We met at Leslie’s house and for once in a long while, all of the regular Castoffs were there as well as our crochet friend Kerrie.  And for the first time, a guest with a Y chromosone voluntarily came to learn how to knit!  Normally, any man who wanders in is a husband just looking for snacks or wine, and when he realizes where he is, he runs away as fast as he can.   We were delighted to see Cy who wants to learn to knit so that he can share this activity with his mother who will soon visit him in Kalispell.

Welcome, Cy!

We all thought that this was very sweet and Michele taught him to knit the ‘Continental’ way with all the work in his left hand.  Now, why she did this, I don’t know, but that’s only because I haven’t ever tried it.  Michele says that it is an easier way to knit – less stressful on the muscles of your hand.  Perhaps she should give us all a lesson…Anyway, Michele was impressed with the talent that Cy showed.  We can’t wait to have a progress report next week.  Thanks for giving us a try, Cy.

Kerrie brought her scarf that she started last week and it is beautiful.  She is using a large crochet hook and what looks like a bulky chenille yarn.  Very pretty.

Bulky crochet scarf

Carol had some exciting news – BOTH of her daughters-in-law are having babies!  Now Carol will have to knit two of everything.  The grandbabies are due a month apart, so I foresee a whole lot of baby stuff being made in the group in the next seven or so months.  Congratulations Carol!  But you are waaay too young to be a grandmother.

Grandma times two!

Julie, Julie, Julie.  To be saddled with a family who doesn’t appreciate your talent.  Dorks.  Julie brought a great hat with earflaps and ties that was magical.  When Julie put it on, she instantly became the beloved literary figure, Pippi Longstocking!

Pippi!

When the hat was passed to me, I instantly became the beloved long-ago comic character, Baby Huey!

Does anyone except me remember Baby Huey?

When the magical earflap hat was passed to Leslie, she became the beloved Dalai Lama from the novel “Lost Horizons.”

Namaste, Leslama

I certainly hope that Julie marched herself home and told those family members what they were missing.  To turn your back on literature is a shame.  I nominate them for WHINE OF THE WEEK.

Speaking of Leslie, she has finished half of the beautiful and intricate scarf that, a year ago, would have been driving her crazy.  But now, our Leslie yearns for a challenge.  She has it in this scarf.

Climbing vines scarf

As a matter of fact, Leslie wants a challenge so much that she is encouraging me to challenge myself.  I started (foolishly) a sweater knowing that I didn’t have enough yarn to complete it all.  Leslie, the great brain, suggested that I use the matching yarn that I bought and create from my fertile (ha) imagination a charted ‘wave’ of color on the body of the sweater.  Hmmm.  That will involve making a chart and tearing out my hair, but I hear and obey, Great Leslama.  I will report, bald and trembling, next week.

Marsha's sweater, uncharted

Deb and Mary are still working on their scarf and mittens, respectively.  Knit, knit, knit!

Deb's daughter will love this scarf

Thumbs up, Mary! Almost ready for the hot water

Francy  made a pidge, and when I say made, I mean made up.  Our Francy loves to wing it when she knits, and this pidge is no exception.   She knit it loosely enough that she could skip making buttonholes and use a smaller, thinner button to place wherever she wanted to fasten it.  She knitted a basketweave pattern at the ends and I like the texture it brings to a solid color scarf.

Freeform pidge

Here are a couple of candids of Castoffs in their natural habitat:

Marylane and Julie. Hey, can't you two get a little closer?

From the ridiculous to the sublime

And I’ll close with a photo of the beginning of Michele’s sweater.  We saw her choose the pattern last week (with subtle hints from the group, ahem) and now we’ll see it come together.  This is gorgeous yarn!

Michele's sweater...well some of it, anyway

Next week we meet at Michele’s house.  I can’t wait to see the progress on everyone’s projects.   Will Mary felt her mittens?  Will Michele be up to her armpits?  Will Leslie have the scarf finished?  Will Marsha have any hair or just a chart?  Will Julie have a family?  Will Carol have another baby on the way?  Will Deb have her scarf finished?  Will Francy bring her puppy to show us?  Will Marylane STILL be working on that darn sweater?  Will Cy and Kerrie join us again?  Stay tuned, knitters.  The drama is unbearable.

