Ravelry Journal Swap and Moleskine Round Robin

So, I belong to Ravelry.com, which is an on-line knitting and crochet community. It's suppose to be about knitting and/or crocheting, right?


First off, Ravelry has a group or two or three for EVERYTHING. I saw that there was a one-on-one journal exchange happening. You first fill out a brief questionnaire, then you get matched up with someone else who signed up for the swap as well. Then after some exchanges to get further details about your swap partner, you then send a journal with, in this swap, a writing prompt and a wee giftie. Susan, my swappee is from the far reaches of the NorthCentral Mid-West and loves pink and blue. She is WAY younger than me, so I got her a bubblegum pink journal with book binding and lined pages, as that's her style of journals (being cack-handed, I prefer spiral bounds). Then I made a Superperson emblem with flowers and vines PINK bag with pink and black ribbon ties for it along with a matching pink project bag that I filled with two pinks and one blue ball of wool roving and the new Clover needle felting pen as her giftie. Well, apparently I chose wisely as she indeed loves pink, but she also loves Supergirl and liked the fabric I chose for her gift. She has also has never tried needle felting, but was interested in it and now she has the start of her supplies if she finds she likes it as much as I have discovered I do. As always, in haste, I left something out of Susan's package, so here is what I wrote to her about that. It might be of use to someone out there.


I wrote to Susan:
I do hope you enjoy the needle felting, I am a huge fan of it as I am sure you can tell from my blog. The only thing I didn’t send along, which I discovered too late was a large CHEAP sponge, like you get from the Dollar Store for a working surface. You can get the brush mats at JoAnn’s, Hancocks, Michael’s, etc., but if you’re not sure if you are going to like the process or only going to try it a few times, I would use a substitute and the cheapy sponge works nearly as well for a needling surface. Use a cutting mat under a sponge, tho, so you don’t mar your table and/or break your needles, ask me how I know, LOL… Above all, have fun and oh, by the way, cookie cutters make great templates for designs if you aren’t comfy with free-handing it… If you do get hooked or needled, as the case may be, many LYSs will sell dyed wool roving fiber by the oz. and some of the artier stores may have dyed silk tops and other kewl stuff that can be needle felted. The black bag with the oak leaves is needled from both wool and silk fibers. Have fun and if you do have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. (See post of 11/24/08 for picture.)


Then there is Group C of the International Moleskine Exchange Group aka the Fabulous Creative Collaborating Chicklets. Wherein, I have met an amazing group of women and they know who they are, who if anything, are funnier, smarter and more clever than me. There are 10 of us in the group, but 6 of us appear to either have the most time to waste or the smartest mouths so I can thank the Gods and Goddesses that most of my group share at least some of my warped sensibilities about the world and Martha Stewart and are willing to talk about free ranging chickens, vegan marshmallows, Moleskines, art and what ever else happens to strike our fancy. Oh, sometimes we even talk about fiber, Frewen is blogging about felting boots, Baby Chicklet about prezzies made of fibers and I just posted about my version of Jayne Cobb's hat from Firefly and what my daughter's getting for Christmas.

So, you might ask, what is a Moleskine? The Moleskine is a notebook that can be quadrille (graph), unlined, lined, watercolour, thick or thin paper filled generally black covered with an elastic band to hold it all together with an inside back cover pocket for stuff that was made famous by the likes of Hemingway, Picasso and various other creative people and a staple in my purse for 5 iterations or about 5 years. It comes in various sizes and now apparently in various colours. We are doing a round robin, which means that currently my Moleskine is in Essex, England UK, with Lini, the Happy Hooker. We each did intro pages wherein we let the women who were going to work on our Moleskine know if we wanted a theme, hated something, had no opinion, yadda, yadda, yadda, before sending them off and then we'll each do 2 or more pages in each of the 10 other books in the exchange before ours returns to home.