Home! I am home. Hello, home. I missed you so. It was wonderful to spend so much time surrounded by family and old friends, and to walk around my old stomping grounds (and boy, did I walk. Everywhere. Vancouver is great for that.) Still, there’s no substitute for being in your own space and sleeping in your own bed, and I missed himself and Chicken-Leg Al the Wonder Cat.

Of course, as will happen when one goes nonstop for three weeks, I brought home an extra souvenir in the form of some sort of cold/flu/creeping crud. My entire face is filled with ever-regenerating slime, my lungs feel like someone refinished them with steel wool and battery acid, and I have all the pep and vim of a sloth on Quaaludes. Plus, I am not braining goodly, so going anywhere near design work would be a grievous error in judgement. I think the message is to just. stop. moving. for a couple of days, and I’m not about to argue. All I want to do is wrap myself in a duvet, snuggle my cat, and knit something utterly, completely mindless. I suppose I could work on Dahlia, but fie on that. I have new yarn and an idea to go with it, and fighting that urge will just lead to tears and delayed recovery.

Remember that alpaca I bought in Asheville? The one I wanted to find the perfect contrasting yarn to go with? This yarn right here:

On its own, it’s quite pretty, but the colour doesn’t really shine, you know? I was looking for something to bring out the richness of the natural alpaca tan, and I found it at the Sweet Georgia studio in Vancouver: one precious, splurge-worthy skein of CashSilk Lace in Nightshade, a rich purply blue. These colours work together even better than I’d expected.

The blurple really brings out the red tones in the alpaca, and the brown shows off the depth of the blue. The contrast in textures is an unexpected bonus, and whoa, mama, is this thing soft. I cannot wait to have it wrapped around my neck.

So if anyone needs me, I’ll be here, under the duvet, next to the kleenex box, making stripes. Just don’t ask me to think.