Knit PH at Freddy's: Feb. 17, 08

If February is a leap year month with only 29 days, why is it taking so long to be over? I've been up late, swamped with work, courting new clients, closing deadlines, putting out new bids... then on top of that I'm pitching three books — who knows where they will go. The weather fluctuates between below-freezing to almost-spring. Although I like the snow it never stays around long enough to enjoy, then it quickly turns slushy grey with traffic. Knit PH at Freddy's has taken a tutonic twist. We are sharing the back room with the new German Language Studies Club. Professor Deike B. can take the entire room when Knit PH takes a summer break. A Finnish friend, Vierpe K., returned from a tour India's tiger country and brought her laptop presentation. Zo, Willkommen alles zu Stricken Nacht, an evening of conversational German and knitting. Maybe we can combine forces to overpower the French knitting circle.

I got an e-mail from Kate, a school teacher who was having trouble with a large blanket. She said she didn't register on MeetUp, but wanted to drop in for advise and a beer. She was the first person to arrive at Freddy's. Kate was in good company though, she is an educator and so is Mira. Related to that, Tracey is one to the librarians in the group, she curates Jewish heritage material. Kate laid her blanket flat on a table for a post mortem. It was about 5 feet by 5 feet and growing, but the I could see where she had turned a few rows and dropped some stitches. Over the din of Rilke I tried to untangle the the last 8 rows but eventually had do an unspeakable act — I broke out the scissors and cut a foot down into the blanket. Kate was a trouper, most people would faint at the site.

Mira brought her Calorimetry headband in progress, it's a very popular pattern from Knitty.com. Meanhwile I was adding the cap on another newsboy hat, I should have brought my labels too. Randy is working on a pair gloves for a lady friend. He asked me to advise at the increase at the thumb. He did all the right things but the pattern had a naming convention problem: M1 inc. I showed him the difference between methods and gave him the correct name according to pattern description: lift increase. Tomo had a new hank of kool-aid dyed yarn. She scoured every bodega in Brooklyn to get the right colors but found no brown. Maybe in the pudding isle in Sunset Park? Emily was working on another scarf, possbily for another office mate. She's going to join us at the dyeing party at Tomo's place, date TBA.

New to the group are Rachel and Meghan, members of Archie's Park Slope Knitting Circle. Rachel was finishing her shrug but raised a question: "How do I pick up 300 stitches if I have less around the edge?" Emily and I explained that picking up stitches is more a "notation" that implies you make some up. In theory if you have 240 stiches, you must M1 after picking up every 6 stitches to get the total of 300. It's not that messy if you have a calculator. There were three other people that I didn't get to talk to. They sat between our group and the Germans. Were they German speaking knitters? After beer and balls, the evening ended with a rich chocolate mousse cake made by Mz. Wiss for the German side of the room.

The upshot to Stricken Nacht: There will always be good cake.