It’s my yarn swap necklace, I grinned at him when it arrived.

Your what?

There’s someone who’d knitted a cashmere sweater for someone else, loved the pattern and wanted to make one for herself now, bought more of the yarn–and didn’t start it because she became sure she didn’t have enough. Since it was a mill end from Colourmart there was no more to be had.

Except I found out about it. I had an exact match and there was no point in having it sit in my stash when someone else actually needed it, and I mailed it off to her. This was about a year ago.

Now, I get it about queues and about knitting for yourself last except those times when you really need to recharge the inner batteries and how complicated the timing of any one project can get. So when I found out I had yet another cone that had somehow been separated from the others, I asked her just in case if she’d had enough to knit her sweater–and when it turned out she hadn’t made it yet, told her I had just found this other cone if it would help her be sure she had enough.

It would very much, thanks.

(I flashed back to childhood memories of Mom making Dad a complicated Aran sweater over quite a few months and coming up short right at the end: that is the reason I always overbuy before starting a project. Always.)

It was around Christmas and I tried to tell her it was on me but she was having none of that and insisted on paying for it.

Okay. So I turned right around and spent it in Ukraine to help them pay for backup power after the bombings because they needed that help and they needed it now.

I got an artist’s project made for me (with progress pictures! Cool!), that woman gets to feel that her country’s anguish matters to the world, the other knitter gets to be the artist making the project she’d wanted to do, everybody wins.