The Castoffs met on a sunny afternoon at Linda’s new condo. Some of us had seen it in ‘transition’ when we helped her move some of her stuff over from her old house, but it was exciting to see it with furniture and without large cardboard boxes.
This being the second day of classes, all of the teacher types were exhausted! Being who we are, we all bellied up to Linda’s bar and were given a huge collection of wines and other beverages to choose from. Ahem…how can I say this delicately? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Set 'em up, barkeep!
Hey! So do you two want to knit?
Doesn't ANYBODY want to knit??
We gradually moved into our seats in Linda’s new living room and gradually the knitting appeared…except for Leslie who was just too fried to knit. She did reveal a lifelong ambition to us, however. It has always been her dream to be a hand model. A what? HAND MODEL. Oh, thanks. I set up the shot and began to see why she dreamed the dream. She has a GIGANTIC hand!!
Leslie, the mega-hand model
Unfortunately, it’s just the one hand…but it makes her an AWESOME computer typist. She can span the keyboard and drink a latte at the same time. Kudos, Les. Oh, BTW, that’s the mitten that Michele is knitting as her bribe for the IT guy. Guess he has big hands, too.
Linda made us a wonderful Heath bar cake, aka ‘Better Than Sex’ cake. Well, you can just imagine the raunchy talk that incurred. Tsk, tsk, Castoffs. What mouths. Finally Linda had to nip it in the bud by pulling out (drum roll, please) THE HOOK!
NO, NOT THE HOOK!
That got us under control…marginally. The cake, whatever you choose to call it, was delicious and gave us a much needed sugar rush. Thanks, Linda!
Ok, so maybe it's not better than sex...but it sure was delicious
Marylane had come to get help on the cable stitch portion of her gorgeous sweater, but by this time she realized that we were all beyond help. Her sweater back is started and the colors are very beautiful.
All 'ribbing' aside, that's one beautiful sweater
The next day, Marylane came over to my house and we calmly went over how to do her cables. Marylane was so excited that she went right home and cabled her little heart out, only stopping to get things ready for a trip to SLC on Monday. She stopped by to show me the cables. Very nice job, ML!
Great cables
I brought my scarf with the chevron pattern. I like knitting it because it’s only a two row pattern, very soothing. I will knit the halves of the scarf separately and graft them together. That way, the caston ends will be alike.
Almost a half
Linda bought two ginormous (yes, that’s a word in Castoffs lingo) balls of cotton yarn and is working through every permutation known to knitter of the two colors joined in dishcloth patterns. So far she has these four, but I’ll keep on counting.
Four down, ninety-six to go
I figure that if she uses all of both balls of yarn, she should end up with a hundred dishcloths. More or less. I think she’ll be sick of these two colors by then and will never have to make another dishcloth for the rest of her life.
Mary, Deb and Michele were there and semi-knitting, but mostly it was social hour today. Too much fatigue at the beginning of school. I’m retired and even I felt tired. Mary brought her binder of patterns and I’m sure she was discussing a very important aspect of purling in this photo. No?
"And THEN this kid's mother had the nerve to say..."
Well, it was a fun afternoon. Thanks again to Linda for being such a gracious hostess. Next week we’ll meet at Michele’s house where we might get some actual knitting done. Perhaps. In the meantime, keep those needles blazing and don’t drop a stitch.
