Warrenton and more Stitches photos
Monday March 03rd 2008, 12:50 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Knit,Life

I have to write here my reaction to Channon’s comment:

Warrenton! I was at what was supposed to be a five-day-long girls’ camp in Virginia that got evacuated during Hurricane Agnes.  According to Wikipedia’s dates, I would have been thirteen; memory says I was twelve.  Anyway.

We got as far as Warrenton on our way home on a bus before we got told we weren’t going anywhere else, all the bridges were underwater. The person who had all the food in her car had made it home, but the bus behind her, unknown to her, had sunk in the mud when it had come to pick us up and had been delayed by having to be towed out of it–and a tow truck big enough to haul a bus stuck at an out-of-the-way location took awhile to find, while the rain kept piling up. So there we were that night, no food, no place to go, no way home. The Mormon Church in Warrenton, with a brand new building, took in all these muddy kids, and we slept on their floor for a couple of days till the waters receded enough to let us go on. Someone that the adults knew from church back home in Maryland was also stuck in town, and he let the kids go to his hotel room, several at a time, so they could use the shower and feel human again.

The camp counselor showed up at McDonald’s the first morning and ordered, “Sixty-five Egg McMuffins to go, please.” After that, the people at the church took over, bringing food. They weren’t a large congregation, and there were an awful lot of us. We were there for, if I remember right, two nights.

And so you see, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the folks in Warrenton, Virginia. Good people.

Meantime, here are a few more Stitches photos from my friends.

Lyn’s Michelle shawl in Sea SilkLyn.

Jan’s Michelle shawlJan.

Jocelyn’s Peace of Mind shawl in Sea SilkJocelyn.

Nancy and her Bluejay shawl in Geisha from BMFANancy.

Catie and her Tara’s Redwood Burl shawlCatie.

Vera’s Bigfoot shawlVera.

I don’t have pictures of everybody, so if anyone has more, shoot me an email, would you? Thanks.


5 Comments so far
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What a great story about my hometown! As a teen, I hated that everywhere I went, I was recognized as my father’s daughter, and often, news of where I’d been and with whom beat me home. Now, I long for that sense of community. I think Warrenton, at least, the one of my youth, really did “community” in a way that is hard to find these days.

Comment by Channon 03.03.08 @ 1:00 pm

Warrenton, Va is a lovely place- I’m not 20 minutes from it. I’ve found the whole town to be full of people who are kind and generous. It’s nice to see it hasn’t changed since you were stuck!

Comment by Liz 03.03.08 @ 4:24 pm

I haven’t been to Warrenton, but I love the parts of VA that I have been to!

Comment by Amanda 03.03.08 @ 4:49 pm

The Mcdonalds staff must have had a conniption! although the look on their face must have been priceless. Oh for a camera….

Comment by Carol 03.04.08 @ 9:03 am

Warrenton has changed greatly since you knew it with lots of new homes having been built within the town limits and especially on the D.C. side in Fauquier County. There is now a Rt. 29 bypass to bypass the old Warrenton bypass where the McDonalds you mention is located. Many of the genteel Southern landowners have died off and the large estates are being sold for subdivisions.

However, Warrenton is still a great place with a charming downtown area full of little specialty shops. It’s still a horsey area and one can still recognize friends and neighbors walking along Main Street. The sense of community isn’t as strong as it once was, but it is still there and probably much stronger than in many areas on the fringe of the D.C. metro area.

There is a very nice yarn shop in Warrenton, appropriately named My Favorite Yarn Shop. The owners are quite friendly and welcome all. Unless they are really busy, they will always take the time to answer questions or help with a problem regarding a knitting or crocheting project whether or not the yarn/pattern came from them. From what I’ve heard about other shops within driving distance, this is a unique feature of their business. Some of the other shops apparently only want to help with yarns that are bought from them. For any of your readers who are in the area, I recommend stopping by to see them.

Comment by Rosanne 03.07.08 @ 2:33 am



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