We were all together at Marylane’s house except Julie, Carol and Francy, but we had two guests to make up the numbers – Kerrie and Lisa.  Kerrie is a crocheter, but we won’t hold that against her.  As a matter of fact, I was very glad she was there to help me (actually, she did it for me) crochet a chain to knit into as a provisional cast-on for some socks that I was attempting.

Thank you Kerrie! Crochet isn't my strong suit.

As it turned out, I had nothing but trouble with my “Traveler’s Socks Using the ‘Magic Loop’ Method.  I had to ask Michele to help me because she had used this pattern, and she had also had to rip her socks out three times before she ‘got’ it.  Welllll, I ripped it out twice at Marylane’s and once more at home, at which point I threw my needles across the room (petulant knitter) and started on a sweater.  So there!

One thing that did make me feel more competent was my finished bulky sweater vest that I brought to ‘show and tell.’

Bulky yarn, big needles - fast vest!

Leslie took a photo of a closeup of the cables on the back:

Big cables were fun to knit

I was quite pleased with the way it turned out and actually look forward to colder weather to wear it.  It’s made of wool and is very warm.  My  Zen coat is finished also and I brought it to model.  See how tired I looked?  See how hard I’ve been working?  Nah, I always look that way in a photograph.

This is a very comfy, warm sweater

Enough about me, me, me.  Our other guest, Lisa, brought the most delicious pesto/cream cheese/roasted red pepper and sun-dried tomato dip that I ever ate.  I must admit that I made a pig of myself.  Oink.  It was a pretty dish too, but I’m afraid that we gobbled it up so fast that I forgot to get a photo.  Thanks, Lisa!

Lisa lent culinary support while Mary worked on her felted mitten

Michele was trying to decide on a sweater pattern using some beautiful yarn from her stash.  Michele and I are trying very hard this year to refrain from buying new yarn, while instead using the yarn that we’ve both squirreled away over the years.  Her stash looks a lot better than mine does!

Michele browsing for a pattern for her gorgeous yarn

And yes, it feels as good as it looks!

Michele and Marylane finished their hats.  Camas Creek Yarn was sponsoring a ‘knit for needy’ campaign.  Here are the pretty finished projects.

Mama and baby hats

Deb and Mary were still working on their scarf and mitten projects, respectively.  We are all looking forward to seeing them completed.

Marylane’s husband Dick came in, so we immediately pressed him into service.  Husbands who wander into the Castoffs meeting are at the mercy of the knitters and will be victimized (all in fun, of course).

Very impressive, Dick!

Leslie was knitting a VERY intricate leaf pattern for a scarf for her daughter, Sienna.  I will hopefully get a photo of it next week when we meet at her house.  She is a brave woman to bring a difficult pattern into our little den of chaos.  It’s usually a recipe for disaster followed by ripping out rows of knitting once home in the quiet.  But, you know, we are a pretty brave bunch.  Yay US!

Have a great week and keep on knittin’!

Well, well, a new year and a new decade.  Happy 2010 to all of the Castoffs!  I can’t wait to see the projects for this coming year because I was dazzled by the projects from the last year!  This week at Julie’s, Francy won the prize for production.  Over the Christmas break, she knitted a Moebius scarf and matching fingerless mitts, another pair of mittens with matching hat AND ANOTHER pair of fingerless mitts with matching hat.  WHEW!  Francy says that this is what happens when you don’t have guests for Christmas.

The whole k(n)it and caboodle

I especially love the mittens that she knitted from a variegated wool yarn by Paton.  This striped yarn knitted into an interesting look.

Love how this yarn worked up

It also seemed to be the season to knit hats.  Julie knitted this fun striped hat for her son, Nate.

No strings attached, Jules.

Julie also knitted a hat for her husband Brian that I modelled, but apparently I have a pinhead and Brian does not.

Sometimes we have a little too much fun at knitting!

Leslie the photophobic showed another hat that…oh dear, I forgot who knitted this lovely hat…wine and 58-year-old memory cells sometimes clash.  Anyway, great hat.

Who IS that knitter behind the blue hat? Oh, Leslie the photophobic!

Speaking of Leslie, she has been making the most wonderful pidges!  She sent me photos of two that she made and gave away before we could get a look at the finished product.  I love the drama in these photos almost as much as I love the pidges.

