A hectic past couple of days here at String. First, the website itself was attacked by spammer ‘bots. Between Sunday afternoon and Monday night, they posted over 2,300 individual pingbacks to a collection of specious websites. I’ve been trolling through all past pages here, deleting the references. I think I’ve got them all now, but if you see one, please don’t click on it – let me know instead and I’ll deal with the blasted thing.
The other major event has been the kickoff of our long-awaited upstairs bathroom renovation. We’ve been in this house now about 2.5 years. All that time our upstairs family bath was only partly functional, with poorly functioning plumbing, 1960s-vintage yellow, clammy plastic paneling (impossible to get or keep clean), patched vinyl flooring, hideous pizza parlor hills-of-Tuscany wallpaper, crumbling laminate over particle board cabinetry, and awful mustard fixtures with gold tone faucets. The only nice thing about it was a stained glass window (partly visible in the first shot):
We’ve been plotting and planning to replace the whole lot with something functional, clean, and historical in mood. Yesterday the project began in earnest, with the contractor carefully removing the antique window and door, then gutting the rest. I promise not to make this a home-improvement blog, but if anything interesting happens, I might report it here.
And finally, just before the aforementioned chaos hit I had a happy not-so-surprise. I signed up for the No Sheep Swap. I generally don’t participate in swaps or knit-alongs, but this one sounded like fun. My gracious and generous upstream swap partner (and all-around fascinating person) sent me this package of goodies:
It’s a skein of South West Trading Company’s Pure, a 100% soy silk yarn in happy berry colors, plus an embroidered purse big enough to be used for knitting accessory wrangling. Thank you, Melanie! I’ll post back here after I’ve tried it out.
On the downstream end, I have been waiting to hear back from my assigned recipient, but my notes and card have gone unanswered. I can’t wait any longer because to abide within the rules of the swap, I have to have her package in the mail shortly. I’ll have to pick something out without guidance on color or yarn weight preference, and hope 1) she’s there; and 2) she likes it.
[Aside: Apologies to Dena, who inadvertently was awarded an extra E when I was spelling her name. It stands for “excellent” and being obvious, intruded itself smack in the middle of my orthography. Thanks again for the fantastic lace-weight. I’m pretty sure I have enough, but if I do run out, I will resort to all sorts of begging, pleading, groveling, offering, trading, negotiating and bribery to secure some more.]
String-Or-Nothing 
Glad you’re enjoying the yarn, and you will not have to beg too much if you need more! Good luck with the renovation.