We met at Julie’s house and, boy, there were a lot of Castoffs there!  Nine, plus a special guest who I’ll tell you about later.  We all had ongoing projects: Carol is working on plum wristlets.  She loved her fingerless mittens so much that she decided to make another pair.  They are sooo pretty.  Linda told me that the pattern is at the RAVELRY site.  My friend Kathy had told me about the site, so I’ll have to check it out.

Yummy plum wristlets!

Joan is having a BALL (get it?) working and reworking her mittens.  We are so sad that Joan will be leaving us to go back to Arizona at the end of September.  “Will you tell us if you finish the mittens,” I asked.  “You’ll never know if I do or not, so I’ll say yes.”  Oh, Joan, just lie to us.  We can’t wait until next summer when you come back!

Havin' a ball! When in Arizona, use cotton yarn.

Leslie is NEARLY finished with her teeny, weeny size #3 needle scarf.  She held up a miniscule amount of yarn, “That’s all I have left!!”  She sounded so happy.  It’s going to be absolutely beautiful.

Teeny-tiny yarn, HUGE amount of work!

Michele and Mary came in together – so happy to be out of school for the day!  Mary is knitting giant mittens to felt and Michele is still working on the Magic Loop socks.  She conquered the holes problem and now she can help me!  Yay!

TG tomorrow IF!

GIANT FELTED MITTENS in the works.

NO HOLES! Yippee!

We had one of those days when everyone wanted to talk and talk and talk and I found that the things we talked about were…well, imponderables.  We talked about unanswerable questions like: Why are there two bathtubs in the Cialis commercials?  Shouldn’t that couple be SHARING a tub?  Why would dipping a pumpkin’s stem in milk make the pumpkin grow bigger?  Or would it?  These questions brought forth a lot of intense knitting and frowning, but no clear-cut answers.  Mary wins the prize for “strange subjects brought up over knitting” however and she even brought a visual aid.

Maybe this has something to do with the separate bathtubs.

Castoffs meetings are never dull, that’s for sure.

We had a special guest that came in at the end of the meeting and grabbed up needles and yarn, eager to catch up with the rest of us.

Menopause is just hell, isn't it, Brianna?

We can’t wait to see how the sweater comes out.  Hmmm.

Julie is working on a purple hooded top-down sweater and I begged the pattern off her.  I find myself gravitating towards big projects.  Sure hope I live long enough to finish everything that I start!

Hoody tunic - top down!

Well, we ate Julie’s zucchini cookies and drank some lovely wine  (my favorite of the day was Red Bicyclette Merlot) and enjoyed the late summer weather.  We talked about at least two very good books, ENEMY WOMEN and RIVER OF DOUBT.  With a room full of teachers and librarians, reading is probably our second favorite occupation.

I’ll leave you with some more candids of our meeting.  Don’t stick the pointy ends where they would hurt!

Marylane, Carol and Joan busy at work.

Jules, Leslie, Linda and Marylane posing for that damned annoying bloggist.

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