I finished a pair of sox today for beloved hubby, Brian. I started these on a trip to Las Vegas in August, but I had two pair going on that trip… finished the one pair I liked best and just plain FORGOT about the second pair. Found it in my trunk a week or two ago when looking for some motor oil, and then had to figure out who they were for, etc…

They were done except for toes, and the perfect length for Brian… that helped me remember that they were for him, after all. It’s a Regia jacquard in turquoise, three blues and a grass green… with solid charcoal heels and toes. I have enough yarn left to make myself a pair to match (we both have smallish feet) but we’re not the “matching clothes” type of couple, so I resist, at least initially. I do love the colors of these sox, though. I could be tempted.

Now I don’t have a single simple project going that I can do on the road (I finished the toes today in line at the Post Office). I have so many obligatory projects and unfinished longterm “thinking” projects, that I hate to start anything new. However, I can’t do my current projects while waiting in line, they take too much brainpower for that sort of distraction. I don’t know why I feel so guilty starting another simple pair!

I need to get over the guilt and start something tomorrow because I will be going to hear my Goddaughter, Sara, sing at solo and ensemble. I expect to have quite a bit of waiting time there, between performers.

I am still plugging on the eternal to-do list (for my work) so I have no picture of the sox yet. That is four finished projects in a week! Purple alpaca and turquoise Opal sox for me, purple cropped-finger gloves for me, and Regia sox for Brian. Now if I can just get some time to take pictures and edit them properly for the web, I’ll let you see the goodies. Meanwhile, maybe you can just catch the good finishing energy from my note!

I’m so excited! My friend Deborah Harowitz (ScarletZebra.com) sent me photos of two pair sox she knit using my Barberpole Sox pattern! Check these out! She competes for the title ColorJoy Grrl, don’t you think???

Deborah used Cascade Fixation (sportweight) cotton/lycra yarn. She bought it one day last fall when she and I met halfway between our homes, at Elaine’s Yarn Shop in Davison, Michigan. Too bad we live so far away from one another, as we both drive over an hour to meet there. It makes meeting an infrequent joy at best. Fortunately, we have email to keep us connected between visits.

Deborah is not only a knitter, but she is a dyer and quilter among other occupations. I have seen her work and it is wonderful. Last year she designed a sweater in hot fuschia and chartreuse (hot yellow-green), an asymmetrical sweater with many textures and many yarns. It is truly a masterpiece. I’ve also seen her quilting with hand embellishment. Very nice work. Her Scarlet Zebra website (link above) offers supplies for dyers, knitters, quilters and weavers. You might want to check it out. The website has a new design recently. Deborah is doing all the web design work herself these days, as well as running the rest of her business. I wonder when she sleeps???

Thank you, Deborah, for making my day! These sox are purely ColorJoy!

I’m crazy busy doing my to do list from coming back from vacation: 18 items, about a dozen legitimately rating a priority of 1. Several of the tasks are due today, thankfully some will not take long.

In order to give you something to read, I’ll put up a picture of the lovely feast I had at the English Rose Teahouse in Ormond Beach, FL (the day it snowed in Daytona, but we somehow missed it… Ormond Beach is just north of Daytona Beach).

The service was lovely, the food divine. My meal was a chicken salad with pineapple, grapes, celery and almonds, with a curry dressing. It also came with a scone (Brian got to eat most of that because of my food sensitivites, and he was not upset about that at all). I also got a lovely darjeeling tea. What a treat!

Just look at the table setting: lovely dishes, a crocheted doily, everything artful as well as tasty. We really lucked out when we finally found this place to have a meal.

We got home tonight. It was in the 60’s when we left Florida. When we arrived at Detroit, it was about freezing, snowing, and pretty nasty for driving. Fortunately (I think), it was colder in Lansing which meant the streets were a little better to navigate.

Knitting news: I finished two pair of sox (both slouchy, one hot purple alpaca and one turquoise/jacquard opal) and a pair of alpaca half-finger gloves while I was gone. We had so much down time traveling by plane and car, and a little time here and there visiting folks, that I had plenty of time to do some good work.

The sox were actually nearly ready to finish when we left (basically they needed toes and that was all) but I started and finished the gloves while there. I have already worn the cropped gloves for hours and hours, they are so right for my lifestyle. They were tedious to say the least, but I am glad I took the time to slog through all those yarn ends to work in, and all the extra planning. These are gorgeous and very warm!

After I finished the gloves, I then started a sock design for a book project. I am again having my horrendous “gauge of the hour” problems and can not get even a few inches of the cuff done in the same gauge. I am so frustrated with that, that I do not feel like knitting tonight. It makes me nuts when I have to knit and un-knit over and over and over again, trying to make knitting from one day or part of the day, match the current knitting. It seems to happen more when I do stranded fairisle-styled knitting, and I just love that sort of design.

It is probably good that I don’t feel like knitting or anything else, because I am sooooo tired! I’ll catch you folks tomorrow. As I get time this week, I will share some photos from the trip. That is, if I *have* any time this week, because I have some major projects to do now, as I return to my “normal” routine.

Sunday night we visited Brian’s parents near Ruskin, south of Tampa. We did not have much time, but we were able to take them to dinner at a buffet restaurant they enjoy. We also got a tour of their park and the area surrounding where they will be living for two months this winter. We tried to go see the manatee, but the viewing area had closed about 45 minutes before we arrived. This sunset was from the fishing dock area in their park. Some neighbors of theirs, also from Michigan (actually, Lansing), took the photo for us (we were in the picture but with the sun in the background you could not see us so I had to crop us all out).

We have spent most of two days with my Mother in Lakeland, Florida. It is a friendly town, and the sun has shone a lot which we appreciate a great deal.

Yesterday we hit the thrift shops. I can always find brighter-colored clothing here in Florida than I do at home in Michigan, so it is a fun outing to shop here. I found two sweaters, one wildly multicolored and one a sort of bright teal-blue. I also found a beautiful flowered rayon skirt in fuschia with accents of purple and blue. I also found two items that will be good for dance practice. It was a good shopping day, indeed!

