Yarnival!

Welcome to Volume I, Issue IV of Yarnival! 

This issue is best perused with your choice of (a) hot cocoa (schnapps-spiked), (b) egg nog (rum-spiked) or (c) champagne (diamond ring-spiked), as befits the season and current state of your relationship.  This elf is all pooped out from sorting through your many submissions.  This was no Land of Misfit Toys, but rather a heaping mound of just-what-I-always-wanted-ness.  If you’re feeling left out in the cold, please don’t!  I’ll refer you again to your beverage choices and encourage you to submit to Carole, editor of the upcoming issue.  And now, laying a finger aside my nose, I present to you, Yarnival!

All Wrapped Up: Features

• Kirsty brings us The Book of Knit.What is your knitting inheritance?  Some of us have vintage needle collections.  Others can trace their knitty instincts back through the crafty family tree.  Kirsty’s a lucky one.  Her grandmother took the time to write it all down.

• TheAmpuT knows what the season’s all about.  …and that’s recycling orphaned blankies from the thrift shop.  Read to the end for a perfect holiday note.  Cue Tiny Tim, please.

• Over the river and through the woods with Cookie!  Forget grandmother’s house.  Bye-bye, Crate and Barrel.  So long, Cletus’s Christmas Tree Farm!  Let Cookie lead you on a couple of magical excursions instead.  First stop, the Textile Museum, and then it’s off to The Moon, Alice!

• Megan feels it’s time we all admitted it.  Online quizzes are the scented candle/bedroom slippers/bottle of wine/ Barnes and Noble gift certificate of the blog world.  They’re what you do when it’s the 11^th hour and you’re all out of ideas.  But in the right hands, such quizzes can be very clever indeed.  Allow them to introduce the Knitting Philistine.  Feel free to steal one.  What else you gonna give Uncle Lou?

Deck the Halls

• ...with socks of lace.  Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.  Nora’s free pattern is a frothy, whipped-cream-on-your-hot-cocoa dream for your feet.

• ...with less infuriating pom-poms.  Instructions can be found here.  Thanks, Kate!

• ...with novelty yarn.  Yes.  Let Robin show you how, and then thrill to Caro’s tale of how, lured perhaps by the glint of pub lighting on eyelash, a boozy reveler mistook her for a meth addict.  Wassail!

• …or un-deck them.  Laura shows us how to perform a bobble-ectomy.  Because sometimes—yes, even at this time of year—less is more.

Ho, Ho, FO!

• Pam wants to know, Do You Believe?  Santa, the Easter Bunny, Sasquatch, cotton intarsia that doesn’t suck ….  Join Pam as she pursues yet another elusive creature of myth.
• Meet Heather’s whacky uncle.  Every family has one.  Maybe yours is currently taking up some space on your couch, leaving walnut shells between the cushions, making off-color jokes about Yule logs or trying to catch sexy Aunt Susan under the mistletoe.  At least this guy’s also practical. 
• The shawls are just flying off the needles these days in blogland.  Here are three beauties.  First, I’m not sure what Leda’s Dream might have been, but it probably didn’t involve that damn swan.  Jenny’s perfect purple shawl is a sweet dream indeed.  I know I’ve got visions of sugarplums just looking at it.  Kiri(e) eleison, Kirsten.  And another in the overtly sexy shawls-on-chairs category.  Beautiful work, Laura!
• She shees you when you’re sheleeping.  She sheknows when you’re awake…  Turtlegirl76 gives us the whole she-bang.  She-does.  She-riously.
• Thrum, they told her.  A thrum-pum-pum-pum.  Fit for a king, Brooke! 
• “It was severe work, but of the sort that was exhilarating.”  Jack London could have been speaking of Aija’s Lizard Ridge.  (Or maybe of the arduous slog that is the yearly Christmas letter.)  Who needs To Build a Fire when you've got something this cozy around?  At least he got to hold it.
• What child is this?  He didn’t just knit it himself, he spun it, too.  Oh, and he’s still in grade school.  Let’s hear it for Hannah's boy!
• There’s something about brocade.  It’s the fabric of crackling fires, expensive stockings hung by the chimney with care, of steaming cups of Earl Grey, of wolfhounds loping ‘cross the moors ahead of lanky men holding slim rifles in the crooks of their arms, and Jenna.  Not Rowan material, my ass.

