Good Weather for Knitters

Yesterday I tootled around on my bike. I’d waited all week for the combination of free time and nice weather. (After our crazy upper-90’s heat wave last weekend, we had a cold rainy week)

First I went to the church to help sort all the dishes and supplies into the new kitchen. It’s a lovely new kitchen, the other one was very old. The new one has a lot more storage and is all clean and shiny.

Later I rode over to the Knit Shop to hang out and knit. They recently moved to a different unit in the same shopping complex, so they had a sale and I got a book for 25% off. It’s called New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and I had checked it out from the library (had to wait in a long list – there are a lot of knitters in Eugene.) I was already pretty sure I wanted my own copy. I’ve already started the Spiraling Coriolis socks that have a shaped instep in the form of a spiral band that winds its way up the foot. Nifty.

I think the closest I’ve come to being acquainted with a celebrity is my friend Eugen Beugler. I didn’t realize he was fairly famous in the knitting world until after I’d spent a few afternoons knitting in the Shop. He’s a fixture there, and designs lace patterns for Fiber Trends. He’s the most cheerful and gracious 80-something that I know, and I know a few.
Yesterday, we were sitting around the knitting table and the shop was gradually filling up with post-lunch shoppers and knitters. One of the employees brought the laptop over to the table to show EB a project that a friend of hers had adapted from one of his lace designs – it was a beautiful chuppah, for a traditional Jewish wedding. We’d barely finished exclaiming over that when a woman came over and said, “Eugen… is that you??” She’d been a co-worker of his about 20 years ago and he’d given her an incomplete afghan project to finish. Then, an old friend came in and reminisced for awhile about taking workshops from Elizabeth Zimmerman back in the day. EB was mentioned in a recent Interweave Knits article about EZ. We like to tease him gently about what a celebrity he is, all the while so pleased he’s part of our local knitting community.

It didn’t start to rain again until the evening. I was glad to have gotten a day out on my bike.