Extravayarnza

First Big Thank You goes to Debbie in Hawaii.
She sent me the Vasco De Gama Yarn Aboard II box!

I wasn't expecting this so early in the swap, I love being surprised...
The handdyed (By Debbie?) sock yarn is absolutely lovely. I have nothing like it in my stash right now & will look forward to knitting it this winter!

Thank You Debbie!

Next up, today brought a second package from Jennifer, blogless in Canada.
Jennifer, all those comments you left on the blog made me incredibly curious. You certainly didn't disappoint!

I totally love the pattern. It will be fun to knit a square shawl the traditional way rather than the backwards way my last one was. I've really been itching to knit a Shetland shawl the last couple of months so you really hit this one on the nose!
And The Yarn!
I think that is the thinnest yarn I've ever seen. 1000 yards in that tiny 20g skein! I think despite the label it blows right past cobweb and is easily in the gossamer range. My thoughts at the moment is to dye one skein light gray. The Shetland shawls I've been looking at knitting use 2 colors. I'm thinking of doing the center and the edging in natural and the border in the gray.
*Smile*
Thank You Jennifer!
I also went right to work at the "extras" in the package solving the game on the back of the smartie box (not the same as US smarties more like M&Ms or Sixlets) & diving into the stack of Origami paper.

Also: My Lace Swap package made it all the way to Rhonna in Norway. She has so many nice things to say & I'm happy she enjoyed the swap!

Other News
I'm so happy because sign up for my classes are going really well this fall.
Two classes & particularly looking forward to teaching are Beginning Crochet & Design your own Christmas Stocking.
I haven't taught crochet before, but I've gotten tons of compliments on the bag I designed for the class & if all goes well I'll be offering the pattern for sale. I'll also design a knit version of the bag...
I'd been looking for a good solution to color in the chart for the Stocking class & found it today.
Colored pencils are great and all, but they never erase well enough....until now!

These erase like a dream. The color just comes right up!
Since the theory for the Stocking class is I wrote out a basic Christmas stocking pattern then created a chart that goes along with the written instructions. Students decide how difficult they want the design to be... simply contrasting heel & toe, easy stripes, fair-isle, aran, or possibly even intarsia. Any way we will work out the design & help you get going.
For new designers (or any designer really...) these colored pencils might be a life saver.

Oh, and keep those comments coming to enter the drawing! I'll be drawing names tomorrow afternoon...