The yarn fairy came

You know, this having to keep my mouth shut about all the design-y stuff I am doing really sort of sucks. I am not particularly good at keeping my mouth shut to begin with, but I get that it is sort of jinxing things to talk about items or ideas that do not yet have signed contracts. But I don’t have to like it 🙂

So I will just say this. A Very Large Yarn company has commissioned a crochet design from me. They said they would send me a few skeins of the yarns they want me to swatch with, and mentioned they would throw in a few other things to facilitate my swatching for the magazines I made sales to over the weekend. So the poor UPS guy comes dragging up my front porch today in the zillion degree weather with a large box (18″ x 18″ x 12″) from the Very Large Yarn company, and it is FULL of yarn. Sock weight to polar weight, fuzzy, glitzy, plain, every color in the rainbow, wool, acrylic, cotton. It was like Christmas! The kid is going to go nuts when she gets home from camp- she will have a great time diving in and touching all the goodies. I am expecting a box from a different Very Large Yarn company tomorrow, although I am only expecting one style of yarn (in a bunch of colorways) for a specific project.

I said it before and I am saying it again – writing actual patterns is a lot harder than it looks. I requested a mentor from the Crochet Guild of America and am hoping to be assigned to someone very soon. In the meantime I am slogging along with my pile of magazines and editorial guidelines, and hoping it will all work out in the end.

On the writing front, I finished a magazine article last night so that was a relief. I am still behind on all of the book stuff (especially the soapstone book), but have to make the magazine deadlines first. Two more articles due next week, one is researched, one is not. Two book proposals floating around in purgatory. I suspect neither of them will go to contract until my agent is in labor (although bless her, she promised to check her email and cell phone as soon as she gives birth, just in case!) She isn’t really due until the end of the summer, but I don’t mind bending the truth for good blog fodder.

Back to checking over my shawl pattern for the third time – I hope I am making it better and not worse!