The Community Sock

I'm posting from one of my favorite places on earth, Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm here, staying at the Hyatt Tamaya Resort and Spa, attending a conference on sustainability. Important subject, beautiful environment, great food, really terrible internet. I mean really slllllooooooooowwww internet. I'm losing my mind.

But I have my knitting with me. This means that, while I wait interminably for my email to download, I can knit. Knitting fast, connectivity slow.

I've brought my Ann Budd socks and I'm about two thirds of the way up the cuff. Just a very simple 2x2 rib--basically mindless at this point. Well, should be. My experience is that, just about the time you think you're going to go to sleep because the knitting is so boring, you find a mistake...a K where there should be a P, and all of a sudden, the ribbing is a mistake rib.

These socks went with me to the Noble Knitters last Wednesday night. There, my friend Nancy asked, "is that Magic Loop? can I try?" and then knit a few rows. Then Joslyn asked Nancy, "is that as easy as it looks? can I try?" So Joslyn knit a few rows. Then the socks and I went home and now I'm sitting here, 2,000 miles away from my friends, and I can see (or I think I can see-it might just be my imagination) where my friends' tension was a little different from my own. My friends are in my socks and I love it!

And, speaking of the knitting community, I sat last night at dinner with a man from Boston University and, of course, we began talking about knitting. Well, what's wrong with that? You're sitting at a business conference, 2,000 miles from home, listening to inspirational speakers about saving the environment through corporate involvement, and you're talking about knitting because...well, you're a knitter.

And the point is, his wife is a knitter. And he was, I think, genuinely interested in hearing about the internet knitting community, helmet liners, community knitting. He made me promise to bring him more information today on how his wife can find that helmet liner pattern (she used to sew liners for his helmets when he was a pilot in Vietnam in the late 60s because even then they weren't made of the right material!).