I knit pretty infrequently and wish I did it more.
The thing I loved most about camp was the opportunity to sit and knit, with like-minded people, and just BE. We talked, of course; but there were quiet times too (Mallory has become less incessantly chatty since last year). In the quiet moments, I found myself praying for various people...if you read this blog, you are probably included in the list. So each of you is knit in some way into the work I did.
The power at the lake was off Sunday morning, from the time we arrived at 9 until about 11:00 (? - I wasn't paying attention to time!) Instead of sitting in the air-conditioned lodge, we sat outside on the porch. It was very pleasant...occasional breezes, good company, children running 'round to increase the breezes. Nice to be in nature doing what we came to do.
I got to talk with a perfectly delightful woman who had been at the camp last year, wearing a scarf and clearly having just been through chemo. This year...she has gorgeous curly hair and a clean bill of health! what a joy and answer to prayer.
She says she is part of a knitting group that meets in the Barnes and Noble in her home town. I got to thinking, wouldn't that be cool, to have a knitting group here? All the knitters there were so very different, but all had this thing in common.
So, I came home and looked it up on www.Meetup.com - the closest one to me is in Plano, which is NOT close - a good 40 miles. Meetup.com also informed me that 360 people had inquired about a knitting group in my home town! Wow! So I'm thinking about that.
My new friend Angela was working on mittens, which were the "advanced" project for the camp. I had intended to do them, but the pattern they were using was for "Family Mittens" knitted from 2 wools at a time and "thick and durable for Maine winters." Texas winters do NOT generally cause us to need such items, and I doubt that my one and only friend in Maine needs me to knit her mittens...she is a much better knitter than I am! One of these days I will get to that sort of project.
So I stayed with my final project, a "trellis scarf." Here it is in progress:
you can't tell from the picture, but on the fifth row in, I did a pattern of *YO K2tog K2* which left holes in that row. The rest is straight knitting. When I get to the 5th to last row, I just drop those same stitches and the whole column (as opposed to row) of stitches will unravel down the length of the scarf. Like a run in a stocking.
Like so much of knitting, I don't see how this is really going to work, but I am proceeding on faith. That's actually like a lot of life, isn't it?
