Tag Archive | knitting friends

World Enough and Time

Oh goodness. Today’s an overwhelm day, apparently. I spent a long weekend in Wisconsin with knitting friends, and it was a wonderful weekend and I got lots of beautiful yarn. But last night I logged it all in the spreadsheet and added it to the stash shelves, and wow I have a lot of yarn. I need to knit more of it! But I need to wind more to knit more! And I also want to write a blog post! And I want to finish reading the book for my book group, plus read the books I got for my birthday. Add that to my actual job stuff and suddenly I feel like I don’t have time for all the things I want/need to do. So! My solution to that: Make a list and just begin, one thing at a time. Bird by bird, as the wise Anne Lamott once said. Hence, blog post.

There were eight of us who convened in Wisconsin, partly for the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival but also partly just to be together. There were two I’d never met in person who I love even more now, and the others I was delighted to see again. We had one big AirBnB so we spent a lot of time hanging out knitting, but we split into smaller groups for different excursions. It was just GOOD to be together. They even put together a little birthday party for me one night, with cupcakes and the most thoughtful gifts. I’m a lucky lucky girl.

I got to pet sheep and go to a bookstore and a yarn store (The Sow’s Ear is SO GOOD!!) and the yarn I came home with is amazing. It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often! Some things were gifts though — I got a specially-dyed skein of yarn plus a gorgeous project bag from Chestnut Hills Farm & Fiber that I adore.

So yeah, good weekend. But after five days of togetherness, I was ready to recharge with a little solitude. I’ve got two projects in mind to cast on, so hopefully tonight I’ll be able to tackle the “wind yarn” item from my list.

A little bit of FOMO

Oct17

I did not go to Rhinebeck this year.

I mean, I’ve never been to Rhinebeck, so this year isn’t really any different. I’m still seeing all the photos on Instagram of cool people meeting other cool people and wearing awesome knitwear and generally having a fabulous time, and it’s convincing me that I’m missing out big time by not being there.

But! I DID go to Iowa! Sarah had free tickets to a musical, and she knows I love musicals, so I zipped up the highway on Friday morning to spend about 24 hours with her. The musical (The Band’s Visit) was NOT our jam and we would have left at intermission had there been one, but we still had fun. Saturday morning we had a mini-reunion of our Wisconsin group (very much missing Alissa!) for a couple of hours of knitting, plus donuts that we didn’t have to wait in a long line for. So I basically had my own low-stress mini Rhinebeck, and saved a shit ton of money in the process.

Take that, FOMO!

Happy Sunday, friends.

Wisconsin Adventure

Sep19

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately, but I had to share my adventure at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. Sarah mentioned ages ago that she and three of her friends had decided to go, and I decided to tag along. I drove the three hours to Sarah’s house the night before, and I got to enjoy her yarn room and ogle her library and pet her awesome dog. The next morning everyone convened at Sarah’s and we embarked on the five hours to Wisconsin, all in one minivan. I’d been nervous and anxious about spending a weekend with two people I’d never met and one I’d met just twice. Well. That went away immediately. Her friends are amazing and it felt comfortable and fun from the get-go. How often does that happen?? Not often, I tell you!

We’d rented a big house outside of Madison, and it was huge and gorgeous. We had a big stone fireplace outside, and a cornfield, and deer that visited in the morning. We stocked up on groceries, had takeout pizza one night and two of them cooked the second night, and we just … hung out. It was so good. We talked a lot and laughed a lot and there might have been some alcohol consumed, but there were also times when we could all just knit in silence and feel comfortable being together quietly. I know, it sounds weird and too good to be true. It was.

And the festival, OMG! I saw so many sheep and they just baa’ed and baa’ed and it was adorable! I watched a little bit of the sheep dog trials and got to pet one of the dogs! We saw so much gorgeous yarn that it was overwhelming at first, and then once you make your first purchase, the frenzy kicks in and boom, you’ve bought one of everything. We also made it to Madison and visited KnitCircus (more yarn, not that we needed it) and had a big lunch/dinner.

It was just the perfect getaway, and we’re all counting down the days until next year’s festival.

Have you been to any sheep & fiber festivals? Which ones are the best? (Besides Rhinebeck, obviously!)

Sock It To Me, Monday!

Nov9

There’s an exclamation point there because this was a GOOD Monday! On a whim yesterday, Sarah and I decided to do another socially distant knitting date at our favorite rest stop in Iowa. So instead of working, I was hanging out with a cool friend and knitting and hiking!

I got my Tainted Love sock to the heel flap, and the black ribbed hat to the point of decreases, so I’m calling that a productive knitting session. And the project bag was a gift from Sarah because it has the state bird of Missouri on it, which is apparently a bluebird and which I’m sure I knew at some point but had forgotten. It just makes me like the bag even more than I did already!

This might have been our last knitting date for a while, because the cold weather hits tomorrow. Glad we got another one in this fall! Hope your Monday was as good as mine!