Deb of Scarlet-Zebra has taken on the Knitting-spring-into-existence project, too. She is knitting some socks in a tulip colorway (zillions of colors in one skein) and she also is painting her house and painting on silk. You might want to see her photos: check out this entry on Scarlet-Zebra’s blog.

I have known Deb for several years. We met on the internet, I think the Socknitters email list, but we’ve hung out a zillion hours, had uncountable four-hour lunches (halfway between her house and mine, we both drive about an hour), and met at places like Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Ann Arbor Art Fair, and Great Lakes Folk Festival in East Lansing.

We had a point where our lives changed and we did not connect enough… but now with her blog, we are reconnected once more. I am really happy about that.

Deb loves color at least as much as I do. She knit these kissing-cousin sock pairs, as a matter of fact (five years ago… amazing how time flies). The pattern is my BarberPole socks. Yarn is Cascade Fixation (DK weight cotton/lycra). But the choice, combination, and the knitting were all Scarlet-Zebra!

Um, I think maybe she was knitting spring into existence when she knit these, as well. Actually, I posted the photos originally on my blog, January 30, 2003. That is a bit early for thinking spring, but the colors surely go with the theme quite well!

I love old neon signs. We wandered all around Chicago, mostly between downtown and the very far north. I don’t know where most of these signs were found, except that the fish sign was in Andersonville which historically was a Swedish community.

Wherever they were found, whatever their condition, lit or not… they make me smile.

The last several hours we were in Chicago, we decided to stick around and wait to drive out until the rush hour had mostly passed. Since Brian is fond of maps and likes to look at how things (roads, bridges, other transit) fit together, we decided to ride the elevated train that the City of Chicago calls the ‘L.’ (Some folks spell this “el” but the City uses the stylized ‘L’ in its literature.) A ride on the ‘L’ is a little bit like a walk through a 3-D map, and a lot like being a fly on the wall, peeking and listening without being noticed.

An elevated train is a wonderful perch, literally up in the tops of the tallest trees, from which to see the lay of the land. You can see the back sides of businesses, back yards, junk areas not visible from the street. You can also see spectacular vistas, peeking down a busy street or viewing an important downtown landmark from a distance.

We were amazed at how close the train goes to some of the buildings. It looked in places as though there was a clearance of less than two feet. Considering that an elevated train makes a *lot* more noise than a subway, and goes by much more often than other types of trains, it must be a significant disturbance to normal living (you have to stop talking when the ‘L’ passes by) to live there. However, the real estate surely would be more affordable for places that close to a high-noise source, and that might be a welcome tradeoff in a high-priced city real estate market.

I have uploaded 72 photos (yeah, really… and I deleted all the blurry ones) of the ride, to my Flickr account as a set. I only added comments to the last photo, noting that it was taken after we had exited the train and walked several blocks north from the station. All other photos were taken starting on the Brown line (north) starting at the Western stop, and on the way to the loop/downtown. My camera ran out of storage space just about when we hit the loop, so I took no photos on the way back up.

Since there are no comments on the photos, you will lose no information if you run the photo set as a slideshow. You can imagine *you* are on that train looking out the window as I was just Monday.

I saved a photo of a beautiful plate of “sushi” (smoked salmon sashimi and avocado roll). Then I viewed it in the recent photos area of my computer. The colors look remarkably similar to the towel-rack “still life” I posted very recently. Check it out.

I am not sure what this means. I can leave it a mystery but it made me chuckle.

Here is another photo of my real house, real life, real colors that I choose to live with. (Yes, I live with different colors in my home than I wear on myself; houses look better in coral than fuschia, in my opinion.)

The duckie is tiny, the very far bottom left corner of the photo. I got him in Montreal the first time I went there (alone, and I don’t speak any French at all). He doesn’t float well, he goes around on his side with one eye in the water and one facing up, but it makes me really happy to have a rubber duckie to go with my claw-footed tub.

I finished taxes. I’m very happy about that. Now I have only 2 computer-work deadlines (one for Mom, one for Altu) and a dance concert (tons of rehearsals in the next 2 weeks or so). And the normal teaching schedule, of course. That feels like a light load at this point.

But it means I have to dance at 9:30am. I usually wake up at 11 (because I get on a roll and I typically finally go to bed at 3am, not because I laze in bed forever). I need to stop typing and go to bed.

In the meantime, enjoy these colors. This photo sort of reminds me of my colorful dishes (a few days ago on this blog), you know?

I found these towels just the way they are hanging, did not touch them or rearrange for the photo. I looked in the door of the bathroom and it was so pretty I stopped and smiled. Then I figured you might smile, too. After all, you all seemed to respond well to the colored dishes. At least two of you bought Fiesta dishes after that post. Dang!

Oh, and I’m clear that usually a still life has something that is alive or once was… a rubber duckie is as close as I get in this shot, but I gave in to the amusing title even though it was inaccurate.

Ravelry is an online community for knitters and crocheters. It is something like MySpace, but in my experience a much more personal environment.

It has databases full of yarns, patterns, designers, books. You can have a yarn you want to use, look it up and see what others have made from it. You can have a pattern you like and look up what yarns people have used when knitting that design. You can look up a designer and see all the patterns associated with that person.

Or you can find groups (something like Yahoo Discussion Groups) where you can chat about things you have in common. I moderate a group on Ravelry called ColorJoy! which is full of creative folks from all over the world. We talk about any creative projects, not just yarn-related ones. The “spring into existence” projects I’ve been showing you this week have come from people on my Ravelry group.

So today I checked in on Ravelry to see if I needed to do anything there as a moderator. And I saw that everyone’s photo (avatar) was embellished with a hat of some sort. Diana/Otterwise got a hot green hard hat with a yellow star on it. I got a “Cat in the Hat” striped red happy lid. There are newspaper-folded hats, bishop hats, witch hats, wool toques with pom-pom, wizard hats with stars and moons, chef’s white hats, I even saw one parrothead! I love my hat. Such fun!

Things like this are not uncommon on Ravelry. There is a group there called Completely pointless and arbitrary and some time during the winter they all drew blue nosewarmers on their photos/avatars. Just for fun.

If you are interested in participating in this community, go to http://ravelry.com and sign up to be added to the list. They will send you an invitation in a few days, I’m told (at one time it was a several-month wait while they were getting the system up and running).

Susan in California contributed three photographs she took on the way to Yosemite National Park, in my “create spring into existence” project. I am having a less than chipper day, but the photos help me a bit. How could I resist these sunny images???

Thank you for these wonderful images, Susan! It’s good to know that it’s spring (or springlike) somewhere right now. We got a bunch of snow yesterday again, it will be a while before we see daffodils, tulips, poppies or their friends. I figure we will get some violets within a few weeks so I’m holding out for them.

I’ve said here before… I’m not very fond of cooking, but I love to eat. I like cleaning the kitchen afterward even less than the cooking part. However, last weekend I was a wild woman in that kitchen. I made several extra meals and froze them. I experimented with baked goods, sometimes very successfully and once very poorly (it looked pretty, anyway).

