knitterly abundance

In the past few months, I have experienced some of the abundance the Universe has to offer. Some lovely things came my way.

Natalie from the Cloudy With a Chance of Fiber podcast (@cloudynatknit) asked us during a #knitchat on Twitter one day if anyone was knitting a sweater. I mentioned I would be but I can't afford a sweater's worth of yarn. She PMd me and said "what colors do you like?" and the next thing I know I get this box in the post.

Enough yarn for a sweater and then whatever else Natalie could fit into the box. Yarn for a hat. Some of her handspun. Plenty to keep me busy!

Not long after that, Ursa, my long time friend of 17 years and host of The Pagan Knitter podcast (@ThePaganKnitter), and formerly the dyer behind Gaia's Colours Fibre Arts, took me out for a birthday lunch. She said she was getting rid of yarn that didn't sell when she was shutting down her dye studio, would I be interested in going through it? UM YES.

So here we have an abundance of sock and lace weight yarn, a few bags of undyed roving that I will find a spinning wheel to work with, and then a few bags of tangled skeins. There will be lots of socks and shawls in my future...

Then one day I was on Twitter musing about knitted underwear or bras or something. My longtime reader and follower/friend @FelicityGS mentioned she had a book on knitted underwear, that she would send it to me.

When Brooke found out it was also my birthday, she delayed in sending the book a bit because she decided to knit me a present! She blogged about it here.

I think I can say with certainty that this is the finest thing anyone has ever made for me. It is lace, thousands of yards of yarn, I can't imagine how many hours it took (100+ I expect), and in three skeins of Malabrigo no less. So to Brooke I offer my infinite gratitude for such a beautiful piece! I wear it a lot (since it still gets cool at night) and will cherish this for as long as I live! I should point out that Brooke is in the category of "friend I haven't met yet", but one day we'll hang out, possibly at some fiber festival in the eastern United States...

In early in March Louse (@CaithnessCraft) of the Caithness Craft Collective podcast declared that we were having a fiber postcard swap, and that if we wanted to be included to send her a message and she would pair us up with buddy to swap with. The idea was that we would make a postcard and it didn't matter how fancy or simple, or even what kind of fiber, just that we make something. Well sure enough Louse paired me up with Judith (@elvetje), another "friend I haven't met yet" (so is Natalie, above, by the way), who is also waiting for immigration to the United States (but she has been waiting for years and she is in the Netherlands). The postcard I made for Judith was a poem I wrote and the state of Texas made from ribbon, stitched to a paper card. It's quite pedestrian compared to what Judith sent me and therefore I don't picture it here.

A stranded colour knitted matryoshka of me and Dan, ribbons and a card! 

On the back this is "To:    " and then Judith's depiction of me, yarnsalad. I love it!

Wait! There's more!

Now my memory is a bit fuzzy on this one, but at some point I asked LouiseJHunt, who lives in northern Scotland, about woad - dyeing with woad or woad-coloured yarn. This happened when I was still living in Ucluelet, I think, which was almost a year ago now. After a bit of information-finding, it turned out that you can't send woad (a plant used for dyeing things blue) to Canada or the United States. Something about botanical content, I bet. At any rate, Louise offered to dye up some yarn for me and send it. I delayed in having her sending it to me because I thought I would be moving soon. That was in September. When she was offering to make leather bookmarks for her lovely listeners, I took her up on it and she sent me this yarn as well.

437 yards of 80%baby suri alpaca and 20% fine merino in lace weight. It's beautiful!

So there you have it. I've been meaning to put this post up for a long time, and it's been more than a month now since I have received all this knitterly abundance. Here I offer up my thanks to all those mentioned here who have contributed to my habit, helped me to feel loved, and have shown me that the Universe is a place of abundance. Thank you, my dear friends!

knitting FO & WIPs

Here are some things I have been working on, knitwise...

Above is a meditation mat, knit entirely in garter stitch using up tons of little bits of colored yarn threaded together with some undyed worsted & aran I found. It ended up being bigger than I planned but it will double nicely as a lap blanket, should the need arise. I might actually make more of these, using other colours as the base colour but continue the rainbow throughout. Still have to weave in ends and block it. 

This is just a simple toe-up simple sock with a short row heel. These are meant to be house socks. I'm using a Mirasol yarn and I love it! I was going to keep going until I ran out of yarn (two 50g balls) but it was already taller than I was planning so the end of the first ball went into the above mat. This is easy take-along knitting or social knitting. Hopefully I will be done this soon!

I don't remember if I mentioned these before, but these are Dan and Stacey Reunion socks. I'm using Cookie A's Sam pattern from Sock Innovation, and I'm using two different yarns as I'm doing this two at a time. This pattern does NOT lend itself well to this technique so I've had to do a fair amount of mental yoga to get it going, but I'm almost past the patterned section, the foot is entirely stockinette. Dan and I have roughly the same size feet, so we are going to share both pairs of socks. Isn't it romantic? I know, we are so mushy.