Today Mom and I went to the ladies’ coffee that is held here in her park twice a week. I have attended these four times previously, so some of the faces are starting to become familiar. Last night, Brian and I played music for the crowd as they were preparing for Bingo, and many ladies made sure to tell me how much they enjoyed our singing. It is always nice to know that what makes me happy, also makes others smile.

After coffee, Mom, Fred, Brian and I went to Hollis Gardens, a beautiful and fairly new formal garden on a lake here. It is one of my favorite spots in Lakeland and I was glad to show it to Brian. He has only been to Lakeland once, if I remember right, and he had not seen the gardens yet. (I took a number of photos there, so I will plan to show those to you soon. In fact, I have taken so many photos here that I am not sure how to choose which to show you and which to keep to myself. It has been a visually interesting trip.)

In Lansing, we have a formal garden called Francis Park, which goes back to the 1920’s. It is where we got our formal portrait as The Fabulous Heftones.

We leave Lakeland after lunch today, homeward bound. We will be sleeping in our own bed tonight.

My Sister in Law, Kathleen Alcocer, is not just a good friend. She is also a wonderful painter and artist, although she has a hard time with me labeling her as such. See this small version of a digital-only image she created with Painter software on her computer. The image exists only in digital form, although it could be printed on paper if she wished to do so. There is something about pure color, expressed only in light, rather than on paper with ink or paint. You can not get a purer color than light!

We really enjoyed our two days with Kathleen and her husband, Pedro (in Jacksonville, Florida) this week. We enjoy both Kath and Pedro, and the city of Jacksonville.

We took many pictures and I will want to share some of them with you here at some point. However, on the road I pay for internet access by the minute, so I will do “blog lite” today.

Wowie, we are on the road and it is such a different life! We had to get up at 4:15am to leave for Detroit, and since we normally go to bed between 1am and 2am, it was really a stretch for us. I got a small nap on the plane and another small one in the car, and those helped. We went to bed at 11:15 at Kathy and Pedro’s house, though. One can only handle so much!

We had no trouble at all getting checked in with our e-tickets on Northwest. The security was worlds better to get through than it had been in August when we went to Las Vegas. I was relieved. Everything about the flight went well (those seats are too small for anyone over 12 years old, though).

When we were preparing to land, the pilot announced that it was 30 degrees F (0 C) in Orlando. There were groans of disbelief from the crowd! Sure enough, when we were walking to get our rental car, there was a recently-washed vehicle sitting in the parking ramp with icicles hanging underneath it. I didn’t have my camera but I wish now I had, just to prove it. Later that night we saw frozen puddles on the ground. Kathy says it has not been this cold in Florida for seven years. I am very glad I brought a few wool sweaters!

On the way from Orlando to Jacksonville, we had a challenge finding food. We went past a strip of Vietnamese and Korean restaurants in Orlando when we weren’t hungry, and then regretted it an hour later when we wanted to find a meal. We got off at Deltona hoping to find something, and there was a strip mall at the exit with stores, then we drove and drove and drove and found only houses. We gave up and turned around, got back on the highway (US95) and finally got off at Daytona Beach and went east looking for a funky beach restaurant.

We apparently got to the area north of the business strip, so again we found a bunch of nicely-landscaped Florida homes. It was interesting though, because all these beautiful yards had plants covered with sheets and blankets, to protect them from the frost. It looked sort of like a flea market or something, a hodgepodge of unmatched garments all thrown together in a mess. I am sure that the gardeners here will have a lot of work this spring, replacing plants that did not make it.

We gave up on a beach café and at Ormond Beach we turned west again, at this point not picky about where we might eat… we would have been happy with even a chain restaurant and bland food. Luckily we found English Rose Tearoom. As you may know, I am a tea fanatic and we truly enjoyed the atmosphere, the Darjeeling tea, and the meal. I had an incredible chicken salad with pineapple, celery, grapes, and a wonderful creamed curry dressing. It was the best food I have had in a long time.

Friday night Kathy and Pedro took us to eat dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, Heartworks Café and Gallery, in five corners, a funky part of Jacksonville. I had lentil loaf (something like meatloaf but much better), Kathy had sweet potato stew, and Brian and Pedro had some latin-American influenced meals. It all looked great.

After dinner we got the grand tour of Jacksonville, driving around and at one point we found an Opening of an art gallery. It was wonderful. There was a showing of several artists, one was Mark Cottle, his show was called Body Doubles. He did assemblages of folded paper and paperclips, a method he learned in China (they make door curtains of these and he found a shopkeeper to show him how it was done). He is an architect as well as fine artist, and so he printed out particular images on the paper that he folded around the clips before assembling them into long chains. Some chains were on a large wall, a huge panel of them flat like a painting. The others were hung in airy cylindrical columns which looked from the outdoors as if they were solid mosaic columns. It is very hard to explain but it was incredible to see as they moved in the breeze.

Another woman, Lynn Whipple, made assemblages with old photos, old boxes, and found objects. There were four glass jars holding cut out pictures of people, three of them who she had given wings of bugs or cut out paper. They were secured to the bottom of the bottles with what looked like beeswax. Two of the bottles were honey jars. It was as if the people were caught by a young child and trapped in a bottle to be observed until they wither from disinterest. She also did some antique looking box assemblages, one with a hand puppet body which had two photos of the same person’s head sticking out, and old handwriting as the backdrop. It reminds me a little of the work of my friend, book artist Susan Hensel.

Brian and I leave in the wee hours of the morning to go to Florida. We will be visiting his sister, Kathy (she is a very fine artist), her husband, Pedro, my mother and her partner Fred, and Brian’s parents. We are only going for five days, so it will be a whirlwind visit but at least a change of pace.

