Knitting at Karen's

Karen Campbell is the power behind Two Swans Yarns, and she was kind enough to host our monthly knitting group at her house so we could have access to her yarn supply as each knitter chooses the next knitting project.

On Saturday morning, October 20th, George left at 4:30am for his motocross race and a few hours later Naomi drove as Melinda and I carpooled with her to Karen's lovely country estate for our knitting day. Through the front door past the formal dining table filled with a rainbow of Jameson's colors, cozy sitting room with baskets of yarn and inviting books, plenty of natural light to knit by, and butternut squash soup on the stove... it was a heavenly day that passed quickly.

Knitters came and went throughout the day; 12 to 15 people made the trip to Kent. Some brought projects so there was knitting as well as show and tell. Many of us perused our coveted Alice Starmore books to choose a project pattern and purchase the yarns immediately from Karen to take home that day. Thank you, Karen, for all your hard work up and down those stairs and with amazing patience as we asked questions and changed our minds. If you could stand it, I think it would be great if this was an annual or bi-annual event to prepare for seasonal projects.

Naomi modeled Ryan's hats knit from just two skeins of Jameson's - you may have already seen them on Ryan's blog. Ryan says the pattern will be ready soon, so we can all choose our colors. I'm planning to knit one for our sailor, Jon, who is based in Tokyo, but currently at sea on the Kittyhawk for its final world tour before decommissioning.

I've settled on Rosemarkie for my first Starmore so that I'll be swatching it in Janine's class next month and putting the colors I choose on Two Swans wish list to make it easy for my family to access my Christmas ideas. I was considering trying Starmore's Oregon as a vest using the color way in the new Vogue Knitting, but I regained my senses before making a commitment. I'll graduate from Rosemarkie before entering knitting college in the form of twice the colors. I'm excited to see the projects progress over the next weeks.

Thanks to inspiration from the Knitting Daily newsletter, I've been thinking a lot about my UFO's and have been making a serious effort to finish the projects that have been languishing at the "nearly finished" stage. My next post I'll share my progress - it already feels great!