Happy Canada Day!

Alex and I returned from Italy last night and I'm catching up on a gazillion emails. Make that two gazillion. You'd be amazed at how many nice girls in Russia write to tell me that they want to be my wife.

Because today is Canada Day I thought I ought to check on what's going on up in the Great White North. The G20 have left Toronto and the city's getting back to normal. My Mom has 6 baby turkeys, 4 baby raccoons and 2 baby red-headed woodpeckers in her yard now. And YarnHarlot is working on a really terrific lace project.

As I was reading YarnHarlot's blog I saw that she's doing a lot to support Medicins sans Frontier through her Tricoteuses sans Frontieres (Knitters Without Borders) program. Please take a look at it because I know a lot of you already donate to MSF and it would be helpful if you let YarnHarlot know how much you've donated so she can add it to her tally.

A few minutes ago Jan dropped by to say, "Welcome back" and to let me know how KnitchMagazine is coming along. Our summer issue will be out very soon.

And she also mentioned we've had some queries about the Stefan's Dinosaur sweater that was the winner in last year's Yarnmarket/TKGA design contest. The pattern is almost ready to be posted.

As some of you know, the winner of the contest was unable to complete the entire pattern after submitting it for the contest. You know how it is...stuff happens that you've got to deal with and you go into "Have-To-Do" mode rather than "Want-To-Do." She sent us what she could, and we commissioned the brilliant and talented Jennifer Penney to complete the pattern for us. Now, that was a challenge! But after a VERY considerable amount of effort, Jennifer is now finalizing the charts and it looks like we'll be posting the pattern very soon. Hurray! I'll let everyone know when it's up.

So...KnitchMagazine is on the way, the Dinosaur sweater pattern is almost complete, and I'm sure that in a month or two -- if I work very hard -- I'll be caught up with all my emails!