I Was "Demo Man" Sunday!

Sunday, dawned bright and clear......cold, too! A blogging friend of mine, Ms. Molly Bee, has been a "hand knitting" volunteer at the annual A-Z Farm Open House this year. It ran for 3 consecutive Sunday's, the last being this past Sunday. The open house is during "lambing season", where if one is lucky, they see a lamb coming into this world, or if not, they see literally DOZENS of lambs, along with their mothers, in pens. Along with this sight, they have other animals and fowl to be seen or have photos taken with as well.

In this 1st photo of mothers with their babies, you can see that the area of sun is a VERY popular spot. ;)

The pens were all located inside a huge pole barn, so come rain or shine, the open house is on.

These hungry twins were the newest addition to the flock.

With so many lambs romping around amongst the various mothers, you'd think that they would be bleating in panic when "Mom" was out of sight, but they seemed to know she was close by and were perfectly satisfied to wander further afar, then RACE back to Mom like they had a GPS system, never bumping into the wrong udder. ;)

So, back to Ms. Molly Bee. As I mentioned, she has been out to the farm, volunteering at each of the open house days, sitting, hand knitting, and chatting with the farm visitors as they came through the wood stove heated "demo" section of the barn. Among the other volunteers, were a couple of hand spinners with their wheels, bake sale people, honey "farmers", face painters, and a woman demonstrating on her circular sock machine (CSM). I should say, she was there demonstrating at the first 2 Sunday's. She couldn't be there last week, so Molly Bee suggested I call Ray, the farm owner, and volunteer my services, which I did, and he accepted, thus my day at the farm as "Demo Man". For more photos, and 1 of me, go to:

http://mollybeesattic.blogspot.com/

This following photo shows my display of finished socks, baby hats, and sock blanks (1 undyed and the rest dyed), plus some re-wound yarn for people to see how things look prior to knitting the socks/hats. A few people actually stopped to look at the books, too. ;) People were mainly interested in seeing the machine "do its thing", and I was happy to oblige, knitting 3 socks during the day, stopping to answer questions, etc. Am I saying that those socks are mistake free? Nope, but no mistakes that are noticeable nor will they make the socks unwearable.

After completing the knitting of a 3rd sock, and seeing it was 3 o'clock, I decided to not work on any more socks, but instead, attach a cone of my less expensive acrylic yarn to the machine and allow visitors to "do some cranking". Was THAT a hit!! I had kids standing in line to crank a number of rows! My image, along with their children, are on many parents cameras that day. :) Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask Molly Bee to take some photos with my camera during all of this....sigh.....it would have been nice for you to see the expressions on the kids faces. :) We had fun!

Here is Ms. Molly Bee concentrating on her pattern......1 of the few times she could actually do some concentrating. I don't "think" she had any mishaps with her pattern and had to rip any of her knitting back to begin again. What mental power, eh??!! :)

I knew from reading Ms. Molly Bee's blog, that she loved purples, so I made sure I dyed a sock blank with some various shades of purples/blues/violets and had it wound and ready to go. I knitted this pair of socks for her on Sunday, and she graciously did the "sewing of the toes" to complete them, thus was able to take them home with her at the end of our time together that day. :)

While we were packing up, one of the volunteers came in and told us that over 2000 people had come through the barn that day......over 500 in the first hour! We knew we had chatted with a lot of people, but didn't realize it had been so many.

I had a lot of fun, came home tired, but was also hyped, as Don will attest to, since my mouth ran and ran, telling him little antidotes about the day. I hope that Ray will ask me to come and be "Demo Man" again. ;)