Phew, we are home after the British Alpaca Futurity 2009. It was exhausting but worth it. We got home at five on Sunday absolutely shattered and fell asleep on the sofa after a rapid meal of baked beans and poached eggs, too tired to make anything serious for dinner. Exhibition Hall One at Stoneleigh Park looked wonderful and there were 350 alpacas for Amanda VandenBosch to judge. My son Alex and I did most of the showing and we were successful with Paris winning the white intermediate class, Lysander winning a junior white male class, Cornelia was top in the intermediate fawn class and Caliph in the junior fawn class. He was also reserve champion fawn male. We got some seconds and thirds too. The two males we nominated Dovecote Jaquinto and Tulaco Centurion proved themselves with their winning progeny – marvellous. Joshua and Kyle came along to help too and we couldn’t have done it without them as Chas was whizzing around making sure all the other things were running smoothly. I hardly saw him for the two days. The fashion show was very good, the British made garments improve every year which is great to see. I was steward for Val Fullerlove who judged the photography, art and craft competition. It was fun and very interesting as she counted and measured the twists in the hand spun yarns. We were very pleased with the number of entries and hope to expand it next year, maybe with some workshops as well. It is a great venue as there is so much space, really easy for everyone to drop off their alpacas in to the hall, loads of parking and a hotel on site so no need to ever drink and drive. As usual a group of very cheerful Finns came along, I love to see their beaming faces. The first alpaca owner in Latvia came along with French, Spanish and German contingents and of course our favourite Italian who is also a British trained alpaca judge Gaia Dakalo.
