I checked the airport and flight info last night and we had more time than we thought–which is why I set my alarm for 5:00 am rather than, say, 4:30. Small favors.

Michelle was getting ready to go this morning and I sat down to peek at my comments while I waited.

And saw the one from Lorraine.

Now, my first reaction (note the sleep deprivation) was, how did spam get through?  But wait–I know that name. (Michelle, I thought towards her in the other room, take your time while I go check this out.) Looking in my inbox, yes, that was Lorraine from cottagecraftangora.com whom I’ve bought qiviut-blend yarn from. (That qiviut angora would take color really nicely and I only wish I could have angora in the house.)

We went off to the airport with me marveling out loud to my kids. John was driving; I simply was coming along to try to get every last minute out of our time together and to make sure there was no falling asleep at the wheel coming home. *Hugs* “Love you Mom!” “Love you ‘Shelle!” “Bye!”

We’re missing her keenly already.

With my focus on my kids while the two were home (John’s got a few more days), I’d totally forgotten: Lorraine had run a contest to name her handpaint 90/10 qiviut/merino, and I had spent a pleasant afternoon meandering around Google and Wikipedia and learning a whole lot about Arctic areas while trying to come up with something relevant to both the colors and the muskox. I’ve seen it snow on the Fourth of July in Banff, I’d read a little, (I loved the story of what the re-introduced buffalo did, thank you for the book, Scott!) I have a niece-in-law and cousin-in-law from Alaska, I knew enough to know I knew very little. Just enough that the contest was simply an  excuse now to go learn about a part of the world that intrigued me.

Pictures of a mountainside in bloom in the tundra: life being determined to celebrate itself in living color. No depth of cold could stop it.

A Canadian national park I’d never heard of.  The Arctic Cordillera Range, isn’t that a Spanish word? How did it get that, I wonder. (And if you search the word without the Arctic part, you find yourself over in the Phillippines.)

I was sure I’d disqualified myself by offering more than one potential name for some of the colorways as I tried to share briefly what I’d discovered, but it didn’t matter; it was surely such a nice yarn, someone else should get a chance to enjoy it. (I tried really really hard not to wish for it and to feel as generous as that sounds. I rather  failed.)  I could just picture someone doing all that work milling that fiber and then painting that yarn and then feeling stuck with having to take on names for her work that didn’t live up to what she was hoping for, so I was trying to stretch the range of possibilities. I told  her in my comment that since it’s her product, if she wanted to choose this name from this person and that from that, it seemed fair to me.

And then I promptly forgot all about it because I don’t win things nor did I deserve to.

A qiviut scarf and 100 g of that yarn to make my own with, too. A shawl’s worth. I can’t believe I get to have Aulavik.

Lorraine says there will be more contests.

I figure the least I can do to tell her thank you is to point you all to where to enter her next one while saying that it was very, very generous of her.

And that Arctic Blend that just came back into stock? My needles can tell you you can get a surprisingly big lace scarf out of one little ten-dollar 2-ply skein, a nice shimmer to it to go with the softness and warmth.

My needles are going to dance in delight in the blooming tundra!