JOINERS!

Well, I'm a joiner... and since I can never leave well enough alone, I have to then go and take it one step further. I've created a group on Ravelry for my friend PJ (american) and our friend Kate (England) and me (Canadian) to do Knit a longs together because Ravelry doesn't allow messages with more than one recipent. Now we have joiners (yay!) and we're hosting a KAL for more people than just ourselves. If you want to come and join, click this link (you need to have a Ravelry account)
I just found out via a scheduling error, that we are going on holiday in two weeks! SO EXCITED! Boy and I are sending kitty to the cat hotel for a holiday (he hates it, but it's better than the alternative!) and we're going to drive up to my dad's for a few days. I forsee fishing (with guns?), exploring, quadding, dog playing, knitting, tanning, wine, beer, ceasers, bbq, bocce, napping and anything else you can think of to jam into three days at the cabin! I also forsee a knock down, drag out fight over the good chair... I plan on winning this time and I'm not above pinching!
Now, this whole driving for 12 hours thing would normally squick me out because that's a long time to drive, but I have the love of my life to chat with and knitting! I will be doing some of the driving, but I will also be doing some of the passengering. And this means the ability to knit for long continuous bouts... (I hope... I've tried knitting in a car before and it's too vibratey, but maybe on the highway will be better. Granted, one of the times was in a Jeep Wrangler, outfitted for off roading, so that was brutal!). I've already started to plan my projects for both knitting on the road and knitting at the cabin. I will be taking my Haruni KAL project (afore mentioned) with me because, well, since this was sort of partially my doing, I should probably knit along... so I will bring that project, made out of either my hand dyed teal laceweight baby alpaca (no picture yet because I had to have it professionally photographed since I can NOT get the color to show up properly. The complication is that I want that laceweight for a shawl that I want to make but I didn't dye enough... so if I can get another skein to match then it's al going for the big shawl, but if I can't, then the big shawl will have to be out of something different and then I will make the KAL out of the laceweight. Sounds confusing, I know, but I"ll know by Friday afternoon what I'm using. If I have to go with my second choice, then it will be this

This is Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Canopy. It's so pretty! So that's one thing going with me for holidays. Then I will take some bulky alpaca so that I can work on my hat if I get tired of the laceweight. And I'm taking the garter stitch shawl that I'm designing (that's a maybe). And then the one I"m probably going to knit in the car will be a simple rectangular shawl that is made out of laceweight and designed by someone I know. And I'm planning on knitting it out of yarn I dyed last year when I was at my dad's. It's 100% baby alpaca laceweight and I dyed it in the Fraser Lake colorway. You'll see it's sort of messy looking below, but that's partly due to how I skeined it and partly due to it being sort of messy. But the lace I'm knitting with it will be very loosely knit, so the yarn shouldn't look like barf... fingers crossed.
So I'm in to dyeing yarn again, and I just got a spinning wheel on the weekend which I need to get set up and start spinning. I think it will give me a different consistency, so I"m going to finish the pink/purple handspun I"m doing on the spindle and start new with something else so that I don't mess up the look. The pink one is the one I"m putting the kitty whiskers in, which will also probably be easier to do with a spindle than on the wheel.
That's about all that's going on lately. I've got the next four days off, so I'm very looking forward to that. Boy is off tomorrow too, so we get to spend our FOURTH day off together in this whole year so far... spoiled, I know!