But when all is said and done, the only thing better than eating the dinner I made, is looking at the beautiful colors of my dishes coming out of the (half-sized) dishwasher. I’ve done 3 loads in 4 days… but this particular scene just made me happy. (Hmmm, look at those colors, am I cooking spring into existence here?)

My Interior Designer friend Kath told me years ago (when I wanted to buy a set of turquoise dishes as my only dishes after my divorce) “Lynn, go for it!” She figured if I loved that color as much as I do, I’d continually enjoy having dishes that color. She could not have been more right.

So I took her advice to heart. If I love the color of something, and it’s an item I need, I go for that color rather than a safe neutral (which is always available). On the top rack is a frying pan I got at Marshalls a few weeks back, and it is the nicest pan I have had in years (maybe ever). And it’s spring green!!!

The color makes me smile even when I’m a bit grumpy from “having to cook again.” Never mind that sometimes what I make is significantly better than most restaurant food. And food I cook doesn’t have hidden ingredients that might make me feel crummy. Cooking at home is the answer most of the time, and for good reason. The colors reward me as I work.

I have said it before… if you wait for “big deals” to make you happy, you will wait a long time. If you can find little things (like this load of pretty-colored dishes) to make you smile, your life can be very fulfilling. And you will have a heck of a lot more happy little things than big deals, relatively regularly, you know?

I found myself answering a post on the Socknitters email list, about using easter egg dyes for dyeing yarn. Someone in the UK couldn’t find the easter egg dyes, so I piped in about other ways to dye with food-grade colors.

For the record, this does not work on cotton or plant fiber. It does work with protein fibers such as wool, mohair, alpaca and other animal fur; silk, and nylon which is a synthetic that acts like wool for dyeing purposes (although it does not take dye as well as animal fiber, in my experience). Other synthetics such as polyester and acrylic are very hard to dye in a home setting, they are typically colored in solution before the fibers are created in the factory.

If you are dyeing yarn it needs to be able to absorb dye on all surfaces. This means dyeing in a commercially-wound ball or skein will result in the center yarn not taking color. Wrap around your forearm or a chair, to make a large loop. Secure ends loosely (a tight knot makes a tie-dye where it’s white under the knot). Use a few pieces of yarn to tie the loop/hank loosely (most dyers/spinners tie it in a figure-8 shape through the strands).

Then soak the yarn for at least a half hour in warm-not-hot water with a little detergent or soap in it (this helps break the surface tension and allow water into the fiber). When ready to dye, press the fiber gently between clean towels and proceed.

This is what I wrote to the UK member of Socknitters:

Cake frosting dyes are no doubt something you *can* find? You can use those with vinegar and they come in more colors than egg dyes, as well. It’s all “food-grade dye” and you can use any of them with some vinegar (mild food-grade acid).

In the US and Canada we also have “Kool Aid” and other powdered drink mixes which contain dye, flavor and citric acid, so they do not need vinegar as do other food colorings. Of course, it can be hard in some areas to find the drink mix packaged without sugar (in tiny powder packets), and it again comes in very limited colors (the US purple is very disappointing/grayish, Canadian purple is like reddish-plum).

Here you can get only a few colors of liquid food coloring dyes, but the cake decorating dyes come in small gel packages in lots of colors. I’m in love with the turquoise Wilton’s dye, along with a spring green. Beautiful. I know there are other companies making frosting dyes, but Wiltons is the brand I find most often.

The goal is to put dye, acid and heat upon your animal-fiber yarn, and allow enough time for the dye to bond with the yarn. Assuming you did not use more dye than can be bonded with that amount of fiber, usually in 45 minutes or so you will have dyed wool and **totally clear** water. This is called exhausting the dye.

Many folks dabbling in food dyes do not know this part and stop too soon because they are eager to get on with it. (They also may be more familiar with cotton dyes which never exhaust and must be rinsed after dyeing.) When I dye yarn professionally (with commercial acid dyes), I leave the steaming hot wool covered in towels to keep heat in, overnight or at least until it comes to room temperature. This really makes a difference to the washfastness of the product. Color, Acid, Heat, Time. These are the four elements to a good dye experience.

Note: after I posted this I’ve had more questions and correspondence with many folks. It turns out that frosting dyes are not a gel but an oil-base, at least some of them. I never experienced any trouble with the oiliness and I expect that is because I soak my yarn in water with Dawn hand-Dishwashing liquid (a very strong grease-cutting product). If you have any problems with getting this particular coloring agent to work into the wool, try a little more soap or detergent.

Someone asked if the yarn has to go into a large pot with dye dissolved evenly, or if the dyes can be squirted/painted/poured onto the skein. Either works but do be careful to not put too much dye on it if you want color to stay in particular areas. After soaking you can use a salad spinner or the spin cycle of your washer to remove most of the water from the yarn. Then put it on a safe surface (Saran Wrap works, or a glass cooking pan) and apply dye as you like. Press the yarn to distribute the color better, and steam or microwave.

Someone asked about how long to time the microwave. This is a dangerous question, if I were to answer in minutes. I have two microwaves and one is gentle, one mean. You can burn fiber if you do it too much, so do take care and watch, especially when you are inexperienced. I always put a vessel of water in the back corner of my microwave to sort of be a “heat sink” and take the extra heat if the fiber dries out. This I do after one spectacular disaster with silk (silk burns quickly, maybe because it does not hold as much water as wool).

The ideal is to hold it at just under boiling, for about 45 minutes. In my dyeing microwave, this means heating it for anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes depending on how much yarn I am working with (I often dye several pounds at once), then letting it sit for a while, turn the pan the yarn is in (if there is no carousel in the microwave), then zap it again, then rest, then zap. Rest longer than you zap, maybe 10 minutes of resting between 3 minute heat cycles. Be sure it’s hot but not burning. Too hot and your yarn will degrade, especially if it has nylon in it.

May you find something fun to play with…

ChezCarla in Florida is the first to send photos in my spring group concept. She had some freshwater pearls and Tennessee River Stone beads, and decided to bead her spring into existence.

Here are the pearls:

Here is the necklace using those pearls:

Here are the stone beads:

Here is a necklace and earrings from those beads:

Carla, thanks for playing! You inspire me. I must confess I found that I “had to” finish my wintry super-warm alpaca/wool socks (pair #160) before I started on spring. Now I need to dig through and see what inspires me, to join my own project!

My project will definitely be from fingering-weight (sockweight) yarn in greens. I am thinking right now either Colinette Jitterbug wristwarmers, or super-fine alpaca-blend socks. Both yarns are gorgeous.

But first I must finish taxes. Then I get a reward, I get to knit spring into existence with the others who are playing this little game.

Sue sent some wonderful photos to support the spring project, and I’ll share those later in the week. Now, back to taxes.

Vicki/KnittingDragonflies has tagged me… in a meme to share 7 random (or weird) facts about me.

