Thrilling conclusion of the Tour de Fleece + Maui Recap

Well, it was a little less than thrilling, because my spinning flagged toward the end. Not because I was sick of it, heavens no, but because I was engaged with other things. Namely, snorkeling.



Sometimes, with sea turtles.




Sometimes, with fellow blogger Emily.



Sometimes, tiki drinks followed.



It was, perhaps needless to say, awesome. I did actually spend a fair amount of time spinning. Sometimes on the lanai of our condo.



Once at a lavender farm.



The progress for the week I was there was not too shabby.



It's somewhat tragic that Maui has no yarn stores. Not a one! Granted, it's a little hard to imagine what one knits when it's 85 degrees Fahrenheit every day year round. It would be a lot of loosely knit silk, cotton, and linen, I'm guessing. Plus the one wool hat for going up to the Haleakala summit at 10,000 ft.

What Hawaii does have a great tradition of is quilting. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to take a quilting class at the delightful Maui Quilt Shop while I was there.

I have only flirted with quilting a little bit. It was long ago, in a galaxy far far away, when I rode the school bus to Mrs. Leerkes' farm to have after school sewing lessons at her screened-in front porch. That was all machine work. Hawaiian quilting is entirely done by hand. It's hard, y'all. I'm determined to eventually finish this one piece. It'll probably take me years, but I'll be proud of it, and maybe by the end my stitches won't look like a complete disgrace on the wrong side of the fabric.



To bring this back to the Tour de Fleece, here's a family photo of all the finished yarn for the week. I did not complete all my goals: the charkha cotton is still incomplete. Still, I'm quite proud of what I did get finished. Now back to regularly scheduled programming in which I also do things like knit, crochet, read books, etc.