Knitting Meet Up

What a great opportunity this turned out to be, getting to knit some very interesting and fun people.

Meet Up Group
We had a total of eight folks who showed up for the meet up today. As expected, it was great to see Marilyn and Kathy again. I can't say too many times how nice it is to be around interesting, smart, knitters with so much style.

Amber and Ben also showed up but didn't go to lunch. Amber is as interesting in person as her blog would indicate. I enjoyed talking with her during their brief visit. Ben was quiet, but very nice, and I have to say he looks better in person than the pictures on his blog. He was wearing a great hat that Amber had made. Nice couple.

Mary V. and Therese showed up as they mentioned they would in the comments. They fit right in. Lively, and talkative and highly interesting, they also knit great stuff. I was so glad they took the opportunity of the meet up to make their trek to Simply Knit.

Finally, Lisa finished off the group perfectly. As a theater producer in my favorite theater in New Jersey (McCarter Theater), she was wonderful to speak with. She also knew the two yarn stores in Princeton, so we got to chat about them too. Having another knitter who isn't fond of larger needles was something I could relate to.

I couldn't have handpicked a more wonderful group of knitters, and I was very happy to have had the opportunity to meet with them. I don't think anyone in the restaurant where we had lunch would have believed that it was a group of knitters at our table. We were by far the loudest and most animated table in the place.

Here's a picture of Kathy, Lisa, Marilyn, Mary, and Therese. I'm sorry to say I didn't get my camera out early enough to get Amber and Ben in the picture.



Kathy took this great picture of us that includes me as well. Thanks Kathy.



100,000 Hits
You'll note that I've reached the six digits for hits on my site. I'm still constantly amazed at how many hits I've had since I started my blog late last year.



FiestWear
As I had hoped, I got to the point on the sleeves where there are no more increases. Later today, I hope to finish and attach the sleeves and sew up the side seams.



Zachary Blanket
Thanks to Amber's historical information about how the King Charles Brocade got its name, I'm having pictures in my mind of a bloodied, baby blue blanket and two grieving parents. Thank gawd the recipients of the blanket don't read my blog.

My revised version of the pattern is just a smaller diamond than the original pattern stitch. Here's a close-up comparison of the two.



I haven't compared the two pattern stitches, but I think I'm just eliminating one or two rows of the correct pattern repeat. When I get to the point where I have to finish the blanket, I'm going to have to read the real pattern stitch so I can get it to work correctly.

FiestaWear Corrections
I mentioned that I had taken some pictures of the process for correcting the switched color mistake. Thanks to Marilyn, I have an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file that shows how I did it. Marilyn also made the comment that I should probably include instructions to use needles one or two sizes smaller when I inserted knitting needles above and below the mistake. I didn't do that, but I think she's probably right.

Click here for a knitting/darning tutorial with pictures.

If you had seen the HTML I was planning on publishing, you'd be thanking Marilyn for converting this to Acrobat for me. I definitely need to find a web page software soon.