Pages

Sunday, March 2, 2008

I've been touching all of your yarn!


So I have this pusher friend who aspires to be a fibre maven. (Apparently raising a child, dealing with a husband, working 17 jobs, indulging in occasional fits of do-gooderness, blogging, and attempting to sleep every third day or so, isn't enough for some people. Me, I get tired just thinking about her schedule!)

Anyway, this particular psychobunny is getting ready for her first big fibre festival, and she bribed me with yarn asked me to help her with some yarn that needed skeining so she could dye it. Now I, being cheap and easy that way being a very nice person, said yes.

So I got handed 30 balls of yarn and a niddy noddy, and I went to work. The uninitiated (like me, up until about lunchtime yesterday!) might think: "Meh! 30 balls of yarn! How long can that take?"

Enough time to start singing to myself. To sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Twice. Enough time to realize that the best songs to maintain a working rhythm were either Monty Python's traffic light song, which I couldn't get through even once before I wanted to pull my hair out; or "The ants go marching one by one" - which, by the second ant, had become a song about going to the bathroom. (I'll just leave that one to your imagination, shall I?)

Turns out that 30 balls of yarn, at 210 metres each, means that I skeined 6.3 kilometres (about 4 miles) worth of yarn over the weekend. My shoulders are a little sore. I feel a ridiculous sense of accomplishment. I have a whole new appreciation for the effort that goes into the yarn that I buy so easily. (Does that mean I should buy even more, the better to support my friendly neighbourhood cottage industry?)

It does mean, though, that all of you should run out and buy Rabbitworks yarn at the fibre fest this weekend. And it means that when you take it home, there's a good chance that I will have already fondled it. (Heh heh. That makes me feel a little strange, in a pleasant kind of way!)

Mr.Q has been calling me "Skein-a, Queen of the Jungle" all weekend. He's also, at this very moment, making a batch of chocolate-chip cookies all by his very own self. I think it's his first time. He's not asking a lot of questions, and I'm not allowed in the kitchen. It's making me a little nervous. But I'm resisting the urge to go check on him, so he can brag about it in the lunch room tomorrow.

I think I'll keep him.

3 comments:

Rabbitch said...

Thank you, Skeina! And yes, keep Mr. Q. Any man who bakes cookies is a keeper. Unless, that is, he eats them while chopping people's heads off with an axe or something.

Anonymous said...

It must be going around. I don't even dye yarn and I was reskeining some "rescued" yarn so I could wash it and then rewind it. Only about 18 50-g skeins' worth, though, not 30.
Lucky me, I didn't use a niddy-noddy, I used a swift.

Rebecca said...

He is a keeper - plays music and bakes, yep. How did the cookies turn out?

I read other blogs and wonder how people get everything done. There must be some water or something out there that gives people super energy and time. It is only 5:30pm here and I feel done for the day, blah. So much to do, so much I want to do, but barely enough energy to read blogs and stay awake.