Zeeppo's World Knitting Tour :South Hill's Village Barnes and Nobles.

My world tour started yesterday at the Barnes and Nobles at South Hills Village. Not to go off on a tangent but this store is not in the mall. I am alright with stores that stand alone in the parking lot. This is good for fast food stores that need a drive through. This store is surrounded on three sides by the mall and is not connected. This is not right on many levels. Why can’t it have an entrance near the food court. No a person that has never been there before just wonders around aimlessly looking for the entrance and it is not there. An angry letter the Simon people is sure to follow.

Moving along The South Hills group is a nice little group that meets every other Friday some where in the disconnected book store. They have a space reserved for them with a little sign. No one at the Bee Hive reserves us a space. We have to fight the wanna be Goth kids for a space. Fortunately Clowns scare them. The space they are seated at is one of those book store over stuffed chair enclaves that are popular these days in book stores. Which island of over stuffed chair changes from week to week. So it is like a little knitting safari to find them. Don’t shoot any one when you find them. I am told that does not go over well.

Unknown to me I had met one of the ladies at the Knitting in Public event at the Point a few months back. The group is friendly and made up of mostly mothers and grandmothers. There was a teen age girl who dragged her boy friend along who browsed the stacks as the rest of us knit. As I have found with most Pittsburgh groups diversity was the rule, except for men. Several faiths were represented and coexisted in a way that the middle east should take note of.

The Knitting projects ranged from a prayer shawl, a new knitter swatch, a scarf and socks that are part of the sock wars going on the internet. I have always found that the better groups have people knitting on multiple levels. It is not just that they are teaching new people to knit, which they are. It is good for even seasoned knitter who gets to learn about something that they may not have known a great deal about. Even the finest knitters have not mastered every knitting skill. Eve though it is relatively simple the combination to create new things are endless. This aspect of knitting flourished best in the sort of environment that exists at this group.

And most importantly there were no fiber Nazis. This is not one of those groups that will turn their nose up at what you are doing because it is not alpha shaved by monks, spun by teen age girls under the management of a five hundred year old spinning master and transported to your local yarn store one skein at a time by camel train. I suppose that was a run on sentence. Still, this is a blog and if you expect editing you are assuming I have a budget or am capable of editing.

Well I don’t have a camera that can be disconnected from my computer so there are no pictures. In addition I am not sure if people would appreciate having the picture plastered on the internet. All and all a very nice group the meets in a geographically easy area to get to. Even for those of is who travel by mass transit.

This groups meet as 7:30 PM at the South Hills Barnes and Nobles. There next meeting will be two fridays from now.

If you have a group you think I should visit let me know. For now I am going down the list on Pittsburgh Knitting. And if you are not on that site go over and see it. From what I have gleaned it is the most popular internet resource for knitting in Pittsburgh area.

On other subjects I actually put a couple inches on the black bag yesterday and hope to do the same today. I think I may start calling it my retirement knitting bag.

For anyone that wants me to visit their group I will never say anything bad about your group in writing. That is just uncool. Every group has it’s merits and usually serves the needs of the people that attend them well. Although, there was that one group in Cleveland that was full of Fiber Nazis. And they were in Cleveland it goes not get any worse then that.

Well I will not say anything bad except for that group in Cleveland. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.