Actually, she tagged me on February 7, the day I was so sick with the influenza/nausea that I was trying not to breathe or move at all. I totally missed the tag until today.

So here it goes. I am choosing to share color memories. Some people have no memories of this sort, so I’m thinking they are “weird” facts. I’ve wanted to share a few of these stories, anyway. It is great that they fit together well here.

1. My first memory is of color. I was about 2 years old (according to my mother who can piece together my story into the fact we lived in Minneapolis at the time). We walked to the house of friends who had many children, mostly older than me. They had a game which was a set of rings in sort of a coliseum shape, where you put marbles on the top ring and players took turns pushing the rings back and forth.

   The goal (I found later) was to make the opponents’ marbles go to the bottom faster than yours.I was too small to understand the rules but I did understand that pushing the rings would move marbles down one round at a time. But the important thing, the reason I remember, is because of the blue and yellow alternating rings of color on the toy. It was so beautiful!

   They would not allow me to play with it because I was too small. I was crushed. It was about color!!!

2. As a child I was delighted when told I had been born in “Golden Valley” Minnesota. It’s a suburb of Minneapolis, but it sounded so beautiful to me. And, one more time, it was about color.
3. When I was very young and playing house, either alone down in my basement or with others, we had to make up names for ourselves. I would insist on being the Mommy (what fights we would have when the first-borns would not give up on being the only Mommy in the game). And being a mommy meant that I needed a different name.

   I would work through possible last names. Black? Boring. Brown or White? Boring, too. Gray? Same. Green? OK, that sounded much nicer. So I always said my last name was Green. It did not occur to me that I could choose a last name that was NOT also a color.

4. When I was in elementary school, the mid-to-late 1960’s in small-town Michigan, the color purple was something of a a joke to my father. He would sometimes say he was the Purple People eater. Or he’d say while we were waiting for a railroad train to cross the road, that THIS one surely would have a purple caboose at the end. He was always wrong but we would hope.

   Now, my father never hit us but he loved to tell stories and make them sound extreme and dramatic. So somehow one time he said if we were bad during the year, Santa would bring us a Purple Whip for our stockings (rather than coal). I don’t know why he started this, but once he started he did not back down on it.

   So, one Christmas season we all went as a family (Mom/Dad, Eric and I) to the five and dime store to get small presents for each other’s stockings. And I went with Mom to get presents for Dad and Eric, then we switched parents. And while I was with Dad, the store lady approached Mom and Eric to ask whether she could help them.

   Mind you… at this time, about 1964, it was nearly impossible to find any commercial item in the color purple. No clothing, no pens/pencils, trinkets, nothing. These days many girls say it’s their favorite color but in those days girl clothing came in standard pastels, red and pink but not purple.

   So when the lady came up to ask, Eric (toddler of age 4) asked “Do you have a purple whip?” My mom was floored and embarrassed. So Mom explained Dad’a joke to the lady. And the only thing they could find in the entire store under a dollar, with purple on it, was a washcloth with a tiny purple stripe and wider lavender stripes, on white. So it would have to do.

   Mom had to clue Dad in to the joke ahead of time. Dad laughed as he should (and it was truly funny). And Eric was very pleased with himself. Clever. He still is.

5. I always wanted to play flute as a child. I remember the first time I saw/heard one, Mrs. Gibbs/Music teacher brought one to school and played us records (vinyl) of music played on flute. I was in love.

   I do love the sound of a flute, but I think now that the shiny factor was also very big. I ended up playing Clarinet for 5 years, Dad did not want me on flute (long story). I never loved clarinet.

   Now I realize why. It was black. Flute is shiny. Now, a bad-sounding flute also sounds much nicer than a bad-sounding clarinet, which did not help things. But I remember I also loved banjos at the time and I knew almost nothing about them other than they were silver-bodied. Shiny.

6. I have always loved the colors I still love. My fave colors are turquoise, fuschia/magenta, purple, and hot green. I also sometimes wear bright cobalt blue, emerald green, black (my colors look great against black) and very occasionally red.

   As a small child, my favorite crayons were in the same range of colors I love now. I have a drawing I made when learning to print, and the colors I chose were magenta and purple crayon (see image). I am not sure where the magenta came from, as typically in our house we had “only” 8 colors of crayons.

7. My first knitting project was in 5th grade, in Mr. Johnson’s class (1969). I remember it was a Barbie pink headband with many “hiccups.” Who knows what happed to that project, but my mom amazingly took me all the way to East Lansing to get more yarn after I made that.

   I was allowed to (only) choose 2 colors. It was painful choosing two out of all the choices. They had small skeins of acrylic Red Heart, and I took home one skein in turquoise (go figure) and one in emerald green.

   To this day, when I see those two colors near one another I go back to the day I chose them out of all the possible choices, at the five and dime (same one as the purple story above).

I am not big on choosing people for a meme, but if anyone wants to play who is reading this, please do go right ahead and dive in!

I love the Spanish language. If I could live my college years over again, I would major in Spanish, in one way or another. That is past, but I have occasionally taken Spanish I over and over again, as an audit, at the local community college. I have sometimes taken Spanish II though for some reason it does not fit my schedule as well.

Once upon a time, in the days before Brian, I planned to move to Mexico. I know that if I lived somewhere like that, I would be up and running without too much delay. I just take to language well, if I allow myself focus.

But now I’m in Lansing for the long haul, it appears. When I find myself lucky, I get to read Spanish here and there, and I recognize maybe every 5th word. I can sort of figure out what is going on but not with any certainty.

Sometimes I go to Mexican restaurants or groceries in Lansing. I just love listening to the sound of the language flow during a conversation. There is such a happiness in me to hear people just plain chatting (or asking where they keep this or that item on the shelves). I love the sound of the language even when I can not tell at all what the subject is.

So today while surfing too much I found a website, Tejemanejes, (labores laneras para internautas hispanohablantes) which is apparently an online knitting magazine in the Spanish language. And the first pattern is wonderful, a cashmere sweater (la perla negra/black pearl) with v-neck that is modeled on a man but I can tell they believe it to be unisex. I’d agree… I would love to have that sweater in my closet (even in black). The bottom “hem” is straight, no ribbing but no hem either (must be the stitch pattern allows it to lie flat).

There are other fascinating photos of pattern (patron) projects. No doubt some of you reading this will be able to use these patterns (and articles) without a struggle. In my case, there is no way my limited Spanish will get me through the very specialized knitting instructions.

I don’t make many sweaters, but this Black Purl one is really right up my alley. I guess in this case it’s good that I have an excuse that I can’t even start to make it!

There are some other interesting designs as well. There is a cabled moebius scarf, what appears to be crocheted colorwork socks, a hair net that appears to be silk/stainless steel from Habu, and a toy; a crocheted “rock star dinosaur.” One of the dinosaurs has an eyepatch, very fun.

