Having fellow crafters for friends is fun!

I've been wanting to be part of a Stitch and Bitch group basically since I started knitting. We had a small group in grad school but the meetings rarely were able to fit into my schedule, even though I really did enjoy going when I could. Since moving to Maryland, I've found that several of my new friends are also crafty. A couple of them learned how to knit shortly before I moved out here and I ended up teaching another one of my friends shortly after moving here. Most of them also sew (oh how I envy their skills!) as well as several other crafts, most of which are SCA geared. About a week or so ago, some friends were over and we discussed starting our on Stitch and Bitch group where we could get together and work on our needle and thread crafts. Last night we met at our house and have plans to make this a twice a month thing. Color me excited!! One friend is rediscovering knitting so we helped her work on her yarn tension and the other started working on making some SCA garb. I continued working on the celestial baby blanket. I'm about 36 rows into this blanket and I can't tell you how frustrating it can be at times. I seem to have the intarsia technique down for the most part but working on the wrong side, I tend to get the pattern backward in my head and end up not twisting where I need to twist. The rows are long enough and yarn/needles small enough that it can take me about 10 minutes to knit/purl a row. So you can imagine how frustrating it is to work 2 rows then notice the mistake, undo the rows and have to work them again. And since I hate frogging rows (just pulling them out), I basically un-knit/purl where I go back stitch by stitch which means it can take me 40 minutes to work then un-work 2 rows and be back to where I started, just in time for Ethan to wake up and start fussing. You can see why this blanket might be finished for his 5th birthday. If that's the case I think I might just save it for our potential second baby or, if that's not going to happen, a baby of a very good friend. Only someone I love a lot will get this blanket. Maybe our first grandchild? :) One thing I'm so excited about having a Stitch and Bitch group for is designating several hours a month to knitting, which means I might actually get to it more than I have been on my own accord. This means I might actually have some decent pictures for you all relatively soon. Also, having another night or 2 a month where I can get together with grown ups is always a plus.