Knitting and Quilting (and Preaching and Purling)

Three Knitters and one Quilter ride travel from Jackson, MS, to Hendersonville, NC, for the Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference.  Knitter A packs a suitcase, a knitting bag, a crate full of worship materials (she's the chaplain for the conference), a pillow, and a purse.  Knitter B packs a suitcase, two knitting bags, a pillow, and a heavy coat.  Knitter C packs a suitcase, a knitting bag, several crates and baskets of knitting books and yarn (she's an instructor for the conference), and a pillow.  The Quilter packs a suitcase (for clothes), another suitcase (for fabric), a sewing machine, an iron, a cutting board, and a bag of quilts.

Question: What percentage of the car's rear window is available for the driver to see out of?
Answer: Zero.

We didn't need to see the road behind us, anyway...all that mattered was the road ahead of us as we made our way to Kanuga Conference Center, in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.    The trip should have taken about 10 hours, but ended up taking 16 hours, owing to a stop at a dealership to fix a faulty heater and a detour through a yarn and fabric shop that just happened to be several miles off the interstate on the way.

The dealership offered to find us a rental car, but admitted it would take as much time to do that as it would take to repair the heater, so we pulled a few chairs into a circle in the waiting room and stitched away while the mechanics fixed.  Sitting and waiting time is never wasted on a knitter.

A little ways down the road, our feet finally warm, we stopped for lunch and a visit to In the Making, home to beautiful fabrics and yarns and a Hannah Fettig trunk show.  We each found a little something to tuck into corners of the car, a ball of yarn here, a printed pattern there, a fat quarter or two...

We finally arrived at Kanuga around midnight, awake just long enough to make plans for the next day's drive into Asheville for more yarn and fabric fun.  Our first stop was New Morning Gallery in Biltmore Vilage, where our Quilter has some of her stunning work on display.

From there we went to Earth Guild, where they sell everything related to fiber arts but the sheep themselves.  Roving, yarn, spinning wheels, knitting needles, looms, beads, dyes, patterns...it's all there.  Except now there is a little less roving there, because some 100% merino came home with me.

The conference itself was wonderful.  There were workshops in fair isle, intarsia, lace, cables, and knitting with beads.  There was a room filled with sewing machines and fabrics.  We had chapel twice a day, at which we took the 23rd psalm one verse at a time and reflected on the ways in which our Good Shepherd cares for us (preach on the 23rd psalm and yarn...please, don't throw me in the briar patch!!)  There were fires in the fireplaces and Kanuga toast on the breakfast tables and rocking chairs on the porch and sweaters and cowls and scarves and quilts and mountains all around and friends everywhere you looked.

Many thanks to Varian Brandon, conference coordinator, for bringing us all together, and to Kanuga for being our holy ground!  Three Knitters and one Quilter from Jackson, MS, definitely plan to return in 2014, and should probably start packing the car now...