Alpacas!

This past weekend, there was an Alpaca show at the DCU Center in Worcester which is just a hop, skip and a jump from our house.  So P and I set out after breakfast, scored free parking and went to walk around.

There was an extremely reasonable $2 entrance fee each and there were some cute little kids collecting the money and manning the booth at the entrance.  They were very proud of themselves handing back the change.  Very bright kids.

So we continued on in and similar to a dog show, they had a small pen set up and bleachers where people could watch.  They judged different categories of alpacas and many ribbons were won.  We could walk around all of the pens for each of the farms and we could walk right up to the adorable alpacas.  Some booths had yarn and roving for sale.

There was a booth for a farm in Leicester that we plan to visit soon.  They had some great alpaca and soy silk  yarn but a fellow knitter snatched it all up.  I hope Nancy makes something lovely with it!   I think I’ll try to score some from them directly.

On the way home, P said that he really liked the alpacas.  After some quick research we found that it really wouldn’t be too nutty to attempt to own some.  They are really pretty affordable if you are just buying them for their fiber.  The ones for breeding are significantly more expensive.

You just need some fenced in land and a three-sided shelter.  Food and maintenance really don’t sound that bad.  P said to buy some alpaca for fiber is almost as expensive as a pure bred dog could be from a breeder.

So that’s something to think about for the future.  We’ll have to see where we end up.

But honestly…a man that doesn’t mind my craziness, my knitting/fiber addictions, and that suggests that perhaps we get some alpacas of our very own.  Unbelievably awesome.  I’m a lucky, lucky girl.