Swap-tacular

 Today, a squished-up but well-sealed box arrived. All the way from Colorado.

Oooooh! inside were some lovingly wrapped parcels.

 Six, to be exact, and cards to go with them.
It's my Loopy swap package!

 My wonderful swap partner chose travel & stories as her theme. For those who know me, you know this couldn't be a more perfect theme for me.
She started off with a handmade card featuring maps, explaining her choice of theme. I'm loving this already!

But let's get to package number one.

 Each parcel contains a little sheepy note, explaining why the pressie was included. Number one states that all journeys start with comfy feet. So I got Heel cream! The best foot-pampering cream in the world. This is so coming to the snow with me.

 Next up, some adorable stitch markers (a unicorn, a mushroom, a wizard and a rainbow) and tab markers in an awesome little case. These reminded my partner of stories and the sharing thereof. As a writer, I never have enough tab notes. And as a knitter, I never have enough adorable stitch markers.

 Next was a big, squishy parcel.
It's socks!
Not just any socks. Firefly-colored socks knit into the "Intrepid Traveller" pattern. Gorgeous and comfy. I'm wearing them as I type this.

 But wait, there's more! There is Colorado chocolate with a fridge magnet (I love travel magnets, don't you?) and Jolly Ranchers, which I'd heard of, but had never tried. Until now. They are so good!

 Of course, swap packages come with yarny goodness. The photo does not capture the fabulous glow of this gorgeous madelinetosh sock yarn.
How much do I love MadTosh? Oh yeah, it's lots. And lots. This is a wonderfully complex pink-and-purple. LOVE!

And finally, because Australia can be difficult to send tea to, my wonderful swapper sent me a tea mug to put my own tea into.
I've been coveting my colleague's awesome tea travel mug (exactly like this one!) every time she brought it to work.
This is beyond fabulous!

 So here is the fantabulous package in all its glory.
Am I spoilt or what?

Oh yeah. Lucky, lucky me.



Win!

Life is perfect.

Win again!

I have long maintained that my knitting is lucky. And I have once again been proven right!
Nerd Wars has ended, and thanks to my dissertation blanket (aka the multi-block cat squishie of endless garter ridges), I won not only a pattern for robot mitts (Gear Isle by Odessa Reichel), I also won yarn! Who doesn't love yarn?
Exactly.
Win.

Cloudy Days

The last of the Stephen West shawl club patterns, and it's a cutie.

The perfect project to bust some stash.

I'm using my leftover Another Crafty Girl in Squirtle, a colour I am insanely in love with, paired with leftover Wollmeise in Feldmaus. I didn't think I had enough yarn to complete the project, but I was hoping for wool magic.

Well, it didn't happen.
Fortunately, through the magic of Ravelry, I found some more Feldmaus in a destash, but unfortunately, it's much darker than what I had (and somehow not as pretty. It's much more mouse brown than nest brown).
But I could finish the shawl, and it's very wearable. It's really more of a sideways scarf, actually. It goes perfectly with a brown felt beret that is an autumn/winter staple for me.

Feed Your Artists

We were going on a day trip to Geelong and I needed something new to cast on.
I'd bought a skein of Noro Kureyon while we were in Japan, and I knew it needed to be a hat.
A Starving Artist, to be precise. The pattern is by Laura Linneman, of Knit Girllls fame.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable knit. Quick, straight-forward and pretty. The yarn is interesting to work with, and the colours are just as magical as people say they are.
This may well become my new favourite hat, and that's saying a lot.

I am made from WIN.

I'm a lucky person. Not $50-bill on the sidewalk lucky, but things-work-out lucky.
I don't win things very often, and I'm certainly no sweepstaker.
In fact, I can tell you every single item I've won in anything, ever.

This week, however, has been unusually full of win.
First, I got a message from a sock knitting Ravelry group, Sock Knitters Anonymous. I'd knitted their mystery sock back in September. Lovely sock, adored the yarn, fell in love with the colour.
And now I've won a prize. And it's yarn!
I got to pick a skein of Goddess Knits sock yarn from her Etsy shop. In honour of the occasion, I picked one in a cheery looking yellow-green, to remind me of the chartreuse sock challenge.
That, and my stash is woefully low on both yellow and green.

But wait, there's more!
Today I come home to a message from my indomitable Nerd Wars team captain, telling me I've won the Round 1 submission draw!

So full of win.

So in short, knit along with others, and fight for your nerddom. Not only does it lead to all kinds of fantastic projects and stretch your knitting, sometimes, you can even walk away with cool prizes for your efforts.

In which I am in love.

The search is over.
I can call off my stash quest, because I. Am. In. Love.
When I first met my OTL (one true love), I wasn't expecting it to be love at first sight.
We met on the internet, *the* dating medium of choice for the lonely, stash-enhancement-seeking knitter anywhere in the world.
My OTL came from a pedigree I'd heard about. Others had fallen in love with it, too. Or at least, it's other-colored cousins.

I'm new at this, I thought. I should experiment. If it's not true love, it will still be a good fling.
Ah yes, the fling.

I tasked my favorite enabler with setting us up. Money changed virtual hands, and a month later, we finally met.

Can words describe the pure bliss when I first laid eyes (and then hands, and then, most disturbingly, face) on my OTL?
Soft. Smooth. Sleek. And the color of the autumn I always dream of experiencing. Or more precisely, the color of a bag of delicious golden Haribo gummy bears.
It was meant to be.

There were others with my OTL. Other potential flings. Famous pedigrees. Beautiful in their own right.
But they were not my OTL.

What? You want to know more about my OTL? Very well. let me introduce you.
The Sanguine Gryphon makes a rather well-known sock yarn called Bugga!, which is not only fun to say, but comes in a wide assortment of beautiful colors, all named after various invertebrae. From butterflies to millipedes, from scorpions to killer bees, you'll find rich, many-hued colors.
But none as beautiful as the Wandering Glider. MY Wandering Glider.

The yarn is made from 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere and 10% nylon. And 31% fairy magic. One skein is a generous 4oz/412 yards.
Enough for a pair of socks.
Or, oooh, a shawl. I want to keem my OTL close. Close to my face where i can snuggle it with impunity.
it's time to tackle my first shawl project.
I chose Pogona, by Stephen West. It seems simple enough, and it's coming along nicely.
As a bonus, spring has been unseasonably cold. It might be shawl weather for a while yet.

Then again, I'm known to grossly underestimate how long knitting projects take. If I can get this shawl finished by February so I can take it with me when travelling, I'll consider it a great success.

So that's me and my OTL. Part of me wants to go out and buy a sweater's worth of this yarn. The other parts of me want to buy more. And in many colors.
Maybe I'm ready for the commitment of a full garment. Be afraid for me, my loves. Be very afraid.