When Webloggers Finally Meet!

The picture says it all. DH and I got to Courtenay on Vancouver Island on a beautifully autumnal sunny morning and there was beloved Peg of Woolinmysoup, Peg with whom I have weblogged and emailed for months, right there in person.

It's an incredible feeling when you actually meet a fellow knitter and weblogger. You have exchanged so many confidences, so much personal information through your postings that by the time you come face to face you are already old friends. And that was exactly how it proved. I hauled out a couple of small things I'd got especially for Peg in Ireland and hidden away in my suitcase, and then she - this was a complete lovely shock - brought out the most beautiful little felted bag for me.




It is about eight inches high and knitted in three natural shades of brown, camel and fawn, with its own lovely drawstring to keep treasures inside safely hidden. And what a treasure there was inside!



Isn't this just the most beautiful lace scarf you've ever seen? I couldn't believe that Peg had made it especially for me. It is light as thistledown, as gossamer, and almost flies by itself in the slightest breeze.



Here are Peg and her lovely husband John looking amused while I play entranced with my new length of airy thistledown lace.

We hadn't even got into Peg's LYS yet at this stage but were still talking and laughing outside while my own DH took pictures at lightning speed (well, he's used to capturing unique moments, it's his job!) So John most obligingly took R out looking for scenery and wildlife while Peg and I hit Jen's lovely Uptown Yarns, completely immersed in chat and laughter and exchanging of scrappy sentences that said 'This is great - I can't believe we've met at last!'

I have to tell you that meeting up with a fellow blogger is so marvellous we should all do it. There is an incredible linkage and power source in all these postings which I don't quite fathom yet, but know it's there. I honestly and truly think we could be a power for sanity and beauty in a world going ever more quickly mad. Can't we arrange web-log-ins in different places?

I must say Peg is blessed in her LYS. It is a gorgeously crowded little place with tempting shelves, snippets and baskets of different colours, textures, fibres at every turn. I was so excited with the journey and the meeting and the gifts that I couldn't settle on anything and bounced from one to the other like a kid. Jen, the owner, and her mother were both calm kindness as they observed their normally well behaved regular and her wildly erratic friend careering around talking at the tops of their voices and calling to each other to look at this yarn or that.

And then to top it all, just as I was fingering yet again the most beautiful hand-dyed yarns I'd ever seen, ,in came the designer responsible for creating them - one Judy McLean who lives right there on Vancouver Island. My heavens, you should see the mohairs and laceweights and homespuns and so much more, all in the most incredibly dreamlike shades. She was fascinating to talk to, as she told us how she'd gradually moved from creating one-of-a-kind sweaters to producing the unique yarns themselves and how she loved doing that. Peg, forgive me, but all this travelling is making me most disorganised and I can't even find Jen's yarn store business card with Judy's details on the back. Is she Sweatergirl Yarns? Can you tell people where to find them, until I get home and back to where I can put my hand on things quickly? And my eternal regret is that I didn't even have a camera in the yarn store. Will just have to call in again on the way back down the island, if only to get a picture of lovely happy Jen and her mother in their utterly desirable shop.

Now up at Campbell River with the sun just rising across the water behind Quadra Island and the occasional ship sliding by silently through Discovery Passage. But my thoughts are still with the wonder of meeting fellow webloggers and the joy it brings. This is something I want to do again. And again.

Tomorrow or tonight, depending on whether I can get the laptop from R again, I'll post on the shameful self-indulgences so far - did I really need a set of Lantern Moon dpns (only one answer to that...) And Briggs Mill roving... And the One Skein book...?