Wonderful Friends!

I've had a great week! And I've been reminded how incredibly lucky I am to have made so many wonderful friends through knitting.

Monday I got a surprise gift from my friend KJ, who lives near Jayne (of the lovely See Jayne Knits!) in Vancouver. KJ and I met through the About.com Knitting Forum, where she is known as Lunadog, and I visited with her in 2005. Then last year we met at Stitches West and had so much fun we were exhausted every night!

Lunadog works with a Vancouver animal rescue group, and I sent her some White Buffalo recently to help with a fundraiser auction. Well, lookee what came in my package!! Here's a gorgeous new kitty bed (Wendy's pattern) for Midnight! I am amazed at how pretty this turned out, considering the um, odd colors of WB I sent. The bed sits quite properly as a cuddly cup just kitty-sized, as shown on the link page, but I wanted to show the pretty colors and perfectly matched trim, so I squashed it for the photo. As soon as I can, I'll post pictures of Miss Elegant Pawsitude enjoying her new bed. (Why did I have White Buffalo, you ask? Well, um, it was really, really cheap and I had ideas about lots of felted projects. After 2 years' marinating in the stash, I admitted to myself that I don't like felting, and KJ's projects are the best use of this warm yarn I can think of.)

KJ sent some other wonderful goodies, too! She is a spinner and sent me a skein of her handspun; I don't know what it wants to be yet, but the yarn is lovely, with one tightly spun strand and a much fluffier one. Yum! And, as a laugh at Jayne's expense, I received a beautiful skein of Araucania Nature Wool, "one of the few yarns left after Jayne shopped!" at a LYS near both of them that was going out of business. And, as if that wasn't a terrific gift, she sent 6 lovely iridescent shell buttons and a matching shawl pin.


Then yesterday I had appointments in West LA, and I was able to get together with Knittess , also known as Mary Tess, for lunch. She recently made a trip to Austin, Texas on family business and brought me yarn!! How great is that!! This is Fauna, a very, very soft 70% baby alpaca/30% merino yarn, from The Fibre Company (dot com); the color is Blue Lagoon. This is dreamy yarn! The colors are melded into a wonderful tweedy effect, with greens, blues and mossy shades all together.

And Mary Tess brought me one of her new inventions: a tethered stitch marker for socks. She is a truly fine knitter, and works socks exclusively on dpns, so designed this to solve the problem of sock markers that go flying off the dpns. The fittings are sterling silver, and the little fish matches a set of markers she made for me a couple of years ago. Knittess makes the most beautifully-crafted markers, with never an end of the wires sticking out to snag on knitting. Click on the picture and look closely at the joins in a larger view. I am in awe of her skills with beadwork!

Continuing this week's theme of iridescent goodies coming my way, I stopped in at a nearby Coldwater Creek store (one of my fav's for many years!) to exchange a couple of tops, and found that there was a gift with purchase, just the size of my exchange; they treat it as a return and a new purchase! Look at this lovely sterling-silver and abalone bracelet! How great is that???