Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The Prez Sez: Notes from the MMK January Meeting

Happy New Year to everyone. Can you believe it is 2006!!!!

Our January meeting was called to order at 7:30 p.m. At Roll Call we checked off Christine Estacion, Karen Gardner, Kathy Graziani, Karen Hogan, Donna Jaffe, Lauri Katz, Ruth Kelly, Marilyn Rifkin, and Kathleen Walton. We welcomed our guest, Lissa Bell, who intends to join us!
Old Business:

We discussed membership and decided that Marilyn and I will take on the duties until a chairperson is chosen. We discussed ways of getting new members and came up with the following ideas:
We will place an ad in the UMD Terrapin.
Marilyn found a copy of our old MMK poster which we will update, copy and distribute to members to post on bulletin boards, etc. in their areas.
Marilyn volunteered to create a listing on the craiglist.com community section.
Christine and Lauri will talk to their alternate knitting guilds about joining MMK to host a Hospitality Suite at this year’s Stitches.
Karen Hogan volunteered to gather information about the Yahoo internet group.

Our 2006 charity project prompted a spirited discussion. We ultimately chose preemie items. The members can knit a hat, blanket, booties or anything else a preemie might need. If you need help with yarn selection or patterns, there are many sites on the internet. Two to try are www.bevscountrycottage.com/preemies.html and www.carewear.org. We will collect the items at our October meeting and donate them to St. Ann’s Infant Home or a local hospital.

Mady and Lorena were not present, so Lauri lead the discussion on Programs. Lauri asked for ideas and we came up with a number of good topics. We voted to highlight a skill at every meeting, with the topic and volunteer leader for the following month picked at the end of each meeting. Lauri will make a list of the programs selected for each month to date and report at the February meeting.

Due to a number of difficulties, the Retreat was tabled until the March meeting.

We had no new business.

For the Announcements/Items of Interest segment, I brought in a copy of Knit Simple which is the new version of the Family Circle Easy Knitting magazine. Many of you may have received a complimentary copy in the mail.

The program for the February meeting will be Knitalongs. We would like to choose a project so bring your ideas. The skill for the February meeting will be increasing and will be led by Christine Estacion.

The meeting ended, as always, with our Show and Share segment and adjourned at 9:15 p.m.

Show and Share details:
Dallas Bolen: Showed the set of size 10 hand made rosewood double pointed needles and a linen cloth printed with the design and meaning of Aran stitches received as Christmas gifts.. Knitting projects were mittens and felted hats.

Kathleen Walton: Einstein jacket, lacy scarf, wool sweater

Marilyn Riffkin: completed felted pocketbook and her work-in-progress, a rust colored sweater

Karen Gardner: booties

Kathy Graziani: almost finished with the “Flames” sweater

Christine Estacion: finished her “Network Twosome”, a two color slip-stitch cardigan, and two scarves for Christmas gifts. Also working on late Christmas socks, and a VK Fall 2005 cover shrug

Donna Jaffe: a camel-color wool cardigan in a broken rib pattern

Karen Hogan: finishing the v-neck pullover for her husband

Ruth Kelly: a necktie and diagonal scarf

Lauri Katz: a curly scarf

Lissa Bell, our guest: finishing a sweater, hat, and currently knitting a purse

A last note, the Washington Post has featured knitting articles in the Friday, January 6 Weekend section and the Sunday, January 8 Sources section. Knitting is apparently alive and well and not “winding down” as reported by some sources recently!

See you at the next meeting: Wednesday, February 1, 2006 at 7:30 p.m.
Program: Knitalong
Skill: Increasing

Dallas