The Great Western Alpaca Show was held this weekend, and I got a chance to stop by for a little while today to check it out.
Have I mentioned how in love I am with alpacas? Just take a look at this face and you’ll see why. He’s a Suri Alpaca and has long, flowing locks of fiber – and the sweetest face you’ve ever seen.
According to the show’s website, the Great Western is one of the largest alpaca halter shows in the U.S. While I was there, I watched some of the alpaca judging. Although I’m sure this sort of thing is old hat to those of you that were in 4H, I thought it was really interesting watching the judges and hearing what they were looking for in the alpacas as far as how how their bodies should look and what their fiber should be like.
Have I mentioned the fiber? In the halls surrounding the show ring and upstairs there were small vendor areas where fiber and finished products made from alpaca fiber were being shown. And earlier during the weekend there was a fiber arts contest. Although I missed that, luckily for me, some of the winning entries were still on display. I think the coolest thing I saw was a bowl that had been formed by wet felting some alpaca fiber, then further embellished by needle-felting some more alpaca fiber on top of it. Although there were a lot of nice things that were tempting me, the only things I ended up taking home were a 1-oz spindle with a rose quartz whorl and about 4 oz of alpaca fiber.
One of the most interesting things I saw in the vendor area were two women at two different vendor booths knitting socks on antique sock knitting machines. I watched one of the women go through almost the entire process – with one of those babies, you can knit a sock in about 20 minutes!
One of these days, I’m going to have to get myself a couple of alpacas. And a couple of goats. And maybe a sock knitting machine.
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