Jennifer is... continually impressed by the Yarn Harlot

For those of us on Facebook, don't you just love (LOVE!) the status line? I can just glance down the list of my friends and see right away where things are different for people. Right now, my friend Richard is "... cranky with Dymocks". My gorgeous friend Alison is "... one day away from getting on a big big plane to take me back to sunshine", my sister is "... going to climb an active volcano", and my darling husband is "... going to join Team Awesome". One can only hope they will all be wearing their pants on their heads, too.

At this point in time, my status line reads: Jennifer is "...continually impressed by the Yarn Harlot". And I am. For the last couple of years, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has got behind the organisation 'Medecins Sans Frontieres' (or Doctors Without Borders) by forming 'Tricoteuses Sans Frontieres' (or Knitters Without Borders), and with the help of the beautiful community of knitters out there, has managed to raise over $400,000 for this wonderful humanitarian organisation. (If you're reading the MSF and TSF sites and are inspired, do go ahead and donate. There's plenty of good karma to go around, especially at Christmas!)

I wrote and posted a cheque yesterday to Medecins Sans Frontieres Australia, and emailed Stephanie to let her know so it could be added to the total for
Tricoteuses Sans Frontieres. I have to say, it was a daunting task. How do you just casually email someone you admire so much and not say something ridiculously sycophantic, or creepy-stalky, or just plain weird? I felt so 'not worthy' to email the great Yarn Harlot at least until I was able to say that I had donated some money to MSF. This is what I eventually managed to type:

Dear Stephanie,


I have wanted to email, or write comments on your blog for such a long time, but haven't quite felt 'worthy' (imagine Wayne and Garth here). Having read your blog, and two of your books ("Knitting Rules", and "Yarn Harlot" - I haven't been able to get the others yet, I'm hoping for Christmas!), I have admired you for the way you write; I can just sense the joy you feel and express so beautifully and with so much humour about your life: your family, your dedication to making the world a better place for us all, and of course your absolute passion for fibre and knitting. To humbly quote your good self - I want be you when I grow up!


I have been a knitter since I was about eight; my mum and her mum showed me, but it never got much further than garter stitch blanket squares until my wonderful mother bought me a pattern for a cowl-neck jumper, a big bag of yarn and said to me, "There. Now go and knit something useful". From there, and from reading your blog, I have tried to learn a little something new in each project I've undertaken, be it a new way of making or decreasing stitches, a lace pattern, or a little intarsia - I can't wait till the next Knitting Olympics! And so now I find myself an obsessed knitter, with a knitting blog and a new fibre obsession to be getting on with - I bought my first spinning wheel on eBay earlier this year and have recently started lessons, and I love it!


My point (when I get to it, eventually) is that I wanted to thank you, Stephanie, for your inspiration and humour that uplift me and make me want to do my best as a knitter, as a teacher, as a wife and mother, and as a human being. And I wanted to leave emailing you or commenting until I was 'worthy' enough to do so. I wanted to let you know that I posted a cheque for $50AUS ($44.25CAN, roughly) to Medecins Sans Frontieres today as my family's Christmas gift to an organisation who could really use it. It's not much, but I know it can help.


With admiration and gratitude,


etc, etc.

That's not too weird, is it?

Crap. Now Jennifer "... is feeling nervous".