Yarny Goodness!

I've two things to share today - one personal 'hurrah' with additional temptation, and one wider celebration to share.

Personal things first - this glorious box is currently sitting in my craft room:

Containing 240g of custom-dyed mini-skeins in 12 wee parcels, this box of Rusty Ferret delightfulness is my advent calendar gift to myself. I have not previously allowed myself the extravagance of buying into the trend for luxury advent calendars... but this year is 2020, and it's Rusty Ferret! Doing fairytales! (I am restraining myself from additional exuberance in typography and punctuation.) My current plan is to open a parcel every odd day till Christmas Eve, and then to spend Christmas Eve (not entirely, you understand), identifying a project to cast on on Christmas day, and knit as much of as is feasible between then and Epiphany (Twelfth Night). The slightly mad 'challenge' element of that is that I'm thinking that 240g of fingering weight, plus a couple of additional skeins from my stash that suit, might make another multicoloured cardigan or pullover. Something using helical stripes in the stash yarn plus the minis as they go... maybe? Definitely a rabbit hole I will enjoy falling down.

And it may be that I find some inspiration in the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long, which has launched today with discounts on patterns by over 90 designers and a stitch-along starting very shortly and running right the way through to the end of 2020, when we wave this year a very distinct 'good bye'!

This Yarn-A-Long is full-to-bursting with amazing designers and wonderful projects (and yes, I've taken a little wander through the search pages in putting this together and suddenly find it is later than I thought!), and is a brilliant way to find new-to-you designers in a forum that is not Ravelry, when Ravelry has become inhospitable to many through their re-design and its attendant accessibility problems.

So, what are you waiting for? I don't have a pretty picture to share - go and follow the #FastenOffYAL and #FastenOff2020 hashtags on Instagram, and enjoy the clever, beautiful, and witty things you can do with yarn.