Mmm, fiber...

So a couple of weeks ago, I read an article in the local paper about a fiber arts group that usually meets once a month at the Farm Museum, just minutes from my house.  How did I live here for two and a half years and not know about these people?  The article also said that this month, they were meeting at the Library downtown.  Maybe an outreach effort, maybe just that it has been a cold winter and many of the Farm Museum spaces are un- or underheated.  Anyway, off I went to the Library at the appointed time.

The group was terrific!  About half spinners, but also several knitters and afficionados of the "c" word.  One woman who has a few alpaca but does not spin brought several bags of fleece and enticed the spinners by saying that if they would spin it for her, they could keep half.  One of the fleeces was from a black alpaca/llama mix (she said), and the fleece was soooooo heavenly.  I was tempted to take up spinning.  The best part was that it was just a big group of people sitting together, working with yarn and fiber, and chatting about this interest we all had in common.  I am so hooked.

Here are a couple of pictures I got in the email the next day:

Look!  I was really there!

Another neat event was that I met another knitter there who was pining for a knitting group.  She had learned to knit at work, but then the person who organized the knitting group left and the group broke up.  She kept knitting on her own, but she was sad and wished for others to knit with.  When she saw me knitting, she asked me to help her with a mistake in her project, so we got to talking and she told me her tale.  Well, what else was I to do but invite her to my knitting group at school?  She came the following week, then was sick this week, but she did email me to let me know why she wasn't there.  I hope she becomes a regular.  She seemed very nice.

As for my own projects, it's still the Lion Suede.  Both arms are done up to the join with the body.  Then I cast on the body (managed to reconstruct how to do that fancy braid cast-on) and I have knitted up about 6".  On me, that's about half the way to the underarm.  I'm doing the cabling we designed for the front, where each side has a cable at the front edge that's half rust and half purple, and the two sides twist is opposite directions.  It's looking very nice.  The yarn is still hard to work, so I knit until my fingers get tired and then stop, and it's taking a long time.  But I still like the way it looks, so I will finish it eventually.