Day 22 January 22, 2010

Woo! Day 22!  I can't believe I've done this for three weeks and haven't taken a single picture of yarn! Today's shot corrects that oversight!  This is a yarn called Juliet (75% superwash wool, 25% nylon) by a company called Yarn Love.  The colorway (which inspires yarn love in me!) is called Nirvana. 

I am, among other things, a knitter.  I am not a prolific knitter.  I am not a particularly accomplished knitter.  But I am a passionate knitter - and I love yarn.  I have entirely too much yarn (and may perhaps have achieved SABLE - Stash Accumulated Beyond Life Expectancy).  The new kitten is a yarn-loving cat (not so our older cat who could care less about yarn) and has unearthed skeins I forgot I owned. Ahem.

THIS particular skein, however, I remember very well. I actually won it (me -who doesn't win anything, ever!) at Sock Summit in Portland Oregon last summer.  Sock Summit is just what it sounds like - a knitting convention for people who knit socks! Which I do - slowly.  I hadn't planned on going as Portland is a very long way from Ohio and it is a bit spendy to participate in the classes (let alone the huge marketplace).  But then, after planning a trip from San Francisco to Seattle, driving along US 1 and US 1A, a side trip to Portland was broached (to visit the famed Powell's books).  And that's when it hit me. The very day of the Portland day trip....was also Sock Summit! Well, it was fate - I simply HAD to go.  No classes - just "browsing" the marketplace and soaking in the atmosphere. 

I gamely entered every door-prize raffle at every booth and on my last pass through the marketplace, trying to figure out how much yarn I could squish into my already-full suitcase....I saw my name on a list of winners! I got to select the gorgeous yarn above and was very, very happy!  I also got the bonus experience of being part of a World Record - the most knitters knitting simultaneously in one spot for 15 consecutive minutes - very heady stuff!

At any rate, I still haven't knit the yarn I won.  I haven't decided how best to knit it up and frankly, I have too many other projects on the needles just now.  So back into the stash it goes - well hidden from kitten claws.