Knitting In Public

So, it’s not the kind of Cookie you’re thinking of:

It’s Cookie A., the fabulous sock designer!

Cookie was teaching two, one-half day classes at Needlework Unlimited this week. I signed up for the morning class on toe-up socks. There are some nice designs out there for toe up socks, but I like the heel-flap-and-gusset socks as they fit my feet better and as far as I know knew, the toe up socks use short row heels

I learned that Cookie also prefers top down socks and that the heel-flap-and-gusset socks were her favorite socks for a good fit! However, we learned to start a sock from the toe, and we actually had a flap-and-gusset type heel turn. We only made a mini-sock (she’s holding mine in the photo), but I’m anxious to try this on a full-sized sock. The only problem is that I still don’t have a down-and-dirty, quick-and-easy way to find how long to make the sock before turning the heel. Cookie had a wonderful handout which included lots of numbers and formulas to calculate all this for you, but I had been hoping for a “knit until 2″ shorter than foot length” type of instruction.

Cookie was a thorough instructor, and I enjoyed her class. She graciously signed copies of her patterns that class members had purchased at the shop. Unfortunately, I bought all of mine online through her website store (and I didn’t bring them). I didn’t get up the nerve to tell her I was one of her beta testers for the website store….

In other knitting news, I have finished and blocked the MysticLight shawl:

Modeled by my lovely DD.

A photo while blocking.

And a close-up for you lace addicts. :)  This yarn is so hard to photograph!

Pattern: MysticLight shawl by Anna Dalvi (no modifications)

Yarn: Dream In Color Smooshy, Dusky Aurora. About 1.5 skeins

Needles: Size 6 (4.0 mm)

 I would probably knit this again, but there are more “Mystic” lace projects coming, plus I haven’t finished MysticWaters yet. The shawl is now off to the County Fair, hopefully to win a ribbon!

Sorry for the abrupt topic change, but no segue here that I can find: 

Two weeks ago, my knitting came up during the Sunday sermon…sort of.

Our church has a Thursday night service (during the summer), and with the family involvement in getting the sermons up on the web, both Chris and Dave were at the Thursday service. When they came home, they said I had to wear a particular t-shirt to church on Sunday. The ‘joke’ written on it isn’t exactly what I would wear to church, but they insisted and I agreed. Since we have our new pastor, John Erbele, and his attire is ‘relaxed’ I thought I wouldn’t stand out too much. When I got to church I was terribly self-conscious wearing this t-shirt. However, no one seemed to notice. I sat during the service, wondering how my shirt fit into the sermon. It finally came near the end: John was talking about anger, and how sometimes we speak out in anger and that we can hurt people so we should watch our language, watch how we speak to people, and that on occasion, we may have to “stick a sock in it” — meaning stick a sock in our mouth to avoid saying things we shouldn’t. He frequently uses sermon props, and this was no exception: every person received a child-sized white sock to remind them to “stick a sock in it.” Finally I understood why Dave and Chris insisted I wear my t-shirt! So after the service, we had John take a good look at my shirt. He laughed and said it was great! We decided to take a “sock” picture, so here we are - John holding my sock-in-progress (Embossed Leaves), and I’m holding the sermon prop sock.

Ok, so it’s a long story and not that funny - but it was fun at the time!

I know John’s head is chopped off in the photo… but it really was the better photo (of 2) for both of us with facial expressions, and besides - he’s pretty tall!

Last, but not least, my time has been taken up with wedding plans and details. This week was the last shower for Molly, put on by Colleen, Jenny, Carol and Pat and opened to the congregation at SSEFC where Molly will be married (next week!) and where we attended for many years. It was a very nice shower and it was wonderful to see all these lovely ladies again. (JoAnne arrived later and I didn’t get her in the photo.)

I’m sure no other blogging will be done until after the Big Event. Lots of pictures of that will be coming soon!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 6:35 pm and is filed under MysticLight, wedding, Socks, Lace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.