Yarn Colour, Tea, and April Fools

Yesterday a friend took me, as a late birthday present, to an undiscovered knit shop: Knit New London - full of many luxurious yarns and unusual pattern books! I went wild running my hands over the soft and colourful yarns and imagining all the things I would make!

My favorite new knit shop has to be Wild & Wooley on Bainbridge Island, Washington, though, in Poulsbo with its sea air. The center of the store has cushy chairs and couches and magazines to look through and a friendly cockatiel, while the perimeter of the large room is lined with yarns divided by colour, rather than maker or type. This has the effect of walking into a fabulous dream-like garden - a riot of colours and shades and is extremely stimulating to creativity. I'd bet that their sales soar just because of the way the shop is set up. If I base than on myself - I spent twice as much at Wild & Wooley as I spent at Knit - so much, in fact, that I had to borrow money from my friends!!! They had an absolutely stunning yarn that was hand-dyed locally and not sent elsewhere so it is unique. Another point for Poulsbo is the bakery nearby - where, in addition to bright yellow "smiley face" cookies, they have the even more popular blue-frosted Frowney cookies!

I am in the front room, pouring over the pattern books I bought yesterday and drinking tea - Pleine Luna, to be exact. The yard needs me to go outdoors and rake, cut, mulch, and generally tidy the debris of winter, but I find it very difficult to go outdoors into the yard by myself and since I'm the only one here, I end up neglecting the tidying. I must do it this spring though - there are so many flowers out there and old rose bushes too that will get choked out by weeds if I don't clear up the stray growth. I need to look at this as a spiritual exercise and an appropriate one for this Lenten season. Okay - I'll do one hour today and then reward myself by a trip to Borders!

I was completely taken in by a very funny April Fools Day joke yesterday! A clever (read = "evil genius") member of one of the lj knitting communities that I belong to posted an enthusiastic message that a certain yarn company that produces much-coveted but prohibitively expensive yarn (Noro at $22 a skein) was having a promotional giveaway of a skein of yarn per person on their website. She went through the whole process of telling us how she had taken their sign-in process then got a choice of colours and types for her free skein. She provided a 'clicky clickity" link for the rest of us to receive the same benefit while supplies lasted! Well...I (and about 50 other people on our list) quickly clicked the link and dashed to the finish line for our greatly desired prize - to find a BIG "April Fool's Day" hello waiting for us!!! We were completely taken in and amazing and dunbfounded by both her cleverness in providing the exactly right "hook" for our community and our eagerness to obtain a freebie! Ah, humanity!

Edit: PS....What a lucky day I am having! My new iPod made my work in the yard fly by!! And it was so enjoyable, I was out there for 2 hours before I even realized it. Must do this again after the next few days of rain...