The Birds!

 I've been doing a little more knitting this week but still not as much as I'd have liked. 

I'm almost ready to start decreasing on this hat.  Only a few more rows to go.

Wow, that's orange!  Hayden is going to be a duck for Halloween so I'm knitting her duck feet to go over her shoes.  I don't have a pattern and they didn't flare out and 'web' as much as I'd hoped they would, but they do fit over her shoes perfectly.  Now I only have the challenge of making the second one match the first. Hope my notes are better than I think they are.

I've also knit 40 billion chapstick holders for the upcoming fall/Christmas bazaars I'm doing.  

But the real reason I haven't gotten much knitting done...

My sister took her grandkids to the Richmond Metro Zoo and invited me to tag along.

I never pass up a chance to go to the zoo.  We saw the penguins,

And of course we fed the giraffes.

The wolves were awesome!  I had never seen live wolves before and was surprised how big they are.  I expected them to be large dog - labrador, german shepherd... size but they were much, much larger.

The black one is a "baby" and looks like a Hellhound.  The others seemed mostly indifferent to the visitors' presence but that black one looked like he'd like to eat us all alive.

 

The camels are always fun to see and thankfully they were in a good mood.  No spitting this time.

 

But my favorite was the birds.  I didn't think anything could surpass my love of feeding the giraffes but those birds....  I didn't want to go into their habitat. I had no idea I have a slight bird phobia.  I mean,  I'm fine with sitting on the deck watching the birds in the yard.  I'm cool with birds in pet stores.  But the idea of going into that giant cage with a zillion birds flying around... Yikes!  But I white knuckled it and went in.   And I'm SO glad I did.  After I got over my initial anxiety wig-out, I had a blast.  The birds landed all over me, and yes, they pecked me a little but the experience was worth the tiny bit of pain. At one point, I had three on my head, several on my back, one on my shoulder pecking at my cheek, three on my arm and another crawling up my jacket sleeve.  So much fun!

Oh, and let's not forget the pygmy hippo.  He was singing to us.

I can't wait to go back!