A Little Thrill

I've had an unexpected little bit of happiness recently -- seeing my yarn made into someone else's creation!

Here's how it happened. When I first got Miss Muffett, my little Louet Victoria spinning wheel (yes, I guess you could say I'm spoiled :), I immediately spun a few little bundles of hand-painted fiber. I didn't have anything definite in mind to do with the yarn. I was just spinning for the pure joy of revving up my new little hot-rod spinning wheel.

Of course, that didn't stop me from taking the yarns to show off to my knitting group friends. One friend in particular oohed and sighed over one of the skeins. It's the one in the front in the photo above. I'd spun it from two ounces of combed merino top from Fleece Artist, in Nova Scotia, bought a couple of years back at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival. It had long color transitions in muted shades of green and lavender, pink and blue-gray, and it really spoke to her.

She admired it and gave me fulsome compliments. Just being nice, I thought. But over the months, as the fruits of my spinning wheel came and went, she kept bringing up that one particular skein. "That was so pretty," she would say, "and so soft. I just loved those colors." I began to believe her.

In the end, I decided to wrap up that little skein and give it to her as a birthday gift. I was pretty sure she'd appreciate it. :)

And she did. When she opened that package, she recognized her favorite skein right away and squealed with happiness. She dashed around some of the neighboring offices to show it to people. Pretty gratifying.

But then a couple of weeks later, the really exciting thing happened. She showed up at work in a new scarf. I glanced and did a double-take. And a triple-take. And then a full-on stare. It looked very familiar. "Wait, that's my yarn! Eeeee! That's my yarn that's my yarn that's my yarn!" She just beamed.

I was so surprised. There were only about 200 yards of a fingering/sport weight yarn, and I hadn't thought she'd be able to do much with it. But she'd searched out a pattern and knitted it up.

And it's so pretty! She chose a pattern that works beautifully with the subtle colors and long transitions. It's the Susan Scarf, a free pattern by the talented Kristen Hanley Cardozo. And she did a beautiful job knitting it.

It was really exciting to see another knitter's vision of what could be made of my pretty yarn. We're both proud of that scarf. (You should see how great it looks when she wears it with her dark green sweater!)

It's as if I gave her a little present, and she turned around and gave me one right back. What a nice little thrill.