looking for good

 I probably need to try to do that more.

I've been hauling stuff home from the storage unit. I have most of it home now, though I'm fast running out of room for fabric. (I probably need to either fix or remove the cheapo built-in shelves in the walk in closet. If I can fix them, I could move the "big pieces" folded up to those, and then repurpose those two shelves for more green and blue fabrics, which are what I have the most of.)

Most of the yarn is home, but that's in totes and will stay in totes, and most of them are stacked in the guest room closet. They're clear totes, so I can more or less find what I want when I need it. 

I DID find the other big piece of "Paddington's Birthday" fabric I thought I had - this was produced in either 2008 (I think it was) or 2018 for Paddington's 50th or 60th anniversary (from when the books were first published). I bought a big piece of the largest print (Paddington making a cake) and smaller pieces of coordinating ones, including a "marmalade orange" piece. I could probably find some other bits and pieces (maybe some of my cake and cookie print fabrics, or I think I have some with kitchen utensils) and work them together to make a quilt. 

I also found a set of fat quarters of Beatrix Potter prints and also a big piece that I must have bought to go with them. I'm on the fence about this - I will always love Paddington (my "Christmas quilt" I put on the bed is Paddington) but maybe that's a little childish for me? I don't know. It's compact enough and I have a place for it; I could hang on to it because who knows, maybe someone I love a lot will either have or adopt a baby and I would want to put a quilt together quickly. 

I did find a bunch to give away; I might wash some of it again just in case it's musty, and then I should fold them up well and call the church that is supposed to have a quiltmaking ministry and take fabric donations. (If they don't? I don't know. Maybe I hang on to it until some time when I'm going somewhere like Whitesboro and I call ahead and ask if they know of a place that takes donations. Or I see if Goodwill will take fabric)

I also got a package in the mail - I had ordered some yarn from an Etsy seller a few weeks back. In fact, I ordered a couple days before Fiona hit the island, and I didn't realize the seller was there (she just said "from the Caribbean" in her shop bio). 

Well, then right after Fiona, she sent me a message - the hurricane had hit, things were kind of a mess. I could either cancel my order and get a refund, or I could wait a bit longer.

I admit, I paused for a moment. There has been (as knitters who are fans of hand dyed yarn will tell you) a LOT of stuff that's happened in the hand-dying world, big and small hand dyers, where people came up with excuses not to fill their orders, or who delayed orders endlessly. But usually they DON'T offer refunds.

And anyway, I really wanted the yarn.

So I sent back a message - no, the yarn wasn't urgent, I could wait on it. I wished her well and said I hope she stayed safe and things got back to normal for her, and I would just wait for the yarn when she could send it out.

Well, a few days ago I got the notification it was on its way. Faster, really, than I anticipated, but maybe she was in a less hard-hit area. 

It came today. I pulled it out of the mailbox and....it felt like there were two skeins in there?

Well, I thought, maybe it was 50 gram put-ups, some dyers break the big skein into two. But then I wondered - could there have been a mistake and I got the wrong order? Or someone else's got put in with mine?

Nope:

The one on the right - the black with bright pastels ("Toucan Sam") was the yarn I ordered, the other one, it's hard to see, but on the tag she wrote "Thank you for your patience!"

Free yarn. (The colorway is called Candy Land. The dyer is Candy Corn Yarns)

I didn't expect that. I mean, I appreciate it (and I hope it didn't eat into her profit margin too much - she absolutely didn't have to do it, I understand natural disasters will slow down deliveries, and this REALLY wasn't that slow)

Not sure what I want to do with it - the Toucan Sam is for socks, but I might consider a hat with some kind of slipped stitch or similar pattern to break up what will probably be pooling. Or maybe I just make wild socks. (Some people call these kinds of colorways "clown barf," which makes me roll my eyes - the ONE place you could probably indulge a love of bright color and get away with it was socks)