A Little Souvenir Shopping

A sample of banded agate

I joined some of my family in the UP (Michigan) earlier this week. We had a wonderful time in some cabins right on the shore of Lake Superior. I practically grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario so it was familiar yet different. The lake was warm enough to swim in and we had some good waves a couple days. Lots of fun!

We also had some cooler weather and that was a perfect excuse to visit a "local" craft store. (Local is relative...this was a good 30 minute drive.)

I kept up my habit of picking up souvenir yarn. They had some lovely sock wool from Schoppel-Wolle that I fell for.

Containing a good red doesn't hurt!

Orange isn't bad either.

You can see it's not packaged in a normal hank or skein. They have dyed two strands at the same time and then wound them onto a spool. You can then unwind two balls that should match and produce "identical" socks. This is one solution to the "problem" of fraternal socks. I don't really mind fraternal socks, but this will be fun to try.

The final push was my sister Judy who loved how these samples:

looked a lot like agates. (She is just a little obsessed with finding an agate on the beaches there.)

Maybe to emphasize the sameness of the two socks, I'll knit these two at a time. I've been itching for an excuse...