I love Bluetooth

Bluetooth is my favorite technological marvel (today). It is how I get photos from my phone to my computer. Just say "send this over there" and it does, like Mike TV in Willy Wonka. Pure magic. Back in August, I lost my little plug in bluetooth thingy. Without my crummy phone photos to inspire me, I haven't blogged since. But this

was enough motivation for me to track down another little magic bluetooth USB box. This is the center of Erdbeere designed by Herbert Niebling, in KnitPicks Shimmer Sunkissed alpaca/silk blend. Even though peach and salmon are not my favorite colors, the yarn was such a dream to work with that I didn't care about the color. (Besides, Cass liked it so I was confident someone else, somewhere would. Just not me.) I cast on July 10th and started binding off the 1,728 stitches of the last row on November 20, 2008. There are 133,368 stitches in this puppy. It is 6 feet in diameter. US Size 3 needles and about 1884 meters or more than a mile and a half of yarn.

The photos were taken outside my post office, minutes before sending it off to Connecticut. Last June I had done a circular shawl to raise money at the Virginia Rainbow girls' Grand Assembly for the Alzheimer's Foundation. That shawl went home to South Carolina. Afterward a sweet woman approached me, asking if she could pay me to knit another. Sorry, I don't do commissions. I can't bear to turn something that gives me such pleasure into a job with deadlines, stress and expectations. Knitting is a gift and so are most of my finished objects. Besides, a project doesn't always turn out the way it was envisioned.

The thing was, Kathy was not asking for herself, she wanted it for her friend who had been so delighted by the shawl and disappointed when she did not win it. I thought this kind of friendship was something special. So I secretly knit this shawl and mailed it off to Kathy in Connecticut. If her friend likes it, Kathy is going to make a donation to Virginia Rainbow's charity this year, the Virginia Lions Hearing Aid Bank Foundation. If she doesn't like it (it is very different from the original blue one) they can use it to raise money for their own charity, Camp Sunshine, at their Grand Assembly this weekend. Either way a good organization gets a few dollars. And I get to say, "I knit a Niebling."