I sent off a care package/birthday/Christmas present to one of my best friends last week! This was a monumous occasion because I'm pants at mailing things, and have been putting this together forever.
The recipient (let's call her K) has recently started knitting, and since I'm a filthy enabler, I of course sent her yarn (amoungst other goodies). But not any yarn! The poor woman is allergic to wool and has been just using acrylic. I admit, I'm not a fan of acrylic in general, but it does have it's uses and there's some nice acrylic out there now. However, I think that everyone should be able to play with lovely luxury yarns now and then, so I found her several different types of cotton (this aint your dishcloth cotton), along with some really nice raw silk (in purple, K's favourite colour of course!).
I'm also running an experiment with her. I want to see how bad her allergy to wool is. K has very sensitive skin, but I suspect it's more the texture of the wool that irritates her skin than anything else (but of course, she knows her allergy better than anyone). I've sent her several swatches of different types of yarn, in individual baggies, including:
- 100% wool (mostly for comparison or to test sensitivity to hands rather than more delicate areas - but I expect her to leave this one in the baggy I've sent it in),
- 50% merino wool and 50% silk (to test if a much finer wool will still bother her)
- 100% baby alpaca (because a lot of people who are allergic to wool, aren't allergic to alpaca. And also because alpaca is the softest thing EVER, like knitting a kitten).
- 75% kid mohair and 25% silk (just because)
She's game for experimenting (yay for fellow scientist friends!), so we'll see what comes of this!
Of course, I couldn't just send her the yarn in a plain ol' box or envelope, I had to make something special! And being a sewist with a lot of quilting fabric and a can-do attitude, I tossed together a cute little project bag in about an hour.
It's pretty simple, but has a few nice details: Fully lined with a fun print, buttonhole slots for the draw string, and I used the only "fancy" stitch on my machine to sew up the open side of some double fold bias tape for a draw string. All very easy, but was fun to work out and the only sewing I did in my last time off.
Now let's just hope that Canada Post doesn't lose the package along the way! They managed to lose my Pavlova pattern, and I suspect some yarn I ordered a while ago. :(
Happy sewing (and knitting)!
