Sunday, May 13, 2007

Fibrefest 2007

Stu and I drove all the way to Abbotsford yesterday (it took us about an hour and a half). It was beautiful outside; very sunny and warm. When you head out that way you see many many farms. With these farms comes lots of livestock. We saw horses, cows, goats, sheep, llamas, and an entire field of chickens.

We arrived at Fibrefest around noon, and decided to check out the animals first. There were a ton of llamas and some alpacas. At first, these animals totally freaked me out, but then I pet them and they were less scary (and they make really funny noises which Stu imitates really well, which is even funnier!).

I also learned that I like the llama's personalities more than the alpaca's personalities.

We saw a demonstration of how to put a pack on a llama---


Here are some of the alpacas---

This was my favorite pen of the whole day----

A mommy and two baby cashmere goats. I told Stu that when I grow up I want goat babies. He looked at me oddly.

Here's Stu visiting with the other goat--


There were also three sheep. One male, one female, and one baby. The baby was so cute. It had little horns. Tee hee hee....

The animals were definitely the highlight of the festival. We went back to them 3-4 times. The yarn was fairly uninspiring. It was almost all stuff that I could have gotten without the 1.5 hour drive (and for cheaper). The actual unprocessed fiber was really nice though. Now I want a spinning wheel ( I have a drop spindle, but ugh!).

We walked around the yarn/fiber area quite a bit, but I only found one thing I really liked enough to buy, but the price tag was astonishing. It was a hank of handspun angora (we saw a bunch of angora rabbits too). This handspun was so incredibly soft, and was worsted weight-ish. The hank cost $130. I was soooo disappointed.

After this we left to go home. We were both a little disappointed, but on the way home we were talking about how cool the animals were, when we passed a sign for the Greater Vancouver Zoo (it's in Fort Langley, so I'm not sure why it's called that).

It was only a little after two, so we decided to go. Neither of us really had much recollection of going to a zoo before, and we had a ton of fun. We walked around for about two hours. It's really worth going.

Here's the cougar (it totally reminded us of The Cat)---


...and me with the giraffe---


...and the lemurs (enlarge this pic, it's got a baby on it's back!)---


I took a total of 130-something pictures yesterday, but these give you the gist of it.

I know this is getting to be quite a long post, but has anyone noticed that The LoopyEwe no longer wants Canadian customers? I know that the USPS has raised rates considerably, but The Loopy Ewe's shipping has gone from $6.50 to ship to Canada to @17.00!! WTF?!? That's like $20 Canadian. I think that WTF covers it!

5 comments:

Nadia said...

Well, I have to say I'm a little glad that the yarn wasn't too good since I had to work.

The animals are totally cute though!

Anonymous said...

It sounds like a fun way to spend the day with your hubby, even if the fiber was uninspiring.

Anonymous said...

AWww looks like so much fun!

Oh my, yeah I just looked at the shipping and man that's steep.

Beth said...

I'm sorry to hear that the yarn at the festival was disappointing. I wasn't thrilled with much of the yarn at NH Sheep and Wool but was able to score some wonderful, affordable yarn that I can't wait to try.

A trip to the zoo sounds exciting. I love seeing all the animals.

Have you emailed Sheri to ask about the shipping increases? She's always good about answering questions. That seems like a steep jump but I know the new postal rates are ridiculous and are now based on package size and not just weight.

Karen said...

Sounds like a good day. It's always so much fun to see all the animals. Too bad about the yarn though. :(