the quacking fiber addict

Expecting to be completely alone at today's meeting, I settled in at Starbucks with a grande hot chocolate, two pattern books for inspiration, and a ton of baby yarn. At first, it was disconcerting to be stared at - has no one ever seen a woman knit in public before?? But, then, D showed up. Which was wondeful, since I haven't seen her in a long time and was beginning to worry (she was recently diagnosed with early onset MS, g-d help her).

To my surprise she was chipper as ever, if a bit annoyed with the pillow she was knitting for her mother (I helped her with the button-hole math, at least I think I did). We had fun chatting for a good half hour, catching up on everything. She's applied to be a teacher at a local alternative public school (the Valley School), and had some great stories.

Then, someone new came in, E. She's a fiber arts student from the Eugene area, but she's studying in Montreal. Ooooh, my stars. It was great talking to her. She had some great stories and was interested in hanging with us this summer. Too cool.

E told D and I about the Montreal version of Sheep-to-Shawl (this came up because she wanted to learn to spin, and was mourning that she missed the retreat) where her class went and stayed on a farm for the weekend. They were each paired up with a sheep, assigned to shear it, clean the fleece, spin the fleece, and make something from the yarn.

How cool is that? I HAVE to find a way to do that. That'd just rock. I don't care that it technically counts as camping. You get your own sheep for a weekend. What a cool retreat idea. I wonder if anyone else'd be interested in that...?

We 3 were sharing pattern books when M came in - and wow, 4 knitters on Memorial Day weekend! Astounding. It was great. Actually, M and D had an interesting conversation about the Valley School - where they both want to apply for teaching positions. Somewhere in there, I taught M to cable, I hope. And D was working on her pillow when I left.

Dad picked me up to visit Mom at Serenity Lane. We ended up staying for dinner - and the head cook, F, is a knitter/ seamstress/ Theater Arts Master - wow. We ended up chatting for a while on that. She was impressed with my baby raglan - which I got finished right after dinner:


See that red line? That's where I am (hopefully) putting in a zipper. Steeking, here I come! I finished the collar with something I made up - it's a teeny version of a sailor's collar/ shawl collar hybrid. Dad and I are hitting Jo-Ann's for the Memorial Day sale early tomorrow. Really early. But, they have 50% off notions (woohoo!).

Actually, Ashley, I kinda made this one up (thank g-d it looks semi-normal...). I took the finished baby measurements in Knitting for Two and Special Knits for Babies and applied basic raglan calculations to 'em. But!, I think there is a knit-in-one sweater pattern by Debbie Bliss in Special Knits for Babies - it's a yoke sweater. It's on my to-do list, somewhere. Or, you can use the Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and scale down, I guess. Does that help? I'm constantly adapting patterns for baby projects, because I refuse to spend $50 on yarn for a single baby sweater. Sheesh.

I'm thinking, since there is so much of this yarn left over - because no one will use it - that I'm also going to make a matching cap and booties to go with the sweater... That's not "too much" is it? The baby'll look like a little mint plant, but some thing's can't be helped ;)