Worldwide Knitting In Public Day

Today was Worldwide Knitting in Public Day. My son scoffed at the idea when he heard about it but I was bound and determined to get out of the house with my needles. Rather than drive downtown and battle for parking near the Seattle Sculpture Park, I ventured up to Crossroads Mall on 156th Street. The day was sponsored by the Eastside Knitting Guild which I had not been involved with previously because I hadn't ever been able to "find" them. I was informed they meet on the 4th Monday of every month in a conference room near Sears. I met several wonderful people today at the event and was quite impressed with two young women who were simply enchanting. Molly is a computer science student at Gonzaga in Spokane and newly home for the summer. Molly learned to knit in high school and taught her younger sister Emma. Molly had a clever design for a shrug that she was close to finishing for a wedding that she was going to hours later in the evening. Hours later. Not days. Hours. Can you believe it? Not a drop of sweat on her brow. Sweet girls - it was so fun to spend some time getting to know them. Emma was working on a baby blanket with boucle yarn for an "as yet to be identified" recipient. I also met Trish who was working on a fuzzy, soft yellow baby sweater. We had a wonderful conversation about her recently trip to Greece (I want to go!), her Technology MBA program at the University of Washington and her days once upon a time at IBM. I had a brief encounter with Samantha "Fiber Adventurer" who had on a gorgeous Shetland Triangle shawl by Evelyn Clark that she knit in SeaSilk. I coveted that shawl. It was a work of art. I never thought I would be interested in lace but after seeing that shawl and remembering the work that Melinda and Naomi do with lace I am beginning to lean in that direction more and more. I am constantly on a quest for new knowledge and learnings around knitting. The challenge of the unconquered drives me, not the idea of having one more sweater in my bedroom armoire! See Samantha's fun blog at http://www.knitquest.typepad.com/ for more about her and the shawl. If you are not a knitter, photo's of her darling children are worth a visit to the blog alone. Samantha gave me a tiny business card with her web blog and Ravelry name. What an idea! How fun! Both Trish and Samantha are women who I would love to get to know more. One thing I find ever so fascinating is that like myself, so many women in technology immerse themselves in arts - fiber, fabric, paint, glass. I know so few other computer scientists or engineers but of the ones I do know - most of them are knitters. It can't get any better than that ;)