It is cold down there right now. Kathy says her plants froze last week, and that we need to bring sweaters. Mom says right now it is 40F at night and windy. The three places we will visit are Jacksonville, Lakeland and Tampa bay area, not very south for Florida but a good deal south of Michigan. Since this is mostly a relationship trip rather than a tropical getaway, we will enjoy whatever happens.

I am taking my laptop with me, but am not sure how well I will be able to post here. We get back late Wednesday the 28th. Please bear with me if I do not post every day while we are gone.

One of my blog readers sent me this link today: http://www.loop-d-loop.com. It is a very modern, urban, young knitting site. There is an overblown asymmetrical argyle sweater that is intriguing, and an oversized houndstooth, as well as crocheted hotpants. I don’t crochet and don’t want to add one more thing to the list of things I don’t have time to do, but the site was quite intriguing. I don’t like sites with animation, but I still stayed long enough to see a good number of designs. Nothing like a new view to make me feel warmer!

It is going to go below 0 Farenheit tonight. I put my wool out in the attic in plastic boxes yesterday but it didn’t get below 10 last night, I think. I’m leaving it out there one more day and then carting it back inside. I don’t have a deep freeze and am not going to get one for just wool.

A friend who has been a spinner for a dozen years says she just does the overnight in the garage (below zero) for her wool once every winter and she has not had problems yet (knock on wood) with moths. I’m figuring it’s much better than not doing it, but my back is tired from the hauling. I want to get the stuff back inside before any furry critters decide I have delivered them exquisite nests! We live in a natural world, as much as we try to sterilize it all and pretend we are in control.

I picked up stitches for the sleeves of a long ignored sweater today. Both sleeves have the stitches picked up and one I knit about 2″ or so on it. It looks about right. This is the sweater I worked with Sarah Peasley on, on New Year’s eve… and I haven’t done anything more since then. I did the picking up at the allergist’s office and the small bit of dance rehearsal when I wasn’t dancing.

Dance rehearsal tonight was wonderful. We are starting to get where I actually feel I know something on the dances we did tonight, which is when it is most fun. The beginnings of a dance are slow and dragged out, no fun… and watching others dance in preparation for a show is not very exciting either. So tonight I did enjoy myself!

One of the dancers just got her PhD and so is moving out of state to a new job. Since she is trying not to move everything she currently owns, she gave me three sweaters tonight. They all are mock turtlenecks that are tunic length, and two are incredibly colorful. The third is mostly black but an amazing wool/ramie blend that is shiny and fuzzy at the same time, with several colors of very large bobbles and embroidery. It looks like Nicky Epstein designed the thing, and I love it! No time to take pics of those tonight, sorry.

Someone at my dance rehearsal noticed my embellished thermos tonight. I just love using embellished items I took the time to graffiti! The color makes me smile even when it is this cold out.

Here is a picture of my embellished cellphone. Most of the dots are fabric paint, and they have stayed stuck for two years. I’m very impressed, since I don’t baby this instrument at all. It goes in the knitting bag with all the rest of my “purse” junk, and it is still looking good. The purple dots around the screen are actually fingernail polish. It stays stuck well but just doesn’t pop the colors like the fabric paint!

I saw Altu today. She said she has knit about 2 or 3 inches on her first sock, so she is quite pleased.

She also told me that Alellan had spent all day spinning the wool I had given her, and the older sister went nuts begging to try it. Mind you, normally this sister is not much interested in this sort of thing, she is a very talented athlete and dancer, and starting to get interested in that group-socialization that happens at the mall on days off. It seemed quite improbable that this very physical kid would have any interest in sitting still to make yarn one spin at a time. Yet here we are, with a kid feeling left out!

Of course, I said I would get her a drop spindle as I did for Alellan, but the vendor who has these quite good $3 spindles made with wooden toy wheels is at my guild in three weeks. That is an eternity to a 13-year old girl. I think I’ll have to let her borrow my walnut spindle (I have only one spindle) until I can get her something for her own.

I count this as a big success, two eager learners happy to be working on the things I taught, and one eager to start. What a great thing for all of us.

I went to the knit guild tonight (what a great group of folks it is, too). I showed off my almost-finished alpaca sox that need to be ripped back a little again and reknit once more (but the fabric is just wonderful and worthy of showing off). I also showed off the purple mohair hat.

Then I asked for advice on the hat of the yarn Mandy gave me, that just didn’t turn out well at all. I may try some interesting things to see if I can make it right. I think in the end, I am going to have to figure out how to knit a beret from the top down (sort of like sox from the toe up, where you increase rather than decreasing).

I also took the time to start picking up stitches for the sleeves on the double-stranded Lambs Pride Worsted sweater. I only got halfway around the first armhole, but it is more knitting than I have done on that project in a month or maybe several months. I have several other projects to handle, one for a publication which is being quite patient with me, so I can’t focus on the sweater too much right now. It was good to at least start in again, with the support of all those knitters in the room.

The picture is a mini sock I knit for Marcia, who is one of the very involved members of our guild. She also works for Yarn For Ewe, my Local Yarn Shop. Marcia did a favor for me once, several months ago, and I knit this (I sewed a pin on the back so she could wear it) as a thank you. I used the same handspun yarn (some of my very earliest) that I used for the mini sweater. I could not get the color true in this picture, for some reason.

Before I post blogstuff, I must stop to acknowledge Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. May the work he accomplished continue to bring change to our world.

I hope I can be a small part in that work that remains to be done. I’m not sure I’m big enough to make any difference, but that will not keep me from the hope I might. The world changes one person at a time. I can perhaps make a difference on that level. At least I hope I can. After all, we are all of only one race: the human race. We are all the same on a very real level.

May there peace on earth, between individuals as well as nations.
—–

Today I started the day doing more decorative painting for my friend Altu’s restaurant. It is at the point where it looks done. I still want to do some embellishing in the restrooms but the main dining room is looking great! She had a space with something like a maximum of 12 seats for maybe 3 years, and now she has a maximum 55 (according to the government, anyway). She accomplished this without even moving her location… she just got to take over the space next door. It looks wonderful. Perhaps I will be doing a website for her one of these weeks. When/if I do, you can get a peek at this wonderful, colorful space.

