Common Cod Fiber Guild

Clara Parkes

I am really excited about our next meeting. Clara Parkes is coming to talk to us about her love affair with yarn and is bringing copies of her book “The Knitter’s Book of Yarn” for signing.

I have posted this event to Boston.com because they have a great option to save the event to your calendar. Try it out here.

The reason it has taken me so long to post about this event is because I have been working hard with Anne (head of MIT Histroy) and Shreya (organizer at MITKnit) to get us a bigger room at the MIT Stata center. Anne and Shreya have been wonderful to our group and reserved us a large room on the ground floor of the Stata Center. We are now in Room 32-123. It should be able to hold 300 of our fiber friends, so please bring out as many friends as you like.

After the talk Clara has agreed to hang out and do some book signing. As usual we will probably head up to the 4th floor to hang around the R&D pub until it closes.

Below is a list of all the stores in the area that offer discounts for Common Cod Guild Members. So the next time you visit these stores feel free to flash your membership card.

ADDED:

I believe the discount is 10%. You need to bring your membership card as proof of membership.

Scenes from a Guild Meeting

The photo above is from our first meeting. Splityarn took this photo and posted it in our flick pool here. This is a great help to people like me who relish reviewing the meeting even hours, days, months later. I always forget to take a photo so I ask that you share with us all if you can.

OK… drum role please… many thanks to the following:

• Susan Gibbs from Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm, for offering up so many door prizes, bring the cutest sideshow ever, and being an all around powerful force for good… thank you.
• Sean from Woolcott and Company, for being our beginner buddy and project doctor wrapped in one.
• Amanda for being our in house masseuse (She has collected info about how to avoid knitting related injuries here)

We are proud to announce that Clara Parkes, author of Knitters Book of Yarn and Knitters Review, will be speaking to us at the next meeting. It turns out that we are growing too big for our current space so we may need to change. More on that in the coming month.

Finally, I will be collecting caps Knit One Save One at the next guild meeting. I will be posting more about this charity drive on my site later this week. Thank you to all who are helping me out

In an effort to promote new fiber enthusiasts and local yarn shops we will be inviting local yarn shops to be a part of the meetings by filling two positions durring the social hour. The Beginner Buddy will be someone who can help new enthusiasts with getting started. The Project Doctor will assist people who are stuck within a project, but need more technical assistance.

Woolcott and Company have generously offered to provide a Beginner Buddy and Project Doctor for the November meeting. Sean (the owner) will be the Beginner Buddy, he is an avid knitter and a spinnner. The Project Doctor will be anounced at the meeting.

I hope that in the future we will have people from all the walks of fiber activities come and be a part of the group. I myself could use some time with a beginner buddy for crocheting and felting. The activities that these positions can  help with will depend on the local yarn store and what activities they support.

If you are a part of a local yarn store and would like to sign up to do this for a meeting please feel free to drop me a line at guild_at_commoncod_dot_com. I will do my best to share this oppurtunity with all who are interested.

Ok… enough said. I can’t wait for our next meeting. I look forward to hanging out after the speach…

-Guido

Sheep in sweaters from Martha's Vinyard Fiber Farm

Susan Gibbs of Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm is coming to Boston area to speak to our group at our second meeting. She is coming to talk about her farm and how knitting plays a role in our lives, especially in times of turmoil. She has been very supportive of the Guild and I am really looking forward to meeting her in person.

Here are some updates since the last meeting:
* Over 100 people are now members of the guild
* There is a bar within 10 feet of our meeting room (cash only)
* The website is repaired
* The guild is being talked about at Rhinebeck

Finally, below is a link to the poster for this event. Please print it out and post it up at your local yarn shop, coffee shop, hardware store, or other community board. This will help us be more sustainable as a group and save me from buying more yarn from traveling around to the shops.

Here is the Poster.

OK.. so the harlot will be in town soon and we are putting together stuff for next year…

and then I go and crash the webpage a little.

Please bear with me the site will be fixed over the weekend.. .

-Guido

Dude… (yes, I say dude)

It’s only the first day of our guild and already I have news to share with everyone. Our friends and co-hosts at Porter Square Books have shared some more details about the Harlot special event:

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka Yarn Harlot

7:00 pm on Oct 15th
St James’ Episcopal Church
1991 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge

The church is a few minutes’ walk down Mass Ave from the Porter Square T Station. Porter Square Station is on the Red line and on the Fitchburg commuter rail line. If you are driving in, I recommend parking at Alewife Station and taking the T into Porter Square. Check out the MBTA website for more details about how to get to Porter Square.

Don’t know how many people the church holds or how we are going to do crowd control. Event planning for the Harlot is really an awesome experience. Perhaps I should email the people who are running the Olympics in China for some pointers.

That’s all for now… but … one more time…

Dude…

Boston is filthy with folks doing fiber activities. The many shops, groups, and blogs are a testament to this fact. Many of us have closets overflowing with our projects and would keep sheep on the Common if it were possible.

So in honor of you fiber faithful… we bring you the Common Cod Fiber Guild website. This site will be a place to see what events we are planning and to help answer questions about the guild. We will be posting guild business, upcoming events, and general fiber goodness.

Please have a look at the pages listed on the right hand side. Each page should prove useful for learning about what this guild is about and what we are planning for 2008. This is version 1.0 of the website and we hope that over time this site will be more useful.

Our first meeting is going to be on September 12th, please have a look at the events page for more information about all the upcoming fun.

Welcome to the guild website and I hope to talk to you soon,

Guido Stein
President
Common Cod Fiber Guild