Knitting with Kai Llama

You may recall, about seven months ago, I had my llama, Kai, sheared for the first time since she came to live at Critter Farm:

The shearer was a really awesome lady who did an impressive job:

 She sheared in such a way that Kai's fiber came off in two large sheets:

And, at the end of the day, that huge "rug" that Kai had been carrying around for two years, fit into an empty feed bag:

I played around with this fiber for days afterwards.  It was so soft.  This whole shearing process was completely new and totally fascinating to me:Kai looked so beautiful (and so young!) with her two years worth of fiber removed: But now that I had all this beautiful fiber, I had no idea what to do with it.  For fun, I offered it up on my blog and was surprised by all the responses I got.  Some of my blogging buddies actually wanted portions of it!  So, George the cat and I sat on my front porch one afternoon and packaged up baggies of it for everyone who wanted to experiment with it:

The majority of it, though, went to my blog friend, Clairz, over at The Zees Go West.  She is a spinner extraordinaire and wanted to spin some of Kai's fiber "rug" into yarn.  She even promised to send me a bit of it, but I was just so tickled she wanted some of Kai's fiber, I didn't really expect anything in return.  So, imagine my surprise when I received a box in the mail last week and found all of this beautiful Kai yarn inside (the smaller baggie also included some beautiful sheep's wool yarn and alpaca yarn for comparison):

Skein after beautiful skein of Kai yarn is now in my possession:

Hard to believe now that this was once the matted coat my llama wore:
You can read all about how Clairz turned that messy, debris-filled coat that Kai wore into this lovely yarn by clicking here:  "Spinning Kai"

This yarn is softer than you can possibly imagine and so gorgeous. Unbelievably, it still smells like Kai! The good smelling part of Kai, that is... :-):And, just so you know...my mom, who is a very passionate knitter, has been waiting (rather impatiently, I might add) for this yarn.  Here she is, grabbing up every single skein in sight.  Sadly, I didn't manage to capture the ecstatic look in her eye:

My mom put my youngest son, Aidan, immediately to work:

 And she couldn't wait to get those knitting needles working:

 If there's enough yarn, Aidan and I will both get hats:

And then Aidan and I will wear Kai llama on our heads:

I think Kai would like this, don't you?