Mossy Cottage Knits

PARTAY!!!!

Funny thing about Guild: Even though you’re surrounded by, indeed, hemmed in by chatty, gregarious people with whom you have at least one major interest in common, it’s still curiously hard to meet people, to connect. I’ve been attending for about a year and I suspect, if it weren’t for the Dear Readers I’ve met there, I would still not know anyone...and I’m not exactly a shrinking violet (no comments from the Mary and Janine Peanut Gallery). Which is why Wednesday night was such an extra-scrumpdillyishus partay for me. A dear friend from work decided to join me; a new online acquaintance and a friend of hers were there; and, last but not least, Sheila and the Soirettes were there. How great to be surrounded by so many new, ultra-new and old friends! (Even better, our speaker next month will be Vivian Hoxbro of Domino Knitting fame so I can pretty confidently plan on yet more scrumpdillyishusiousness.)

The “event” on Wednesday was mini-classes. I attended “Knitting a Lace Border” with Evelyn Clark, who you may recognize as the uber-talented designer of many of the shawls and other items sold through FiberTrends. She is a member of the Guild—the person who introduced me to Guild, in fact—and a lovely, friendly soul.

As part of the lesson, Evelyn gave us a printout of a pattern to practice. I immediately felt a slight nagging nervousness, since you never know which pattern is going to be your Waterloo, and this lace border pattern had Waterloo written all over it since it—gasp!—self-scalloped. Surely it would require great mental and physical and knitial contortions to execute! When I found out that the pattern requires all of a two-row repeat, one of which was a lace row and one of which was super-simple knit/purl “gimme” row, you can imagine how quickly I went from feeling nervous to feeling stupid for having felt nervous to happily churning out inch upon inch of razor shell lace.

Knitting Knews
Here is a picture of the beginning of my latest project, a baby sweater from “Knitting for Baby.” Since this will only be worn for a short time, and since the baby can pretty much be guaranteed to smear all sorts of unspeakable things all over it, I’m knitting it out of Red Heart crapyarn. But I’m surprisingly happy with the results. The stitches and cables are clear, firm and clean and the color is a bright, happy, saturated red.

And here a picture of the front of the Aran pillow comforting the finished back of the Aran pillow as it is being tortured on the stretching rack. This pillow will probably be finished this weekend.

Posted by Ryan at January 23, 2004 11:44 AM