the Village Knittiot

While everyone was off in Cummington having a magical weekend, Mr. Knittiot and I stayed home and had a magical weekend of our own. Friday afternoon we waded through traffic to pick up our friends from the Philadelphia airport and brought them back to our little apartment for a weekend of fun and relaxation. We went everywhere and did everything and by degrees I found myself falling a little more deeply in love with my sweetie, my newly adopted city, my best friend and her kind and considerate husband. As we left them at the airport late Monday afternoon, I found myself wishing that it could go on like this forever. No responsibilities. No adult pressures. Just endless days of summer and laughter, peace and contentment.

Even though I was not at an official fiber festival, everyday in the Village is filled with fiber and this weekend was no exception. My friends are lovely and were perfectly willing to humor me, even when it involved a detailed explanation of all the various spinning fibers currently in my possession (Never miss an opportunity to proselytize).

Thursday night I managed to finish Ruby Joy, though, as is usual with my knitting, it did not quite turn out as expected. I’ve decided that maybe it is time to just embrace that about myself. About 4 rows shy of finishing it became apparent that I was not going to have enough yarn and after some frustration and a little crying, I decided there was no way that I was going to be ripping out that much of what I had done, so I tinked back one row and bound off right where I was. It looks just fine. And even though I thought I was being incredibly loose with the bind off, it turns out I wasn’t, so it was a little difficult to block. Nevertheless, it is beautiful and I am thrilled. Despite the fact that it was something like 90 degrees outside on Sunday, I wore my mohair/silk shawl anyway. We were going to the art museum after all, and I kind of felt like she belonged there.

Saturday before we were about to head out for a day of strolling through the city and soaking in the sites, I quickly checked my e-mail where I learned that Loop was having a sale. Plans were immediately made to proceed to the store where Mr. Knittiot managed to snag some bamboo yarn and a really sexy Brittany crochet hook. Me and my Summer of Knitting Naturally walked away with a few skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca’s Organic Cotton and a pattern for a very basic sleeveless number that I am already well on my way into.

Sunday morning I spent some time convincing Hiroe she wanted to crochet teaching Hiroe to crochet. As I was working with her I noticed that I have really made some strides in my teaching abilities since my early days of yarn pushing. It wasn’t that I was awful before, I just have a greater sense now of how instruction should flow, what steps should follow each other and how to be intuitive about the amount of information any given person can absorb at one time. Mr. Knittiot also jumped in and gave some useful pieces of advice and she was moving along quite nicely in no time at all.

I also managed to get some spinning time in and decided to take the opportunity to play around with the hemp fiber I got at Maryland. After adjusting to the differences between plant and animal fibers, things seemed to be going quite well and I even managed to ply up and swatch a little sample. It is actually pretty soft and according to all reports only gets softer and softer with every wash. I’m going to keep playing with this a bit and once I really have my feet wet, I’m going to order enough to spin up a summer top’s worth of yarn.

In and around the fiber activity, we managed to wander all over the city, taking in the art museum, the zoo, Rittenhouse Square, South Street, The Magic Garden and much more. There was a considerable amount of tasty food — the best of which was prepared by my resident chef, Mr. Knittiot. Lucky for us, Hiroe’s husband John is an amazing photographer and he documented the whole weekend. Feel free to wander over to his blog and check out his last several entries. Fiber folk will not be disappointed as he has some amazing pictures of my spinning wheel in action, Ruby Joy on my shoulders and Hiroe and I crocheting in and amongst some of the other snapshots of the weekend.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 7:26 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.