A Little Story

Once upon a time there was a Pink Lemon. The Pink Lemon was a happy, kind, and beautiful creature who loved to spin and knit. She also loved touching soft things, seeing pretty colors, and being around fluffy animals. Once a year she was given a opportunity to do all of these things when Heaven came to the mystical land of Maryland. (This was the part of Heaven that was fibery, not the part that strongly resembles Nordstrom's shoe department.) It was a wondrous event that she looked forward to every year, saving her money, arranging for the love of her life to take time off from work so that he could eat food-on-a-stick with their angelic son while she indulged in all of the wonders of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Show. (It would have been much easier to call it Heaven Comes to Maryland, but alas, they did not put the Pink Lemon in charge.) In the year 2005, the Pink Lemon had been asked by her mother (the Pink Grapefruit?) to pick up a few things. The Pink Lemon gladly said that yes, she would shop for her mother (being the happy, kind and beautiful person she is). One of the booths she visited that day was from a place called Kid Hollow Farms. The Pink Lemon gazed in wonder at all the beautiful rovings piled bag upon bag, just calling to her fibery, color loving heart. The Pink Lemon purchased a half pound of two different colors: Loganberry for herself and Kiwi for her mother. It was a wonderful blend of Border Leicester Lamb's wool and Mohair. At the end of the day, the Pink Lemon, her angelic son, and her saintly mother in law (who pitched in to help corral the angelic one that year as the love of the Pink Lemon's life was far away on a business trip) dragged their tired bodies along with their large bags of purchases back to the Pink Lemon's cottage (conveniently located within driving distance of the magical sheep event). The Pink Lemon carefully packaged all of her mother's purchases and shipped them off to a far away land called Colorado. Then the Pink Lemon began spinning her own purchases. The Loganberry roving was one of the first things to be spun into yarn. It made a glorious, soft yarn that was perfect for socks. So the Pink Lemon knit socks with it.
The first pair of socks was knit toe up, plain stockinette with picot hems at the top a la Claudia.
The second pair of socks was knit top down with the Blueberry Waffles stitch pattern. Both socks were spectacular examples of sockie goodness. The colors in the yarn made little speckles that danced on the Pink Lemon's feet and the Pink Lemon noticed that not only had she enjoyed spinning this yarn, she had enjoyed knitting this yarn and tended to wear these socks as soon as they were washed and placed back in her drawer.

The Pink Lemon remembered another half pound of roving purchased from this same vendor, but the Pink Lemon did not own this and could not spin, knit and enjoy it. So the Pink Lemon decided that in 2006, when Heaven once again came to the mystical land of Maryland, she would find the vendor and purchase more of their rovings. The Pink Lemon's plans were thwarted however, when she was unable to find the booth for Kid Hollow Farm. Downcast and needing to use the restroom, the Pink Lemon left the giant Sheeparama without more Kid Hollow Farm roving (she did take home quite a bit of other things so it wasn't really as sad as it sounds). She knew that her mother had not yet spun the Kiwi roving (her mother, like all good fibery people, tends to stash way more than she actually uses). The Pink Lemon could ask to purchase the roving from her mother, but there was a good chance her mother had forgotten about the roving. Calling her attention to it might make her want to spin it up herself when she looked at its soft, colorful beauty. Somehow, the Pink Lemon had to distract her mother with something else so that she wouldn't notice the subtle shadings, the fluffy softness, the perfect sockie potential of the Kiwi roving. The Pink Lemon thought and thought. She thought some more. Every time she wore her Loganberry socks (which was a lot), she thought even harder. Unfortunately, she never could come up with anything so beautiful, so wonderful, so distracting, that she would be able to get the Kiwi roving back. (Or at least so beautiful, so wonderful, so distracting, that she was willing to part with.) It seemed that the Kiwi roving would be lost forever to the Pink Lemon, relegated to marinating for all eternity in her mother's stash. The Pink Lemon tried to go on with her life, she tried to forget the Kiwi, but it sat stubbornly in the back of her mind, taunting her with its very existence as part of her mother's stash.

One day the Pink Lemon sat down to spin and decided to try to spin a yarn that was lofty and bouncy. She spun and she spun. The roving was dyed in the Beach colorway from Kendig Cottage. It was beautiful. It was fluffy. It was almost 1150 yards. It was also the unfortunate aqua color of babies whose parents wait until they are born to find out if they have dangly bits or not. The Pink Lemon couldn't get past the unknown baby connotations the color had for her. She figured that the yarn had served its purpose as helping her to learn to spin a softly spun but lofty yarn and that it could play in her stash (for she had one also) for all eternity. Then, the Pink Lemon's mother mentioned that she could give the Beach yarn a home. A good home. A home where it was loved and not mocked for being a unisex baby color. The little bit of the Pink Lemon's brain where the memory of Kiwi roving had sat, mocking her for over a year, woke up. The Pink Lemon could purge her stash of the Beach yarn and also finally, get the Kiwi roving back into her grasp. At last the Pink Lemon had the perfect distraction to get the Kiwi roving back by her side, where it obviously belonged anyway. Casually, the Pink Lemon asked her mother if she would be willing to trade 8 ounces of unspun fiber for 12 ounces of spun, gloriously soft and fluffy fiber. Her mother, not knowing that she was about to give up the most wonderful part of her stash- even better than the baby camel fluff (let's face it, she'll probably never spin it - baby camel fluff is scary)- said YES! The Pink Lemon heard angels sing the Hallelujah Chorus (or at least a six year old boy singing the James Bond theme with his teddy bear). Yesterday, delivered into the hands of the Pink Lemon, by the muggle postman who had no idea what he was carrying, was this:

The Kiwi roving is home at last!