Yesterday with Friends

There's a group of us that meet once a month in Queen Creek - we call ourselves the Yarn Yankers. We hang out for a few hours, show each other what we have been up to. Bring stuff to give away - teach each other new things. It's a lot of fun. Recently one of our members has been having some health issues and we haven't seen as much of her as we would like to.

Yesterday we had an impromptu gathering of a few of us and it was really nice to see them all.

Beverly had to try on my mothers shawl and show us her runway style



I had no idea how much difference it makes to get together with a few friends for a couple of hours and just talk about what we do with fiber. It's amazing how recharged I feel afterwards. The sense of community, of fitting in with your own small segment of society. Most of my life I have felt like an outsider. The kid on the sidewalk watching every one else do/have/be what I wanted. This little bit of time with them takes that "outsider" feeling away.

Portland Visit - Day 1

Wah!!! I took photos, but am using my work computer and cannot download or upload....

pics will be added at the end of the trip or whenever I figure out how to post flickr photos to blogger. Usually I post pics from PicasaWeb and that works fine.

Anyway - a great time today. DeVia and I met Melissa B, Duffy, Gary, and Mary for lunch at Dan and Louis. It was so nice to see Melissa and Duffy again, to meet Gary and Mary for the first time and to give DeVia a small glimpse of the excitement generated when two or more knitters are gathered together.

After leaving Dan and Louis, we headed towards the yarn store, but stopped at Starbucks first for a chai and bit of a knit.

We then went to Knit Purl for the PDX Knit Blogger meet up. Bobbie invited me to join them and conferred on me honorary PDX knit blogger status. The store personnel could not have been more welcoming - there ending up being about 25 of us and they handled it very well.

DeVia hung out for a little while and then headed to Powells. She came back for the ending and was recognized as the outstanding fiber enabler that she is.

There was chocolate, yarn fondling, pattern oohing and aahing.... I can't begin to remember everyone's names - Kathy wrote them all down (including blogs). 3 other knitters were working on the Mystery Stole 3 - I had to put mine away as I just could not concentrate on the lace and talk too.

AIDS Lifecycle

I can't tell you how proud I am of my friend Janisis. For the second year, she is a roadie for the AIDS Lifecycle ride. Here is the page where she describes what this entails and what it means to her.

I wanted to insert just a small quote from her description

"I want to tell you about how much fun it is, but the term 'fun' doesn't begin to cover the emotion ... it's so much more than fun... it's deeply rewarding, enormously satisifying, hugely gratifying... joyous service."

Please take a moment, go to her page and write her a note of encouragement - donate if you can to support her in this effort.

Been a long time

It's been over a month since my last entry and I have a lot to blog about. My niece's Cinderella birthday party, easter, pretty growing things in the garden and new yarns - however today is about Knit Camp.

Some of the members of the GLB-knit group that I belong to got together over the weekend in Vermont to hang out and knit together.

Oh my gosh - what a great time it was. The flights were on time, even though I was in a 40 seat prop job for one leg of the flight. The weather was amazing and the people I met felt like family that I had not seen in a long time.

I have a bunch of photos to share - they can be found here.

Here is the text of the post I made from the Albany airport on my way home:


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Well, Fudge just dropped me off at the Albany Airport for my trip home from glb knit camp.

What a wonderful couple of days. It was great meeting everyone. It felt like a school reunion - I wasn't really sure how people would look and felt a feeling of familiarity even when meeting someone for the first time. It felt like old friends after a long time apart.

Ray's yarns were wonderful and the alpaca that Mel and David brought is amazing. I learned the mobieus cast on from Witt and demo'd the figure 8 cast on for toe up socks. I learned the patch toe for toe ups from Duffy.

Sarah and Jeri are full of fun, Jenny and Deanna have wonderful soothing energy - I just could have sat in their presence for hours.

Much much thanks to Sadia and Ann for pulling this together.

Wonderful Melissa accomplished miracles with food for all of us.

I can't wait to see Duffy again - another great reason to head to Portland every chance I get.

Melissa Scott - I restrained myself and didn't act like a star struck fan in front of her - thank all the gods there are.

And the boys - what can you say about the boys but how great it felt to have their gentle male energy - Witt, Gary, Lou, Mel and David - I have missed having queer men in my life and you all felt so familiar.

it was great to meet Joy, Susan, Pamela too.

I have to thank Fudge for schlepping me back and forth to the airport and for being my friend. It's always easier to go somewhere when I know there's at least one person who knows me and who I know likes me already. Then I can be brave with strangers who might not like me.

Thanks to all who came - those who didn't missed a great time.

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I'll catch up later with everything else that's been happening.

My favorite picture from SOAR last year

I can't believe that it's taken me almost a year to post this picture. But then again, I didn't have this blog last year.
From the left we have Alicia, myself, and Fudge. We had the best time at SOAR in 2005 and I can't wait for this year.

Spook is going with me this year and I don't think Alicia or Fudge are going. I hope it's as much fun. It's different for me when I am not sure if I will know anyone there or not.