(Woohoo… I just looked in the archives, and a wonderful hat based on an Egyptian sock motif, includes guidelines in English for knitting it. It’s not a full pattern but it is a guide and a chart. For me, that would work great, and I bet it will be enough for a few of you out there as well.) Actually, in the archives there are a number of items with English help.

I hope I translated the tiny bit I dared, correctly enough to not embarrass or confuse anyone. Let us face it, many knitters love looking at pictures of knitted items. This will work well in the pictures arena, even if you are, like me, Spanish handicapped when it comes to knitting patterns.

Photo? I took this in 1996, in Tulum, Yucatan, Mexico. Can you see the small squarish pyramid top and left? The water at right is the Caribbean Ocean. It is an ancient and holy place, one of the few places in the world where I literally can find no words.

It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and I’ve had the great fortune to travel a bit. This photo was taken with film, printed on photo paper, scanned in, and manipulated for the web when many computers had the capacity to display merely 16 colors on screen. Please forgive its lack of detail and darkness, that’s the best I could do at the time.

Vicki of KnittingDragonflies has given me (and my mother) both a “You Make My Day” blogland happiness award. Vicki, I am absolutely honored to be on your list.

Leeann of Wool & Chocolate awarded me this same honor in late January (just as I was heading into the month-of-low-health which we just finished up. I did mention the award when she gave it to me.

I find it impossible to name 10 people. Some of those I might choose have been chosen dozens of times already. I look at my Google Reader (blog organizing system) and I have 20 blogs listed under “friends.” There is no way to do this without hurting someone who I think is fabulous.

So I will specifically decide to exclude every single blog which is knitting or wool related. And I will not choose exactly 10. But I’ll put a few here I have not seen elsewhere (I mostly see knitting blogs awarded, because I am frequently reading knitting blogs).

I am making sure to list only blogs that are updated several times a week. Right now those are criteria that bring my list down to something somewhat manageable. I think these are listed approximately in the order I discovered them.

If you write a knitting or related blog, please know that I wanted very much to choose your site for this award but it was an impossible task.

OK, here are the non-knitting blogs I read regularly, listed under my first list “Friends” in Google Reader. They all do make me happy for Blogland, so this is as reasonable a choosing system as any I can imagine:

The Iceland Weather Report - A woman born in Iceland, raised in Canada, tells of the everyday and the unusual back in Iceland where she has lived for the last 14 years of her adult life. I love her candid and observant writing style.

The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz - This writer is also a gifted photographer. Her passion (for food, cityscapes of all sorts, cilantro, rice, and life) keeps me coming back. Photos of New York City every Monday.

Kathleen’s Vegetarian Kitchen - My Sister-in-Love Kathy (Brian’s sister) lives in Florida, cooks vegetarian, even shows how to make mozzarella cheese at home. Also traveling/restaurants, both in the USA and out.

Doug Berch - music friend who posts about his music performing and recording, his instrument building (lap/mountain dulcimers, really beautiful to the eyes as well as ears) and sometimes poetry. He’s a fine human being, too.

Ukulele & All That Jazz - Howlin’ Hobbit, a ukulele player in Seattle. I met him through this blog (a report on one of the regional ukefests brought him the first time). He talks about his city, about performing, recording, and geeky interesting things. Never a dull moment.

And here are two blogs about house renovating that I read less often, but when I do get there they can keep me up till too late reading every single word. They are not friends, I may not have even left them any comments before, but I have shared the sites with interested friends:

Stucco House - In the twin cities of Minnesota, a little 1920s bungalow. I used to own a bungalow in Lansing, and I was born in “The Cities.” I’m fascinated.

The Petch House - a Victorian in Eureka, California, which was pretty much gutted and subdivided when the current owner moved in. Reclaimed lumber from warehouses, vintage tile laid one tiny hexagon at a time. Vintage-era light fixtures, re-wired up to code. Absolutely riveting to me.

And a blog I am really new to, but which has exotic and beautiful photographs. I think I followed a food link to this but I do not see food when I look today. I’m not sure I can say that this fits the original essence of the award since I’m still figuring it out. However, what I’ve found so far (living outside the USA, fascinating architecture, embellishment, clothing, photography) sure makes my heart sing when I go there (Yarnstorm fans will enjoy this photography with certainty):

My Marrakesh - You will have to figure this one out yourself, but the photos are worth a peek if you do not read a word.

Thanks to blog reader Patch, I got referred to SaraJane Helms’ website where she and other polymer-clay-artist friends are making a miniature quilt store (scale works for 11.5″ dolls, I think that’s like a Barbie). It is truly wonderful. I have met some of the artists involved in this project, back when polymer clay was new and it was my only artform. They have continued with the clay as I have proceeded first to soft block printing and for the last 6 years, knitting.

SaraJane’s husband Bryan Helms also does some amazing collage work. He uses small polymer clay pieces and affixes them to found objects, often musical instruments which no longer are able to make proper music for whatever reason. He is a musician as well. I think he thinks something like I do, he made a wig head into a polymer and glass bead sculpture (I’ve made both mailart styrofoam heads and polymer clay-embellished glass heads).

If you are interested in where creativity can take an artist, checking out their site is worth your while. Have fun!

I’ve been grumpy today. The weather is crummy, the squirrel got back into the attic and my legs are like rubber bands so I can’t stand or walk long at all. When I try to do anything not sitting down I need a 2 hour nap very soon thereafter.

It is very easy to get into a funk in a Michigan February anyway, and I have work to do. I can not stay with the grumpy spot my brain is in right now if I want to get anything done at all. Therefore, it’s time for a gratitude list again. So here it is:

• Brian.
• Tapioca pudding.
• Sweet potatoes, baked with butter and nutmeg.
• Friends who call to see how I am doing.
• Friends online who write and make me feel better.
• Every single one of you who comes by this blog… especially when you take the time to comment, but that is not at all necessary.
• Brian.
• My wonderful 1998 VW New Beetle, Joy Bug. I love that car. I love her soooo much. She has 130,000 miles and needs some tender loving care sometimes but I am still in love like I was in 1999 when I got her. She doesn’t show her age at all, not a single rust spot.
• Wool, alpaca, mohair.
• Music.
• Brian.
• Health insurance, thanks to Brian and his workplace.
• Everybody I work for, every shop, every student.
• Ravelry… what an inspiring place this online fiber community has become.
• My family… the ones I was born to and the ones married in.
• The wonderful relationship I have with my Mom and my Brother after all these years… earned the hard way.
• Brian.
• This house. It’s quirky like me. Brian picked it before we met but it’s very like what I picked for myself, and with prettier wood trim (and much better parking).
• The porch on this house. Heaven.
• Lansing and all the creative people in it.
• All the travel I have done in my life… 250,000 miles on my former car, Martha G., and trips out of the country mostly as gifts or windfalls, each trip as magical as the one before.
• Good foods, especially “ethnic” foods.
• Fun clothes.
• Wonderful yarns in my house ready for me to knit with them.
• My career(s), both knitting/fiber/art and music.
• The sense that I am no longer an outsider in my own town. I belong.
• Brian.

