A Gift from My Mother-in-law

I have the best Mother-in-law in the world!

She came down to visit this week and brought me a gift: a whole tote of yarn from her stash.

Here it is all spread out.

Pink wool from Briggs and Little:

Lucky her, she is only one hour away from the Canada border. So, she slips across at least once a year to restock her wool supply.

6 balls of brown wool and one ball of white wool - vendor unknown

5 balls of brown wool:

This was a gift to my MIL from her MIL. It is very soft wool. It is also hand spun.

Several skeins of bright pink wool from Knit Picks. I will have to make this into a sweater ... or a skirt ... for my neice. She just LOVES this color.

Lastly, my MIL's favorite find. She purchased this from a local fiber fair in Maine. The wool is hand dyed and hand spun. It is super soft. She was hesitant to give it up, but didn't want it to sit in her stash unused for another year. I wound it up into balls as soon as I got home. It isn't enough to make a sweater out, but it will be perfect for a shrug or a hat/scarf combo or a lampshade cozy.

Then, after gathering up all this yarn for me, she trolled through my blog and noticed that my balls of yarn were still done in the old fashioned style. In other words, I still wind them by hand. Insisting that she isn't going to buy any more wool for quite some time (I give her 3 months before she caves) and that she has wound her entire stash into yarn cakes, she gave me her ball winder. Boy, oh boy, I can never go back to winding yarn by hand. I am converted! It took me 3 minutes to wind a ball of yarn. 3 minutes! Before it would take me at least 15 minutes even with my trusty umbrella.

My MIL made me swear that I would keep this yarn free from dirt and far away from those pesky _oths. Just to put her mind at ease, I took a picture of the yarn back in the tote, safe and sound in my cedar closet.

Thanks, Mom!