Knit Natters Going Strong

We had a good meeting today - pretty good-sized group, great refreshments (potluck, natch), some people back now that summer's winding down, and it was just a delight to relax with my local knitting friends.  I enjoy knitters so much; this group is so pleasant, so down-to-earth, and so creative!

Sylvia brought this photo of our charity knits that she delivered to a local childrens' home.

As you can see, the ladies came through yet again!  This particular ministry is taking babies now, and can also use baby items.  They were quite pleased with our club's items, and would especially like slippers for the kids.   Hmmm.  I hadn't expected to go on yet another slipper binge, after last year's!  I guess I can break out those "Footnotes" patterns again.  

Barbara did an awesome Passap demonstration with circular knitting and vertical stripes.  I showed the easy cable join in my recent video.  I brought along the baby blanket to show the technique, but now I'm on a lap robe (we're doing some lap robes, too).  I had gone in Hobby Lobby a couple months ago and found that they were clearing odd lots of Homespun at a nice price, so I purchased every variant of purple I could find.  If I make more progress on this project in the next couple of days, I'll put up some pix.  My challenge was to mix all the different purples, dye lots of purple and different color runs.  I'm definitely in a scrappy mode, having a good time mixing up ingredients and trying to get a rich-looking effect.

One treat today was seeing some of the items the ladies have already made.  Sylvia's doing some very nice tucked lap robes, and Mary and Norma worked up some cabled ones.  

Another huge treat was the bag of her family's antique baby clothing that Joan brought, absolutely fascinating items.

Several in our group are going to the Dallas machine knitting seminar (with Diana Burns), but I have too much going on to go along, and Barbara said she can't make this one.  So, we're staying home, and we'll have a smaller group at next month's meeting.  Our lap robe knit-in has been postponed to the 2nd Saturday in November.

The next few weeks are going to be crazy for me.  I'm doing an all-day continuing education class one day this week, rushing around trying to catch up a bit at work (we converted to a new general ledger, and it slowed us down), then going to Ohio this weekend to teach a knit seminar (whoopie!), then going to Dallas the week after, but just for a day.  I take this stuff one day at a time, that's for certain.  In October, I'm going to Asheville, North Carolina, to teach a seminar.