The New York transit authority (whatever it may be called) has a web page listing public art in the subway system. It is fascinating, and seemingly never-ending. Good for New York!

I have known about Black Purl magazine online for a little while. This online magazine is about handwork, not just knit and crochet, and looks quite a bit at what are sometimes called “ethnic” artforms. You may enjoy perusing the back issues of their newsletter, Essentia, when you get a minute.

There is an article in the current issue, about African Folklore Embroidery (South African, bright colors on black backgrounds, right up my alley). There are kits available and they are seeking out teachers to pass the artform forward. Do check out the African Folklore Embroidery website for a visual feast.

Some of you may remember that I had some fun making small holiday gifts by knitting and felting tiny 3-D hearts. First I made one with dreadlocks for Brian, then a more straightforward one for my Goddaughter, Sara, as a tree ornament.

I posted the projects to Ravelry and the designer, Anna Hrachovec, noticed. We have had a few very nice emails and she asked me if she could use my dreadlock heart on her blog. Of course I said yes… thank you.

Mind you, there are over 200 projects on Ravelry from this pattern alone. Anna had a good number of choices out there. She just spent a week on her blog showing all sorts of variations on the heart (which is a free pattern… I recommend it highly… have a finished heart in 45 minutes and smile for at least a week).

So Wednesday Anna finished her whirlwind tour of Ravelry hearts, with my dreadlock dude and a totally clever heart-as-potted-plant variation. I am honored by the company I get to keep on that blog entry. Woohoo!

After a week of emotional and physical blahs, illness and inertia, this is the perfect antidote. For the record, I cooked and I made myself eat more food than I thought I could eat… and I got more energy Wednesday night than I have had in a week. I should only wonder why that seems so surprising. It’s obvious, is it not?

But then I get this great note from Anna, and I go back and look at not only my hearts but a whole bunch of others’ interpretation of this very simple and fun pattern. And my week is transformed very quickly indeed.

Thanks, Anna!

If you like the heart, try it. If you like the idea of knitted toys, check out Anna’s site where she has all sorts of fun and amazing projects waiting for you… some free, some for pay, all worth time and money.

I need your help. You see, I have been in bed since two Mondays ago. I am tired of being tired. My fever is gone, I am officially not contagious, and yet I can hardly stay awake in the middle of the day. Every day is wake up, rest, nap, wake up, eat, sleep again.

I have no energy. Standing upright is a tippy prospect, I need to be where I can hold on to a wall. For those of you who know me, this is just not Lynn. And no, it’s not mono. been there already, thank goodness it can not repeat.

Brian was funny today. As a background note, I once knew a cat named Amanda who acted like she owned the world… Queen, not pet. She would sit there looking superior, and the family she lived with developed this funny joke (to them) where they would turn to Amanda and say: “Poof! You’re a cat!” And she’d look around like something unpleasant had happened, not liking the change in energy.

So I tend to say “Poof! You’re a cat!” Or “Poof, you’re a ________!” When I need a change in perspective. I find it quite amusing, in any case.

So today Brian sat in his chair and said, “Poof, you’re LynnH!” Because, boy oh boy have I not been my normal high-energy LynnH self lately. I wish his magic had worked. In time I am sure, but not as quickly as we might have hoped.

I realize that the first line of defense is good rest, and that I have done. I can’t take standard vitamins because of all the allergies I fight, though I have an iron pill I can take every couple of days if I have a tummy full of food to avoid a stomach ache from it. I know that the standard advice would be to eat beef or some sort of mammal product but that just does not work for me, though chicken remains in my arsenal for the time being.

So tonight I am planning to make some chicken broth into something or another. I will take “Emergen-C” powder to get a few vitamins in me. I ate something like a third of a cabbage (stir fried) which was tasty but not exactly an energy factory. It took me till dinnertime to get out of bed, to even make that. Thank goodness I had some soy tapioca pudding already made which I could eat until I got today’s energy together.

Any advice for me? What do you do when you need energy and it is not coming from within? Please pile that comment bin full of options. I will not be able to take all the suggestions because of my fussy food allergy situation, but if I do not use the advice, perhaps another commenter might learn from it.

I want to be LynnH again. This lump I have turned into is a boring gal. Please help.

(Oh… gratitude: my car started today after sitting still for more than a week of very cold weather. I did not go anywhere but that was gift enough.)

I’m still down for the count. I was able to eat today, more than soup, but still have a raised temp. That’s six days on my back, and I am allowed to feel grumpy about that. I’m doing all the right stuff, thank goodness I love tea. It can’t last much longer.

I opened the door a little today for a tiny bit more air, it’s supposed to get mean-cold tonight. Any fresh air is good at this point.

A Masterful Diversion

So, while my life is significantly boring… I suggest you go check out the work of Dave Cole. He is a man who can not be categorized and I love that sort of person. He did the project where construction equipment knit a huge American flag. He also knit a wedding dress by hand, with 1/8″ strips of dollar bills. It is spectacularly beautiful, many women would look gorgeous in that design.

He even knits lead teddy bears. I have seen the flag, the wedding dress and one of his teddy bears in person.

Cole does a lot of projects that are not knitting, but this is a knitting-focused blog so I’m highlighting things with more interest to my readers.

For the record, he also co-wrote a book, Learning Outside the Lines, about how to get through high school and college if you are ADHD and Learning Disabled… during the time he was getting his degree from Brown University. A personal-experience sort of book.

I had some time to burn so I really looked at a lot of Mr. Cole’s site today. He not only dreams of improbable creations but finds the resources (inner and outer) to get what he needs to make them come about. I admire that.

What I Haven’t Done Yet

I’m the first one to admit I could benefit from a little meditation or slowing down. It seems that everyone around me is finding some way to calm their inner selves with Yoga, some other Meditation, Chi Gong, Nia, Tai Chi, whatever. So far I just can not go there.

(Well, Brian is already calm, he needs none of this. He won’t understand why I needed to write a whole column about it… which is why he is so perfect for me. Not sure why I’m perfect for him, but I’m glad, anyway.)

I tried one yoga session one time, and I wanted to run away half way through the class. However, I’d come with a friend who was a regular attendee and I had to stick it out. That instructor was big into “feel your muscles” and I was not interested in that sort of awareness.

The closest thing I’ve ever found to yoga was adult ballet class, when I was lucky enough to take it from Diane Newman (Director of Happendance Troupe and School). I found that when I had inner conflict, I found it very hard to balance my physical body. I had immediate information about my psyche when I stepped away from that barre.

Luckily for me, Diane allowed for the adult class to be less strict than a normal ballet class, and when I’d fall over and laugh out loud, she didn’t flinch. In fact, she’d tell me how beautiful my foot was. She would find the one thing I had done right and make sure I knew about it. What a loving person she is, and it shone through in class.

