I remembered I promised to write new posts. So this is a new post. Yay!

Last weekend I went to the Anchorage and Valley Fiber Arts retreat and had a good time and spent embarrassingly large amounts of money. There weren’t any classes this time around, so nothing new really learned. Also, I accidentally scheduled something else during the weekend – I watched Spamalot! – so I had half of my day wiped out as I had to drive back to Anchorage and watch the show.

Because I wasn’t going to miss Spamalot.

I made yarn, I have a pic of one of the things I was spinning on my camera, I will post pics when I find my SD card reader. I also took pics of some of my friends projects, one was spinning qiviut, and one was spinning merino. Exciting, we are.

Spamalot was really fun. While at times I felt I was the only one laughing in my area (discouraging as I was sitting between two guys who love Monty Python), I still had a good time. They got the whole audience roaring with the ‘Knights who say Ni!’ mini-skit. Without going into too much detail, they got local when the Head Knight declared they were no longer the Knights who say Ni!. You Betcha.

John O’Hurley was actually quite good as the lead. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but he did have the stage presence and a surprisingly good voice. The rest of the actors weren’t known to me (not surprising), but they were mostly pretty good.

A (most likely) partial list of things I purchased:

• llama roving - I have a pic of the llama, it’s from Honey Hill farm in Palmer, AK
• shetland roving - three different colors from the same farm in Palmer as the llama. I never used to like shetland because it felt a little harsh, but it is wonderful to spin. So I had to have it.
• alpaca - 1/2 pound given to me out of pity since I didn’t win any fiber in the Chinese auction. The lady turned out to be allergic.
• merino batts - at least 5 different fun batts of merino from Denise Morrison of Fiber-n-Ice. Denise is super nice, she’s the one who taught me how to spin on a wheel.
• kid mohair roving - I’m going to use it to ply with some of the merino batts. From Myler Almandinger
• bison down - This is from a farm in Palmer, AK. It’s the best bison down I’ve found. The lady is super nice and a spinner too. Her mother is a spinner and she and her husband make verra nice english wool combs (I’m buying a set in cherry).
• cotton roving - It’s hard to find this in AK, but I really wanted some to play with on my charkha.
• felting bucket - this is for those of us who want a little more control over the felting process, or maybe you have a front loader. It has washboard like ridges on the side of the bucket. From feltgood.org
• devils club hand salve - I got it for my aunt (she has rheumatoid arthritis), but she graciously let me keep it after we all tried it. This stuff is great! I have mild osteo arthritis in my right thumb, and it was seriously aching after spinning almost constantly for 2-3 days. The devil’s club salve really worked to make it feel better. You can find another local maker of this salve (it’s a first people’s remedy) at alaskahoneyman.com. And yummy, yummy honey.

Ok. This is a post, poor formatting and all.