Knitting Connections

Apparently the heat has gotten to me and I'm unable to write. That's the only reason to explain why I haven't posted anything for 20 days.

The past few weekends have been interesting and filled with fun yarn things. All this fun was courtesy of Ravelry connections.

A few months ago a lady from Australia posted in the MN Knitters group that she was coming to Minneapolis for a week and asked where the best yarn shops were. I was feeling adventurous so sent her a private message saying I would be glad to play tour guide on Saturday and show her some sites and some LYS. That meeting took place last Saturday. We did a quick driving tour of St Paul and then headed over to The Yarnery. After that Borealis, lunch and Lila and Claudine's. All this was followed by a driving tour of Minneapolis and a stop at the Mill City Park so she could see the Mississippi river and the 35W bridge since she had heard about the collapse of the old bridge all the way in Australia. All in all it was a great time. Leanie put a major dent in her credit card with several sweaters worth of yarn she couldn't get at home and returned to her hotel ready for the week's conference.

During the same time I found out about a group of knitters in Kandahar at the hospital there. I contacted one of the knitters and asked if my knitting group could send some yarn to them. My group and also The Yarnery donated yarn and the box went out to the Role 3MMU hospital this past week.

When I was working at my family friend's yarn shop in the late 70s and 80s we didn't have Ravelry or other methods of finding knitters in the rest of the world. The only patterns available were the ones at the local shops. Mail order yarn for the average person was totally unheard of. And the thought of meeting up with someone on the computer and getting together was something that only happened in science fiction, after all computers were only for big corporations and took up an entire room to house it.

Each year and decade sees so many changes in the world but one thing remains constant - people with similar interests like to get together to share those interests. I for one am looking forward to all the knitting connections I will make in the future and hope you all get to meet many knitters in your own way too.

oh - one fun side note. After posting about the whack-a-doodles last time I got a message from someone I know who's father-in-law is a minister and wanted to used that post in a sermon. Who would have thought a post would end up as a sermon!