What I Do

So in order to get in touch with my physical self, I now study mideastern dance (AKA belly dance) and rehearse with the girls. With lots of music and other women around me to distract me from the effort it takes.

I have never been strong physically and pushing my muscles hard is not pleasant, no matter how much others might like working out until they can’t push further. (Photo is me dancing as Eudora, at New Aladdins Restaurant just Friday. A blur, my camera does that, but it’s sort of wonderful to show the movement here.)

I do love to walk, but I admit that this is also an activity with distractions. I love the distractions. Especially when the grass is green and there are flowers of any sort, I walk the neighborhood and observe gardens as they change through the months.

I find it hard to walk when there is snow on the ground, though. I don’t like cold any more than feeling my muscles.

A Stitch/A Mantra?

Knitting has a repetition I adore and which makes it somewhat akin to some sorts of meditation. However, I am all about knitting in circles around and around, knit knit knit without any pattern or counting at all. And I can do that without looking at my hands.

So I read blogs while I knit socks in circles. It’s good for getting the fidgety nerves out of my fingers, so to speak, but it’s not about paying attention or anything.

The Real Practice in My Real Life

So Saturday night I made tapioca pudding. This is a real treat for me, something I truly enjoy as comfort food and have absolutely no allergy problems with. Currently, I make mine with soy milk, brown sugar, tapioca and a tiny bit of butter or ghee (there is nothing like dairy fat to satisfy, I must admit). Not even vanilla most of the time, just four ingredients. (I published a partial-coconut-milk tapioca recipe here once. It’s reeeeally good. Doc says no more coconut, so it’s your recipe now.)

But tapioca pudding requires stirring pretty much constantly until it boils, slowly. It is very hard for me to accomplish. In fact, I must admit that one day I burned two batches. Two. Sigh…

Striving for Serenity/Grasping Straws

Saturday I had to dive in and use Adobe InDesign. I worked on it one other long day, and that is it. I must say it is so unlike anything I have ever done before that I am really struggling. I cried at one point (drama queen that I am) but recovered and pressed on.

Maybe it is harder for me, because I am an expert at Microsoft Word, I’m very good at PowerPoint and Excel, I’ve done web page design since 1996, have done programming in dBase III+ and DOS and MS Access. I am used to being the expert. None of these programs are anything like a layout program. It’s start from scratch time.

I have tried to “grok” three different page layout programs over the years, even sat in on classes and it didn’t sink in. Others say how logical these programs are. So far they have not made much sense to me. Why they exist, I totally understand. how to use them, not so much.

I’m grateful for my friend Deb who uses this program a lot (to lay out whole books, not just patterns). She surely has discovered things about it the hard way, many things I will never need to know. Or so I think today. She at least explained a few things to me this weekend while I was whining and whimpering. I’d do drama queen, she’d do resource librarian. Just the facts, ma’am. Exactly what I needed.

I took a class in how to use the program, back in October. I remember a few things from that class, and I do have the book we used as a reference which has been quite helpful. Today I did something I learned in class, and my computer flipped out. It flashed and blinked and in the end went almost entirely gray with a few words still left on the screen.

Somehow I lucked out and it did not stop running. I gave it about 5 minutes, then waved my mouse across the gray screen, and as I did the words under the mouse started to appear. I clicked Cancel in a dialog box and got everything back. Whew. But as Brian says, I was sort of in a dangerous energy or something.

Stirring is a Mantra…Maybe?

I didn’t feed myself enough because I was focusing on other things. So I realized after dinner that a little comfort food dessert would be a very good thing. I wondered… do I dare to make tapioca pudding? The closest thing to focus, to meditation, to yoga that I ever accomplish? On a good day, anyway.

I took the challenge. And I stood there and stirred and stirred, and watched that pudding. I talked to it, told it “nice baby” and all those things you say to a child or a kitten, or an unsteady car. And I did it. I did a perfect job of tending to my comfort food. I did not burn it, I did not so much as turn my back on it for a minute.

It was good.

On January 31, NPR put up a web page (I’m reading into this that there was a radio spot on it also) about what they called Extreme Knitting. This includes so many ideas and expressions, there is no way to explain it without looking at individuals and their specific works. (In December 2005 on this blog I pointed to a Flickr photo of a tree encased in a multicolored “tree sweater,” for one example.)

It surely is beyond wearable garments, in any case. I watched the “Audio Slideshow” which is photos and narrative. I loved it.

Then I followed several links given on that page. I went to KnitKnit and from there clicked on the KnitKnit book that has only been out since September. I clicked on names of featured artists in the book, looked at photos of them and/or their work. And I am so in love, so inspired.

It took me to a good number of knitting names I already knew, and also new ones I had not known yet. Some of the names I have mentioned here before are Debbie New, Freddie Robins, Annie Modesitt and Althea Merback (of Bugknits, where she is called Althea Crome).

Oh, it makes me feel good to know that people are truly following their hearts. They are letting knitting be a method toward a message rather than the thing you do to get X product.

Mind you, I knit socks all the time for a product. But I also love it when folks are artful and follow their instinct. This is really inspiring to me. Perhaps you will enjoy it, also.

Thanks to those who sent good wishes. I think the woman who told me if I didn’t waste energy worrying, I’d have more energy to heal, was right. I had two achy Excedrin-dependent days, one lazy and dull day on the couch, and then today was not so bad.

For a cold, that’s quicker than my usual course of events. But after all… a cold is small potatoes. It’s going away as I type. I will be fine to dance tomorrow night.

Right-Sizing the Yarn Site Way

But that’s not what I’m talking about in my title today. I’m talking about my shopping cart.

I have been struggling for a year with uploading photos that look pretty good on my laptop, and having them be resized and otherwise messed up (including color shifting). Therefore, my website was not presenting my handpainted yarns properly. The Tiptoe Sockyarns looked the worst by far, and are so beautiful in person. I was so sad that I could not figure it out.

For a while it looked like maybe it was reducing the size by a specific percentage, I thought it was 75%. That did not prove correct.

When I loaded the books yesterday, and went to peek at how it looked on the main page, I saw that in the case of at least one book cover, it had INCREASED the size. Voila. A little sleuthing with PhotoShop as my friend, and I figured it out. It resizes to have a height of 300 pixels, no matter what size the uploaded photo might have been.

I looked all over the internet a year ago, to try and figure this out. I read a lot of things that did not get me anywhere. But I decided to let go of a half-dozen knitting books from my shelves, and it came clear quickly. I am so happy!

I took all new photos, zoomed in properly to have a 300×300 photo (actually, they can be zoomed in on at 600×600 in one place). I got a lot of light, which gave me pretty good color to start with. I tweaked the colors in PhotoShop with the skein of yarn sitting on my lap for a reference, until that photo looked as close as absolutely possible to the actual yarn. (Of course I understand that monitors all display differently, but at least the balance is about right, on at least my monitor.)

