unexpected yarn porn

One of the advantages of getting up at 7:30 every morning (it's Mike's fault - he leaves for work at 8) is being able to catch the postman when he comes by in his little package-bearing truck!

this morning, mr. postman came bearing a shoebox of goodies from my mom - the purpose of the package was to send me some shorts that I had left in Vancouver last year, but as usual, there were other fun things in the box. Like this amazing piece of yarn porn:

This is the Cap Sleeve Top kit from HandMaiden Fine Yarns (I'd neve heard of them, but it turns out that they're a division of It comes with two skeins of yarn - one 200g skein of Lady Godiva and one 100g skein of Silk Maiden; both are 50% silk, 50% wool, in the Glacier colourway. That's 300 grams kids! 775 metres! Its slightly lighter in colour than it looks in this photo - The two skeins are wrapped up together in this photo, but if you look closely, you can tell them apart - the Lady Godiva yarn is the one with the two plys wrapped together, while the Silk Maiden looks more like a handspun yarn - it has that very soft, slightly irregular look to it - but gorgeous all the same! (go here to see them individually - you have to scroll along to the left a little)

I'm sooo loving this yarn, although i'm not sure when I'm going to be able to work on it. I have oodles of baby projects to work on at the moment... one blanket on the go (due in July), another one in the planning stages (I'm thinking the Danica scarf in 2 shades of blue, with yellow or green as the accent - its for a boy that's due in September), and then one other as-yet-undetermined project for a baby due this fall - but I'm hoping to see the parents when I'm in Vancouver in August, so I'll have to finish it by then. For that one, I'm thinking an outfit of some sort - west coast babies are fun to knit for, since it never gets too hot or too cold for knitted items. Oh, and on top of all this, I still have 1-1/4 sleeves of Jemima to knit before i can start blocking and seaming... but that, too, can be put on hold, because in another week, it will be too hot to knit with warm fibres, let alone wear them!! :)

I think I'll wait on this HandMaiden project till later in the summer - we're moving to a less hot apartment at the end of June, and I'm guessing that I'll like it better if I don't have to (literally) sweat all over it in our current super stifling flat!

Ugh... but now I have to get going, so that I can walk over to the Ottawa Uni library before the heat sets in - its only 10:15 and its already 21 degrees! (i think they're threatening rain today, but I'll believe it when I see it!)

PS: thanks so much for the package mom! you're the best!