A knitting guild

I was invited to come and join a knitting guild a couple of years ago, I liked the idea so I went to check it out. There are two guilds in my area one meets in El Segundo and the other meets in Mar Vista. For those of you who are not familiar with Los Angeles both El Segundo and Mar Vista are part of Los Angeles because L.A. is not like a "real city". We are a patchwork of little areas, like Venice Beach, Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Hollywood, etc..... even Malibu is part of the greater Los Angeles area. L.A. is HUGE you can really see this when landing at LAX at night the lights start and you are flying almost a half hour to reach the airport. It is a beautiful sight to see all the lights shimmering below.

We also have lots of people who live here and because we are so big we need our cars to get around. Public transportation just never works out for us, we are too dependent on our cars and I must say it's damn convenient. I'm not sure what this does to the environment or any of the numerous negatives that come with owning and driving a car but such as it is in Los Angeles.

I tell you all this because the traffic and getting around becomes part of life, I don't like traffic and I don't want to drive far distances to go to meetings etc. The Sand & Sea Knitting Guild used to meet out in Malibu, and it was a lovely drive up the coast with the magnificent Pacific Ocean and beaches, movie star homes etc. I really enjoy that drive except when it become bumper to bumper traffic down the Pacific Coast Highway. So I deemed this guild to be "geographically undesireable".

I always thought that it was called the Malibu Guild, and now I realize that it's formal name is the Sand & Sea Knitting Guild. For some reason they lost their meeting room and had to move and to my advantage they moved only a few miles from my home. It takes me 5 minutes to get to the church where they meet. I get to go through the Santa Monica Airport "Cloverfield" a small but noisy airport a couple of miles from the beach. I've always loved this airport there are so many interesting things there.

I really like meeting with other knitters and the benefits a guild can offer, such as their extensive knitting book library, the educational programs they offer and not to forget the raffle and lunch. It's only $25 dollars a year so I joined. There are many very talented knitters at this guild I've seen some really beautiful projects shared. This year one of our new members (my friend Olga) won 1st place at the Los Angeles County Fair for a beautiful sweater she knitted.

Here is a bag I won in the raffle, I'm so easy I was happy as could be when I won this. I don't know what I did before I had this, I am using it every day now.

"Visitors are welcome to attend the monthly Guild meeting which is held on the second Saturday of each month from 11:00 am until 1:30 pm at St Andrew's Lutheran Church, 11555 National Bl., Los Angeles."

Last month I was lucky and won two great grab bags in the monthly raffle. How this works is when you win something the next month you are supposed to bring something equal in value and it gets raffled off.... the raffle tickets cost 3 for a dollar I think and you can put your ticket in a bag of the item you may want. You can put all your tickets in one bag or whatever you choose. This system is a lot better than just having a raffle because often you would win something you may or may not want. I won this wonderful little bag, for small projects and a kit to knit a purse. I spent a gran total of 3 dollars. Now next time I will take some new items that I have in my "gift" drawer.

I love supporting my local yarn stores and my knitting guild, spreading the word about knitting and how much fun it is just trying to get others addicted like the rest of us. We are after all just "yarn pushers".