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Festivus 2010

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It's been a long, long time since I blogged anything. I blame a number of factors, all of which too boring to detail here and now. But, I finally gave myself some motivation (I couldn't wear my festivus gift until I photographed it; and it's only a small step to blogging once I have the photo!)

The TCYW Ravelry group's Festivus 2010 was held in December. The basic concept is that each person in the group who wants to take part gives a fibre art gift to one person, and receives from someone else. You know who you're giving to, but not who you're receiving from. There's a price limit, and we all go out for dinner some place nice. This year it was organised by the inimitable Beentsy and Yarnpiggy, and it was, just like last year, an excuse for spoiling each other and being spoiled.

It turns out that having a mystery spoiler/spoilee is also a good way to get to know someone you might not have previously known; my spoiler was Lady Sheepsbane whom I hadn't met before. With help of appropriate Ravelry forum postings she came up with just the right gift (that's the Ravelry link), knitted in the right size and colour. And some lovely handspun yarn that hasn't told me yet what it wants to be, a notebook just the right size (small enough to fit in my purse), and a candy to top it off. A perfect combination of festivus items.

Festivus Spoils

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One of the knitting groups I'm in on Ravelry meets locally, and beentsy and yarnpiggy organised a Festivus swap (secret Santa). I was lucky to get beentsy to knit for, and even luckier that damselfly drew me to spoil. Which she did.

The scarf is knitted from her own hand-spun, with beads on the end. The colour is more blue-gray, like in the top left photo. One of the chocolate bars has chili pepper and cinnamon, the other coconut macadamia curry (yep, really). Four types of tea: lavender, winter fruit spice, vanilla, and rose congou. Hand-made stitch markers. And, to top it off, a pattern for Sivia Harding's Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl. I feel blessed and very lucky!

Homecraft

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For a change, the Ravelry group I knit with decided to go on a field trip, and it didn't take much for me to convince them to try Homecraft Importers. The web site is new, and obviously still has some problems, but I do like the store. It has yarns, threads, and other supplies for knitting, crochet, and needlework. Supporting that range of fibre crafts is rare here in Vancouver, most of the LYS really only have knitting yarns and maybe some crochet hooks. We had fun looking at the brilliant rayon and silk stitching threads, the different yarns, and tried our best to enable each other to buy more. I was quite restrained and only bought enough yarn (superwash merino, nice and practical) for some hats for the kids. Not that I know when I'll get to knit them, of course, but I have hopes.

And one day maybe I'll have an excuse to make something out of some of the more exotic yarns there. Bamboo, or maybe that Bouton d'Or Ksar, a really soft yarn with camel and wool. It was gorgeous!

Then down to Country Beads for all the people making the Ice Queen shawl (no, not me, I have enough on my project list right now), followed by coffee. We even got lucky in the weather - grey and gloomy of course, but no rain. Which is all you can hope for at this time of year.