How to Become Lifelong Friends with a Knitter

If you read my last post, you know my chorus went to Regional Competition last weekend.  Awesome job, Sound Harmony!  We had a fabulous debut, and I'm really proud of the sound and energy that we produced on that stage with such a small group.  Check out these beautiful, smiling faces:

Thank goodness for knitting, though, because I did a lot of sitting.  All together, I sat through a 6-hour drive from Seattle to Spokane, 26 quartet performances, 23 chorus performances, a couple of hours worth of judge deliberations, intermissions, and setup breaks, and a 5-hour drive back home.  On Friday, I'll reveal my wonderful creation from all that knitting.

Today, though, I want to tell you how I made crafting friends while at this competition.  Are you ready to hear my method?  Here's what I did:  I held knitting in my hands.

Well, okay, so that's not exactly all that I did.  At one point during a break, to keep myself pumped up about the next quartet, I spotted someone knitting and yelled out, "What up, my Knittah!?"

My chorus promptly disowned me.

I'm not ashamed, though.  Every knitter knows the best way to make a knitter friend:

• Approach knitter, knitting in public.  
• Say, "Hi, what are you working on?" 
• "Can I touch it?"  
• "Is that wool?"  
• "Wanna see what I've been knitting?"

It's foolproof.  We all love that connection.  Anytime I bump into a knitter in the wild, it's as though we've been crafting together our whole lives.  And really, we have.  

Travel Knitting

I've been sort of panicking all week because I don't have enough knitting to last for a 10-hour round-trip car ride.  Tomorrow, I'm heading off to Spokane to compete with my chorus in the Region 13 Sweet Adelines convention.  Yep, alongside my knitting, I sing sweet, sweet barbershop harmony.

But seriously, what was I going to do with all that time in the car?  Twiddle my thumbs? On top of that, I'll be sitting in an auditorium for many hours watching other groups perform.  I need something to work on, and I didn't have a project ready!

So I spent way too many hours on Ravelry this week looking for a pattern that

1. I already had the yarn for
2. Would take a significant amount of time to make
3. Didn't require me to look at the pattern the whole time
4. Wouldn't be enormous by the end of the weekend so I could pack it away when necessary.

It seemed impossible.  Socks are too finicky.  I found a LOT of lace options, but I couldn't immediately memorize any of the charts.  Hats I would finish in the first few hours (though I did consider bringing enough yarn to make 14 hats while I'm away).

Finally, I settled on a tank top.  I have this lovely purple yarn from Newton Country Yarns that's 75% Tencel and 25% Linen, perfect for a Summer project.  I found the Razor Cami pattern on Ravelry, and it only requires me to memorize a single round of lace!  I checked my gauge, and it came out a little bit big.  "No problem," I told myself; the pattern is for an XS-S, and I probably want a S-M, so that should work out.  I cast on yesterday, and I already like it (though it still seems a little small).  

Here's hoping it lasts through the weekend.  Maybe I'll pack some extra fingering weight yarn and needles just in case.  Mawata doesn't take up much space in a bag...

Nine Rubies

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm travelling this week on business.  And it is a very,very lonely trip.  I'm down in Foster City, CA, just outside of San Francisco.  None of my teammates are here.  My husband stayed home with the cats.  I don't know anyone, and no one speaks English in the break room (which was a big surprise for me).

Even though I'm down here for work, my evenings are my own.  Tuesday, I drove over to Chinatown to see what all the hype is about.  Honestly, I found it to be really dirty.  I mean, people often say that Paris is a dirty city or New York is a dirty city, and I never saw what they were talking about.  But Chinatown was dirty.  Like, lots of trash all over the sidewalk and funny smells everywhere, dirty.  I didn't want to stay there for very long; it was still rush hour when I went back to my hotel room.

But I knew that Wednesday night would be better because Nine Rubies Knitting in San Mateo hosts a social knitting circle on Wednesdays.

Ah, sweet beautiful knitters, you make me so very happy.

This shop is gorgeous.  I've never been in such a large LYS.  Rather than the cramped/cozy little stores I'm used to, Nine Rubies has a high ceiling (with a sparkly chandelier), lots of open space to walk around, and plenty of seating area.  What they lacked in yarn variety, they made up for with their incredible samples.  I asked to see a sample of a silk-straw yarn, and she showed me three unique garments and said, "I have more samples of this in the back, if you want."

They ladies around the circle were as warm as the California sun.  Jeanine was working on designing a tutorial for crocheted dragon stitch fingerless mitts.  Two sisters sat crafting and telling me about their dogs and plans to move to Seattle.  A mother came in with her daughter to get help on knitting a herringbone cowl edged in faux-fur.  We chatted about ergonomics, cats, local yarns, Ravelry, and restaurants in the area.

Lonely knitters can always find a refuge in local yarn stores.  Nine Rubies Knitting was an excellent safehaven.  A skein of Malabrigo Worsted and Anzula Cloud made its way into my stash.  For a couple of hours, I almost stopped missing home.  Almost.