the quacking fiber addict

Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that "this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word." Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of...."

One of the stores that was so disastrous to my Stitches budget was Purlescence. They carry luxurious hand-dyed fibers for spinning (Chasing Rainbows and Blue Moon, to name a couple) and a vast array of hard-to-find knitting yarns (hard for me, anyway). As I was playing on Craftster this afternoon, I found out that the new knitty is up. I quickly sought it out and narrowed my interest to a single pattern, Queen of Cups. As I read through it, I discovered that it called for a cast on of 64 stitches (lo, the same number of stitches on my paisley socks that were causing me to pull my hair out). I decided that I'd rather knit these socks than the ones frustrating me, so I printed out the pattern and vowwed to rip out and start anew. Here's my progress as of 1/2 an hour ago:


But, anyway, returning to the title of this post. As I printed out the pattern, I scanned down to the author's bio. I laughed when I saw that the creator was none other than the owner of Purlescence - the same woman who had wound the yarn for Mum's hat and wrist-warmers 4 days ago.

How cool is that?

Labels: cast on, frogging, socks, travel