Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Cackles of glee

This post? Lots and lots of pictures. Just a warning...
(also, I am about a week or so late in posting all the details. Many apologies)

So I'm part of this group on Ravelry, Knitters on Belay. For those of us climbing types. Anyways, there was a swap posted on the message board. I got to thinking "hey, I've never done this before, could be fun." So. The theme: my town. (Where I, the sender, live, not the play) Included also? Knitting and climbing, obviously. The start date came around, and I got my buddy's name and address, and lo and behold! She lives in Vancouver. Hmmm, thinks Kit. This is going to be harder than I thought.... In any case. After much ado, and not much else, besides getting used to the new job, and climbing some, and knitting some, and finishing up the old job, I finally got everything together, and rocked out some hand delivery on Sunday.

All together there was:
A hand strength/stress ball
A Vancouver touristy keychain
A climbing and knitting map of Vancouver, Richmond, and North Van
A (fun and reversible) little bag
Some Elann Esprit
And some Skacel Merino Lace
Plus a fun little tape measure
and some stitch markers, climbing themed.

The markers were something I wasn't planning to do, but that worked out nicely. The original throught was to use retired (used, and not wanted/useful any more) "protection" (things that can keep you from falling to your death) to make stitch markers. Things like cam lobes, hexes, stoppers, stuff like that, in small sizes. But nobody responded to my notes on message boards in time for me to get things dealt with. So I turned to the Fimo (yay, fimo) and made my own. After finding the paint, and comandeering a paintbrush (because the old landlord still has mine from before moving) it was easy to make distictive and fun markers. Whee!



And then Wednesday, I got home to a package on the steps!



I was so very excited that I did not even go into the house; I took it out to the lawn and opened it there, still in my work clothes, covered in drywall dust, stucco and silicon, and took pictures. Sarah is definitely amazing, and I'm pretty sure we're kindred spirits. Everything was individually wrapped, with semi-cryptic notes attached, all bundled together in a 5.10 shoe box.



After much cutting of tape (lots of tape. It seemed like a whole roll) I now have a whole bunch of new toys, all of them green. As follows: A quickdraw, some soap, nail clippers, candy rocks (mostly consumed by Marksman, but I let him), yarn needles, sheep notebook, chocolate, Indigo Moon yarn, stitch markers, chocolate (not consumed yet), seeds for a garden full of pacific-northwestern plants, a magnet with a picture of The Chief, and a handy cloth shopping bag. Isn't it pretty?



Like I said before, kindred spirits, but also, mind-readers? Because this is stuff that I likely wouldn't spoil myself with, but would look at, say "ooh, pretty," and catalogue for another time. The yarn, especially, because it is a colourway that I love, and a beautiful yarn in and of itself, but I'm not prone to treating myself to things like small-batch handdyes, or anything like that. I tend to hang on to my wallet (or hand it to the boy) and buy similar things; large-mill brightly coloured sock yarn, mostly. And so for a small-mill/small-batch/local yarn to end up in my stash is fortuitous indeed, and Sarah is a goddess. Now I just have to wait for the time to come when I can plant my own garden, and see what's in the package waiting to sprout! The current lack of garden is due to a few things, mostly the kids upstairs (I live in a basement) being somewhat unruly, and me not wanting them to kick things over if I have a potted garden at the top of my stairs, and the fact that I moved in in May, well after the time for spring planting had passed. So now I wait patiently for an opportunity to have green things again. And while I wait, I will make green socks, instead.



(Though I still have to finish Marksman's grey ones... I have about 3 inches left, including all the decreasing for the toe. The second one is suffering from the distinct lack of bus-knitting I am currently engaged in. Which is to say none.)