Knitted Together

I sat down to blog a bit, but you know, prowled around on Ravelry first. Just to see what genius occurred there today while I was at work. Found two surprises, one tragic and one hilarious. Funny how life is balanced that way, huh?

Rachel Wattenbarger was killed in the recent Parkwest Hospital shooting. I saw a post on the boards from The Yarn Haven that described her as having just started to attend their weekly knitting lessons. I don’t know if she was a new knitter or just new to those classes. I also heard at work that she was a long-time friend of one our coworkers. And I drove right by there just moments after the shooting, the other day, on my way home from work. As I drove, I was thinking about the new Addi short circular needles that yarn store now carries.

There’s a message in all that somewhere, I’m sure of it. How a stranger’s tragic death has strings leading outward towards people from two different areas of my life. As I was leaving the one area and thinking about the other, I drove right by her during her final moments, unaware of what was going on so close by.

We all really are connected and on so many levels. Of that much, I’m certain.

That balance I mentioned? It would take something really silly, yet equally coincidental to balance out something as sad and poignant as our loss of Rachel. Yeah, that would be the funny thing I found on Ravelry, which connects up to the little world that is our knitting group, the Fertile Turtles. Remember the birds called blue-footed boobies? Remember the toy version our giggles inspired, created by Mary Beth? Yeah, okay, well I stumbled upon yet a third blue-footed . . . baby. No, it wasn’t a cyanotic child, but a knitting pattern for baby booties that look like blue duck’s feet. And yes indeed they were inspired by the aforementioned bird!

So I left a comment on the Ravelry posting of the pattern, and of course followed the links to the lady’s blog. I still hadn’t put two and two together at that point. Wait for it. I go back to her Ravelry page to check out her other contributions, and there it was.

Oh. My. Gawd.
It’s THE Jeny of Jeny’s-Surprisingly-Stretchy-Bind-Off fame!
Holy crap!

Ya know, to be perfectly honest, I would’ve been too flustered to write a comment if I had known at the time who she is.

I wonder if it’s such a small world for everybody, or if it’s just a knitters thing? Then again, I’ve preached to ya before about the power that is Ravelry.

Last Sunday was another glorious spring day, as evidenced by the smaller, but more intimate, turn out at our group’s watering hole. For some reason, folks want to work in their gardens this time of year, instead of knit wooly things. Go figure. I passed Pat when I went in, as she was already heading out, having been there for awhile already. Yeah, I was late again (shush!). So I’ve no idea what she was knitting on.

Pam, although she was wearing some handknitted socks, wasn’t working on any – she has a raglan baby sweater in the works for her newest grandchild-to-be.

Raeus has finished the back of her alpaca blend sweater and was working on some other part of it. Don’t know which part, as I was too distracted by the big swatch of alpaca fabric that was free from the needles and free to be fondled. You know, that back segment. Sigh.

Jane brought a shrug to knit, and Debra is nearly there with that grey sweater. Kim wanted just a taste of lace, so she’s knitting a lacey bookmark. Mary Beth is currently doing the back of her Cassidy sweater, and Nicole is still creating little crochet owls.

And check out what grabbed everybody’s attention: Jessica came back to us and was crocheting her “Rug O’ Many Yarns.” She just free-formed combined a bunch of yarns to make this ultra chunky rug!

I finally made peace with my house socks by transferring them to the little 9” circular needles, and whew! Does that ever feel better! I can now resume knitting for fun. It really does make that much of a difference. There are lots of methods to knitting socks. If you’ve tried it in the past, but didn’t like it much . . . try it again with a different method. One of ‘em is bound to suit you. ‘Tween the internet, knitting groups, books, and classes, there’s going to be somebody to help you get started.