After I was done at Altu’s, she and her daughter Alellan and I went back to my house. They hadn’t been here yet for some reason. Alellan had to take the grand tour finding my teapot collection, the claw-footed bathtub that I’d painted purple with turquoise legs, and a number of smaller fun finds.

After the semi-tour, I did my best to teach Alellan how to spin with a drop spindle. She has wanted to try this for a long time. I got her some beautiful roving in blue/green/purple and she really liked it. She was starting to get a feel for it before I took her home. She was certain she would have all the blue roving spun by the end of the night, and I bet she is right. Fortunately, I had a bit of other wool here and there and so I sent her home with three other types of wool to try out.

Altu has been knitting since she was a child, but had never knit in the round before. I knit her a pair of sox last month and she loves them so much, she wanted to learn how to do that. I got her started, she was on round #2 when she had to leave to pick up her other daughter. I’ll check in with her tomorrow and see how it is going.

After I dropped Alellan off at home, I went to Stitches in Time, in Howell, MI, trying to meet some of my knitting guild friends there (our Lansing guild often goes there on the holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday. It seems wrong to me to celebrate his life by creating a shopping experience, so I didn’t go last year. This year I had spent enough time with Altu and Alellan that I felt OK about spending only a few hours there.)

By the time I got to the shop, the Lansing crowd had gone home for the night, so I sat down and got to know some of the more local folks. It was fun.

I ended up realizing that the alpaca sox I’ve been working on (and I thought were within an inch of starting the toe decreases) were just plain too big around for me to enjoy wearing them. I ripped them out right there at the yarn store and decreased more stitches at the gusset. By the time I’m writing this, I’ve caught up to where I was. Maybe I’ll have a new pair of sox in the next few days! We are going to Florida on Friday, so I’ll have to think about what projects I want to take with me for that five-day excursion.

I’m still thrilled about my sweater find yesterday! It is so warm and comfy, and long enough to keep the tush nice and toasty!

Tomorrow night is Knitting Guild. I love all my guilds, but this is by far the most important. I’m looking forward to it.

I started the day out right today! I had brunch with some of my friends, an informal group I sort of made up, which I call “Smart Grrls/Strong Women.”

I started this around two years ago when I saw that so many of my friends had very fine daughters, interesting and smart. I had a good hunch that these girls did not know each other but might really enjoy meeting. I also had a strong belief that young women really need to know strong women other than their own mothers. In our pre-teen and teen years, I believe we need to figure out different ways to stand tall without copying our own parents. Often we have a limited number of adult friends from whom we can learn other ways. I know I wished for more exposure to “grownups” when I was starting to figure out who I was.

So, one day I called a bunch of folks I knew would click. I invited the girls first. I said out loud that they might like to know women other than Mom. That they were invited even if Mom could not come, and I could give a ride if need be. And that I wanted them to sit next to someone other than Mom when they got to the restaurant. I called them Smart Grrls to their faces, which I thought they needed to hear. They ate it up.

I haven’t done this as much as I should, because we have such a good time when we meet. Not all the women I invite are mothers, but they are all strong from the inside out. Most are artists, some practicing their art more than others. All are creative people who love me in a way that makes me stronger.

We have had as many as 12 people, although usually it is more like six. Today we had only 4 people, but it was a definite success because the one young lady who came, did not come with her mother at all. She held her own with the three adult women who are now her friends, too, no matter what age.

I need to remember to do this more often. These women, all of them, are precious gifts to me. When I celebrate them, we celebrate each other, and we all become more strong as a team.

Pseudo-Knitting News: After I dropped off the young woman at her home after breakfast, I passed by my favorite resale shop. I was surprised to see they had the Open sign lit, and I detoured happily. I found a number of things, two of which were sweaters.

One is a very thin, finely knitted white sweater in acrylic, alpaca and wool. It has a scoop neck and is intended to fit very tightly as sort of that anorexic-grrl look (the label is from a popular store for young women). I was delighted, because I am always cold and I will wear this as a sort of long-underwear shirt. Alpaca, ummmm. So warm and so soft! That was three dollars!

In addition, I really have been wishing lately for a very long mohair sweater to cover my tush. I love mohair sweaters, they are warm and lightweight. I bought two bags of mohair yarn from http://www.elann.com in December, but I’m pretty realistic that those will not become sweaters this season. I’ve only knit one adult sized sweater (short sleeved, but on size 5 needles) and am halfway through another (bulky wool/mohair) sweater, stalled for months.

It is freeeeezing here in Michigan right now, and I wanted warm clothing *now*!!! It never fails, whenever it gets cold I buy something wool… as if that will fix the weather problem! It does make me feel better.

Luckily, I found a cabled mohair-blend sweater that will do the trick. It’s a very bright green, not one of my normal colors (I may try to overdye it at some point). Since I like my sweaters oversized, I need to roll up the sleeves quite a bit. But hey, it is long enough and thick enough and warm enough for me. Three dollars! No wonder I never knit sweaters!!!

If you are also suffering from the cold, I wish you warmth. I am sitting here typing with my new sweater on, and handknit legwarmers and sox. This is the life!

Prepare for a more grumpy than usual post… I’ll get back to my sunny self tomorrow, I promise.
—————-

OK, I will finally admit it. I took the quiz by coffeebean, called “What Doc Marten are You?” I had seen other people be the snakeskin one or blue, and Sheri Figueroa was the pink one! I wanted to be the pink one, too! Not that I would wear Doc Marten’s, I need my feet to breathe more than that, but they look good, and the pink is a shade I adore.

So I dutifully go to the quiz website and it becomes clear quickly that the questions are setting me up for failure. I have longish brown hair with a streak of silver-gray in it. It goes perfectly with my skin and my eyes (it did take me years to realize this, I admit). It’s beautiful just the way I was born, really lovely. I love purple, but I don’t put it in my hair. (See pic of me and my lovely brown hair, wearing a skein of Lorna’s Laces Crazy sock yarn as a necklace.) OK, I can probably survive one mousy-sounding answer.

