I do still knit...

...In fact, this weekend I've done nothing except knit at the 6th Annual Spartanburg Knitting Guild Knit-a-Way in Little Switzerland, NC. My mom invited me to join her for the event this year. We're high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just a stone's throw from the Parkway, along with some 50 or so other knitters.

Many of the people who are here have known each other for several years; others of us are here for the first time. All together, though, we are very much like the beautiful prayer shawl being passed around, on which everyone is knitting for a guild member recently diagnosed with cancer. It lives in a basket, nestled in a bed of various purple balls of yarn. Knitters take turns choosing a yarn from the basket, and knitting a row lengthwise on the shawl, leaving the ends as fringe.

Here we all are, nestled in the fog at the Big Lynn Lodge, a wide variety of people like so many balls of yarn. Knit us together, though... As we sit in the great room of the lodge, women's stories and laughter are becoming a thread woven into each blanket and sweater and scarf and shawls we hold half-made in our hands.

I've learned three new techniques: magic loop knitting, double knitting, and entrelac. The magic loop is lots of fun, at least for the little project on which I learned it. The guild is sponsoring a Christmas tree for a hospice program in Spartanburg, so we learned to make little knit hats to use as ornaments. Here, then, is my very first knitted hat, no more than two inches high...

More on double knitting and entrelac tomorrow, after I've had a little more time to work on them! Look what else is being knit on the front porch of our cottage!