Psychic Knitter

I just got my set of interchangeable Harmony needles this week and I love them! The colors on the needles are so pretty and the needles are easy glide and nicely pointed. As soon as I got them I transferred my kitty blanket onto the new cable and I must say it's so much easier to work with circulars with no memory cord. I'm loving the flexible purple cable. The set goes up to only size 11 needles so I had to get the additional larger sizes along with a couple more longer cords but now I am set as far as circular needles go. I highly recommend these needles. I got them from knickpicks.com which was a recommendation from a lady working at a knitting shop.

I incresed my yarn stash substantially last week when I wandered into a yarn store that was having a major sale. I got some Louisa Harding ribbon and yarns along with her book on accessories. I am now armed with enough of her yarn to make two handbags, and two scarves. For now I am happily working on my knitting for charity projects. The knitting is simple which allows me to do it while working or listening to books on tape. Of course I still have lots of projects that are a little more challenging still on the needles so there is not a shortage of things to knit!

I am thoroughly enjoying the book "Yarn Harlot" by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. It is laugh out loud funny. I managed to read half the book in one sitting which is a record for me of late. I particularly identified with her chapter called "Cracking The Whip" where she describes going around the house and rounding up all of the partially finished projects. I have recently discovered that I am a bit out of control in this aspect of my knitting as I now have more than six unfinished projects on the needles. I always have a good excuse for starting yet another project though. For instance, I am working on a knitted coin purse I started yesterday because my thinking was that I would be going that evening to the yarn store that I bought the yarn from and I wanted to start the project in order to see if I wanted to purchase more yarn there to make more of the purses. Make sense? Of course it doesn't. LOL Also yesterday I purchased a set of 11 inch circulars because I HAD to start my new snuggles cat blanket to get a feel for how it would look. I have yet to get the coils out of the cable. I'm told hot water will do it. I could go on about all of the unfinished projects I have and the whys of it but really it all boils down to knitting ADD. It's just good to know that I am not alone in my madness.

Tucked way up on 17th street in Denver is this wonderful coffee shop called St. Mark's Coffee House. This was the meeting place of the other Downtown Denver knitting group this week. It's a great area although the parking is really tight which means I had to park way down a side street which when you don't know the neighborhood can be a bit disconcerting. It's a good thing I had my walking shoes on as opposed to the three inch stilettos I usually wear (ROFL) There were quite a few more people there this time around. We took up two areas. New to me was the airline pilot, the travel editor, the young feisty political gal and the Republican from Texas who is voting for Hillary. LOL An eclectic group to be sure. In the four plus hours we were there we ran through many topics, none of which had anything to do with knitting, of course. Much to my delight the later it got the busier it got in the coffee shop. The funniest part of if all was that I recognized the guy who worked in the music department of the old store I used to knit in! He stopped and chatted with us for a while. Pretty surreal to run into someone like that in a relatively large town but in many ways Denver has the feel of a friendly small town where such a thing can and does happen. There is a bar right next door called of all things "Thin Man" after my favorite movie series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. I was really tempted to duck in for a martini. It would have been too cool. Next door to the bar is an up and coming Italian restaurant called Il Posto which I would love to try. I can't complain though I had an awesome pot of black pearl dragon tea that was fragrant and tasty.
Thanks to one of my online knitting friends, I found out about an organization I recently joined. It's a group called Hugs for Homeless Pets. They have a donation program called "The Snuggles Project" where you can knit blankets for shelter animals and donate them to participating animal shelters in your area. I thought it would be a fun project to work on in memory of my 2 shelter cats. I was excited to start my blanket and I cast on a bunch of stitches before getting out my tape measure to see if I was close to the 14 inches needed to make the blanket. The gal next to me said "Ummm Valerie, your needles are only 8 inches long." You don't have to be a knitter to know I was not going to fit an extra six inches on those needles although it did take me a minute before it sank in. LOL Did I mention I am NOT good at details????? Anyway if you or someone you know would like to know more about this wonderful volunteer group, go to www.snugglesproject.org to get the scoop. Meow!
My only thoughts on the drive home was why the radio was showing the Beatles "Get Back" when what was playing was a song with the lyrics that said "oh oh oh (or was that ho ho ho? LOL) it's magic never believe it's not so" Well it was a magical quirky night...........