Wow, that was absolutely the craziest thing ever.  Remember how I was marveling at competitive yarn buying?  That was nothing!

I've known about Sundara for a while now but every time I went to her site there was nothing for sale and I figured oh well.  Then brooklyntweed wrote about his Sundara Spiral Yoke Pullover and I thought hmmm, I really need to figure out what this is all about.
This time, the new website had more info, plus some searching around on Ravelry lead me to... well, go at your own risk, the Sundara Yarn Love and the Seasons Yarn Club groups and it was all downhill (or uphill) from there.  Ordering one season was a pretty easy decision, but then I found this thread with images of last year's seasons collection (here are the flickr links for spring, summer, autumn and winter for those not on Ravelry).  So totally and utterly pretty!  That, in addition to browsing around the forums and observing the fanatic love for this yarn (I mean look at this or here on flickr) and the extreme difficulty in obtaining it, lead me to, um, cough, well, yes, shhhhh.... I signed up for all three other seasons!!!  I was in particular not expecting to love winter, but in the end I decided that only in getting all four would I avoid any regret, even though I have never actually seen any of this yarn in person!!!  Also, it's within my yarn budget (yes I have a yarn budget, instituted just recently) but only just... and only if I really don't buy much of anything else in the next 8 months, which is completely unrealistic, but I am going to try and restrain myself from doing any more "collecting" and only buy yarn if I have a specific project in mind, at least during the subscription.
Except, of course, for today... I work from home on Tuesdays so when I saw the update hadn't gone up yesterday, I started stalking the site when I got home last night, and hanging out on the gigantic update thread (I won't bother linking to it - it has over 1,000 messages, most of them not particularly interesting if you are reading them after the fact, but it was a lot of fun while it was going on including side discussions on, amongst other things, the olympics and The Closer).  There was no update last night so... I figured I'd try my hand at it today.  I've never even been around for an update before but today, whaddya know... ..."out to lunch"!!
This "out to lunch" screen indicates that the update will be posted soon, and this is also the point at which crazed Sundara stalkers the world over starting hitting F5 like crazy people (except if you're on a mac in which case it's apple-r).  So I was apple-r-ing away and at the same time giggling hysterically because I mean, seriously?!!!  Totally crazy!  The site kept going down with a variety of error messages and people would occasionally risk a few precious seconds away from the website to post on Ravelry... thank goodness for that chatter so I a) knew I wasn't the only crazy one and b) was encouraged not to give up and c) it made it fun.
Then, gasp, after at least half an hour of "out to lunch", possibly more, I forget, the yarn seemed to be up.  I had different tabs set up in one window with the different yarns I was interested in so I started reloading them, selecting the quantity and hitting purchase... only to still get error messages.
The extreme level of fanaticism on Ravelry along with helpful tips from veterans lead me to persevere... I knew it was going to be hard and very competitive, and I was prepared to both stick it out and be disappointed.  Thank goodness I was home because I could never have done this at work and would never have even attempted it.
So I kept refreshing on various tabs, while trying not to have too many refreshes going at once to overload my connection.  I was not getting through to an actual shopping cart but I could tell from the updates on the Ravelry thread that not many others were either... so I kept going until... I'd heard that it's better to avoid paypal and just try by credit card, but neither link worked for a while so I just kept hitting both until one worked, which happened to be paypal.  I'd also heard that it's better to just focus on one colorway and getting that through so that's what I did, although I did try other yarns in between.
After a few tries, I was able to get through to paypal, lost a few precious seconds because my phone number was not saved into my paypal profile, then back to the Sundara site but still, it wasn't over yet, I still had to confirm my order...
Several tries failed until finally, there was a long pause (by this point I am muttering "pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease" under my breath and looking heavenwards) and then... OMG wow.  I scored 2 skeins of limited edition Citrus Zinger Sock!!!! (I'm not sure how long that page will be up as limited editions come down after the update.) I was so happy, it was what I really wanted.   I'm not sure why, but it really captured my imagination.  I don't think I've ever even owned any yellow yarn before, and it's not like it's a particular favorite, but this just looked so lovely and sunny and happy, and I have a very special project in mind for it, which I will detail further when I have it worked out a bit more.
By the way, I was warned that limited edition yarns are almost impossible to get, but I figured yellow is not that popular a color, and there wasn't much buzz about it on the Ravelry thread, so I decided to give it a go.  Plus I dreamt about it, yes that is how obsessed I have become.  My dream was highly specific - in it I woke up and the update was happening so I put Citrus Zinger in my shopping basket, considered checking out but got greedy and added Spruce over Sage, only to have both disappear so I went for Daffodil instead and managed to get it!!!  That was how I decided to go after just one colorway but after I was done, well, I decided to keep trying and... I also managed to get 1 skein of limited edition Lemon Lime Fingering Silky Merino.  I didn't even try for Spruce over Sage, even though I really liked it as that seemed pretty popular on the thread.  I almost got Thriller as well but it disappeared before I could confirm the order.
So yes, that was absolutely the craziest and most ridiculous thing I ever did for yarn.  I'm not sure I would try again with such persistence - is this yarn really so much better than other more readily available yarns?  Probably not, at least not proportional to the effort required, but I couldn't resist the challenge and I would like to think I would have had fun no matter what.  Unfortunately many who did not score are bitterly disappointed, which I understand (I'm not sure "fun no matter what" would have held had it been my third or fourth unsuccessful try), but I feel bad for them being so upset, and slightly guilty for having scored twice, even though, well, I think I was relatively restrained, and all is fair in love and yarn stalking, no?!!!
But anyway, all I can say either way is... YIPPEEE!!!!!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 06:54 PM in Knitting, Knitting FO: little giraffe I, Knitting: sundara yarn, Knitting: yarn | Permalink You are so lucky! I will be interested to hear what you really think of the yarn once you get it. Because I harbor some of the same secret thoughts about whether it is really worth it.

Posted by: knithoundbrooklyn | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 08:56 AM I was just really bad... I saw the links to last years season's club pics, and had to jump in too..just for winter though. Thanks for enabling! Boy I better do some serious dyeing to make up for that one. ;)
[null, {"document_url": "http://beautifulthings.typepad.com/beautiful_things/2008/08/yowsa.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/2779139078_c9035da21c_m.jpg", "src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/2779139078_c9035da21c_m.jpg", "formatted_filename": "c da c m", "alt_text": "!!!", "rendered_width": 240, "rendered_height": 180}, null, {"document_url": "http://beautifulthings.typepad.com/beautiful_things/2008/08/yowsa.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2778470645_18789eccdf_m.jpg", "src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2778470645_18789eccdf_m.jpg", "formatted_filename": "eccdf m", "alt_text": "Getting close...", "rendered_width": 240, "rendered_height": 180}, null, {"document_url": "http://beautifulthings.typepad.com/beautiful_things/2008/08/yowsa.html", "unformatted_src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/2779381504_d8fe89cecb_m.jpg", "src": "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/2779381504_d8fe89cecb_m.jpg", "formatted_filename": "d fe cecb m", "alt_text": "Success!!!", "rendered_width": 240, "rendered_height": 180}, null, null, null]