Today I paid for and downloaded my first pattern/book ever. Natalie from the Cloudy With a Chance of Fiber podcast and the woman behind #knitchat on Twitter was kind enough to send me a box stuffed with enough yarn to make a sweater and then some.

After poring over patterns in Ravelry, I found the one I'm going to knit. I'm going to keep that quiet for a bit, until I'm certain I will finish it, but it's a top down cardi.

an enriching experience

I just had a really good experience tonight and wanted to share it with you.

I have mentioned here before how much I love Twitter and the Thursday night #knitchat that has been running every week for more than a year now. #knitchat began with Natalie from the Cloudy with a Chance of Fiber podcast, and her co-host Rachel (who recently gave birth to a son) is often an active participant.

During this year of being a part of the #knitchat community, I have made some pretty great Twitter friends, I feel like if/when I actually meet these people in person that it will be just like old times, like no time had past, as if we've been friends forever.

Natalie is a self-proclaimed tech geek (you did say that once, right?). She works in tech, so is always in the know about cutting edge technologies, especially when it comes to social media. A few days ago when I suggested that we have a "weaving in ends" party (note for non-knitters: when you are finished knitting a project, there are always tails of yarn that need to be woven into the fabric) for all our Christmas gifts. Natalie made it happen. She opened up a discussion thread in Ravelry, gave us the link with information on how to set it up, and announced to Twitter when it would be.

It was my first time with using Google Hangout, and I think you have to be logged into Google+ for it to work. I haven't been using Google+ very much (though I signed up for it a few months ago on Natalie's advice) but Google Hangout is a very powerful tool. It's like Skyping with nine of your best friends. Or up to nine - I guess there is a limit of 10 people, but tonight there were only three of us.

Natalie beckoned me on Twitter to come a bit earlier, to make sure it worked. After some fussing with my computer, I was able to hear Natalie and she could hear me! We talked about our knitting (and I confessed I had no ends to weave in because I was compelled to wrap all my Christmas gifts today, hence the ends were done already). I am very familiar with Natalie's voice because I listen to her podcast - but none of my Internet friends had heard the voice of yarnsalad until tonight. :-) 

It was great. I blog, Tweet, and post on Ravelry and Facebook, but of course what you read here is the cleaned up version. I have to be politic about what I write so as not to offend anyone or air any dirty laundry. With Google Hangout I was able to have a fairly intimate conversation with someone I have long considered my friend, but with whom I had never had a discussion with until tonight.

Maia joined us after about half an hour, and there was some interesting conversation about yarn shops (in Portland, Northern California, and Victoria), some TV shows I will have to see when Dan and I get Netflix (he doesn't know we're doing this yet, but we are). We talked about the #knitchat KAL (knit-a-long). By the way - if you want to participate and haven't voted, you should TOTALLY go vote for Nathan's Scale Mitts. They would be a quick easy knit to do, in a worsted or aran yarn. Another pattern is leading the polls right now, but it has a dumb name and even though it's pretty, I feel a special allegiance to Nathan, who has long been a participant on #knitchat and is also a dear friend I've never met.

Sam got to participate in this hangout too. She was sleeping, but I got her up, held her in front of my webcam, then put her back on the bed. She wasn't really interested.

well now I _have_ to blog today

O gosh my dear readers, I'm so sorry I haven't posted in nearly two weeks. Really? Twelve days?

I actually started a post telling you all about my visit with my sister & her daughter. It was tremendous fun and I have lots of pictures. That will have to wait.

Something happened today that made my day. I was driving home from Tofino, listening to the KnitWits podcast, when I heard Rick mention some of the listeners "there are even people with names like yarnsalad..." I was delighted! That's the third podcast now that I have been mentioned on (the other two being Caithness Craft Collective and Cloudy with a Chance of Fiber). Imagine how silly I felt when I discovered that this podcast that I had been mentioned on was released on March 11th. As in over a month ago. Sorry Rick & Carin. I love your show! I'm just working my way through it is all.

What else can I tell you to tide you over until I can make a proper post.. We have had a few days of sun here in Ucluelet. We know this doesn't mean winter is over. Winter is not over until April 30th, according to the signs on either side of The Pass, which tell you you must have tire chains or winter tires between October 1st and April 30th. Seven months of winter. And sunny days, while good for one's mood, do not necessarily mean warm. I think our high today was 10 - and it's been hovering around 7 for the last few weeks, so 10 isn't much of an improvement. O well. Soon we will have spring.

Knitting-wise, I have not actually been knitting very much since the Sock Retreat. Really. I have finished a piece for a secret project, and am working on another piece for that same secret project, which I obviously can't tell you about yet. But that is really fun and I can't wait to see it all come together. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it. All of my Cookie A socks are on hold. I have gone back to a pair of socks I started almost a year ago and I really must get them finished. I only recenlty figured out how to manage the intarsia bit (thanks to a friend's help) so once I get that section done, I think these socks will fly off the needles and will be given to their intended recipient. Then I'll be on a sock-finishing streak, I'm sure. I hope. Just in time for flip-flop season.