I’m sitting here knitting and listening to it rain. Well, technically I’m writing this blog post and listening to it rain, but I was knitting up until a minute ago. I’m desperately hoping it will stop, today’s the Pride Parade here in Toronto, and Team Knit will be donning our jerseys and grabbing our bikes, and heading downtown to march/ride. This year is the Bike Rally’s 20th anniversary, and we’ve got a rider for each year, and a float that the fantastic volunteers made (I’ll show it to you later it is very cool) and we’ve got other Rally People to dance, and…. it’s raining.  Pretty hard, actually – which is so totally demoralizing. I really feel good about the work that I do for PWA, but there are moments when I really do wonder why so much of it has to be in the rain.  (I just right this minute sent a text asking one of the people putting the float together and asked them what our glitter status is. I have visions of every bit of it washing off the thing. They’re under tarps, it turns out, so for now, Trevor reports “minimal glitter loss”.)  The forecast calls for things to improve a bit later – but if you’re sitting in sunshine right now, try to send a little of it Team Knit’s way.  We’re going to be very soggy on our bikes if this keeps up. If that inspires you to donate to us, that would be a pretty good pick-me-up. Team Knit remains: Me,  Ken,  Pato and Cameron.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and make a little sunshine this way – Karmic Balancing Gifts! We’ll see how many I can get up here before I have to get on my bike and ride to the Parade.  Maybe the rain will stop while I work on it.

First up, an amazing gift from Kate, 8 balls of Valley Yarns: Amherst, in Cayenne.  (I love this stuff, and that colour, actually.) Kate will be mailing that to Lizz, and I hope it makes her day.

Kristen, at Rosetwist LLC has two beautiful gifts from her shop, a pair of sterling silver earrings for a knitter – that knitter would be  Samantha.

and a charming pair of sterling silver earrings for a spinner (especially charming because she made them from charms) that Kristen will mail to Pelly.

Mary from Kino Knits has a great gift – I love the idea behind this pattern collection.  The Tolstoy Collection is a group of three patterns, a one colour, a two colour, and a three colour… all designed for yardage flexibility.  (That’s a neat trick.)

She’ll be sending out FIVE digital copies of that – to Jeannie, Wendy, Lara, Maida and Betsie.  I hope they love them.

Ursula, all the way in Vienna, has a beautiful present she’ll be sending to Bettina.

It’s 300g of a merino/yak/silk blend, and so lovely.

That’s it for today – though there’s much, much more to come.  It looks a little brighter outside too, so maybe Karma’s working.  Have a great Sunday everyone, and Happy Pride!