Celebrate, good times…come on!
By Helene | June 17, 2010
What can I say – sometimes the 80′s hit songs just seem to fit…but I digress!
It seems as if we have so much to celebrate these days – from the small to the large…perhaps one of the things that really works with our group is that we love to celebrate even the smallest events in our collective lives – which frankly I think is a pretty good way to live your life!
First off and long overdue so my apologies are the celebration of new members
Andrea aka WitchyEditor on ravelry has been with us for a few weeks. She totally has fit right into the group and once again we seem to be pooling in the career themes too. Andrea’s commute right through Taunton on her way from work to home is what got her to us and we couldnt be more thrilled! Also a formal welcome to Toni aka Yarnpimper on ravelry who jumped in with both feet months before moving to Taunton. Just as she is online she totally is a great fit for all our insanity! Welcome to both of you lovely ladies!
Watching Caroline aka Cranky’s wedding was a treat – what was more fun was the total scheming that we were doing while she was partying and making Chuck and honest man in Vegas. Our celebration came together with a fantastic wedding party this week. Our unsuspecting bride took several minutes to see the wedding cake we had for her off to the side! This cake was a group effort from Wendy, Melissa (and Lila) and myself – Wendy and I are very good at watching Melissa expertly handling fondant. I think we did a pretty good job of incorporating the bride and groom theme with yarn dont you?! If I could knit actual shrugs as quickly as the one for the bride on the cake I’d really be celebrating! Caroline and Chuck now have a wedding cake top to freeze and try and eat on their anniversary – brave souls!
Chuck will be celebrating whatever his blushing bride purchases with the little Victoria’s secret gift card we gave her – although I think that will fall under TMI! |
Tal created a special bridal hot pink mask for our Cranky…can’t link to this one missy! |
Now lucky for us there are many in our group who at one time or another decide its their turn to take a theme to an extreme – and Annette stepped right up this time adding some true wedding celebration hilarity. I will only mention the glow in the dark handcuffs in passing ok. Running with our favorite recurring dirty type theme,
| Annette found the perfect shot glasses for the occasion and had them filled before presenting them to the group.
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Naughty candies all around – and wouldn’t you know the bride got one with her anniversary on it! How lucky is that?! |
For those who want to know just mix 1/4 oz Bailey’s® Irish cream and 1/2 oz amaretto almond liqueur topped with whipped cream – and of course a cherry. Again I will restrain my comments by just saying we have some talented girls in our group!
Deep Breath…..ok…onto a celebration of another kind – tada….a YARN CRAWL! Group consensus is that July 24th is the next date that the largest amount of us can make this happen. We’ve yet to decide where we’re headed so get yourself to SnB to help decide what shops we will grace with our collective presence!
At the end of the day – I dont think I can say enough about what joy there is in having this group of women together on a weekly basis.
Don’t drop any stitches!
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Welcome Alexis!
By Helene | June 11, 2010
Once again in the true tradition of SnB Kelly and Keith welcomed our newest member on a Wednesday Evening
Alesis Bryanne
7 pounds 13 ounces
20 inches long
arrived at 11:38 on June 9th
Looks like Caroline and Chuck wont forget Alexis’ birthday – and when she is older Alexis will always remember Caroline and Chuck’s anniversary!
Kelly – the appletini’s are on us – she is truly beautiful and we cant wait to spoil her!
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Here comes the bride
By Helene | June 10, 2010
Wednesday nights are always fun…and always special…but tonight was a different kind of amazing as the ladies of SnB gathered together over a laptop…looking at a webcam at the Bellagio in Las Vegas as our beautiful and Cranky and Charles got married.
There were smiles and giggles and awwwwws…ok and maybe even a few tears…and even some knitting.
In our very own snb way we decided that while their vows were lovely, they could have been improved upon…just a bit…and would go something like this…
To each other:
I Charles take you Caroline, to be my wedded wife.
I Caroline take you Charles, to be my wedded husband.
Then together:
to have and to hold
from this skein forward
for knits and purls
for love and understanding of cables
surrounded by stash
in style and in farty scraves
From this project forward
never to frog this marriage
I pledge you my heart
We now pronounce you
Tastefully simply wed
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We see no need to sugar coat
By Helene | May 28, 2010
This morning I have what can only be termed an SnB hangover. My stomach muscles hurt from laughing and I keep giggling to myself as little sound bytes go through my head. Perhaps it was brain fry from the heat, but whatever it was, last nights group was in rare form…really rare form.
On the tame side…We had a star appearance by the lovely and tiny Merrin who has truly grown so much in such a short time. That baby is all smiles and faces….so much fun and beyond adorable in her little polka dot sunsuit.
Throughout the evening Kim kept telling everyone that “we really are that kind of group” face it – you know what she meant…I dont believe that modeling my bloom shawl, or feza scarf was meant to be done to the humming of the stripper song….but yep we just go with it! I did what any self respecting knitter would have done and put my feza scarf around my neck, covered by my bloom shawl and carrying my Tal KAL Bag – which of course prompted Tal to ask “what’s that show that highlights what not to wear?” “Oh, What Not To Wear” was the response…you can just see how the evening was going can’t you? This prompted the discussion of putting together a book of things that people should never knit…we may be onto something here you know.
Julz and Cranky were in total impersonation form – both leaning to the New York / New Jersey accent hysteria…my favorite Julz moment was her SNL Coffee Talk directive…”boston college is neither in boston nor a college…discuss”. She just needed the wig. Cranky does a mean New Jersey housewife …real or otherwise it was perfect.
