I'm too sick to come up with a creative title

Flu, yuck. I've been feeling kind of off for a few days and yesterday I realized that I was coming down with something. This morning I woke up feeling like utter crap. And Mr. T, love him though I do, is absolute shite at taking care of me when I'm sick.

But I do have some fun things to tell/show you.

First up is a most wonderful gift :) As long as I've been knitting, no one has knit FOR me. Until now. Miss Kippi of the comments knit me a pair of gorgeous socks using one of my favorite yarns (Sanguine Gryphon's Skinny Bugga, a cashmere blend sock yarn) and favorite colors (Faithful Beauty):


Aren't they fantastic? They fit perfectly and they're amazing to wear. Apparently she was trying very surreptitiously to find out what size my feet were and dense me didn't get it. A truly lovely gift, one that warms my cold, dark heart.

More fun stuff, too. Light pink Wollmeise. A color not found in the usual universe of intense, vibrant Wollmeise colors. Talented Helena of Midnight Sheep offered to take my skein of natural Wollmeise and dye it a light, shaded pink:


It's perfect! Someday I will break down and get a lightbox so I can get really good pictures that show all the subtlety and detail of the yarns and the knitting. I feel like the pictures I take don't really represent their full beauty.

I'm still waiting for my most recent Wollmeise lace order to arrive... those will be amazing.

Over in the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Swap group on Ravelry, we've been conducting auctions with the proceeds going to international relief organizations to benefit the earthquake victims in Haiti. Everyone has been amazingly generous, both in their donations of yarn and finished works and in their bidding (someone bid $500 for three skeins of yarn!). As of this morning, we've raised over $6,500 for international relief organizations.

But wait! There's more! Claudia (the Wollmeise) herself has offered up two items. One is a skein of lace in a colorway a lot of people want. Good. The other is a chance to get your very own personally dyed custom skein of laceweight yarn. Wow. Her auction will take place between 11 am and 5 pm this afternoon, and I expect it will raise over $1000 on its own. It's gonna get crazy in there.

Numma Numma has also offered several skeins of her yarn in favorite colorways to go up for auction. In addition, Sheri at The Loopy Ewe has offered to auction off a package of three yarns from her sock club this year, limited edition colorways of Wollmeise, Numma Numma, and Sanguine Gryphon.

I'm so proud of the outpouring of generosity here and all across Ravelry. The need in Haiti is both deep and broad.

Knitting? Not much. I'm still plugging away on Pas de Valse. I'm soooo close to splitting the sweater up at the armholes, but I haven't felt well enough to get more than a couple of rows in. Hopefully soon I'll have some interesting pictures to show you.