Strange days

I have to tell you, that the modern age occasionally freaks me out.
(Well, more than occasionally, but I'm sometimes freaked out by gas stations. I may have a freak out level that is lower than normal.) I did two things worth mentioning yesterday.

I spun.

(You didn't think I was going to spin that boring brown did you?) This delightfully cotton candyish batt was a birthday present from Laurie (That Laurie) who really, really has excellent taste in fibre. It's a Brushstrokes Batt from Indigo Moon Farm and is a completely seductive mix of 50% LLama, 25% merino and 25% silk. (Some dizziness when contemplating that is normal. Put your head down for a minute if you need to.) It is as soft as it looks, and when it's spun up it has a glorious sheen....that's the silk.

I met Lee Ann. She's here on a little vacation from her real life in Montreal, and we arranged to hook up at the local. You will note that she's holding the boring baby blanket. Lee Ann really deserved the sock, but I didn't have it with me. (I am carrying only the blanket since my self control is so crappy that I can only knit it if it's all that I have.) I was so delighted to meet her, and enjoyed her so much that I was overwhelmed with the urge to have her hold something....I had to make do with what I had.

Here's the freak out. (As previously mentioned, this may only freak me out.) I find in incalculably strange that as a modern day knitter/spinner, I can swing between an ancient activity like spinning...and half an hour later I can be meeting a knitter from another part of the continent, knowing what she looks like before I meet her, knowing much about her life and being able to detail her current project (the pony puke poncho) even though we have never met. That through the magic of the internet and the wonders of things that plug in, I have friends all over the world.

It's the sense of expanded community, that we are all actively engaged all over the world in each others intimate lives and doings, that I could pick Emma (or at least her son) out of a crowd, or that if I needed to I could get Vincent out of the pound for Norma, or that I know exactly what Sandy's couch looks like. I can hope Amie's ok today, and wonder if Cassie sent Cassie some roving (since it's at least partly her fault that she took up spinning). I can walk in the sunshine on Saturday and hope that it's not as hot in Boston as it is here, since Claudia was doing the MS ride.

It's the wonderful modern electric connectedness of it all. That I can get dropped into any terrifying brand new city in North America and have somebody to have dinner with. That we wouldn't know each other at all, that I wouldn't have thousands of comrades in wool, if it weren't for two things.

Absolutely cutting edge, up to the minute modern technology
and ancient, never changing, timeless knitting.

Freaky contrast eh?