While the calendar flipped a page over into March this morning, Old Man Winter is unrelenting.  Snowflakes continue to fall from the sky confirming what the Farmer’s Almanac predicted last fall ~ a long, heavy winter.  Certainly around here it is just so and the woolens have no need to be put in the trunks just yet.

There are indeed very good people in the world, and this cowl was made for just such a person.  A woman I met through a support group for parents of children with Type 1 Diabetes manifested a very expensive device for my daughter.  While the machine allows for better sleeps for my husband and I (we must wake up every few hours through the night to manage her blood sugars), for the first time in six years since her diagnosis when she was two years old, we simply couldn’t afford the steep expense.  As a somewhat inadequate gesture of my deepest gratitude, I cast on for this cowl using my own Wool Maiden yarn I gradient dyed.  Serendipity would have it that the cowl is called The Present and is found on Ravelry.

I mailed it off just after Christmas, and our guardian angel loves it.  As did my Sunshine girl who immediately cast on for her own Present Cowl in another skein of gradient yarn from Wool Maiden in worsted weight, or Maya.  It is rather convenient having several totes of luxury yarn in the house, ready for the shop.

Sunshine has made a few knitted projects now and deserves her own Ravelry account, I’d say.  She wears the cowl every snowy chance she gets, and often with this pompom hat she made from our homeschool fibre group I host, The Handmaidens.  Sunshine dyed her own wool and quickly cast on, again using some aran weight Wool Maiden yarn we call Athena.

I am delighted by how much I enjoy dyeing yarn and transforming luxury wool into multi-coloured skeins.  Wool Maiden began a year ago as a fun project, and for now, it shall remain more of a smallish thing.  With three homeschooled children, a hobby farm filled to the brim with critters, and a husband away most of the time….I am full.  But I manage to find a few moments here and there to play with colour and fibre.  A little “mama” time, all to myself.  I stocked up the shop yesterday with 40 skeins of wool, in anticipation of Taproot magazine’s Weave edition coming out….I have an article in there!  I hope to do seasonal stock ups as well as custom orders…and we’ll see how it unfolds as the children grow.  For now, I am having so much fun with it all and I hope knitters and fibre enthusiasts will also enjoy what Wool Maiden has to offer.

Please take a peek at the shop and tell me what you think.  I’d love to hear about your favourites and any other ideas.  On the weekend, I will be adding some felted bunnies just in time for Easter and I also plan on doing a give-away soon, too, so stay tuned!

ravelry notes on the Present Cowl here

Wool Maiden shop here

Wool Maiden website here