And now my Tiptoe Sockyarn page looks right. The yarns are the right colors, finally. No “jaggies,” no recoloring to muddy. Who would buy yarn when they could not really tell what it was like? I get such good feedback from those who knit with it, but it took a leap of faith on the buyer’s part.

Because I expect an influx of new visitors this week (due to the MagKnits pattern which should show up Friday), I wanted the site right. I will end up taking more photos over again, given some time. I also want to figure out if there is any way to make it more obvious on the main page, that the categories of merchandise are hiding in a little list in the top left corner. However, for now the biggest issue is solved.

I am so happy to finally have solved that one mystery. Life sure is full of puzzles, isn’t it?

Happy, happy…

(For the record, the first yarn shown here is named “Happiness.”)

I guess I had the right sick day. It was so cold here, only 3 school districts within the radio station’s reach were open. Not a snow day, a cold day, which just almost never happens here in mid-Michigan.

I didn’t leave the house all day, and now today it’s warmer. Still too cold but better. My car will want a long warm up today.

OK, I don’t have as much time for a long blog, so you get a list today. I have been sleeping off the cold which takes a lot of time! Now I’m up late and I will have to work for 3 hours teaching at Rae’s tonight, and believe me there are things to do before leaving home (even though I am moving slower than usual).

I’m much, much better than I was, although I still need a pack of trusty Kleenex everywhere I go. I will sit to teach tonight instead of stand, I bet, but I will teach.

Here are some bits of information you might like to know:

• I teach Sock Darning tonight (Thurs.) at Rae’s Yarn Boutique, 6-8pm. Merely $15 for one session. Bring your own wounded socks or I’ll have some you can practice with.
• I will have a design in the MagKnits issue which comes available tomorrow. Woohoo! (See photo tease above.)
• I put up six used knitting books on my shopping cart for sale, good pricing and $1 shipping.
• I am dancing at New Aladdin’s Restaurant on Friday night, half-hour shows 6:30 and 8:00 (Outer Frandor in Lansing, near video store and Sparty’s) No cover, tips welcome.
• Brian and I sing next Friday 2/8 at Foods for Living, 4-6pm, no cover
• Paz of “The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz” also has a photo blog, pics of New York City, called “Paz’s New York Minute“

Dang. It’s not even done with January yet and I have a cold. Trust me, I’m counting my blessings… I didn’t feel crummy until just after our Friday concert was over with. First I had a doozy of a headache, then the cold set in but luckily without the headache… I’m all for a cold rather than a headache, personally.

We don’t perform again until February 8 (Foods For Living, 4pm-6pm). So I’ll surely be feeling fine in time for that performance. It’s a cold. They don’t last forever.

Meanwhile, I toughed it out through my classes Monday at Haslett Community Ed. What I do there is unusual enough that I know nobody who could substitute for me. My students were wonderful and understanding, and it went fine.

But when I got home I was so wiped out I just plopped down on the couch. Brian thawed us some dinner from the freezer. (I can not tell you how wonderful my crockpots are, we cook two full ones at a time and freeze, and then we need not cook some nights. Just like tonight.) A couple of Excedrin and dinner, and I already feel better.

Planning a Mostly-Lazy Day

Tuesday I don’t work at all, though I have 2 short appointments scheduled. I think I can cancel one but not the other.

I will work Tuesday with my feet up on the couch. Thank goodness for laptops, I can do email from there now.

I will also finish knitting a few straps on bags that are nearly ready to be shrunk/felted for my new ZigBagZ patterns. And I will go back to learning InDesign (computer program for laying out patterns and other documents).

The Dreaded Learning Curve

I spent Saturday diving in deep, with this new program. I do not enjoy learning curves for computer programs, but I have a list of projects all waiting for me to master this one. I played with a simple pattern first, so in case I really messed it up I wouldn’t have wrecked something big. I have a mitten pattern almost ready to roll.

In the end I will use this program for many purposes. Most of the documents will be my patterns, and probably some promo materials for The Fabulous Heftones. I’ll also use it on menus for Altu’s Ethiopian Cuisine… and my mother’s incredible very-beginning-reader books.

I will talk about Mom’s books here more when they become available. Mom is totally brilliant at teaching reading, and these books are her life’s work… her Opus. So that will be the very coolest thing I’ll do with the program, and very soon at that.

Nearly-Ready Pattern… Finally(?)

The ZigBagZ are really five separate bags. I have been discussing the possibilities for them with friends (yarn shop owners, test knitter/proofreader/collaborator Diana, knitting buddies).

It looks like I may decide to split the bags into two patterns, one for the three smaller ones and one for the two larger carry-all bags. They are all zigzag with the same number of stitches in a repeat, but there are different charts, different handles, different button flaps. The big bagz are significantly different in many ways, from the smaller bagz.

With five designs, I had to say “start with section A then go to Section C then D & E” or the like, for each of the smaller bags, which made it a bit hard to navigate. And at 15 pages, I would have to price the pattern higher than my other patterns which could be a hassle as I (and shops) sold them.

The pattern idea started out as a plan for a large carry-all. I made the smaller bags basically as gauge swatches, and they were so fun and useful that I kept going with them. They are all tested and mostly ready to go (it’s the two big bagz that have taken so much work and time).

The photo above is of the first two large bagz knit… the front one I knit, the back one Karen knit. Mine was from prototype numbers. Diana just finished another from actual pattern specs and it should arrive here tomorrow for me to shrink. Cross fingers. (Photo at left is small bottle bag, this one I kept for myself and use frequently.)

February 7

I have announced on Ravelry that this pattern will be available February 7, and I bought an advertisement on Ravelry to run from Feb. 14-29, so everything that is looking good needs to proceed as planned at this point.

But I’m thinking that Linda and Diana and Rae are right, that things would work better for me and my shops and my customers, if things in this project were more streamlined than they seem to be right now. Fifteen pages is TOO LONG for a pattern. At that point we are in booklet territory.

I wish for folks to make these bags without wondering what I was thinking when I set up the pattern I have a reputation for easy-to-follow patterns. I want to keep that reputation.

Cooking Sweet Green Pea Soup

Anyway… that was a digression but maybe it was interesting to my knitting readers. The point is that I can still work, at least when the Excedrin is doing its job. And I will be as horizontal as I can. I will even limit my cooking time to as little as possible. In the end, it’s just a cold, right? Irritating but temporary.

Green pea soup works well in a crockpot. And it’s SO good. Check out this recipe at Paz’ website for a recipe which was my inspiration. Yum!

I met Sriyana (internet name) on my Ravelry ColorJoy group. She makes amazing Tapestry-Crocheted mandalas.

Tapestry Crochet is a way of doing colorwork in very firm single-crochet, where you carry the strands of the yarns you are not using inside the stitches of the yarn you are working. It makes great baskets and purses, doesn’t stretch much, is sort of all the things knitting is not (which makes me very interested in it for bags, backpacks, purses… things that are not easy to do well in knit fabric).

