This week I reached out to the world and it said "YOU WON". I'm very happy. Somehow this little win (actually 2 wins) makes the world a happier place. I did the dance of joy and sang my little "life is good" song. This week I did something I haven't done since 1999 and I won.
Do I have your interest? Are you just biting your nails with excitement to find out why I'm a winner? Okay - I can only draw out this so far before I let you in on my thrill of victory with no agony of defeat.
I never try for things on Ebay but I was looking around for the heck of it and saw an Alice Starmore book that was coming due in a couple hours. A few hours later I was the proud owner of "Fisherman's Sweater".
I was feeling rather proud of the new book and the low price I paid for it so I checked out a few other Alice Starmore books and saw "Celtic Collections" up for bid and a really low price to that point. I put in a bid - was beat out - held my breath and put in another bid closer to closing time. I got Celtic Collection for $31. The best price I've seen at Amazon is $66. I'm a happy camper.
So what does all this have to do with Worldwide Wednesday? It's a stretch but here goes -
Back in the 70s when I first got back into knitting the world was fairly small. You may go out of town for college but flying someplace for vacation was rare and you definitely didn't go places for knitting workshops. The Internet didn't exist, very few knitting magazine existed, and the only way to get yarn and supplies was at your local five and dime store or a craft store like Lee Wards. You used what you could find. You didn't know any better.
Over on Ravelry in the Nifty Fifties group we were talking about our granny square afghans in acrylic. It seems all of us crocheted one or were gifted with one. Choices were few and yarn for the most part was "plastic". I was lucky because a friend of our family opened a yarn shop (The Yarn Shed in Robbinsdale for those oldies that might remember). I worked Friday nights and Saturdays for several years to help out and the knitting world grew for me. I met Elizabeth Zimmerman in books and then in person, I discovered wool yarn. Found out I could design pretty sweaters. Learned how to teach what I loved. But - through all this the world was still fairly small. We would get customers complaining because they had to drive 3 whole miles to get to the shop!
Today's knitting world is so amazing. We can order yarn from all over the world. We can meet up with knitters from all over via the Internet. We can blog and post about our accomplishments and problems. What an amazing world we live in. We can even buy books from a seller across the country and never have to go into their store. I like it!
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