Talking to strangers

This weekend I'm doing something new: going to a knitting retreat! I've been to festivals, I've taken classes, I've done demonstrations, I've gone to plenty of knitting groups, but I've never gone somewhere away from home for the express purpose of just hanging out and knitting with strangers.

What'll it be like? Who knows? I'll report back!

The one that I'm going to is organized by Paula of the podcast The Knitting Pipeline, which is one of my very favorite knitting-related podcasts. She's always throwing some interesting non-knitting content in there-- nature and Celtic music, among other things. It's very well produced and presented, and she seems like she's going to be a fun person to know. Plus she used to correspond by letter with Elizabeth Zimmerman, so if there's a six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-but-for-knitting I'll clearly be doing pretty well. She's also the designer of one of my recent finished objects, the Piper's Journey shawl. This is made of handspun, and I love it.



I totally picked out an outfit to bring to the retreat so I can debut the shawl there. You bet I'm that dorky.

I know I've written about this before, but I love podcasts. I listen to many of them, both knitting related ones and all sorts of other things. I like to listen to the knitting ones during times I can't knit-- usually when I'm using a form of transit where it would be quease-inducing or unsafe to knit. Also sometimes while I'm eating. When I'm actually knitting, I tend to listen to other ones. When I spin, I love listening to audiobooks.

I've found a great group of knitters here in my new hometown that are a hoot to knit (and bowl, and watch movies, etc) with, but knitting podcasts are the next best thing, especially if you ever have introverted days where you're happy to listen and not contribute to the conversation. I do have lots of introverted days, but this weekend I'm wearing my extrovert hat (or shawl, as it were). Hope y'all have a fun weekend!