Knit Natters Meeting Saturday

Knit Natters met Saturday at Barbara's house, and at some point during the meeting I woke up mentally and started taking pictures.

Oh, yes, I know when it was.  It was when Pat brought out this jaw-dropping, gorgeous lace project during Show and Tell!  Check it out...a hand knitted lace sampler with a beautiful edging.  She's working on another lace sampler now.

Upper left, Sara is doing very clever knitting frame baskets using plastic grocery bags!  She weaves the bottom (yes, weaves) on the knitting frame and then knits from the bottom up.  We learned a new-to-us word:  plarn (plastic yarn).

We had a small group, but some terrific projects going on all around us on Saturday.  We also have a new person!  Margareth, a nursing assistant who lives in Pflugerville with her husband and two teens, is getting back into knitting and has unpacked her wonderful old Lanofix 321 that she purchased in Brazil.  She hunted around and found the manual in Portugese - good thing she can read it!  I have pages from a manual that a knit lister was kind enough to send me, in English, that will help me help Margareth if she needs any help.  Lanofix, by the way, is a Silver Reed machine.  She's sharp as a tack, though, and I figure she'll be teaching us in no time.  Here's Margareth (not a very good picture, I'm afraid, with her face turned away) chatting with Mildred as Mildred showed the scrubbers she knits.  Mildred, who is a retired R.N. and Margareth, who is a C.N.A. working on a surgical tech certification, got to talking hospital talk.  Mildred is 97 now and bring some new project to show us every month, in fact, usually several projects.

Barbara is Passapify-ing some of my patterns, including this scarf, modeled by the lovely and talented Tiffany, who did one of our demos!

Barbara's granddaughter (age 7 now) showed us how to make a cute, loopy hair scrunchie on the Brother machine.  This was her first demonstration, and she did an excellent job.  Since she likes to wear them, it's a good thing she's whipping them out now instead of having her Grandma do all the knitting.  She has also helped Barbara make wazoos for the troops.

Hmm, I wonder if our youngest member would let me film her for YouTube.  I bet she would.

And, here's missy with Barbara's latest porcelain doll.  Yup, Barbara pours the porcelain, fires it, paints, re-fires, etc.  An amazing amount of work goes into these dolls.

The doll's outfit is a double jacquard sweater that Barbara demonstrated last month plus a pair of baby pants (using the Forma!  I so want to master the Forma) that she demonstrated this month.

My Show and Tell was to talk about the wonderful experiences we had at the Space City Knitters seminar, and Barbara and I both showed off our beautiful embroidered Space City Knitters name badges.  We were planning to pick on Sylvia to come up with an embroidered badge for OUR club.  Sylvia was getting in a CPR class she needs for her teaching job at a preschool.  Sylvia, are you reading this?  This is not a hint, it's shameless begging.

Here's a picture of my name tag from Houston.

I had gone over to Margareth's house in Pflugerville on the way to Knit Natters and had a look at the Lanofix.  I persuaded Margaret to bring some of her projects from her Lanofix.  Here's a sweater that reminds me of Charlie Brown:

Bea and Margaret from San Antonio weren't able to make it because Margaret was scheduled for a cancer treatment Saturday.  Margaret, you're on all our minds and in our prayers.  We're looking forward to seeing Margaret's summer fair isle project.  It was Margaret's idea to get Tiffany started with being a demonstrator.

I did the Tam demo - I was hoping to show the automatic short-rowing method (which isn't in my YouTube video of how to make the Tam), but we had a few technical difficulties with Barbara's 965i mispatterning - probably just a sponge bar - so I showed the short-row method.  Margareth and I were breathing down Barbara's neck as she did that Forma demo.  It was Margareth's first encounter with a Passap E6, and we told her about Strippers and Pushers.

We are working on a Knitapalooza for sometime next year.  We have a spot lined up.  I know, a Knitapalooza needs to be really big and exciting, but ours will have to start out small and exciting!  It just sounded like a good, weird Austin name to me.  You know, Austin has a slogan, "Keep Austin Weird?"  What we need are knitters to come to Central Texas and participate.  Pat says she'll demonstrate, and there's me, Bea and Barbara.  Bea and Barbara are terrific on the Passap.  We'd like feedback, so please email me if you are interested in something like this:  diana_knits "at" sbcglobal.net.  And yes, we would love to have a yarn shop participate or some sock crankers...