I turn 37 on Monday. Now, usually I’m less fond of birthdays in the latter half of a decade (they all feel downhill to me, for some reason), but 37 is special. In addition to being immortalized in cinema (in Clerks as well as Monty Python, but, uh, I won’t link to that scene), 37 is just a cool number. Not only is it prime, but it’s the very first irregular prime, and for a math nerd like me that’s pretty exciting. It’s the normal human body temperature in Celsius. Neat! It’s the number of plays Shakespeare is thought to have written if you count Henry IV as three parts! (Okay, I had to wikipedia for that last one.)
Point is, I’m unusually chipper about this birthday. To celebrate, I’m going to have an entire truckload of Jeni’s ice cream this weekend while I visit TNNA. Since I won’t actually be here on my birthday, and since I feel badly that I can’t bring ice cream back for all of you, I thought it would be fun to celebrate my birthday with a giveaway.
Giving away 37 things seems more than a bit excessive, though, so I started thinking about fun themes. I spotted some yarn from my very first trip to Rhinebeck, sitting next to yarn from my first trip to Sock Summit, and I thought–aha! How about a giveaway of yarn from my knitting travels? Giving away 6 different things seemed to make sense–I can never keep up with blogiversaries, but I’ve been doing this thing for 6 years now. So here we go!
Here’s how it will work. You leave a comment sharing something fiber-related about either a birthday or a trip, and I will pick 6 random winners when I get back next week. On Wednesday, June 27 (six days from now!), I’ll announce the winners and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Here’s the loot:
First trip to WEBS. Shibui Sock Yarn, color 7498, 2 hanks.
First (?) “oh my god everyone online is buying this indie dyer’s yarn I must have some!” internet craziness. And well worth all the hype, too! This is Plucky Knitter single-ply 100% merino sock yarn, in “Pumpkin Spice Latte”, from around October of 2007. (By the way, I had to root through blog archives a bit to find this. I can’t believe Jacob was ever that little! I’ll have to take updated kiddo pics sometime soon and compare them.)
First Rhinebeck. This lovely Shelridge Farms sock yarn (2 hanks, “Nutmeg”) is deliciously soft wool and colored like fall in New England. Plus, they’re fantastically lovely folks.
First Stitches. This luminous 100% silk typically sits in my ‘yarn inspiration’ bowl because it is so lovely. 3 hanks of Fiesta La Luz in “Palomino”, perfect for a scarf or some such.
First Sock Summit. This merino-cashmere-silk blend lives up to its name: Breathless by Shalimar Yarns. One hank in Sapote. I am plotting a sweater in this stuff. More than one knitter has gasped upon touching it.
I was tossing the stash, trying to pick a 6th prize and failing, and cursing myself for not buying much of anything in the many many trips I’ve been taking to teach. (In my non-shopper defense, I have LOTS of yarn.) And then I thought: Well, how about recognizing the past couple of years as a travel, and give away some designs?
So, in honor of the first time I’ve ever turned my hobby into a highly enjoyable side business, the 6th bit of loot will be a complete set of all of my self-published designs. Happy birthday to me!
(And so on.)
Whew! Still with me? If so, remember that you need to leave a comment sharing something fiber-related about either a birthday or a trip to qualify, and I’ll see you on the 27th!
Amy Herzog Designs