Mandalas are often done as drawings. They were discussed by Carl Jung as a sort of connection between the inner self and the outer self (this is a very rough one-phrase explanation, please forgive its inadequacy). I spent a year or so drawing at least one mandala a day as a self-awareness exercise and it was a wonderful practice.

Sriyana’s mandalas are spectactular. She has won awards, and now she is featured on Carol Ventura’s Tapestry Crochet blog. The article is very nice, and goes into a nice level of depth with a little personal history for perspective.

Please consider taking the time read this wonderful article and meet my new friend, Sriyana.

I have put up a Flickr photo set which you can view as a slideshow… of the Stage 1210 concert last Friday.

For those who were there (or wish they had been), this does not take a very long time to view and will give a very nice feel for the event.

Hanno M. took many of the photos and he’s a very artful photo-reporter. Thanks again, Hanno!

Hanno took this photo of Brian playing uke Friday night:

It sounded like that at times, too. Thanks, Hanno.

Leeanne/Wool & Chocolate put me on her short list of “10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland.” I am honored. I do my best to keep this cyber-place as upbeat as I can, at least 95% of the time, hopefully more.

It is interesting that Leeanne notes “The experience of reading her blog is really enhanced by the fact that she responds to blog comments with personal emails…” I do try to do just that, as much as my time will allow. It seems really important to me at this point in my life.

Thank goodness I don’t get hundreds of comments like Stephanie/Yarn Harlot does, though it clearly shows her popularity (and the comments there have somehow become a community of a unique type). I think sometimes I long for that many comments. Then I remember reading a book by Eleanor Roosevelt, about her life, and a huge portion of her time was spent tending to correspondence. She had no choice, really… she couldn’t say that she was just tired of people admiring her and seeking her advice or assistance.

But me? I value every single one of you who read this. I get excited every time I get a comment. And whenever I possibly can, I write with at least a thank you when you take the time to write to me. Thank you, Leeanne, for saying right there in print how much it means to you. I guess we have a mutual-admiration society going here and I’m delighted!

For the knitters who loyally tune in here, you have not seen many photos lately. I knit this hat off the cuff, starting on Saturday at Scene Metrospace Folk Festival. I finished it Monday, and I love it. Altu’s daughter who is a Junior in High School, also loves it. This feels good to me.

(No, there is no pattern. Maybe I will write it up, I hope I do, but the ZigBagz are top priority and I can not focus on a new thing until some of my old things are tucked safely into bed… Nevertheless, I do love this hat. Yarns are DiVe’ Autunno in teal-to-green with black and Cascade… can’t find the ball but it’s worsted-weight 50% Merino wool, 50% Angora… in a bright green. Very soft, I’m calling this my Soft Stripe Hat for now.)

Well, Monday was one of my favorite holidays, right up there with Thanksgiving. We celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I did work, but I work teaching others and I think teaching/learning are reasonable pursuits on that sort of holiday. I have written long essays on this day in previous years. I am not writing about it today, but that is not to say that the holiday escaped me. It definitely did not.

However, I was reading the comments on Stephanie’s Yarn Harlot blog the other day, and someone mentioned a Squirrel Appreciation Day. And it’s on the same day as Dr. King’s day? Amazing. I admit that the date of Dr. King’s celebration changes because of Monday holidays, but I found it impossible to understand the idea of a Squirrel Appreciation Day at all, and to have it compete with MLK Day was surreal.

I remember a friend from New Zeeland who moved here for several years. She says the first few weeks they were here, they used up much photographic film trying to get good shots of those adorable squirrel creatures. They seemed so exotic!

But for me? If Dr. King is about peace, then squirrels are not. We have one spectacular tree, and from it a squirrel can get on our roof. From there, he/she can get into enough mischief to cause my house damage and me a bit of jangled nerves.

We had a squirrel when I moved here, who was fat and fearless. I think someone was feeding him and I was not amused. He would come up on the step and when you yelled at him to go away, he just looked at you. As in, are you bringing me food now? Quite spooky. They live near humans but they do not usually get along with us quite that well. They should rightfully be a bit afraid.

One day we found squished squirrel in the road and that one stopped coming around so we think it was him. As Kenny says, Curiosity Killed the Cat, and Indecision Killed the Squirrel. They are always trying to figure out which tree is closest to run up if they are startled, and sometimes they head to the closest but not safest tree (or phone pole). Maybe I’m a squirrel, I suffer from indecision myself, though it has never threatened my life at this point.

When I moved here there was a protected spot on the roof where a lot of angles came together, where the squirrels had gnawed a hole and were trying to get through to the attic on the other side. Our neighbor at the time, Marvin, put a metal plate there with a plywood board over it, and that ceased to be an issue.

Then this year I kept hearing “someone” up in the attic, at all hours of day or night. We have had birds before but this one seemed to be scurrying in a way a bird would not. I figured it was a squirrel. We found that one was going in and out the vents on the roof. We got new animal-proof vents. And the sounds did not stop.

So about a week ago I talked to friend/musician/woodsman Paul Bennett and mentioned the squirrels. He didn’t miss a beat. He said, they are traveling in the gutters of your roof, look for a low spot on the very edge, and they get in the attic by chewing a hole through the roof boards, underneath the very last bottom shingle.

So a few days ago, I heard it again. And I went outside. It was the perfect weather for the discovery… and sure enough, it was a piece of cake to find it once Paul had described the situation. On the front of the house where we added on the new porch several years ago, there is a side gutter. And there was clearly a little entry hole, and even squirrel tracks going from the gutter a foot or so from that hole up to the top of the roof. Wow.

Well, then I read about squirrel appreciation day. I personally am afraid for my house, that the rodent will gnaw through electrical wires or something. I’m a little less worried about the things stored in the attic, though no doubt it could become bedding for the furry little pest.

But I read the whole page written by the Founder of Squirrel Appreciation Day. And I read that the animals do not like the scent of mint, and if you put peppermint oil on a cottonball in the attic space, they will vacate. This sounded too good/simple to be true.

I had a cottonball, and I had some very strong Eucalyptus oil, which is to me even more obnoxious than peppermint. So I put some oil on the ball and put it in the one attic door I could reach easily. I can get Brian to help me go into the one other door near the squirrel area when he gets home.

I’m crossing my fingers. I am not one to put out bait, and closing up the hole could trap the dude inside which could be very bad. I really want this furry tenant to go his merry way without a formal eviction of any sort.

As I type this I can hear someone up there walking around. It’s really spooky. Let’s face it, we are humans on earth and we make little climate-controlled boxes to keep ourselves warm and protected. But we are not in charge of nature, and animals are much more resourceful than humans are in cases like this.

While researching this column, I found a web page that says in Council Bluffs, Iowa it may be illegal to do what I am doing.

City Attorney Richard Wade said roughly in the 1930s, the City Council adopted an ordinance barring people from bothering black squirrels.

According to the ordinance, it is illegal to annoy, worry, maim, injure or kill the squirrel.

My squirrel is red. Go, cottonball!