Saturday 18 July 2009

A riot of colour

Really, I think one of the best things about birthdays is all the ways in which you can extend the celebrating. You can spread out time spent with friends and family over several days and this means, rather happily, sometimes being the smiling recipient of generous gift giving.

During the week, good friend George presented me with a book I've been longing to make mine for some time.

custom knits

Custom Knits is one of those MUST HAVE books, I think. I was thrilled when George gave it to me and I've spent the last few days devouring it. I'll be writing a review shortly!

Next came a very special gift from Jejune during the week. Jejune is, if you know her, a talented artist and she very generously gave me one of her original pieces of knitting art. I'm told that some discussion took place with Sean in readiness for this gift. I liked knowing that. It made me smile.

Jejune's Knitting Art

Towards the end of the week, a package was handed me at my desk at work and I recognised the handwriting immediately. I was having a particularly nasty morning so the timing of this package of squishy goodness landing on my desk couldn't have been better. It was from the ever wonderful RoseRed.

wollmeise Digitessa

Wollmeise. Always, always treasured. I'm not even taking it out of the wrapper. The fun thing about getting this at work was seeing the faces of workmates who have not seen me receive yarn at work before. The presentation, the gloriousness of yarn wound into a twisted skein such as this - they were amazed. It's nice to be reminded sometimes that not everyone gets to experience the wonder of this stuff like we do!

And finally, today, Kylie came to town. We gathered together in the afternoon to farewell Shelley who is sadly, for us, leaving town next week. Kylie gave me some of the gloriously coloured Kaffe Fasset Regia sock yarn. That man knows color - such an explosion together in the one skein!

Regia 04350

I have such wonderful friends. Just such great women. I count myself very lucky, and not just because they have excellent taste in yarn!

And since I'm in a yarn p0rn kinda mood, here are a couple of skeins that arrived today, courtesy of Tinkingbell who organised a bulk purchase from Blue Moon Fibre Arts. I chose a couple of colours that were not my usual style.

Socks that Rock in Sunstone.

Socks that Rock Sunstone

And Socks that Rock in Beryl.

Socks that Rock Beryl

God I love that name. Beryl. I was partly inspired by the socks made by RoseRed in this colourway and partly I just wanted to have yarn called Beryl. I don't know why it's so funny but when I showed it to Sean and said the yarn was called Beryl, even he laughed. It sounds like your great aunt, doesn't it? The kind of woman who chain smokes and boils all her veggies to death. Or maybe that's just me.

It's been a fine birthday week all round.

Bells