Then they ask about favorite album, movie and TV show. My favorite music is South African, especially Mahotella Queens and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. (The large picture is one of the Mahotella Queens that I took myself, from the front row at the National Folk Festival in East Lansing, MI USA, August 2001.) If you have not heard this music before, do check it out, it is addictive and never tires the ear. If you can’t find it locally you can try Elderly Instruments, a music store where my hubby Brian works.

My second favorite type of music would be the tunes and ditties from the 1920’s, flapper/early jazz stuff I’ve talked about here before. Both my favorite music types are funky and unusual in my mind, but I get a choice of Grateful Dead, Lionel Richie, Tori Amos, The Doors. I had to pick Tori Amos, that was the only performer listed I have ever purchased a CD by.

Next: media questions. OK, so I’m unusual in this society, but I really really don’t like TV or Movies. I just don’t. I tried to like movies, but they stir me up so much that I was getting upset. I don’t feel like spending money to get upset, so I don’t go anymore. The last movie I saw was The Lion King, at the movie theatre. It was a wonderful movie overall, but his father dies and I, too, had my father die when I was only 14. That part was so awful to sit through, I was in pain. I just can’t enjoy that kind of emotional manipulation, even though I understand it is exactly what they set out to do, and what others enjoy.

I don’t have cable and I don’t have a VCR. I do have three television sets but they are all black and white, and they mostly gather dust being sculptures. OK, I turn on the TV for the Olympics Figure Skating every four years, and I did turn it on for about 20 minutes this New Year’s Eve to watch the ball drop in Times Square.

But the one thing I would watch a lot, if I could just figure out when it was on, would be the Teletubbies! You don’t have to like them too, but doesn’t that make me a little funky or at least a little interesting or odd? They didn’t give me that choice. They gave me seven current TV show choices, none of which I have ever seen.

Then they want to know if I go out on a Friday night, what I drink. Well, I’m a fanatical tea drinker. (I’ve talked here before about my collection of Hall teapots including a donut pot like the one pictured here.) I prefer Japanese green tea if possible, perhaps the kind with toasted rice in it (Genmaicha). At the Lebanese restaurant I drink anise tea, at the Ethiopian restaurant I drink a spiced tea with cloves. At the Chinese or Thai places I drink jasmine. That seems different and funky to me! What I don’t drink is alcohol… my choice, based on family history mostly. So the only choice I have that isn’t alcoholic is water? Come on! They didn’t even offer espresso as a choice. Humph.

In fact, if I go out on a Friday night, I might just be at New Aladdin’s Lebanese restaurant, drinking anise tea and watching my dance friends entertain the crowd. Or if I’m lucky, I’m performing myself, as Eudora. But I flunked the question anyway.

I did OK with the car choice. My fave vehicle (practicality aside) would be a VW Bus from the 60s, especially a grass-green one. The bus was actually an option in the quiz. I should have received a little funky credit for that one, right???

Then they want to know what tattoo I want. OK, I’m 44 years old. I don’t want a tattoo at all. I like skin to be skin colored. The only tattoo I’ve ever seen that I liked was a bass clef, in black, on the ankle of a fellow bass player. That is just as far from the choices given as no tattoo at all. Strike six!

By this point it makes no difference how I answer the last three questions. Of course, my “drug of choice” answer is caffeine, which is a serious demerit on the coolness/funky scale.

So what did the ColorJoy grrl get as her Doc Marten color? Classic brown. Ugh!!! I protest!!!

I am positively allergic to brown, how dare they! The only brown I think is truly beautiful is brown skin (OK, and hair). I don’t even really like wood very much (although I like the wood floor in my house). But here is what they say:

I’m the plain classic brown Doc Marten…
I’m mellow, down to earth,
and a little on the conservative side

Conservative? Me? Hardly. I don’t party, and don’t follow the mass media. That makes me conservative???

I’m a fourth-generation Unitarian-Universalist (my great-Grandmother was one of the founders of Nora Church in Hanska, MN), I play a funky bass instrument called a Heftone which was built by my father-in-law, that looks like a huge banjo. I am a middle-eastern dancer (beledi dance, otherwise verbally contorted to “belly” dance). I wear so much color that when I do laundry I do a “fuschia load” and a “turquoise load.” I painted my front porch purple. I mail embellished styrofoam wig heads through the US Postal service without envelopes, for the fun of it.

I drive a 1998 shiny “Techno Blue” New Beetle with stars on it, with purple fuzzy dice and two talking teletubbies in the back seat. I once drove for two days to Montreal, with one of my goals to buy eyeglass frames there. I put 250,000 miles on my previous car driving alone around the USA and Canada discovering big cities, especially NYC, Boston and Chicago. Yes, alone. (I made friends when I got there.)

My favorite food is Ethiopian, followed by Lebanese (and when I can get it, east Indian). I mean, I eat these foods all the time… not just on a special date. I had Ethiopian lentils for lunch today.

What makes me “classic and slightly conservative???” Aargh! Even the kids I work with at the community center tell me “Oh, don’t worry, those new kids just aren’t USED TO YOU yet.” I should at least rate a color, right?

Maybe the fact I even took the quiz says I’m not as unusual as I want to be. I guess I was enticed by that pink! They got me good.
—————-

OK, I’m back. I’m myself again. I just needed to get that off my chest. I promise I won’t be grumpy here for a long while now. ColorJoy, right?

I love Brian Andreas’ works. He combines words and highly-colorful images of beings, in a way that really reaches me where I feel it on a gut level.

I have one of his “Story People” of painted wood, with a poem on it (it looks like it was rubber stamped one letter at a time). I also have a print. Both bring me to tears when I read them.

The poem on my wall piece is too long to quote here, but this is what my print says:

for a
long time,
she flew only
when she thought no
one else was watching

How did he know? I grieve that I had to go through those days, and rejoice that they are gone.

