Sometimes the stash finds you

Monday, I rolled out at 5 as usual, and hit the road at six. Tuesday was also a full day, but I didn't have to leave home till the lazy hour of seven. It's daylight by seven AM!

I had to leave by seven again today. And that just doesn't leave me time for a morning blogging session. But today I got home early, so here we go!

Monday morning we had a bit of an adventure before I left the house. Fly insisted that he needed to spend the day outside, so I opened the back door and let him out onto the patio in the dark. He got one step out, and froze, alertly focussed on something Out There. I turned on the backyard lights to see great fat possum waddling away as fast as her naked pink legs would take her. I am sure she is ripe with young, and that's just not what we need around here. For you folks from Oz, I should remark that possums around here get up to twenty pounds, are ugly, naked-tailed, rat-faced, beady-eyed, vermin, rife with ticks and fleas and carrying any number of contagious diseases. And a big one will happily take on a cat and win. I was not happy to see the little mother, and suggested to Fly that he spend the day cursing her. He sat himself down under the shelter of a lawn chair and proceeded to wash the whole experience out of his memory. But I haven't seen the possum around either, so who knows? Maybe someone down the block leaves out food for the dear little creatures.

Tuesday night, I got home to find a package from Amy Lane, of Writer's Lane.com. I have had the great priveledge of helping edit her latest book, Bitter Moon I, and she sent me; one, an autographed copy; two, several wonderful fiber themed post cards,; three, a t-shirt that says,"Official Member of the Amy Lane Editing Team - Transcending Typos, One Manuscript at a Time" (Squeeeeee! We loves it we does! We are sleeping in it!)
and four, two skeins of Rio de la Plata hand-spun, kettle-dyed wool. My flabber is completely ghasted, I can tell you!

I have been carrying this yarn around, asking it what it wants to become. Like any young being, it has been having trouble really settling on a future for itself. It wants to be mittens, no, a hat, no, a tea cozy, no, a fire truck, no a scarf, no, it wants to play with other yarns and be a sweater. A big sweater. A sweater that is bullet-proof and can fly and vanquishes evil! And,. . . and, . . . it leaps off tall buildings in a single bound! Yeah! That's what it wants to be - today. Tomorrow, it may want to be a ballerina. It can be anything it wants. This is America.

Naturally, the artistic consultants had to come by and contribute their suggestions.

But that's not the end of the stash acquisitions. Beth and her husband lived and worked in Africa decades ago. She is starting her spring cleaning early, and decided that this yarn would never get used in her house. It is karakul wool, spun in the Kalahari Mills in Botswana, and vegetable dyed by a women's co-0perative. And she just gave it to me!!

The white yarn came to me today from one of the gals in my writer's group who is also cleaning house. It's Harrisville wool. These are all fairly rough yarns, but they would be ideal for felting. or for some outerwear. And since this is fourty days of knitting for others, I might make some sweaters for the orphanage in Romania.

Sometimes, the stash just comes to you.