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This is where we’re going on our next vacation.

Land of Knit

🙂

…of 2 socks and a bit of embroidery floss

is the first monkey of the year, outfitted in the first sweater of the year!
Also my first attempt at duplicate stitch for the snowflake/flower-

No name yet for this little cutie yet. I’ll leave that to the little girl he’s headed to in NY.

Other woolly developments include last week’s colorful batts becoming yarn,

and doing a bunch of carding and combing in preparation for the WSU Country Living Expo in a few weeks!
I always like to have a variety of wools available for people to play with.

It’s a great way to spend a day-talking spinning wheels with people and sharing the joy of wool processing.

(And there is usually at least one vendor there with dyed kid mohair, which I find utterly irresistible.)

Have a great week-

The kind of saturation we’ve got going on outside is not especially inspiring.

But inside, my spur-of the-moment dyeing project yielded really cool results!

Started with roughly equal amounts of white (Frank) and light brown (Griff Spring 2012)

Divided into ziplock freezer bags and treated to food coloring and koolaid microwave spa treatment-

It was magically transformed into this-

Nothing like some deeply saturated color therapy on a grey day!

So now the question is, do I spin them up separately and do some cool stranded colorwork, or blend?

I spun up a quick little blended sample from the carding waste so I could get an idea of what it might look like jumbled

But I’m having a hard time deciding. Suggestions are much appreciated!

And I am please to report that I finished the Maui shawl

It was a pretty fun knit.
I don’t usually do shawls, and I’d never done anything with a “knit on” edging, but it was really slick.
You only cast on 3 stitches, and only cast off 25. Very clever.

Well done verybusymonkey.
Well done.

or,

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Maui anymore”

Yeah.
We’re back.

It was amazingly beautiful-

And this one is to prove that I was actually there, and I didn’t steal these photos from some tropical paradise promotional site 🙂

There were lots of cool chickens-

And even some cows and horses, (which I didn’t think to photo)

But I only saw one sheep.

And he was in the window of an art gallery!

Way cool, though. Cast in bronze, seashells for fleece. Very Maui sheep.

Good thing I brought some Frank and Felix with to keep me from going into complete wool withdrawal.

Here is my travel knitting (Canyonlands shawl, by verybusymonkey) not-so-artfully arranged on my lap in the airport-

I thought the wavy lace edge made it a good fit for surfside knitting.
And I happened to have some nice ocean-y colors in my stash from last summers indigo adventure.

When it’s all done and blocked I hope it will be a nice Maui memento.