Weekend of Knitting-ness!!

This past weekend was a frenzy of knitting-ness!

Friday night I went over to Victoria's house for a S&B. Victoria is one of the owners of Village Yarn and Tea.

I got to meet some very nice people, including Amy. I've been dying to meet Amy- Amy of Good to Be Girl fame! She has THE BEST stitch markers! They are so adorable. Of course my favorites are usually food related. She's a really nice person as well. I hope I'll get an opportunity to knit more with her in the future.

There were about 10 of us there and so there were a lot of people wearing hand-knit socks, of course. I just had to take pictures of our socks. (Terry - you would be proud of this kind of picture!).


Mine are the ones with the big toe being separated from the rest of the family. I love the tabi socks. These are knit from some handspun by my friend Terry and the pattern is from Not Just More Socks by Sandi Rosner. I think I'm going to knit most of my socks this way. I don't feel the difference in shoes but it gives me great flexibility - I can wear them with my flip flops.

I had a great time at Victoria's. I discovered she has two Yorkie girls. I was smitten with them. I've been wanting a little female Yorkie. I've already got Chase(yorkie male) and Beanie(maltese male) and also Greg (homo sapien male). I'd like a little more female energy in this household! I keep looking around but with as much as Greg and I like to travel...a third dog is out of the picture for now.

I got a bit side-tracked. Back to my weekend filled with Knitting-ness.

Saturday I had my monthly knitting buddies over. Yes, it was St. Patricks Day and we just sat and knit and spun. I was torn because Janine was hosting a knit-in for Dulaan on Saturday as well but I had booked my monthly knitting day back in February. I couldn't change the date. So I didn't get to attend that fun event. I heard from Linda K. today they accomplished quite a bit! Good job everyone!

Knitting day at Naomi's was nice and relaxing. We knit, chatted a lot (I think that is why I have to frog on my Kauni project) and didn't eat as much as I expected! I guess we were too busy with our hands. Next month I hope to have more time to make some really yummy appetizers to tempt folks to eat more! Uh Oh. I sound like my mom! No! Not THAT!

Ellen spun and man...is she fast!! She is amazing! My jaw kept dropping as I watched her!

I continued spinning on some merino/silk. That is a bit more frustrating than the BFL. I'm trying to spin finer...so....it's all about learning and practice!

Melinda(go see her finished Starmore Roscalie-it is so gorgeous in person!), Sandy and I were the die hards. I jumped up to look at the time as it was just beginning to get darker outside. I was exclaiming "It's 7:20!". I thought it might be about 6pm, but 7:30? Where did the day go? I suppose that meant we were having a good time. I'm looking foward to next month's knitting already.

I made some progress on my Ruth's Kauni Cardi (which I absolutely adore!). I realized I made a boo boo and will have to frog a long way back. Can you see my error?

It is about half-way down. The weird thing...well there are two weird things about having to frog this.

One - having to frog half of what I've done is NOT bothering me. I just so love knitting this that its not painful. I absolutely love this yarn. I'm not kidding you that the thought of ripping this halfway down is not bothering me - I like this yarn that much! Ruth, if you are reading this... Thank you again - for both the design and getting me the yarn.

The weird thing number two? Sandy told me about something that Vivian Hoxbro had said regarding the need to finish things quickly. She basically said why hurry to finish a project? You are never really "finished" knitting because once you are done with one thing, you are on to another so you never really are "finished" knitting. Somehow I liked that. It resonated with me. I'm such an achievement oriented person. It helped me relax around the personal pressure I put on myself on my finish my projects.

Today(Sunday) I spent about 4 hours with about 9 other women winding bobbin samples of all the Jamieson and Jamieson&Smith shetland colors. There is a fair isle google group of people that wanted samples of all the colors to help us design our own fair isle colors/patterns. Since it is hard to use color cards and financially prohibitive to buy all 320 skeins of yarn, this group decided to buy all the yarns and then split up the skeins on embroidery floss bobbins. Mind you there are like 320 colors/skeins and 25 people in the group. Imagine the logistics nighmare of trying to split up each skein for 25 people....well we worked on it today at the Greenwood Library and boy....this is a labor intensive undertaking!!!

I took 18 skeins home that I have to wind. 18 skeins times 25 people per skein is 450 bobbins. Yes, you read that right...450 bobbins. I was amazed that Gail had already done 24 skeins herself. Gail, I appreciate your hard work and organization. I really hope those remaining 3-4 people pay you!!!

Also thanks to Leah for your hard work and organization on this as well!!!! She has a great post describing our day, with great photos.

Well I best be off to get ready for the week ahead. Looking back on the past few days.....I had a wonderful weekend spending time with and meeting wonderful people. This was exactly what I needed to take the edge off work stress.