Go check out his site - http://storypeople.com

The site has Andreas’ books with his poetry and line drawings, matted prints in color which include a poem, and the 3-D wall-mount story people. There is a chat board which looks fascinating although I didn’t dive in very deep.

I chose the version of the site for “older browsers.” It was disappointing that I couldn’t make the e-greetings feature work, even after I created an account where I told the site my email address. That was a disappointment, but maybe it would work with the new version of their site and Internet Explorer (I use Mozilla most of the time).

Even if you can access only the poetry, it is totally worth a trip in any case. Fabulous, heart-lightening stuff.

I asked the Knitlist for opinions on Michelle’s request for “butt warmers.” I had thought I’d use the Barbara Walker Knitting from the Top book (I still think I probably will) for the pattern/formula, but didn’t know what yarn and how much yarn to get.

Michelle wants to be able to machine wash these, she wants them to be warm, and she wants to keep the costs down if possible. However, since she will wear these a lot and surely wear them out no matter what they are made of, we need them to be durable.

I thought an acrylic/wool blend would be good, and she lives near a Michaels store where she could get some WoolEase so I thought that was the first possible solution. However, the input I’m getting from the Knitlist is that for the type of hard wear these will get, they would probably pill and maybe wear out too soon if made in WoolEase worsted (which is a light worsted).

I may try Plymouth Encore, which I have used and like just fine at a tight sock gauge. Either I’ll do that, or I will look for some sort of worsted superwash that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Often I go to Brown Sheep yarns for affordability, but I don’t like their superwash very much. I’m sure something will come up that will work. We are not on a deadline, this is just a cool idea.

Someone sent me a note that the Rebecca knitting magazine website (this is a european magazine aimed at young knitters) has some free patterns on it. Did you know that? I somehow was surprised. Anyway, they have a pattern for a “bikini” free in PDF format. (See picture above.)

It is not skimpy as I would expect, it sort of has hot pants instead of bikini bottoms, and the top is more like a halter top one could wear with a flowy broomstick skirt in the summer, quite cool. The model is far too anorexic for my taste (am I the only one worrying that we are going to lose a generation of young women to this devastating ideal of skin and bones?) but the two-pieced suit looks wearable for not just a model. I may try that top for the summer, myself (and I am 44, not at all in the target audience). The hot pants I would rather knit-to-fit, but the pattern may help me figure out how much yarn I will be needing.

I found a men’s sweater in a two-color slip stitch pattern that I really liked on the Rebecca site, as well. (I wear a lot of men’s sweaters myself, I like the “flashdance” look of huge top/leggings.) You might want to check it out.

In socknitting news, I am working my way on both the purple alpaca and the turquoise Opal sox. I still don’t know what I will do with the found sox of yesterday so I’m letting them sit in a corner of my workspace until they tell me what they want to be. I’m leaning toward giving them away but I’m not convinced yet. It seems most of the sox I’ve done for myself are handwash yarns and it would be great to have a few more machine wash goodies for myself between handwash days. (The picture is a swatch I did in the round, from the Opal yarn. I wear it as a wristwarmer now.)

I haven’t touched my knit rug in days, nor have I done any spinning. I keep thinking I will start on the sleeves to my sweater, and I desperately need a chunk of time to get into the dyeing studio. There are all these white yarns begging for my attention, and a bunch of folks on my emailing list, wishing to see what I am going to sell.

However, I have a lot of computer work to do these days for three different clients, distracting me from the yarn-coloring. That means when I’m home, I often am doing my geeky work instead of knitting or dyeing. I am working with my brother, Eric, on one MS Access project. We solved a problem today that has been an issue for two years! We are very excited about that.

Thank goodness for sox, which can be knit in bits and pieces everywhere but home! If it weren’t for them, I might never finish anything!

My friend Michelle, another dancer in my troupe, asked me today to make her a special project. She wants what she calls a “butt warmer.” How intriguing!

She dances in cold rooms (our dance rehearsal tonight was two very long hours at 50 degrees F, more extreme than usual since the building was having heat problems again). She can cover up with a sweatshirt and a pair of legwarmers, but her tush gets cold! She basically wants a pair of knitted hot pants (extremely short pants) made of worsted weight yarn. How fun!

I have the Barbara Walker “Knitting from the Top” book which details nicely how to do pants. I was planning to make myself a pair of long underwear with my leftover sock yarns, before next year’s cold season. Now I get to try the trickiest part, the top part down to 2 inches or so past where the legs join. And I’ll be using fatter yarn, as well, making it a quicker project.

I put out a note to the Knitlist asking how much yarn she should get for this project. I usually make socks or hats, or occasionally legwarmers. I sure do not know how much sweater yarn I need for butt warmers!!! We will see how this goes. It may take a while because it definitely will be thinking knitting, which I don’t do much of. However, it will be fun and rewarding when I do complete the project.

In other news, I was digging around in the trunk of my car today looking for some oil, and I found a plastic grocery bag I didn’t recognize. It turned out to be a bag containing a pair of sox I had started in August and totally forgotten about! All that is left on them is to knit both toes. What a wonderful find!

I knit them mostly on vacation in Las Vegas (when we went to Graceland Chapel to see a wedding performed by “Elvis,” a wonderful wedding indeed). I did them in Regia self-striping yarn, on size 2-1/2 Brittany needles which is really a bit loose (remember I knit tightly in general so it may not be as off as it sounds) but I was interested in instant gratification. How funny is that? Some kind of instant I got!

I apparently kept knitting on the feet of these sox when I was distracted by other things, so they are too long for me. Now I have to decide if I want to un-knit an inch or so and make them fit me, or give in to the fact that they are loose all over and they may fit a friend better than they fit me.

I visited my friend Altu today, who I had gifted with sox around Christmas (but not specifically a Christmas gift) and she was waxing poetic about those sox. She is a skilled knitter running a restaurant, hence she finds no time to knit. She’s never knit sox but now that she adores the pair I made her, she wants me to teach her how to make some. It should be fun, if I can get her away from the restaurant long enough to really learn.

