Why Fiber Trends is so cool

About a year ago I bought the pattern for A Felt Flock . I had one of those crunchy moments where I thought it would be wicked cool to have all sorts of wooly, natural stuff in the kids' Easter baskets. I knit 2 sheep, both topside and tummies. And started to realize that I was going to end up felting them late the night before Easter and trying to blowdry them with a hairdryer or somesuch to get them done in time. So, I set them aside for the next year, figuring that surely within a year's time I could get them done.

Of course, all of this must take place in secret since it's actually the Easter Bunny who is filling those baskets, not Mom. Although if directly asked I will admit to slipping a toy in, even felted lambs.

As you can guess, the sheep got set to one side and pretty much languished. When we sort of moved into an apartment/temporary housing last fall I took them along because the apartment had a topload washer (we have a front loader, which makes for trickier felting simply because most felting directions assume you have a toploader). But I never got around to doing anything with them because I frittered away my time on frivolous activities like looking at about 100 houses that were on the market (really, we had spread sheets to keep track of what we'd looked at). Then, of course, we actually moved, the pipe broke in the basement, the dryer overheated, blah blah blah.

And here it is, almost the last possible moment. I got out the sheep parts yesterday, intending to throw them in the laundry with a load of towels. But, wait, why do I have such long bits of yarn dangling off of them? Why are there safety pins stuck in various places, particularly their bottoms? Could it be that I shouldn't just throw them in the washer and then whip them together? I managed to dig up the pattern (you have no idea what labor lurks behind that simple sentence, given that most of the craft stuff is randomly heaped in the basement). I glanced through, and realized that I had left off somewhere in the 2nd page, with miles to go before they were sheep. Specifically, I need to sew the tummy to the body, knit hooves, then "see pattern insert for back hooves, tail, ear and horn instructions".

Ummm, yeah, that ol' pattern insert. The one that I sort of remember being stuck in the pattern when I bought it, but it was in my way while I was knitting so I took it out and put it someplace safe. "Someplace safe" in our old house in its pre-moving state, which is quite different from the house in transit, and hugely different from our house now.

So yesterday morning bright and early I emailed Fiber Trands and asked if there was a way to get the insert. And, you know what? Within a couple of hours I had a PDF file of the insert. Of course, I have no idea what yarn I was using for hooves, or where I would've put it, and I'm uneasily aware that I have no memory of needle size used thus far. And I have no energy in the wee hours of the night to work on this due to this stupid stupid time change which is a stupid thing to for us to do with clocks and only a stupid society would do such a stupid thing (plus allergies this time of year that are putting me in some sort of proto-asthmatic condition, which is making me a tiny bit cranky maybe).

The Easter forecast shows only a 50% chance of sheep at this point. BUT, Bev at Fiber Trends has definitely done her part. She has come through for me.