Llamas and Llambs!

I have just returned from spending a few days up north, to just south of Aberdeen, visiting my folks. The kids had their October break from school and I took some leave from work so that we could spend some "quality" time together. As I hadn't seen my parents since the summer we decided to go spend a few days with them. Granny and Granda love spending time with the grandchildren, sadly this does not happen as much as we all would like due to work/school/rugby schedules etc.

We arrived about lunch time on Monday after an uneventful drive north. Nothing much was done in the afternoon of arrival, we just decided to chill!!! I did some knitting (surprise, surprise!!!!!) and chatted to Mum and Dad while the kids played on the play station! Mum and Dad were just back from a trip to the west coast of America, so we had lots to chat about and pix to look at!!! They traveled from San Francisco up to Seattle. Stopping over at Lake Tahoe Nevada,Grants Pass, Newport and Portland, all in Oregon, before ending up in Seattle, Washington. They seem to have had a wonderful time.

OK, so they brought me back some goodies when they visited a really cool yarn store in Jacksonville Oregon called Llamas and Llambs Boutique.
This is what I got.........................

2 balls of the most amazingly soft "Bamboo" yarn by The South West Trading Company. It is dye lot #143-107. 100g = 250 yards, so I guess I have 500 yards to work with. The colours are beautiful, a mixture of reds, purples, golds. I don't have a clue what I'm going to knit with it, so any suggestions would be gratefully received! If I need to send to the USA for more I will, coz it is so nice. Going by the weight, I think it will drape real nice, so probably a shawl or something like that, so I will need more yarn if I decide to knit that.




They also bought me this really neat Sock book published by Interweave Press and edited by Rita Buchanan and Deborah Robson. There are some really cool sock patterns in it and once the xmas knitting is done I will do some sox from this book.




OK so that's the knitting goodies, I also got a thimble to add to my collection from San Francisco and a fridge magnet that says "Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?" Think they know me pretty well.....I HATE HOUSEWORK!

Right, what else did we do this week. On Tuesday I visited some relatives and then went down to the local library to do some Family History research, then chilled in the evening and did some more knitting!

When we woke on Wednesday we decided to go up to Aberdeen to do some shopping and while Mum and Dad did that I took the kids to Satrosphere, a science and space centre, where we spend a great couple of hours. When we were there we went to a talk on space and Ronan was able to dress-up in a space suit, complete with helmet for the purposes of the demonstration. We then met up with my folks for lunch, before doing some more shopping. Mum had been "inspired" by the short row scarf I was knitting so she decided to go to John Lewis's to get some yarn. Boy was that a disappointment,I was so unimpressed by what they had and the way it was displayed that I took some pix but blogger being blogger won't allow me to load them!(%%%%%^%$*&&^%$). She didn't find any yarn there to inspire her though, so when we got home we ordered some from McAree's in Stirling! (Yarn ordered late Wednesday night, arrived early Friday morning......Mum WAS impressed!)

Thursday it rained, and rained, and rained, so we didn't do too much. I did go visit my granny and do some grocery shopping though. The roads were really bad in places and at times I was really scared when I was driving as visibility was terrible because of the rain and the road was flooded in places, making driving very dangerous indeed. I was glad I had left the boys at home with my Dad. Did I say it was raining on Thursday?

Friday, today, well the few days had flown in and now it was time to go home. We were all sad coz we had enjoyed the break. We left mid afternoon and made good time back to Edinburgh, where it begun to rain and rain and rain. Again visibility was pretty poor and the surface water on the roads had lead to a few accidents and road closures. But thankfully we made it home safe and sound!

I will try and upload the rest of the pix to go with this post at somepoint over the next few days! (If blogger allows, that is!)I also managed some FO's this week so will post about them too!