A Bluestocking Knits

I ended up somehow with a drawer-full of this lovely stuff, Araucania Nature Wool, a dozen skeins or so in four colors — the old Tall Mouse craft store in Yorba Linda used to every so often have sock yarn or something else that wasn't a novelty yarn, and I picked up one of these skeins in amazement one day, and then every few months bought another, because nobody else did, until the supply was gone.

The colors are rich and varied, as you would expect from kettle-dyed skeins, the red especially vivid.

The wool has a slightly rough softness to it, so that you know you're wearing wool but you like it.

Alas, both Tall Mouse and Nature Wool are no more.  What to do with my drawer-full of wool?  It felts beautifully, I heard, and so I decided to make placemats in a random-stripe pattern.  Here are the first two —