Slumberland

I haven’t posted much about knitting lately. Mostly that is because I just haven’t gotten much knitting done, what with summer and real-life things interfering with the knitting time. But I am working on a couple of things. No new patterns just yet — I have some ideas percolating, but nothing ready to talk about or even swatch up yet.

The two newest projects I’m working on are the Lace Ribbon Scarf from Knitty (maybe half done) and the Rogue Hooded Pullover from The Girl from Auntie. (Pictured here, just beginning.)

The scarf was supposed to be my airplane and train knitting for the UK trip, but I didn’t get very much done. It’s a very easy pattern, though, and very portable. I have it memorized now, so if I need to take knitting somewhere, I can just grab that.

Rogue is another story. It’s also easy (so far), but it’s a 19 page pattern, and there are charts to follow, and so this will be “at home” knitting for now. It’s going to be really cool when done. And warm too, I hope. It has Celtic cables on the sides, around the hood, and around the neckline. And I intend to finish it before Thanksgiving. Let’s see if I can manage it. It’s actually relatively quick so far.

One more knitting tidbit, and it’s sort of goofy. Jason and I went out to dinner with his parents for his birthday on Monday. On the way home, I had this sudden urge to stop at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. It’s a bookstore, right? Why not?

So we stopped there right around 7pm. As we walked in, I saw that there was a group of people in the back around the stage, and someone was introducing an author. “Hmm,” I thought, “it would be funny if it was a knitting author.”

And then the woman introduced… Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot! My jaw just about dropped off my face. I guess I haven’t been keeping up with things as I should, or I would have known she was going to be here!

Because I was with Jason, who really didn’t want to spend all night there, I didn’t sit down and listen to the reading, or get an autograph. I did listen to a bit from the back, though. In Stephanie’s post about the Seattle reading she has a couple of audience pics, and if the picture was larger, you would see me standing up in the back of the room.

It’s funny, because in England (and in Germany and Austria last year!) I managed to stumble on a couple of yarn stores completely accidentally (“Let’s turn down this street — I bet it will be interesting. Oh, look, another yarn store!”), and I was telling Jason that I have an inner yarn sensor. And then this Monday my sensor led me to a book reading by a knitting celeb!