Knit Night at Gabriella's

I did hit Gabriella's Yarn Shop for Knit Night last Wednesday. Since we are managing with one car these days I had to drop off Kosta at home, change, and then whisk myself off to a couple hours of relaxing, knitting, and chatting with the ladies.

This is Gabriella.

She is the delightful owner. She used to work in banking, or investments or something that had to do with numbers, worked long hours and dressed in suits every day. Now she wears Converse sneakers, gets to knit a lot, and often brings her dog to work. (Lily is a Maltese puppy and one of the cutest things I've ever seen. As soon as I get a pitcure I will post it.)

Here you can see Gabriella slyly engaging in product placement. Her husband has an import business and the energy drink she is sipping is one of Mr. Gabriella's products. What? You can't read it? Hmmm... I'll have to try harder next time.

Here are the rest of the ladies. And I am terrible with names, so please don't ask. But I can tell you something about each woman sitting at this table. The lady on the left with the short curly hair just had her first grandbaby this year. The lady sitting to her left in the peachy-orange shawl is a whiz at all kinds of needlework. She was nalbinding and hand spinning that night - neither of which I had seen done before. Nalbinding is an ancient form of knitting, although you can't really call it knitting per se, because it is done with a large needle (usually bone) and not two sticks like the modern form of knitting.

The lady on the far right in the blue t-shirt is knitting a really cool shawl/scarf made up of a bunch of circular shapes. She and I have the same phone and bonded over that. (I was sitting in the chair next to her that is now pushed back and vacant).And the lady in the white with her back to us is of Ukranian descent and is originally from Rhode Island.

We sat and chatted for a couple of hours. I have to admit that I don't get out often and it was nice to be with people who weren't coworkers or my husband. A strong hermit gene runs in one side of my family and I often have to consciously push myself out into social situations. It's not that I have fear of social situations - not at all... I love to meet people and go places. I just have a bad habit of letting my homebody nature take over and I forget to get out there. I've been two weeks running now and will defnintely go back.

Conversation is light and fun. It runs the gamut to where we are from (Hardly anyone in Florida is actually from Florida, especially in a touristy place like Naples), to family, health, pets, yarn stashes, phone companies, Halloween, kids, grandkids, pretty much anything you could think of. And you get to see what everyone is working on. Lots of fun!

Gabriella has many beautiful things in her shop, and I love to walk around, squeeze and fondle. (The yarn, people, I'm talking about the yarn.) At the moment I have been put on a yarn diet, which I am not happy about, but we have some possibly big expenses coming our way in the next few months and need to tighten the belt. It's not something I can talk about at the moment, but I can tell you that no, I'm not pregnant. It's a little sad, because I don't have nearly the stash size someone should for a proper yarn diet. It's like making a 5'4" girl who weighs 130 pounds go on a diet. Probably won't kill her if it doesn't go on too long, but she really doesn't need it.

Oh well, perhaps our fortunes will change soon. If I could just get that novel edited and sold for a jillion dollars I could buy a whole house and fill it with just sock yarn. How's the editing going, you ask? Ahem... well, it hasn't for the past few weeks. But I plan to get back on that editing horse tomorrow (my one day off this week). I don't know why I've been balking at working on it. I guess things have been a little crazy with work and dealing with some health issues. So I've been feeling tired and a little bummed out lately. But I hope I can kickstart myself again tomorrow.