my spinning time in this year and properly participating with the Tour de Fleece, but I will keep spinning to get some skeins done that I had planned on spinning for that. I hate that life gets in the way sometimes with my knitting and spinning, which are my way to relax and get away from our chaotic world. I did finish this skein of yarn that I started spinning last September, see my Spinning a Tweed Yarn for more information on the fiber :P. This is 4 ozs and about 150 yards, it is a bulky yarn. It’s really hard to spin a thiner yarn with a fiber with lots of thicker viscose bits. I did go ahead and just do a 2 ply because a chain ply makes a 3 ply yarn and I knew it was already going to be thick and thin and bulky, so I decided the 2 ply would be better. I think the colors turned out nice and looking more like a speckled yarn because of the bits of tweed color :). This will be given to my Ophthalmologist at my next visit for her 18 month old daughter. Should make a nice bulky hat for her, lol should knit up really fast, and yes we do get very cold in the winter here :). She did my eye surgeries in Dec and is a knitter, so this is why I chose to spin a skein of yarn for her. If I had realized how thick the viscose bits for the tweedy look were, I would have chosen a different fiber to spin for a sport weight yarn for a little one.

I have been enjoying the cooler temps, but this will be short lived as we start ticking up to the upper 80’s by next week end and August, which is only about a week away, is our hottest month. Last year my daughter got married in August, on the hottest day of the year, outside, and with the heat index it was 118 F. ugh.