a month of letters - a challenge

I love letters. I love paper, fountain pens, friends, ink, language, rubber stamps, stickers, and stamps. What's not to love? You get to make so many choices - color, texture, subjects - and you get to share them. Win-win!


Mary Robinette Kowal, puppeteer and author, has created a challenge for February: A Month of Letters. It's easy: each day, send someone a letter, or a card, or a postcard. A real one, with a stamp. Even the post office thinks this is a great idea - check out its blog !


Who can you write to? Make new friends on the forum she has set up, join PostCrossing, send a postcard to a sick child, look up old classmates, re-connect with family and friends, write fan mail to your favorite author... just have fun with it!

• In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

You can also join the Facebook page and tweet about the challenge (#LetterMo).

I fell behind in my correspondence last month because of ... stuff ... so if anyone is waiting for a letter from me, check your mailbox.

because all I've been writing lately is letters........

Dear Penny,

The guy who filled the vending machine at work put the animal crackers behind three packages of pretzel goldfish. He never does that. I'm so bummed. A little package of animal crackers = my afternoon break sometimes, with tea (of course) and a little knitting. Now what?

(No, don't tell me to buy a bag at the supermarket and bring a portion to work with me. I already do that with yogurt and cereals. It isn't the same with the animal crackers.)

(Clearly, Penny, I can mope about anything.)

It's been odd that none of the women at work has commented on the lacy Baktus I've been working on. Usually, anything any of us knit or crochet is oohed and aahed at. I was beginning to get a complex. But yesterday, I was wearing a lavendar sweater, and the Baktus looked so pretty against it that they noticed, and said the design is cute. (It is.)

I told them about the Ishbel-like shawlettes and how I've been chided for doubting my ability to knit one. (You're not the only one who chided me...) The Muggles thought it was funny that I feel as if there's a hierarchy of projects - like, I can knit this but I can't knit that - which made me realize that all crafts look uniformly impenetrable to a Muggle. That's exactly the mirror-image to the mindset I  have to develop -- all projects are uniformly penetrable. I should do a sampler.

Anyway, I just bought the shawlette pattern Gaenor and two skeins of mulberry-raspberry variegated yarn, and I'll start it this weekend. (Baktus is almost done.) Gaenor has the same basic construction as Baktus plus a lace edging, so it'll be the transitional piece of knitting to Ishbel.

 

Did I tell you that I got my copy of Respect the Spindle? I only had time to leaf through it, but - I happened to read two paragraphs about leaders, and I realized what I've been doing wrong to get so many breaks after I've wound-on. Leave a longer leader, says Abby. I tried it. PRESTO. Magic. 

And speaking of cross-stitch, I've been reading Monica Ferris's needlework mysteries, and I decided I need to do one of her cross-stitch patterns - The Han Phoenix. It's been awhile since I really wanted to do counted cross-stitch - probably a good thing, since I couldn't have seen well enough to do it before the cataract surgeries! Isn't that a beautiful pattern?  There's a piece of silk in the book (Thai Die) with a similar embroidery - I trust the little cross-stitch wouldn't cause as much mayhem as it did in Excelsior...

Time to watch the last episode of "Fast-Forward" and get ready for work tomorrow... Give Shadow a couple of under-the-chin scritches for me, yes?

love, 

teabird