Stocking Stuffers

• Tim Burton’s not the only one.  Angela manages to combine horror with the holidays.  Oh, and she does just plain horror pretty well, too.
• Tinkertoys!  Drills! Cheapskates!  Ladies with curlers in their hair!  No, we’re not talking about Christmas morning.  We’re talking Bezzie.
• And speaking of stockings, check out Sarah's (mind you don't cut yourself), Mai's (love the Seuss-ified blog name), and Emma's (away in a manger).

Santa, Baby

The Kates have it this month.  What’s their secret?  Mistletoe?  Cookies?  Some tiny whistle only fiber-loving men can hear?  Whatever it is, let’s all remind them that the spirit of the season is sharing.

• You might get an iPod.  You might get some cashmere gloves.  Dig deep in that stocking and you very well may come up with a nice, round Florida orange.  But kiddo, I gotta break it to you.  Not everyone gets a Richard.
• He doesn’t love her in spite of the knitting addiction.  Far from it.  This wooly love story begins in a Soviet bread line, meanders through years of love and stash enhancement, and ends with a marvelous FO.  Zhivago-esque in its sweeping scope, this story is worth the read for the vintage photos alone.  Do I hear Laura's Theme?

From the Editor

There it is!  I hope you enjoyed this month's Yarnival!  Or at least that you were in enough of a boozy haze by the end that you will remember that you enjoyed it, which is basically the same thing.  If you're new to Yarnival!, please check out Issue I, Issue II, and Issue III, which are chock-full of Yarnivaly! goodness.  If you'd like to edit a future edition of Yarnival!, please let Eve know.  And remember to leave comments to let these bloggers know you stopped by, else it's coal in the knee socks for all of you.

Comments

[Sarah]

FANTASTIC! You did an amazing job, Julia!

[Kirsten]

My choice is the schnapps- spiked hot cocoa - but with the spring-like weather we've been having, I may need to put it on ice!

I'm off to read the festive holiday Yarnival! Thanks for editiing!

[laura]

you did a great job editing this issue, julie! thanks! what a nice early christmas present. :)

[Carol]

THAT was fabulous! No wonder you were asked to host! But then, I'm not all that surprised;)

[Robin]

WHAT A GREAT POST!!!!! I'm off to fix myself a hot toddy now!!!

[Carole]

It will be fun to look through all these posts. Thanks for pulling it all together.

[maryse]

well played julie ... well played!

[megan]

Your holiday edition of YARNIVAL! is wicked awesome. Excellent job, 'specially that features section. That Knitting Philistine sounds like one kooky, clever gal! (Thank you so much for the inclusion.) Be back soon...around Jan. 18. Have a wonderful month of big-time-holiday-fun!

[amisha]

this looks fabulous... *thank you* for putting it together!!

[Kirsty]

Thanks for including me, I'm so thrilled.

[nova]

Very well put together!

[turtlegirl76]

Wow! Whomever nominated me, I'm honored. It was a fun post to write! Thank you so much for including me!

[Jenny Raye]

Excellent post! I'll be going back through it more carefullly when I have the time to really savor it.

Thanks for the inclusion.

[Dorothy B]

Good job on the newest Yarnival. I've laughed and cried and I'm not finished reading yet.

[Ashley]

May I recommend Cointreau in the cocoa in place of schnapps? Ever so much more sophisticated. I'll be drinking some while I comb through all of these tonight!

[Paula]

I really liked this post, I too will be checking it again when I have more time.

[Lisa]

I'm a little late checking the 4th Yarnival, but I loved it! Great job.

[Cookie]

Awesome job! I'm so behind in blog reading, this was a great way to get some of the highlights of the season. :-)

[Jennie]

I have really enjoyed this and also read issues 2 and 3. So glad I came across Yarnival!

[Ailsa]

Um, I stopped by. I liked teh beverage choices, so I stayed a while, and it was great. Thanks. So it's no coal for me. 1 year.