Treasure!

 It's Thursday, so after breakfast off I went to the library to hang out for a while with the yarn women. We were in a room off to the side today because Wainfest, an arts and culture celebration for children, is happening and there were lots of kids in the library doing fun things. We had our coffee/tea/treat cart in our room and had a lovely time once again. I am really enjoying this group of women and it's fun chatting and discovering the ways in which we're kindred spirits and how we're different. And of course we all enjoy seeing what we're each working on. 

Today as soon as I walked in, one of the women (I'll call her Ginny, which is not her real name) said she had something for me and handed me this:

She explained that it used to belong to a dear friend who passed away several years ago and that it came to Ginny. t's at least 40 years old, she said. Inside the case, we have these:

What a treasure! Ginny does crochet, but these are too small for her to use and she wanted them to go to someone who would love them. I will definitely love them!  I am very excited about these for a few reasons. First of all, I absolutely love using tools and materials that belonged to women in generations before me. There is something special to me about creating with tools that other women have used to create with decades ago--my hands and their hands taking what is essentially string and, with the help of these hooks, turning it into something beautiful. My life is very different from what their lives were but we have this in common. A former colleague gave me her grandma's circular knitting needles and the case they live in a decade or so ago. She also wanted them to go to someone who would love them. I use them all the time and have made many hats and other things that keep me warm, just as grandma would have done. Another thing that's great about these hooks for me is that, with the exception of one of them, they're all brands I've not used before because they weren't sold in the States. This matters because they're shaped differently and will feel different in my hands. This is true of the knitting needles as well--they're made of different materials than modern ones and they're much nicer to work with. Finally, these hooks are in slightly different sizes than ones I already have. The smallest in the case above is .75mm, which would be for something the thickness of sewing thread. I'm going to have some fun playing with those. 

I'd set aside the socks I worked on for the first couple meetings, but finished them the other night.

I'm wearing them with my Birkenstocks today and they're soft, squishy, and I love them!

I started a new project last night. I did some swatching and in the end decided on small 3 round solid granny squares with some surface crochet as the beginning of a hat. I have light hats for summer and thick, squishy hats for winter, but I could use a hat for in-between sorts of days like today. I'm using some deep purple wool that a friend brough back for me a couple years ago when she went to Boston--she found several hanks at Goodwill there. I used most of it with some other charity shop yarn to make a sweater, but I had one larger ball and a few wee balls left. I'm using that with some turquoise yarn given to me a couple weeks ago by Ginny. It belonged to her auntie. 

Ginny doesn't like wool and she was thrilled to see auntie's yarn being used. She said auntie would've loved to see it, which made me happy, too.

I'll make a few more squares like these and put them together for the main part of the hat then I'll crochet around the bottom for the brim and the top for the crown in the purple and I'll have my hat. Maybe I'll get it done so I can wear it next week. One of the other women there, Mary (again, not her real name) took one of the squares and copied it with some yarn she had so she'll be able to refer to it in future if she wants to. It's like the old sample books women used to keep with pages and pages of samples they'd crocheted for future reference. 

So it was another good time--a nice chat with very nice women, yarn, tea/coffee/treats, and I picked up some books while I was there. What's not to love? Hope you're having an excellent day, too.

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