These newfound sox would fit Altu pretty well. They also would fit my friend Ulyana, or my friend Elizabeth, or my goddaughter Sara. But they were intended for me! Brian says they look like they should be mine, so maybe I’ll just go ahead and rip away on that foot and make them for me after all.

It snowed today, which means I need color. Maybe you are in the same boat! You may want to visit this site with beautiful quilts and lovely handpainted/embellished fabrics:

http://home.earthlink.net/~gorgongurl/gallery.htm

The woman who does these, Melanie Testa, is on one of my dyeing email lists. Lovely stuff.

In knitting news, I turned the heels on the alpaca sox yesterday, then turned heels on a pair of turquoise jacquard Opals today. I’m always delighted to be past that part… not because I have trouble with it technically, but because I just prefer knitting without a thought in the world.

I’ll be happy now until I get to the toes on both pair. It won’t be too long on the alpaca, because I’m about 3″ past the heel and I like my sox slightly less than 9″ long. I still am decreasing the gusset stitches on the Opals. I’ll take pictures when they look like something!

The Opals are very very slouchy in the cuff and the alpaca only slightly slouched. I am looking forward to the alpaca for sheer luxury and warmth, and the Opals for the color. I am in a turquoise mood, I have been for several months. Turquoise is harder to find than fuschia and purple, my other two “standard” colors. It will be fun to finish something soon. Then maybe I will allow myself the time to start in on the sleeves on that stalled sweater!

I’ve been in dialog today with folks on the PalmTalk email group on Yahoo. I have had a Handspring Visor Neo (Palm device) since about August, and it still is not working the way I need it to work. Fortunately, there are friendly folks who are willing to share what they have experienced.

I really love my Visor, the calendar is very helpful to me. I don’t do well with paper calendars at all, and carrying my laptop everywhere was getting clumsy enough that I was not doing it all the time. I had a bad few weeks where my schedule got very confused, thus I decided to get the Visor. If I can enter something electronically, I seem to do a better job of keeping it going. This has been a big improvement. Now I just need to figure out how to print only a handful of my appointments. I have been using Lotus Organizer for this function, but it is not synchronizing nicely with the Palm device. Therefore, I’m looking for other ideas.

While corresponding with the Palm Talk folks, I decided to follow the links in a few folks’ signature lines. I found one person who collects yo-yos and one person who makes balloon art by twisting long balloons (my father in law does this sometimes when he hires out as a clown). The page about how they make balloons I found particularly interesting.

I wonder why it is that I get obsessed with knitting sox and inventing the perfect recipe for pumpkin pie that doesn’t use milk or egg, and someone else loves yo-yos or twisting balloons into artforms? Why is it that Brian loves to play banjo and ukulele (and a host of other instruments) but not drums… or for that matter, why does he not wish to act in a play? Why does my brother like acting and directing *and* designing lighting for theatre, yet if I can not be on stage I do not want to give up my time off to help with a play?

In a previous “life,” I was obsessed with polymer clay. I made sculptures, wall pieces, used sheets of polymer as paper for block prints, and made kazoos. The first time I really talked to Brian, he bought a Hershberger Art Kazoo from me. The kazoo shown here on the stand is one I made for him much later. I think I made it for our first Christmas together. I believe the number of the pictured one is #135. It is titled Kazookulele.

I haven’t made a kazoo in over a year now, but I have made close to 200 of them. Brian and I had kazoos as favors at our wedding over six years ago, so that folks who did not bring their instruments (we had a jam session as our reception) could hum/play along.

Today Brian and I went to the Elderly Instruments employee holiday party. Brian has worked there for over a decade. Since they are a retail (music) store, having the party after the crazy days of Christmas orders are over makes it so that people can actually enjoy themselves.

What a group of creative and talented folks these are! During the entire party there is live music, performed by employees and their friends and family.

Opening the “Concert” of the party was a group of old timers playing acoustic stringed instruments in a style rarely heard anymore. The star of that group was Dorsey, Brian’s banjo-playing friend who will be turning 94 next month. He is a ray of sunshine, always a smile on his face. These days he doesn’t get out much when it is cold, although he is still living in the home he built in 1959-60. He was delighted to be there and we were delighted he could perform!

The next group was Brian and I, as “The Fabulous Heftones.” I got to sing my new song, “Tellin’ it to the Daisies,” that Annette Hanshaw number I mentioned about a week ago here. It went over well and was very fun. In previous years, I haven’t sung many pieces because I didn’t take the time to learn new tunes. This time I sang a bit more than usual and got a lot of lovely and kind feedback that people enjoy my singing. That was a wonderful development!

OK, so they already know how good Brian is on the ukulele and so they may take him for granted. I sure don’t!!! But good feedback is always a delight, especially since I enjoy performing so very much.

To keep warm, I wore a beautiful stole that was given to me my friend Altu. It was hand-woven in Ethiopia of hot pink silk and very fine white cotton threads. It has really long and flowy silk fringe, and is a large piece of fabric. It was just the thing to perk up my black dress. There is nothing like wearing a piece of art to make a woman smile!

I don’t buy black garments much any more. I only wear dressy clothing on stage these days (meaning I don’t choose to buy new clothes for parties, I would rather save my money for yarn). This is a lovely dress I’ve had for a number of years, that fits me really well. In addition to the stole, I made up for the lack of color in my dress by wearing a turquoise lace shell peeking out the neck, and hot pink tights with violet shoes. With a violet scarf tied in my hair, I think the overall effect was not black!

The other musicians were all excellent, and quite varied in style. I especially liked the family who sang Andean music and other South American pieces. The one daughter who was about 11 years old, was playing two drums very capably while also singing. I was so happy for her!

I would have played drums in 1969 when I started band, but that was just not acceptable for a girl at that time in my community. I would have been good at drums (I have always been very good with rhythm), and I would have loved it! But instead my father gave me two choices: clarinet or trumpet. I would have loved flute as well, but Dad did not consider that an acceptable choice for whatever reason. I never liked clarinet, and therefore never became good at it.

