Gather ’round, friends, and I’ll tell you the story of the maiden flight of the Karma-Spewing Goose.

It’s a good story, a happy story, and a story that’s very very easy to tell because most of the actual telling has already been toldified elsewhere, and all I have to do is link to its bits and pull them together.

It all started when… well, no, I guess it started farther back than that. I guess in a way you could say it goes all the way back to when Jen and I first met Dan. We did a little innocent enabling, and then we continued to do more enabling, and then he started doing some pretty intensive enabling of his own, and meanwhile he kind of got to be family, and altogether it’s been quite the roller-coaster of mutual enablement all around.

Well, so then it all started when Dan figured out that if he was going to be a Serious Fiber Professional he needed to think about investing in Serious Fiber Tools, so he made this trip, and the next thing we all knew he was In Love.

And then it really all started, momentum-wise, around the end of March, when the rash of Good Wheel Karma began spreading among my friends. First, there was Abby looking to de-stash a wheel that had belonged to her mother-in-law. My blogless friend Heather jumped at it, and it arrived bearing gifts - as you can see here and here.

Meanwhile, in the course of all the public rejoicing over this happy transaction, Abby got wind of the fact that TheTserf was struggling cheerfully along with a cranky old wheel, a knock-off of an Ashford Traddy that just didn’t want to work right for her. Well, Abby loves her some Tserf (as who wouldn’t?), and she loves her some scammin’, and the next thing you know she had cooked up this scam, to the great satisfaction of all parties.

So then, just as the atmosphere in our crowd was already heavy with good wheel karma, Amy up and decides to sell the object of Dan’s affection at a considerable discount, because it isn’t the model she wants in the shop.

You know what happened next, right?

This. (Scroll down past all the mouth-watering fiber and yarn pictures.)

Actually, before that there was a whole lot of trepidation and uncertainty and agonizing, and there was also a fair amount of trepidation and agonizing afterward too, and there might have been some Evil Enabler-ish encouragement from certain quarters… but anyway, that was the upshot.

And meanwhile some of us got thinking… just look at all this Good Wheel Karma flying around. We all need us a piece of that.

So we put together a conspiracy. Originally the plan was just to get a lot of people together to help out, in a widow’s-mite/barn-raising sort of way. We figured that if enough people put a little something into the pot, maybe we could chip in, say, as much as half the cost, and that anything we could do would be gravy for Dan (who generally does not have a whole lot of spare cash kicking around, if you know what I mean, and I am sure you do).

All I can say is, we grossly underestimated the generosity of our target audience.

I spent the next few days watching the bottom line of my spreadsheet and picking up my jaw off the floor.

We never even got to ASK more than half the people on our list; within a week we had pledges enough to cover the entire cost and then some, and - well, within a week after that there was…

this.

And then all we had to do was sit back and watch…

this.

Fiber people. I’m telling you. If there’s anything they can’t and won’t do for each other, I can’t imagine what it is.

The name of the Goose comes from the fact that Dan, feeling giddy after making the down payment and the commitment, apparently said something on Twitter about how now would be a really good time for a Money-Spewing Goose to land in his life. As you may imagine, those of us who were already plotting to accomplish exactly that got a pretty good laugh out of this.

You may notice that I referred to this adventure as the Goose’s maiden flight. I’m not in a position to speak authoritatively about this, but I believe we have not seen the last of this interesting animal. Remember the part where I said we raised more than we needed? I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work… but any day now the Goose could fly again.

I’ll be watching the skies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Bloggerei, Spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.