I finally went to a Portland knitting group last night.

It was great! It was held in a knitting store, they served champagne (well, sparkling wine) and I met some very interesting people.

I passed around the hat I just finished and there was a lot of praise for it, including from my new best-friend-forever Jenn, who came over and sat next to me insisting that I share the pattern with her. I showed her my knitting notebook with all the cryptic scribblings. She made a copy of my diagram of the hat, and she's going to try it. Good luck to her. It was a very rudimentary pattern, not much detail, much to fill in as you go.

The owner of the store passed around some yarn for us to look at... a cashmere yarn that was only 43 dollars a skein. Well, it was fine stuff, hand painted dye, etc. If you count the cost per hour to knit a really skinny yarn like that, it would probably come out to 43 cents an hour. Which is far cheaper than Texas Hold'Em.

I'm going back next week.