road trip!

It was a chilly, rainy Friday, at the beginning of rush hour(s). I had been up for work since 4:00 a.m. and was more than a little bit tired. So what did Leah and I do?

Why, we hopped in the car and drove to Boston for a knitting event, of course!

We've been fans of Franklin Habit for a long time, so when I heard he was going to be the inaugural speaker for the Common Cod Fiber Guild, I made a note on our calendar, even though we had camping plans for the weekend. When the camping plans were scrapped due to a dreary forecast, we knew exactly where to go for Friday evening's alternate plan!

Seen here rolling up his 1000 Knitters scarf after his presentation, Franklin was as awesome a speaker in real life as he is through his blog and his art and his photography and his podcast contributions and his articles. Oh, and his knitting. :-) All of the above don't even hint at what lies under the surface. You see, Franklin shares his life in Chicago with a raucous imaginary sheep roommate named Dolores and a growing cast of characters. There's never a dull moment when Dolores is around and, somewhere along the line, Scott too has become a fan of Dolores' antics. So, a while back, Scott, who creates sheep out of glass , decided it would be fun to celebrate a particular sheep created with pen, ink, and Franklin's incredibly creative mind.

Leah made her way up through the packed-to-overflowing room to meet Franklin after the "official" part of the evening was over. She gave Franklin the Dolores stitch marker and had a fun little chat with him.

We met plenty of friendly knitters after the meeting, including some we're hoping to hook up with again for the next event, and thoroughly enjoyed trucking around the very interesting halls of MIT (reading about the giant hair ball, the 8-ft. slide rule, the oddly angled buildings, the technological innovations underway there) and riding the subway to and from the event with scads of Red Sox fans.

When we arrived back home (at 5:00 a.m., thanks to a nap in a rest area, where -- I kid you not -- a cone of tencel served quite nicely as neck support for a restful snooze), there was a new flock of technicolor sheep grazing on my desk. Glad to see the flock reproducing, as a bunch went to Rhode Island this week and some more were shipped to Turkey (the country, not the feathered flock roaming our yard in the mornings) earlier in the day. 

Sometimes this whole knitting thing is a little surreal...just the way we like it!