NOTICE TO NON-RAVELERS

1. Ravel-centric content ahead
2. What on earth or off it are you still waiting for?

Today is Bobmas, the (first) annual intergalactic holiday celebrating the founding of Ravelry!

Of course the traditional (as of yesterday and all the plans for yesterday) celebration actually takes place on Bobmas Eve, when all the good knitters (I know I should say “and crocheters” here, but as it happened I didn’t see any last night, ahem) meet to do what good knitters do: eat, drink, be merry, exchange gifts in various ways, give thanks to Bob (and Jess and Casey), and of course… knit. Not necessarily in that order.

Last night there were Bobmas Eve celebrations all over the globe. The Boy^TM and I attended the New York chapter, held at my old stomping grounds the Seamen’s Church Institute, organized by the lovely and charming knittingfiddler and the lovely and charming devittles. There were other lovely and charming organizers as well, but I didn’t catch all of their names, I’m afraid. In fact, I hardly caught any names except those of people I already knew, and even in their cases it’s mostly Ravelry user names. Which is more OK than you might think, because names didn’t seem to matter all that much.

What do Ravelers do on Bobmas?

They knit.

I think that’s actually somewhere between 40 and 50 knitters, plus three indulgent muggles. A whole lotta knitting going on. This room has been used for weekly knit meetings for many years - one whole wall is a solid display o’ knitty goodness: it’s lined with shelves that are piled with skeins of yarn and with hats and scarves knitted for SCI’s Christmas at Sea program.

What better venue could there be?

What do Ravelers do on Bobmas?

They eat and drink.

Helen of Troy raises The Loyal Toast

Look closely at the knitting pictures above (dang, I should make an image map and post bigger copies, huh) and you should just be able to make out a variety of excellent sandwiches, cheeses and fruits, and a couple of bottles of the famed Two-Buck Chuck. (Knitters really know how to live it up.) These are followed, of course, by the obligatory Traditional Bobmas Cupcakes.

Of which I’m afraid it never occurred to me to take a proper picture because I really was not paying much attention to my blogging responsibilities. Hadn’t been for The Boy^TM, I hate to think how little photographic evidence I’d have at all. That Two-Buck Chuck is pretty good stuff.

What do Ravelers do on Bobmas?

They exchange gifts in a number of different ways. Last night’s loot opportunities included a raffle, a Yankee swap, and a de-stash sale - all proceeds from the first and the last of those going to Ravelry.

Here’s knittingfiddler running the raffle, preparing to toss a cool KnittyCity gift bag to a lucky winner.

She is ably assisted by the distinguished gentleman in the bowling shirt,

I hope someone had more presence of mind than I and actually took a picture of the amazing nautical macrame hanging on the wall behind her; it’s really extraordinary….

who is none other than Mr. Fiddler himself.

BTW, that skein of sock yarn should look familiar - I think it was Firebird Candidate #4….

We also contributed a handful of Tcirc-Keepers to the raffle,

and I didn’t have to pull any strings, because devittles totally won hers fair and square.

(Sneaky Mr. Boy^TM caught me unawares while I was pretending to supervise the proceedings.)

The raffle over, the down and dirty business of the evening began. The Yankee swap thing was new to me, and I have to admit it was a little scary at times.

Jesh stole a cool project bag (made, and filled with knitting goodies, by Helen) from its first recipient and guarded it like a dragon for the rest of the evening; I for one would not have wanted to be the swapper who tried to steal it from her.

Kathe ran the numbers on this one too, and she tried hard to stay impartial, but after a couple of severe losses in the early rounds she too wound up with a prize she didn’t want to have to give up, and the suspense was palpable.

Please please please, don’t take away my Trekking sock yarn!

You can relax. Jesh kept the bag. Kathe kept the Trekking. I don’t think anyone came away unhappy.

I didn’t participate in the swap - we were a little late arriving and I was maybe a little clueless at first about what was happening - but I still scored some great Bobmas loot: devittles gave me a skein of very interesting cotton sock yarn; and as part of the de-stash frenzy I took a couple of bags of Elite cotton off her hands. (Because I am SO in need of more stash myself.)

On our way home The Boy^TM marveled at the good cheer and lack of bloodshed accompanying the swap. I had no trouble explaining.

“First of all,” I told him, “knitters are NICE.”

“Second,” I said, “knitters know that other knitters have pointy sticks.”

Happy Bobmas to all!

THIS JUST IN

Or rather, This Just Out. FlockSock Club members, take note:

As of yesterday. the first Firebird kits are IN THE MAIL. Jen had hoped to get the rest of them out today (everything is packed and ready), but there was a logistical complication with getting stuff to the post office, so shipping is expected to continue tomorrow and be completed not later than Monday. Overseas shipments went out first.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm and is filed under TsockFlock Club, Bloggerei, Firebird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.