The box had this lovely, happy sketch on the outside:
Open it up to find this:
(Nope, she didn't send Sunny to me - Sunny just comes running at the faintest scent/sound of tissue paper)
Here's layer one of generosity:
And layer two:
All told, Meg sent along four(!) skeins of yarn she dyed herself. She has a fabulous eye for color - everything is very happy and spring-y, and it brought a smile to my face. She also included a ladybug tape measure, a water bottle with a Northwest Territories logo (yep, my package came a long way!), some little monkey key tags, a plush/velour flower, a lovely bookmark, a set of chibi darning needles, and two adorable pots to start some flowers.
Here's the yarn (and yes, I've already asked her to please open an etsy shop):
And some closeups:
The other Canadian to spread sunshine in Indy last week was the Harlot. I don't think I can add anything that hasn't already been blogged. She was charming and funny and great.
ZEN was supposed to attend, and represent the Indiana babies, but she threw up, in the car, on her way to the bookstore. ZEN's lovely father was bringing her to me at the store and had to turn around and clean her up and put her to bed - and miss his baseball practice. To put that in perspective, baseball is to him as knitting is to me. Except he can't do it year-round, so it was wonderful of him to miss practice for this!
And finally, a few FOs, just to show that I do occassionally finish something I start:
This is the blanket for my friend Gina's son-to-be. She is doing a knights and dragons theme in his room. I am going to hire out the finishing (putting a flannel backing on it to keep his little fingers from getting entangled in the intarsia mess. I am not good at intarsia. I do not like intarsia. I will continue to do intarsia only when I need to make a gift for a baby, toddler or child.
Ah, this is what I am calling my Oh Crap!-otis. I was working from a 759-yard hank of yarn. If you know the Clapotis pattern, you know that Kate Gilbert initially made it with 3 skeins of Lion & Lamb. Lion and Lamb has 205 yards per skein. The pattern was later modified to call for 4 skeins, but most people didn't use much of the fourth. Math is not my forte, but one would think 759 yards would suffice. Uh, no. Not so much. I did only 12 straight rows, rather than 13, and I still ran out of yarn, so this is a rare 5-sided Clapotis. But, it's not that noticeable if I wrap it around my neck, so I suppose it's OK. And I did love the Makalu Lambgora yarn.
I knit these mitts with some handspun I got at the Fiber Event. The pattern is from Tangle, and is called Nancy K. I really enjoyed these - a quick knit, and I like the button detail. I will knit them again, but I will probably use an even yarn, and I would not do the picot bind-off with the bulkier yarn.
