Friendship and Knitting Just Go Together

Friendship. I am always so thankful for friendship. It comes in many forms and from many places and you just never know what you are going to get, to quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump.

And we all know that I am all about the knitting although I don’t grind you down under the weight of all my cast on projects….and there are a bunch of them I am sorry to say. With more to come, like the hat that I am casting on today for a knit along. Like I don’t have anything else to do. Be warned that there may be knitting project posts ahead.

And when you combine knitting with friendship well then you get something that is just wonderful. And that is what I have with Tri-County Knit-A-Holics. Catchy name isn’t it.

A bit of background. A while back I was in another knitting group. They met once a month and I will be honest in saying that from month to month many of the ladies didn’t pick up their knitting except for that one night when we were together. That isn’t the way to make progress on your knitting. It isn’t the way to grow your skills. You can’t remember what you did a month ago and your knitting mojo not only got up and went it might never have been there in the first place. And other than the one night a month that we were together there was little if any interaction between the knitting participants. But it was the only group that I knew of and I soldiered on.

And then I joined Ravelry. (cue the trumpets and the harps)

And I sort of did some things on Ravelry, hung around on some of the different forums, slung political trash talk around. You laugh but let me tell you, knitters take their politics VERY. SERIOUSLY. And we play with pointy sticks so sometimes we can be sharp in our jabs. But I digress.

Through Ravelry I met Jess. I invited Jess to my knitting group. She came. Then the knitting group stopped meeting. I was set adrift in a sea of knitting aloneness.

It was lonely.

Allllllll by myself. Don’t want to be allllllll by myself anymore……

Ummmm, sorry about that.

The funny thing about knitting is even though we knit alone at times the best thing about knitting is the ability to interact with and learn from other knitters. You see the work that they are doing, you are inspired to try something new, you get to brag (just a little) about what you have accomplished. But you can’t do that if you don’t have anyone to knit with or if the group that you do have don’t really take their knitting seriously.

And then, about a year ago, I got RavMail (you know, email only on Ravelry) from Jess. She had formed a knitting group, Tri- County Knit-A-Holics, or TCK for short, and did I want to come and knit?

Did I ever!!! And so began my assimilation into the collective knitting with the ladies of TCK. We meet every other Monday at the Panera in one of our towns. They know us as “the Monday Knitting Group” and have now allowed us to invade the VIP room. That way we can spread out and make all the noise that we want.

And we might sometimes be noisy. We laugh alot.

And sometimes we have “supplemental” or “emergency” meetings on the off Mondays. Knitting emergencies are very…….urgent. And require a meeting.

And last night was the TCK 1st annual cookout which was held at Chez Knit.

There was food…..

Lots of food. HHBL grilled 40 hamburgers and I don’t know how many hotdogs.

There were family and friends all getting together. All the member of TCK know each other, obviously, but most of our families have never met so it was great to get everyone, 35 people I think in all, together to get to know each other.
  My friend, Miss Miriam, she of the blueberry picking fame. Hi Miriam!

Tara, our “novice knitter” who has already designed her first scarf pattern. She will soon leave us all in the dust. And Jen our resident crocheter who makes the most amazing things. And is my Girl Scout Cookie dealer.

Oh yes, there was laughing going on. That is not uncommon when we get together.

And after we had eaten our fill then Jess had a little surprise for us to commemorate our first year together. A year that has seen us walk through all sorts of things together, our pointy sticks in our hands…..well, all except for Barb (yellow shirt above) who had her needles confiscated at the Barcelona airport before a flight home. Which meant that she couldn’t knit for the ENTIRE FLIGHT. Oh the tragedy of it all.

This is what Jess made for each of us, in our favorite color…….
It holds a notebook. It is gorgeous. I am in love. I want to take it with me wherever I go.

By the way, if you are on Ravelry come and find me. Obviously my name over there is 4bookworm.

So, after this disjointed and rambling post (did you expect anything else from me?) all I really want to say is that I love my Knit Sibs almost more than I love my Knit Picks Options needles.

Ok, I guess I love them more than my Options Neeldes….and MAYBE even more than my stash of sock yarn. Which, the ladies of TCK will tell you, is sacred.

And large.

And growing despite my best efforts to keep it contained and managable. But that is a post for another time.