What comes around goes around

At some point during my childhood, my dad got a book called The Lazlo Letters by Lazlo Toth, whose real name was Don Novello, better known as Father Guido Sarduci on “Saturday Night Live.” The premise of the book was that if you send letters out, you get letters back. The whole book was filled with letters Novello sent out to various companies and people and their subsequent replies. It’s a wonderfully silly little book.

I’ve kind of been living that with my knitting lately – I send knitting out, and I get yarn back.

As a result of my meditative knitting, I’ve had a lot of things to send out into the world. In the past month I’ve given one of my best friends a knitted kerchief, my childhood best friend a scarf, Becky of Princess Mikkimoto a scarf (she’s getting married this weekend!), and Becca in Alaska a warm wooly hat.

In return I’ve received some lovely random wooly goodness from friends. First, a box addressed to “Heather O’Keeffe Gardner’s Home for Wayward Yarn” arrived from Meanlouise. The box was filled with lots of Malabrigo worsted weight yarns. One skein turned into the kerchief I gave to my friend. A partial skein is being turned into a hat. The final skein is now residing comfortably in my stash until I figure out what to do with it.

One night my mom called from her knitting night and asked if I wanted some more Malabrigo Rasta, which is unbelievably soft and lovely and unbelievably hard to find, and, of course, I said yes. A few days later, it arrived. It’s on my projects table, waiting to be turned into a cowl for a Christmas present next year.

Yesterday another surprise box of yarn arrived from a high school friend who is a knitter and whose daughter works in a yarn store AND spins her own yarn. The box contained a skein of her daughter’s hand spun lace weight yarn and a skein of sock yarn. My friend said the sock yarn reminded her of our school colors – blue and gold – and when she saw the name of the colourway – Rock Climber – she knew she had to send it to me. I’m going to have to learn to knit lace so that I can do the handspun justice, and I’m going to knit my little climber socks out of the other yarn. But I won’t let her climb in them – climbing shoes are death to socks.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to knit and send my projects out into the world. Because, apparently, if you send yarn out, you get yarn back.