Good for what ails you

Yesterday, I was a little down. And then I got mail. Did I mention how much I like getting mail these days? Yes I did. Only once? Well I do like getting mail these days.

There was a day not long ago, somewhere about February I think, that someone linked me to knitting online. At the time I did not knit, and the only online yarn source I ever heard of was Mary Maxim. It's OK, you can laugh, and you may want to tidy up after you spewed your coffee, but it never occurred to me, that anything like this knitterly yarny world existed online. Call me 10 kinds of a Dunce, but I never ever thought about googling it. I'm a googler newbie, a novice, a dunderhead. My only defence is that I had painful dial up at home, and almost all of my Internet is at work. (Its weak, I know, but it is all I've got) Once exposed, knitting online was a good virus.

Knitting online led me to so many great yarn and needlework sources, Red Bird Knits , Knitpicks, Webs, and then all the small sites, the specialty yarns, like Blue Moon and all the wonderful sellers on Etsy and Ebay. Online led me to a great LYS, and some wonderful people who are taking me, screaming, one step at a time, to knowing knitting.

I really enjoy getting the mail and even now I wait for a book. Each day I stop at the boxes down the road, and open my little mail cubicle, and sometimes there is magic. Occasionally there is magic that I'm not expecting.

That is what happened yesterday when I picked up the mail . A Hampstead House book catalogue arrived, always a delight. But I also got one of these.

My first Seed catalogue for 2008. I have ordered from T&T for 25 years. Back to the days of the farm, when 10 50 foot rows of peas was the norm. When gardening was vegetables, and potatoes were staples. Its all flowers now, but that;'s ok. Veggies need sun, and I don't have a lot of that. T & T are great source of short season seeds for the Canadian climate. This years catalogue is so new the website isn't updated, but I have it in my hot little fingers. Here in the cold of the northern hemisphere, before the depths of winter, just as the darkest dark descends, I'm thinking solidly, Spring. Excuse me while I go jump up and down for joy.

It will be followed by others, Alberta Nurseries , Stokes, MacKenzie's, and more. From here on in, it has to look just a wee bit brighter.