Estes Park Wool Market & Shawls

Author: Soul Traveler /


A few of us from my knitting group went up to Estes Park last Saturday to attend the Wool Market. It was a beautiful day for a drive. My fellow passengers were able to work on some knitting on the way up. I'm not so sure that they were doing it as a part of Knitting in Public Day (which was last Saturday) or because no one dared pay attention to my driving. I was amazed at all the yarns and cool knitting related products before me as I stepped into the main building. Fortunatley I was with some very experienced shoppers who attempted to guide me a bit on this my first time. I think the words "down girl" were mentioned but I scarcely remember as I was in a haze. I am a shameless sniffer of silk yarn and finally had to buy a hank of it just to satisify my nose. Fortunately my one friend is a vistual calculater for any type of yarn requirements for standard projects. She's also quite savvy about prices as well so at least the yarn I bought for my stash could actually be used to make something someday when I am free to knit for myself. These days I am fully occupied with charity knitting because I love the torture of living by deadlines that I cannot meet.

I am fairly certain that I have mentioned the shawl I am knitting for the women of Afghanistan. It occured to me about two weeks ago that I may not make the deadline for sending in this shawl. It has to be just over six feet long and I might be at 3 feet. I got a brilliant idea when looking through a knitting book called "Big Knits" when I saw a wrap that could be made in just 10 hours using number 19 needles and super chunk wool. YAY! Why didn't I think of this before? Brilliant! I ran over to the yarn store that I had just bought yarn from and told them about the project I wanted to do. They found me 10 skeins of chunky wool that was on sale for half price! I was thrilled! I went home and started it up that night and after two nights I was half way done. The pressure was off. And then it hit me. Well, actually a dread feeling started creeping in when I gazed upon my bulky patterned piece. It has to drape over her head and then be wrapped around her neck and flow down. Something that resembles a shag rug, DRAPE? CRAP! I went to the web site and confirmed that the requirement is for medium worsted wool. Gee, that's why I had chosen the yarn I had in the first place. DUH!!!! So now I have two half knitted shawls. At this point both useless on their own but wait, I have another brilliant idea. Perhaps I could join the two and have a one very interesting (albeit UGLY) shawl. Perhaps not. OK so it's back to the needles for me. July is weeks away. As long as I don't get any more brilliant ideas I may still get this done. I dont know, perhaps I should change my moniker from Psychic Knitter to Psycho Knitter. After all, being crazy is part of my charm.