We pushed Kat to provide us with a recounting of her date with a certain musician…getting information from Kat is kind of like trying to do lace work using black yarn on size zero needles in the dark… for the record we are split on the base your decision on whether or not you know if you want to….ummmm “be” with him within the first 5 minutes. We still dont know if there willl be another date in the near future – nor do we know if Kat will share that information with us!
There was the trying of of the asparagus bridesmaid dress for Tal to sew boobs into – which probably would not have been half as funny if the wearer of said bridesmaid dress was not swinging her bra around the top of her head.
As the sarcasm and snark made its way around the entire table…no one was immune or safe…and Melissa summed it all up perfectly when she declared that as a group – “we see no need to sugar coat” which we all decided should be the official motto of Taunton SnB! This combined with carrying over the use of agree and disagree buttons from ravelry to spoken commentary on pretty much everything was the flavor of the evening.
We had a surprise visit from the Taunton Junior Chamber of Commerce last night too…they were looking for new members to join in for networking and community building….I will only say that Kim and I are officially out of the target age range and therefore not eligible to participate…which produced thunderous laughter…way to make a girl feel special huh?!
Tal’s bag KAL is still underway for many of us…I loved making my bag – learned how to cable without needles and had a total blast working on something that I had no idea what the finished product would look like. I have opted to give my bag to our bride to be – it’s a bit on the smaller side for me and she was in love with it…her payment was only to model it…next time I will be more specific as to how I wanted her to model it! Of course when silliness has run amouk as it often does at SnB we take it to extremes…and forced the following photos from other bag knitters…aren’t they all pretty!
After last weeks’s SnB and Tal’s yarn sorting I was totally motivated to take a good hard look at my yarn closet and stash too. What a great chance to go through and review what I have, what I really want to knit with, what I have no idea why I bought and what I totally could never see on a pair of my needles…now I have a nicely organized stash with a refreshed view of what I want to find project wise over the next few months…I highly recommend a good stash review…
I will also let you know that as a result of my destash, I brought in a big bag of yarn that I no longer felt connected to in for the taking…so if you’re bummed out that you missed all the hilarity kick yourself once more people…yep – you missed free yarn!
Keep on stitchin girls!
Til next time!
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The Long Overdue Catch Up
By Helene | May 21, 2010
So much to get caught up on…we all know how it goes…I get busy and the blog suffers! Reminder – I’ll always accept the offer to anyone who wants to be a guest blogger! So I’m 3 SnB’s behind but will do my best to go over the highlights!
Here’s some of what you missed!
Cinco de Mayo was celebrated in grand fashion…yarn, beer and a crochet ahem…well lets call it an adult toy that had everyone giggling. True to form when we asked the cute waiter helping out that evening how big he thought it was – he quickly proved that 6 inches will always appear to be 10 inches to one gender.
We had a fabulous May birthday celebration complete with paper tiaras for the birthday girls; chocolate fountain and tons of fresh fruit to dip – even some of Melissa’s totally amazing homemade graham crackers. It wasnt easy to order dinner first with chocolate just begging to be indulged upon but we were all good – as a matter of fact, no one stuck their tongue under the running chocolate so I’d say everyone really behaved well!
An off SnB night activity was Kim’s surprise party – what fun that several of us made it over to the Long Branch to help with the surprise – although honestly, I think we were all more surprised at the array of friends that Kim has – seriously, people from all over with stories that must be told! It was fun to see Kim actually surprised – Eric did a superb job! Some of us are much better than others at staying up and partying very late – for a full review of burger king, dancing and wooing check the Ravelry board!
New to SnB is my lovely friend and nutritionist extraordinaire, Nicole. She’s been talking about coming to learn to knit for ages and finally got to join us. We had a group effort of teaching as it was her first attempt with our favorite pointy sticks. Julz’s teaching skills to help her learn the long tail cast on were fantastic, then it was off to learn the good old knit stitch. Between good teaching, and amazing student and total positive support from the room we had Nicole knitting like a pro in no time – seriously the girl didnt drop a stitch the entire evening! Next time she comes back…we will teach her to purl!
Tal’s bag KAL is in full swing – there are a bunch of us working on it at various stages. t really is a blast to see how it comes out in all of our different color combination’s. For a while we just werent sure how it was going to look or how it was going together – thats the whole fun of the mystery don’t you know! Seriously – was it a bag or a hood or a hat or a mask or what…and how much do I adore Tal to allow this photo of me wearing the bag in the blog??? Overall we were pretty good at not wanting to know where we were headed just going clue by clue but last night we finally agreed that it was time to see the completed bag – adorable!!!
As if providing us with a majorly fun project wasnt enough – Tal also was a busy lady and did some serious spring stash cleaning – it was like birthday presents for everyone as she emptied bag after bag after bag of yummy yarn on the table free to a good home. Let me say this – yarn gives us all the vulture mentality. We all act like free yarn is the last yarn on the planet and we must grab our portion before anyone else touches it! It is wedding dress day at filene’s basement – only with string. Some would say we’re ridiculous – I say we’re just typical. It was so much fun I for one suggest that perhaps some of us also have stash closets that need cleaning…anyone anyone?
Even if one or more of us decide to do a stash thinning there is always yarn in our future…which brings us to our next subject – a proposed yarn crawl. General consensus is that we are long overdue for a yarn crawl. We’re thinking of late June – the question is to where?!
Finally super congratulations to Kim on the birth of her beautiful grandson and to Julz who is graduating with her Master’s today! Yay to both of you!
Thats about all my brain can remember for now…
’til next time
Keep your stitches on the needles!
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