I feel very fortunate that knitting has led me to a new community of friends. I am thankful that my local yarn shop has embraced creating a community atmosphere and I’m learning that it is somewhat unique.
My local yarn shop, Silk Road Textiles, offers “open knitting” sessions on Thursday evenings, every other Friday mornings, and once a month on Tuesday evenings. In addition to knitters I have met through taking classes at Silk Road, I have made some wonderful friends with fellow knitters at the Friday morning and Tuesday evening sessions. Our Friday morning group has even thrown in extra sessions by also meeting at the nearby coffee shop and taking a “field trip” to find buy “used” knitting books at the library sale. I suspect, and look forward to, we will do a yarn crawl trip.
I found out such scheduled sessions are not necessarily common to all yarn stores. Many offer an “open table” where a knitter can sit and knit anytime the store is open. But I prefer these scheduled sessions as it’s more fun to meet with other knitters to see what they are making, the yarns they use, and future projects they are considering. Not to mention the help I almost always need on my current project. As I mentioned in my last post, it was through these sessions I found out what I was doing wrong on my scarf project which I had been very unhappy over.
Knitting has truly become an important activity for me in retirement. These sessions have joined other activities such as theater ushering that will influence do we decide to continue to live in Cincinnati or move to be closer to our children/future grandchildren. I am grateful for the knitting community that Silk Roads has helped to foster.
I am not alone in hating to do gauge knitting. It is essential in anything that has to fit such as a sweater and to be honest, even socks. But I have recently learned it can be important in something as simple as a scarf if the yarn you are using is dyed so as to generate a specific pattern.
Knitting Is So Fun 