Pretty string

Look, things feel awful.  I get it.  I do.  And I’m doing what I can to fix that.  I voted for Biden and for Sarah Gideon (because I’m lucky enough to live in a state where we will probably flip our senator from republican to democrat, and holy crap that matters so much) and for all the down ballot races too.  I’m staying home to avoid plague.  I’ve given money to the organizations in my community that are trying to feed hungry folks and to the organizations in my country that are trying to work against the incompetent white supremacist we have in the white house.  And that stuff is what’s important in the long run.  But in the short run, I’m also distracting the hell out of myself with an absolute avalanche of pretty string.

Because knowing that there is something lovely coming in the mail, and then getting something lovely in the mail, and then daydreaming about what I’ll make with that lovely thing helps when the news is full of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary pandemic deaths and rampaging wildfires and blatant voter suppression.  So I’m going to show you some of the pretty bits that have been bright spots in an otherwise dark time.  But I’m also going to encourage you to make your plan to vote and to ask your friends and family if they need help making theirs.  Because yeah, we can totally do both.

That’s Hypothesis Yarns Tweed DK in Royal and Wildcat.  I am feeling the tweed so hard right now.  I don’t think I’ve ever really knit with it, but I am looking forward to giving it a try.

See, more tweed.  That’s Western Sky Knits Tweed DK in Patina.  Yes more turquoise.  Yes more tweed.  No I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but again, their job right now is to make things feel a tiny bit better for a tiny sliver of time, and they’re doing that job well.

And it’s not all tweed, speckles still have my heart too.  That’s House of a la Mode House Worsted in Glitter Sky.  Because gray with colorful speckles is, as we’ve discussed before, the shortest route to my heart.

And of course any time I find myself in a yarn acquisition phase, you can be pretty sure I’ll get some Seven Sisters Arts loveliness.  This is Apex in Sugar Maple, and I am, as always, madly in love with every color they do.

How about you, have you been getting more yarn (or getting yarn differently) lately?  I figure it’s something I can safely do now (and something that helps ensure the companies and industry that I love will be there when we come out the other side of this), so I’m just going to roll with it.

Oh, and someone out there is flexing their fingers about to send me a scandalized note warning me that saying who I voted for is illegal.  Good news, it’s totally not!  In a handful of states, it’s technically illegal to take/post ballot selfies, though enforcement is spotty (more info on that here, so do double check your location’s rules to be super safe, because these folks would like nothing more than for your vote not to count).  But just saying ‘I voted for Biden’ is not at all illegal. Someone else is about to say that they’re just not that political and don’t understand why we can’t just stick to knitting.  Here is your occasional reminder that saying ‘I’m not political’ is just another way of saying ‘the status quo is working out fine for me, and I don’t give a crap about anyone else’ and that’s a really really really bad look right now.  And someone else is about to warn me that if I don’t keep my mouth shut about politics, I’ll scare all my customers away.  And once again, good news, that’s totally not true.  I know I try really hard to only do business with people whose values I share, and it turns out my customers feel the same way.  In fact, the more open I am about my values, the better my business does.

So…do what you can to hang in there.  Do what you can to help others.  And see if anyone in your life needs help making a plan to vote (there’s good info here if you like text, or here if you like video).