On Thursday night I was sitting at the hotel happy hour with some of my co-workers when we saw these giant keyboard type machines with some kind of antennas sticking out of them carried in one after the other. We also noticed that sitting all around us were older ladies, all wearing sweaters. I leaned over and asked the group next to us what was going on and they proceeded to tell me about the knitting machine convention. Needless to say, I was fascinated. They tried to convince me it wasn't a lazy person's hobby, but I wasn't buying. We then played "Guess the knitting ladies" with them based on who was sitting at the other tables. They would pick a table and we would guess whether they knitted or not. Fun times. I found out you can hook up a computer to one of these machines and feed pictures into them. I asked if I could have a giant afghan made with my face in the middle of it, and the answer was YES! What a great Christmas gift idea for next year!