An awfully complicated swap

First up, thanks everyone for your very, very kind comments and emails. Someone said to me that I must think hard about whether or not to post that sort of thing, given I don't often get deeply personal here, and  yeah, I did think long and hard. 

Last time it happened, I wrote about it weeks afterwards, not immediately. It was all a bit removed by then. 

This time, writing about it more immediately seemed to help. I've read the words over and over again and in some ways, it's soothing. I've captured something about the way I feel that sort of puts it outside myself - making it somehow less sharp in the way it hurts. That's how it feels today, at least. Tomorrow, who knows?

At any rate, putting the words out there connects to me other women who've gone through this in a way that joining an online support group doesn't. I can't explain it and probably should stop trying. It helped in a small way to write a tribute to our lost little one, and that's what's important.

Onto other, nicer things. 

A while ago, RoseRed, BrownPants (who doesn't blog so much anymore, but I'll link anyway) and I participated in a swap that was a little bit different. A sock swap. It's kinda hard to explain and given I got confused about who I was knitting for a number of times, I'm not sure I can even explain it properly now. But I'll try. 

You give yarn of your own choosing to the other two participants, and they each knit a sock for you so that you get a pair of socks back for which you didn't knit a stitch.

The same is done for the others. 

The girls had to explain this to me numerous times. Even now, trying to remember the steps, I need to make hand gestures in the air and talk to myself to try and figure out how it happened. I'm so dense.

Maybe pictures will help.

Here are the socks made from my yarn, Cherry Tree Hill, with one each knit by the other two girls. That's clear, isn't it? Pattern is Nutkin. 

They are fabulous. They fit like a dream, despite being knit by two different knitters and I have worn them heaps since I got them. How good is it to have socks made out of my yarn, with not a stitch made by me?

And here is the first sock I made for BrownPants. Lorna's Laces yarn and the pattern is the Show-off Stranded Sock pattern.

To see the ones BrownPants and I made for RoseRed, check out the post she just put up!

It's a fun idea. I really recommend it as a way to try some yarn you don't own and avoid Second Sock Syndrome into the bargain!

Bells