handknitters guild

three hours hasn't gone so fast as the latest meetup of the handknitters guild (their website needs a little update - they now meet at ross house, flinders lane, melbs city, not too far from coffee haven degraves st). jude skeers (our lone male...) showed up with his latest creation - we think it was called the broome beanie, but the champagne was working its wonders at this stage. the hat/scarf/accesory par excellence was a neato tubular thing, knit on a combo of a size 10 and 4 circular needle with fancy yarns including the work of satan, sullivan's knitting yarn and ostrich. the neat thing about it was that because it was knit with those yarns, it was fairly giving and stretchy, so it was possible to fashion a normal scarf, a wrap, a hat, and other wearables out of it.
we come across a neat way of knitting circular that we hadn't seen before too - when knitting ickle things like fingers on gloves, do it on two double pointed needles, and simply slip the second stitch, which you've lined up to be a stitch from the back of the finger, and then knit the front one. which might sound terribly confusing, but makes a hell of a lot of sense when seen.
we met up with joanne, a fabulous lady we first met at a mini wool show when we bonded over her stash of colinette. she's the one who has made us see the light, and vow to get a little more creative in our knitting. so, the next project that we're really keen on is a ruana from cheryl oberle's folk shawls.
it's an amazingly beautiful long shawl in garter stitch that can be constucted out of your stash. needless to say, ours is going to be incredibly rosy hued, and pretty flurfy. the fun bit is definitely mixing all the yarn to create a sort of knitted painting.