LOVE the buttons!

I want one, too!

Lucky friends to get such beautiful pidges from the master pidger herself.  Leslie decided to make a freeform pidge for herself out of bits and pieces of leftover yarn.  And of course, she found some fabulous buttons for it.

Just from the chin down, dammit!

This pidge epitomizes our Leslie’s creativity and free-spiritedness.  You go, girl!  If only she’d let me take a photo of her head.  Maybe she’ll make a hat that must be modelled.

We oohed and aahed over Julie’s Christmas cookies that she and Brian made using Brian’s grandfather’s patented icing recipe.  They were almost too pretty to eat…but we gave it our best attempt.

So much work...and then gobbled up by the likes of us

We had a wonderful time at Julie’s and we were glad to have Carol back from California to join us.  She is back at school for the final year!  Then she’ll be a teacher!  Yay!  In the meantime, we hope she will be with us as much as possible.  Deb was with us and is knitting a scarf that is NOT fuzzy.  This is a step toward clarity in knitting, Deb.  Congrats!

Hey, I can actually see the stitches!

Michele is knitting a belt for her daughter out of the most interesting cord.  It changes colors as she delves deeper into the ball.  Very cool, Michele.

Cool colored cord

The rest of us were working on the same projects: Marylane on the baby hat; Mary on mittens and Marsha on her blue vest.  Some of these will be finished by next week when we meet at Marylane’s house at our regular day and time.  I’ll leave you with some candids of us working and talking; talking and working, but most of all, having fun together.

Hey, less reading and more knitting!

Well, that's better. This is a knitting group, for crying out loud.

Is this a contest? I think Mary's winning!

Four of us were available to meet for an impromptu get-together.  We just felt the need to knit and talk.  Marylane, Leslie, Mary and Marsha did a lot of talking, but not much knitting!  I think I knit a whole row on my vest.  But we talked about a lot of things, including Marylane’s new Droid phone that her kids gave her for Christmas.  It is very cool!  We got online with it at the meeting.   Marylane is still learning all the apps, but so far she is having a lot of fun with it.  Of course, we forgot to ask her her phone number, so that will have to wait until next time.

Mary and Leslie admiring Marylane's new "Droid"

Marylane was also working on a little pink hat for a baby gift, but was having a little crisis over the earflaps.   I think she knew how to KNIT the short rows, but wasn’t 100% sure about it, so she didn’t get a lot done on that project, but had her sweater to work on instead.

Tiny earflaps, big problem!

Leslie was working on a pidge for a friend.  She was using double strands in a basketweave pattern that is going to be really fabulous.  The great thing about the pidge is choosing beautiful buttons to set it off.  Can’t wait to see this one.

Pidge in the making

That creative brain of hers is planning a freeform pidge made out of multiple colors and types of yarn worked in short rows in no particular pattern.  I am very excited to see what she comes up with!  It makes me want to run out and buy yarn for a pidge myself.  I’ll try to restrain myself until my vest is finished.

I have yet to block my green Zen coat, but I did model it for Leslie, Mary and Marylane.

Zen coat coming to a close, finally!

It’s very substantial, very warm and I like it.  There is a pleat in the back that was fun to make and gives the coat a nice bit of style.

Knitting a pleat was remarkably easy.

I have promised to block it and wear it to the next meeting at Julie’s house.

Mary was starting the second of her to-be-felted mittens.  I got an extreme closeup of the first row – kinda, sorta.  Her fingers were very occupied with all those needles!

Wow, lots of needles!

Well, although we were few, we had large fun.  We talked about movies, politics, government refunds (that Mary got and the rest of us didn’t.  Thanks for checking, Mary!).  Leslie suggested that we go as a group to see the newest remake of ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 3D when it comes out.  It sounds great and it has Johnny Depp.  I like 3D movies, and did I mention that it has Johnny Depp?  I think we’d like it a lot and, oh yeah, Johnny Depp is in it.  Where do I buy my ticket?  How long do we have to wait?

Happy New Year, Johnny!

Happy New Year to all (and to you, too, Johnny Depp) and I’ll see you at Julie’s house on the 7th of January.  Keep knitting!