Open letters to myself.

Dear Self,

Hello. How are you? It's been a long time -- too long, in fact. I hope this letter finds you well and in good health and good spirits.

Love,

The Yarnista

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Dear Self,

I have a small question for you. I hope you won't be offended, but I wanted to know how it's possible that you took nine pictures of your Easter centerpiece, and every single one of them is blurry? Did you purposely make them blurry? If so, why?



Maybe next time you shouldn't try to test the limits of that fancy camera lens. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.



Again, don't mind me saying so, but you did a terrible job of getting rid of the yarn in the crystal bowl next to the yarn. The yarn was pretty -- why did you take it out? Are you afraid you're going to spoil the May selections for club members?

I hope this letter finds you in good health and good spirits.

Love,

The Yarnista

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Dear Self,

Please be sure that next time you accost a White House volunteer, you do it nicely. There's no need to get huffy when the word dyeing is misspelled all over White House signs and programs. Please, consider that it's a  holiday event for children and cut people some slack.



I know you feel that your tax money is being wasted on misspelled signs, but it's highly doubtful that anyone else noticed. You were probably one of the only Yarnistas in attendance.



What's that? You were only upset on the inside and you didn't actually say anything? Oh, well, that's a relief. Perhaps you did learn some manners after all.  Did you say anything to the President?



No? What about the First Lady?



Good. I'm sure they're busy with other important things. I'm sure they didn't make the signs or programs that describe all the eggs dying.  I certainly hope you didn't hurt the feelings of either of the Obama girls or Michelle Obama's mother. You would never live that down.



Whew. You can rest your head easily tonight. I hope this letter finds you well and in good health and good spirits.

Sweet Dreams,

The Yarnista

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Dear Self,

No, you're not as fit and stylish as Michelle Obama. Sorry.



I know you went to Macy's and bought yourself a new spring dress. You can't put lipstick on a pig. Or, you can, but it just won't look as good as it would if you put lipstick on Michelle Obama.



What, are you squinting? See, Michelle Obama knows that she should open her eyes for the camera and not squint. It doesn't really matter how bright it is. When you squint, you look like this:



Also, you're not fooling anyone. Here you are, putting pictures on a blog associated with a business that has the word Irish in its name, and what are you wearing here? Green? Orange? White?

Hello?



Meow.

The Yarnista

P.S. I hope this letter finds you well and in good health and good spirits.

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Dear Self,

I hope this letter finds you well and in good health and good spirits. But I'm surprised you're just now figuring out that the Easter Bunny is, in fact, blind. The Easter Bunny must be led by the arm wherever it goes so it doesn't bump into things. It wears glasses, but they don't really help much.





Sorry to spoil all the fun.


Love,

The Yarnista

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Dear Self,

The next time someone asks you, "Should we bring snacks for our two year old to this long event, or should we not bring snacks for our two year old?", pick the first one.

Just trying to be helpful. I hope this letter finds you well and in good health and good spirits.

The Yarnista

Glimpse of the graveyard

Taken, once again, with my pocket camera under terrible lighting conditions. I bought this camera thinking it would be nice to have a little camera in my purse for snapshots, and the picture quality is just not that great indoors.  But I digress.

Here's about 1/3 of the 3IG yarn graveyard.  Periodically, I clean it out and donate the yarn to a worthwhile cause. The last time it was cleaned out, I donated two full lawn and leaf bags of yarn to a senior center.



There's nothing wrong with the yarn in the graveyard, perse. The yarn will still make someone a perfectly serviceable garment, it just doesn't look quite right. Take the yarn in the immediate foreground, for example. It's supposed to be Clodagh. You can see how it looks a little more red/orange than burgundy. Who knows why that happened. Barometric pressure? The age of the dye solution? Hard to say.

Perhaps I'll make some graveyard kits and put them up for sale here on the blog. I could take 1/2 ounce from a variety of colorways in the same yarn weight and send them all together so you can make a scrappy pair of mismatched __________________ socks/mittens/wool baby pants (fill in the blank.)

Which reminds me, I have hatched a brilliant plan. More on that tomorrow!

The secret to my success

The secret to my success is manyfold. Is manyfold even a word? It better be, because it's part of the secret of my success. I wouldn't want the secret to my success to be a made up word.

Because the secret to my success is manyfold, I shall not endeavor to delineate them all in this post. Instead, I shall give you two. Two secrets.

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Please forgive the picture quality. I was taking it with my snapshot camera under fluorescent lighting.

Coffee and chocolate are the secrets to my success. The love runs deep. They both act on the creative, hard-working part of my brain, I think. They have to, there's no other explanation.

I just got this single cup coffee maker for the other people in the studio. I actually don't use it, because I prefer coffee the strength of paint thinner (cream, no sugar), and this doesn't allow me to adjust for that. But the candy? That I do help myself to. With three of us, I have to refill the candy jar twice a week. Sometimes I'll throw a few Jujubes in there for the person who likes them, but otherwise, it's all chocolate all the time.

If you don't like coffee and/or chocolate, I don't know what to say to you. You are foreign to me.

The Yarnista happily accepts gifts of both coffee and chocolate. Just sayin'.

Whatever shall the Yarnista do?

Pray tell, gentle readers, whatever shall she do?

Whatever shall she do with all this yarn?



Pass the smelling salts!











P.S. In case you were wondering, you are not missing the point of this post. There is no point. Alas and alack.

I am in love with this sock.

And why wouldn't I be? What's not to love about a cushiony, yummy, green cabled sock?

The pattern is called Craic, as in "crack," as in, "Gaelic word for fun," not, "Street drug that will get you locked up." I may sell Craic, but I draw the line at crack.

What time is it? Have I had enough coffee? Did I fall asleep without brushing my teeth? Did I leave my contacts in all night? The answers are: 8:13am, no, yes, and yes. This actually explains a lot.

Poor Hannah Six, I am rambling when I should be showing off her pattern.



And the side:



Love the back:



Now, for those of you who are newer knitters and are thinking to yourselves, "There's no way I could knit those, they're too complicated," let me fill you in on a little secret.

Cables are just knitting stitches out of order.

That's all they are. You create the complicated look by putting some stitches on a little holder, knitting some more stitches off your regular needle, putting the stitches from the holder back on your regular needle, and then knitting those. In fact, most patterns (like this one) tell you how to do the cables.

These socks really are just lovely, it makes the Yarnista happy just to see them.

Craic Socks. You know you want them. 

(Ravel it.)