Weekend travels, and a little bit of fleece

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! Andrea, I loved the card you sent, and I did indeed have a cupcake-filled birthday, courtesy of my labmate Stephanie. We always do something for birthdays in my lab, which I think is really great! These cupcakes had cardamom, and they were delicious. I must get this recipe...
I received a couple of fibery presents, including a drug-dealer yarn scale from Dave and a Knit Spot pattern from Rachel, and I will show them off as they arise, but I did want to show you this (Pardon the squinting, it was sunny. I do in fact generally have my eyes open.): That my friends is 4 pounds (yes, pounds) of alpaca fleece. Remember this fleece that I got as a Christmas present from my uncle Adam? Well, he heard I was going to send it off for processing, not being much of a spinner, and decided to send me more! 4 pounds! Thank you! This is going to be a LOT of yarn - I'm thinking of having it spun DK weight since I suspect that will be the most versatile, but I will probably also get some laceweight, because frankly there is plenty to get significant yardage in several weights.

Dave had a bike race in Wenatchee, WA this weekend, and I went along for the ride. We stopped in Leavenworth on the way, which is a real experience. It's worth looking into this in your spare time, but basically Leavenworth is a small town in central Washington that has decided to make itself into a Bavarian village. Some folks got together in the 1960s (I think) and thought, "Yes, here's a good idea. Let's turn this town, which has no German history whatsoever, into a replica German village, and maybe tourists will come and resurrect our economy." Amazingly this plan worked, as you can see here: They even had a beer cart:

I didn't get any photos that really do the place justice. Suffice to say it's bizarre, and exceedingly cheesy. We camped at Lincoln Rock State Park, just northeast of Wenatchee, where a massive windstorm kept us up most of the night. It was like camping on Everest (I expect). The sides of the tent were shaking and the wind was really loud. I've camped in thunderstorms and I think this was worse. The scenery was nice - the park is on the Columbia River just above the Rocky Reach Dam. This was taken Sunday morning, before the sun made an appearance.

Because I didn't get much sleep, I had to drink some diet pepsi:Let it be said that I can really hold my soda...

Knitting content soon. I took a sock and my Endpaper Mitts but hardly knit at all because it was really too cold to sit outside with hands exposed...