May your hearts spill over with good wine (or love if you so choose)...

You know, sometimes you have to just give yourself a puppy shake and rattle the doubting and freakish panicky behavior right out. It is helpful when doing so to have a group of fascinating people around you at the time. So, the Valentine stories have proven their worth over and over for the last week. PatsyAnne won the drawing and the gypsy silk will be going to live with her. How does that relate to the doubting and freakish panic come in? It's the colorway, in general.

I started dyeing this colorway a while back and I have morphed it and transitioned it every so slightly this way and that until I found the 'real' color it is meant to be. I'm weird like that with the dyeing. I think up the color first. Then, I map out how to make it come to life. Job done, right? I don't know. I get so frustrated with myself as a woman, mother, artist when I see these talented people exuding confidence in their work while I am struggling to the last breath with mine. After the frustration, though, comes a long string of laughter - for I know that without the struggling I wouldn't really 'know' the colors the way I do once I've hit the 'right' place for them. 'Gypsy' has been such a journey for me. Should it be lighter? Darker? Less conflict (or more) with the tertiary colors? Who knows! I mean, I'm not that kind of dye expert. I'm just a woman who enters the kitchen, takes some naked strings, and puts a coat or three-layered bedazzled suit on them. Hence, the struggle part. I work with it, dance with it, fight with it, and, at last, take a long look at it and you cannot imagine the exhale of long awaited peace that can be heard when it settles into THE colorway. Not too dark, not too pink, not too light - just a feminine mix of colors - some happy, some saddened - to truly reflect the complexity of being a woman. Shameless plug, here - I've stocked the shop with it for Valentine's Day!

Ahhhh! The gypsy socks (actually, they are Cookie A.'s monkey sock pattern knit in the gypsy colorway) are done and perfect and I love them. I do think I'll be knitting this colorway again, soon. Is it vain to knit your own yarns? I don't think so. I cannot see asking anyone else to buy a yarn that I haven't knit at least a swatch of but even better if I've knit the whole thing. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, the pattern chosen was to satisfy my requirement for the Sockdown - January KAL on Ravelry. I've been wanting to have a sample of all my colorways knit into socks and between that and my total fixation of Ravelry (they have pretty much everything from groups of kindred spirits to yarns to patterns and an awesome place to pin your FO's, no?) me thinks me may have gotten in over my head. It's Sockdown every month plus the Sock Knitters Pentathlon on yahoo and also the 2008 sock knit a long (also on Ravelry) and Sockmania (which I will likely not satisfy this month) and then there's the two pattern designs I am working on. Whew! What to do....and it seemed like such a moment to celebrate when I finished the Monkey Socks yesterday. Like, such a triumph. Now, at the bottom of this paragraph - it seems a small achievement.

I've postponed the design I set out to use for the 'Lady of the Lake' handspun because I think I've found a better cause for this gorgeous yarn. Monkey Toes (site disabled so I can't link but you can find out more on Ravelry) passed away recently. I confess I didn't know her but I had had a few of her patterns in my 'projects to be done' folder for way too long. So, I settle on 'Brigit' and am furiously knitting away to meet the deadline for the 2008 Sock Knit along February theme, "Remembering Mama Monkey".

I'm off to make some pralines, get some dinner plans underway, and try to be Cupid shooting poisoned? love darts throughout the family home. If there is really a prospect of peace on earth, divine being of anyone's choosing, please show me the signs by providing a bottle of organic wine to aid me in my quest!