Beginnings and Endings

Every beginning has an end and vice versa. Sometimes the middle lasts a long time, sometimes it goes all too quickly, and sometimes, like in fairytales, it's just right.

This weekend marked a beginning and and end.

On the beginning side, we had the first "official" meet-up of the PDX Knitting Bloggers group. From seeds planted at the Yarn Harlot's talk when she visited Portland, Bobbie wondered if maybe all the local bloggers could get together sometime. Judy took the initiative and started the Yahoo group, and we were off. In two shakes of a lamb's tail, the group grew and now has a whopping 54 members!

Sunday, a bunch of us got together to knit and chat. Knit Purl graciously offered to host the gathering. When we arrived, we were warmly greeted and invited to the meeting room downstairs. Some of us (ahem!) took a little longer to go downstairs, because we I could not walk past the ShiBui sock yarn without buying some!

Downstairs, we were greeted by Darcy and crew who had iced tea and cold water waiting for us. I'm not certain if the cookies and brownies were from Darcy or someone in the group, but they sure were good! To top it all off, Darcy announced that there were stickers underneath some of the chairs and whoever sat in one of those got a prize. Oh, lucky day, I had a sticker! So in addition to the two skeins of ShiBui I had purchased, I was gifted with two more.

Knitting, conversation and general merriment ensued for the next three hours (which, by the way, flew by). I'm telling you, it does not get better than this. Great knitters, great bloggers, great snacks, great hosts, great yarn -- I'm overcome with the greatness! Kathy already posted a wonderful list of everyone in attendance and links to all the blogs, so I won't repeat it here. Besides, you should visit Kathy's blog; she has some good stuff over there!

Okay, so that was the beginning item for the weekend. I sure hope the middle of that one goes on and on and on.

Here's the ending item: The striped socks are finished! I even washed them and they are blocking now. Someone sent me an email after my last post about this (sorry, I seem to have lost it and can't remember who it was!) and said that the Regia yarn softens up considerably after washing. That's definitely true, thank goodness! They came out of the wash very nice and soft. Now as long as they fit my friend, all will be well.

I'd classify the middle on this item as just right. I started them on June 23rd and finished them on July 8th. Not super-fast, but given the amount of stuff I have going on, pretty quick.

Specs:

Yarn: Regia Strato , color 5743
Needles: Empress bamboo DPNS, U.S. size 1
Pattern: My basic 2x2 rib

Next up? Finish the the Mountain Colors Bearfoot SIPs and the lacy one's I posted a preview shot of before. Oh, and the Mystery Stole Clue #2 is waiting for me, too. I finally finished Clue #1 after having to rip out the last two rows due to a mistake I couldn't isolate. That's what I get for trying to work with black yarn after 10:00 at night!