The National rundown

Paul and I headed off on Friday for a a lovely weekend down at Telford at the National Alpaca Show.  I'e got to be honest we wouldn't' normally take alpacas this far, it as a six hour trailer journey for the girls but Barbara is very persuasive!!  Thank you Barbara (and your team) for putting on such a well organised and fantastic show.

We had six entries into the show in three of the four different categories, in view of our involvement of the Border Mill who were organizing the yarn competition I thought we'd better not enter that one.  We were very pleased to return home with six rosettes, you can't complain at that really can you.

We only took two alpacas, I didn't think it was a good idea to take down Sunburst, to a working boy a small pen means its mating time so two days in a small pen in close proximity to girls is asking for trouble!  I hadn't entered any juniors either as I wasn't sure I'd be able to have them halter trained in time because of my hand and operation so it was down to intermediate girls, Strawberry and Ankhesenamun to fly the Barnacre flag in the halter show.

Strawberry was up in the second class of the show, she behaved very well. 

She came a very respectable 3rd, in fact the girl that pipped her to 2nd, Katchoo Calypso, is actually from one of our girls Highland Rose, so we are no even more excited to seeing what she produces to our fantastic grey stud Sunburst.

Ankha also behaved very well, she did try and eat the artificial grass a few times but walked well and stood superbly.  She was placed 4th and I've got to be honest we were disappointed with her result, it was probably more to do with the oral reasoning given by the judge Nick Harrington-Smith, than the placing, he said her fineness was her downfall, she has a 17 micron fleece with 100% comfort factor!  Had he of said staple length maybe I wouldn't of been so miffed.  I did get a couple of well experienced and trained people (who will remain nameless) to have a look and they said she was very fine???  This was the National Show so I know I should be happy with a rosette and I am.

We had also entered her fleece into the fleece show, that's more like it, 1st!  We went over to have a look at the fleece entries on the Friday night but as I didn't have my catalogue I wasn't 100% sure it as Ankha's fleece that had won but I thought it was her. 

Her full sister Meketaten came 2nd in the Adult brown class.  I was very pleased with this because I entered the fleece show at the last minute without checking the fleece and I'd completely forgot I'd pulled some of the fleece out to spin for my hat entry!!

Our third entry to the fleece show was Strawberry's junior grey fleece which also came 2nd.

My final contribution to the show was in the hat competition, it took m absolutely ages because I wanted to knit the bobbles in different members of our herd, I can identify every single bobble.  I was very pleased to win 3rd.  This one won't be up for sale it's mine!! 

It was only possible for us to go to the national because my fantastic mum and dad were farm sitting.  Not only did mum do a fantastic job of keeping a very weak goat kid alive who requires round the clock feeds, looking after all the animals she also managed to do my mountain of ironing, scrub the floors and clean the bathrooms.