Last night, I hit a pebble in my road to de-cluttering my life. But let me back the truck up a little first.
Retzlaff was lovely. Because I am apparently camera-challenged, especially when it comes to remembering said camera in the first place, I took pictures with my phone. And let me tell you, I was chuffed to find out that my new-and-improved LG takes much better pictures than my old Razr:
The view from my chair
Juanita "practiced" spinning (it's pretty snazzy for actual practice!)
Jasmin and No-Blog Rachel bought matchy-matchy mohair
Gregory made friends
This one requires a little bit of explanation. Cynthia was sitting in this chair earlier in the day and mentioned that the wines at Retzlaff weren't her thing. I must say I agree - they were perfectly serviceable wines, but I wasn't thrilled by anything in particular - except the Port, which is fanTAStic. Anyway, as she was saying this, the flyer for her Victoria did a creditable impression of a frog and jumped off of her wheel, landing on the grass at her feet. It was - to say the least - bizarre.
About 20(?) minutes later, once we had all but forgotten about the strange magnetic fluctuations of the place, there was a great SNAP!, as if a water bottle left too long in the sun had burst. But no, it was the back of Cyn's chair winging off to about 10 feet behind her, narrowly missing an innocent shopper. That was when we decided that it was time to stop talking about how other wineries have wines we like better and totally change the subject.
In the mean time, I worked on my Tobacco Road roving from CMF. It will eventually be a 3-ply, but I'm still plugging away at bobbin #1. I borrowed these photos from Gretchen 'cause hers were MUCH better than mine:
I really must get a grown-up camera of my own one of these days! And here is the alpaca I chose on my own that is all Jasmin's fault because she didn't look after me:
23 oz pin-drafted alpaca from Morro Bay Fleece Works
Left: Zoe, 12 oz Right: Rex, 11 oz
Closeup for the voyeurs (you know who you are)
In all fairness, I was intending to make the Faroese shawl from the cover of A Gathering of Lace for my grandmother out of the unspun icelandic from Schoolhouse Press and came across this alpaca instead. Since she is from South America, I thought it would be more fitting, and it ended up costing about the same. As soon as I'm finished with the Easter Egg roving for Jas, I'll start on this alpaca. After all, winter is coming sooner than I expect. Sigh.
Anyway, back to the pebble in the road. HeteroLifemate got a job at a game company in Novato, which is about 70 miles away. Sadly for my wine consumption, he's moving next week, so our rent will be going back up again. Last night, ManCandy asked me if I wanted one more bookshelf, or two. My reply was (are you ready for this?) "actually, I don't feel like buying anything at all right now."
I know. Shut up. Let's hope it lasts.
