Reader, I walked the whole marketplace.

Beautiful things just kept leaping into my bag…

But what sticks with me isn’t what I bought. It’s who I got to spend time with.

One of the unexpected joys of starting Capitol Hill Stitch n Bitch has been realizing that our little Tuesday night group is part of something much larger. Everywhere we turned, we saw “knitting celebrities,” watched groups in coordinated knits congregate, and met knitters from across the Pacific Northwest who were just as excited to talk about yarn and community.

Of course, I also managed to wrangle everyone together for a group photo.

What keeps surprising me is how often I think I’m organizing a knitting group when what we’re actually building is a community.

The knitting is just the excuse.

That’s become even clearer over the past few months. We’ve watched people who arrived knowing no one become regulars. We’ve watched beginners ask their first questions, experienced knitters share techniques, and complete strangers become the kind of people who save each other seats.

So if you saw a group of fiber artists wandering around Flock looking simultaneously inspired and overstimulated, that was probably us.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

Like I said, I think I blacked out.