Nordic Knitting Conference in Seattle
News from Lorilee, who is on a Professional Development weekend on the West Coast
Well, today started with an early bowl of cheerios and ended with delicious Indian food - curry coconut shrimp. In between we had lots of fun.
We were packed and ready to go early. I stuffed some “Know Your Cuts of Lamb” t-shirts into my bag to give to deserving yarnies along the way. Diane, Sue and I boarded the plane in GR and had two smooth flights to land us in Seattle.
When I am traveling with my family, they might describe what I do as “knitting all the time.” Well, they have no idea what that means unless they’ve traveled with these two. No waiting time is wasted. Board plane, stuff bags in overhead, sit, buckle, kniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, wait until captain turns off “fasten seat belts” sign, stop knitting. Wow.
I had a little embarrassing mishap upon takeoff out of O’Hare. I was working on the space invaders sock and didn’t notice that my ball of yarn had fallen off my lap. No problem, until the plane’s nose went up sharply and it started rolling down the aisle toward the rear of the plane. Not a thing I could do, so I looked back and watched it roll. Some people would notice it go by and try to grab it, but it was going too fast. Then of course, they had to look forward to see what kind of fool had let this happen. I got laughed at. It rolled all the way to the back of the plane from row 8. A long period of time passes on a plane before you can get up and retrieve things, or before a flight attendant happens by, so I just kept knitting until the tension over 30 feet of carpeting was too great, and I was stuck. Finally, flight attendant Carol came by. “Excuse me,” I said,” but I….I…you see here…” Carol is a knitter. She understood. She walked back there, got that skein, wound her way back to me, and then, after pulling out a good six feet or so, like a knitter would do, she gingerly tucked the rest of the skein into the magazine pouch in front of my knees. SHE got a shirt.
We picked up our rental car - a PT cruiser-, got lunch, and had some time to kill before meeting at Skacel at 1pm, so we went to Ikea first. Diane had never been to an Ikea store and thought it wonderful that one store could have so many options for storing yarn! as in “Oh, this would hold a lot of yarn; wouldn’t that hold a lot of yarn?”
Then we went to Skacel Knitting, our needle and yarn supplier, a place with truly lots of yarn, so Sue could say, “This is much more yarn than I have, but their ceilings are so much higher.” Well, that’s because it’s a warehouse, Sue. We had a wonderful time chatting with the fine folks there (they got some shirts, too), and talking about the knitting conference which begins tomorrow.
There is a feature about it in the local paper. Apparently, it sold out very quickly; we feel lucky. 200 knitters will be there;we can’t wait to meet them.
We are staying in a lovely B&B, which I won’t describe, because I can tell that you are already jealous.
Classes start early in the morning. I will listen and learn and bring back some good knitting knowledge.
Oh, I forgot to tell you how gorgeous a snowy Mt. Rainier is when you are flying next to it.
-Lorilee, Thursday night, October 4
Photos added later.
Susanna Hansson’s Bohus Stickning knitting class:
Susanna is in the back, wearing blue:
Our work:
Class with Annemor Sunbo: Magical Knitting
Our class results- mine is the cat with curved tail:
Pictured: me, Diane VanderPol, Annemor Sundo, Terry Shea, Sue Nuckolls
Seattle, viewed from the ferry returning from Bainbridge Island yarn shop hopping:
