Post Mortem

After fantastic Harlot Happening (read all about it here, here, here and here - in the days to come on any of the blogs under Canberra S'nB in the sidebar, I'm sure) I was visited by the tummy bug. This particular bug hit me after an hour's sleep on Thursday night/Friday morning. There was no further sleep.

This enabled me to finish the Christmas Pudding beanie (we got up to the decreases at the Happening) and another Time Thief Watch Cap and cast on another from some of the yarn donated at the Happening. Made it into work because we couldn't have opened if I hadn't and collapsed into bed last night at about 7.30, not surfacing until 8.30 this morning. Normal services should now return.

All up we raised $135 for Stasia's soup kitchen and her other work, particularly with our homeless and addiction affected population. We also made 21 hats (including the Christmas Pudding Hat), with enough yarn for at least 4 more. Not bad for 17 knitters. I wish we'd had more and I wish we'd made more, but I've done the sums - that is 0.006% of our population. If New York were expecting 750 knitters, that 0.003% of their population. We did pretty well.

I dropped everything off to Stasia this afternoon, just as she was unpacking from last night's soup kitchen. An entire van of boxes that 24 hours earlier had been full of food. That's a lot of hungry people nourished yesterday.

Stasia asked me to convey her thanks to everyone involved. That, my friends, is everyone who came or supported us (list in Bell's post) and all of you who supported us from home. Check out Gemma joining in on the internet from Sydney, and we had messages from The Shopping Sherpa and Janette as well.

Photos of the lucky door prizes: Not shown were the Patons patterns, Brittany needles and gift voucher donated by Cassidy's of Kingston, hand-dyed sock yarn, and hand-dyed hand-spun yarn from the Happy Spider, and the books A Gathering of Lace and Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Knits. Hopefully the recipients will blog soon. The yarn and needle kits also came with patterns for the Kiri Shawl, the Print o' the Wave Stole and the Sister Scarves patterns. The hand-dyed spinning fibre is Australian Merino from Ewe Give Me the Knits and the hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn is from Sheepy Chic - generous sponsors, talented women and great business name devisers. :) Jejune did the stitch markers and counting bracelet

Speaking of Jejune, these two photos show how the party got off to a VERY quiet start and it's all Jejune's fault. She devised two puzzles that had us all heads down and puzzling for quite some time. The first you can all enjoy on her blog - it's an interactive crossword. The second was a match the picture to the knitting pattern once the tension, yarn and needle size details have been removed. It proved a tough one, but I think we all got there in the end.

Here's the wool that was donated in lieu of hats on the night. I'm most of the way through a beanie with the Patons Jet. It's heathery purples and green and SOOOO soft because of the alpaca. There's enough here for 4 beanies, plus the leftovers will enrich other.