hi mom

you made me. that was a fairly awesome thing to do.

i know i've been the retarded black sheep of the family sometimes. made you lose your shit and caused you lots of worries and heartache when you deserved none.

sorry about all that.

and now i'm 5000 miles away and haven't seen you in six months. life is good here, but not being able to hug you and say thank you and have farting contests with you sucks donkey balls.

i really really miss you.

back in the winter i saw this lovely merino-silk fibre at work that reminded me of you. i was only just learning to spin with a wheel, but fearlessly i sat down every night after work anyway for a month to spin a skein of yarn. my first full skein of yarn, in fact.

after ogling the finished 500-yard skein for a good week or so it seemed only fair that you should get the very first thing i've ever knit with my own handspun, and so i started knitting you a shawl. the pattern is the same 22.5 degrees one i used to make my own shawl for TNNA.

towards the end i managed to run out of yarn for the scalloped edging, so i dyed some more fibre at work. not being very smart i added soap to the dyestock, and the fibre got felted. but being very persistent i spun it anyway, even though every second felt like a good old prison-style ass ramming (as you know i'm quite fine being gross).

and this is how it turned out.

it's soft and shiny and lovely and for some reason it's perfectly stripey too -- i can't say that was intentional, since i just split the fibre into two bobbins and plied them without any colour planning whatsoever, but i'm willing to accept all of your oohs and aahs anyway.

i hope you like it. i love you and miss you and one day i'll be back and we'll have us some good stinky times again.