Fortunately, I also wanted to play guitar and Dad thought that was OK. He got me a guitar about the same time, and I played it pretty much constantly until I went away to college. I gave up my music for over a decade and picked it up again when Brian encouraged me to learn to play the Heftone Bass (click the Fabulous Heftones link above for a picture) that I play with him now. I love playing the Heftone! I found it easy to learn after playing chords on the guitar for so long. And it’s so small, it fits in the back seat of my 1998 VW New Beetle as well!!

(Here’s a picture of me with my car, whose name is Joy. OK, I know it is sort of corny to name a car, but most of my cars have had names and I was so joyful to get her, there was only one name she could have!)

It’s that time of year again. The time I get so sick of everything outdoors being mostly gray. Light gray cloudcover (where I live, we get almost no sun in the wintertime), light gray/white snow on the ground, the houses mostly painted white or beige, the trees the only color… many shades of taupe and reddish-gray. It makes me nuts, especially when there are so many clouds that it feels as though the sun never rose at all.

Last year I reacted to this by painting small walls in the kitchen/eating space a pale peach for warmth, and then followed that by painting trim in the same room either purple or turquoise. The year before, I painted my cellphone with fabric paints and my thermos with fingernail polish. A year before that, I went into my attic/studio space and painted turquoise spirals and dots all over the harvest gold stucco walls and ceiling.

Today my knitting friend Tony and I went to our spinning guild. I did a demo on how to use polymer clay, primarily because fiber people often need a button in a certain shade and polymer is a great way to make your own colors, if need be. I enjoyed it tremendously, I just love teaching and I know a lot about polymer. It’s fun to feel competent!

I took my graffiti-painted thermos with me when we went to the guild. It occurred to me that maybe it could make you all smile, as well.

I finished a beret made of the yarn my friend Mandy gave me for Christmas (see my December 30 entry). It just plain didn’t work. It looked fine for most of the knitting but it just is awful now, after I stitched on the hat band. It fits fine but it sort of gathers or ruffles up around my face instead of being flatter.

Someday I’ll figure out berets. For now, it is still a guessing game every time I change yarns (which changes gauge and number of stitches, never mind the drape is different).

I ripped it out twice before I started this version. It will be harder to rip out with the sewing I did to make the I-cord into the hatband. It will be worth it to get it right. After all, Mandy loves me so much she chooses to give me yarn that is gorgeous. I can choose to knit it up in a way that I will actually want to wear it.

My rule for purchasing garments at a store is that I should want to wear it when I’m tired, first thing in the morning, or I probably won’t wear it much. So the beret must be corrected, which means knitting it again. It’s a good thing it doesn’t take long to make a hat, usually two days.

I’ve been working on some knitting for a pattern, and I taught my first computer classes of the term this week, plus I had a client with a big deadline this week. I haven’t had as much time to type here or knit.

However, I’m photographing some yarns and a couple small bits of roving I’ve dyed recently. The picture here is one of the rovings. I’m working on a website to sell them but it’s not ready yet. I thought I’d be selling by late summer and look at me! I get sox and easy hats knit, but that is because I can do it waiting at the doctor or the post office or the bank!

Fiber-friend Judy Lessard writes of a Fiber Art conference in Lewisburg, PA, June, 2003. It covers many subjects, including basketry, beading, dyeing, embellishment, felt making, knitting, spinning, and weaving.
The conference website is http://home.ptd.net/~tjaugust/index.htm

My friend Ruelaine sent me an envelope in the mail, out of the blue. It contained some photos she took of me somewhere between perhaps 1999 and 2001. OK, so my hair and glasses are different these days, but it’s me.

I have such respect for Ruelaine. Not only is she a fabulous photographer but she is a wonderful poet. Listening to her recite poetry, you can’t do anything else but just drown in her words. When she reads, her whole body is involved, as well as her mind and soul. I wish I had some of her poetry to share with you.

When it comes to springtime I may have to get on my knees and beg for a copy of her poem that speaks of spring, as well as a sort of springlike change in life. “…It was a hard time, Lord, but it’s over…”

Some day I’ll have the full text of this piece on paper, to memorize it. I cry when I hear her recite this piece. I love the poem not only because of the images and feelings it contains. I cry because I, too, have had a hard time, and it’s over.

Along with the photos, Ruelaine sent along a page with some wonderful words written by children near Detroit, Michigan, just after 9/11/01. I’ll share one with you.

If You are Lucky in this Life
A window will appear between two armies on a battlefield. Instead of seeing their enemies in the window, they see themselves as children. They stop fighting and go home and sleep. When they wake up, the land is well again.

–Cameron C. Penny

Ruelaine, thanks for the two gifts!

Hi, all. I had a long day, with a client deadline and then a lovely drive to Ann Arbor to meet with other knitters and fiberartists. We meet at Borders Books and it is just a great group, worth the more-than-an-hour drive one way that it takes. I saw some people I hadn’t seen since October (my schedule has been nuts, plus the group did not meet in December).

The knitting teacher I mentioned on the 31st, Sarah Peasley, writes today that she has her new website up and running. Even if you are not in our area (Lansing, Michigan, USA), you can get her free pattern for golf club covers. Her address is:

http://www.sarahpeasley.com

The picture here is of a sweater designed by Sarah. I think it is just beautiful.

Today was the first day of my new term at Foster Community Center. I have a computer classroom there, where I teach computer classes (mostly to novices, usually retired ladies) and where we open it up as a lab to the public, four times a week, for games and homework.

Since August I’ve also had a program, CityKidz Knit! This is the most fun I’ve ever had, maybe ever. My kids are from 7 years to about 15 years old. They are delightful people and they do a darned good job knitting. I have a few kids still with me who started this summer, who are doing hats, scarves, stoles, socks and one sweater. This term, the City of Lansing put a blurb in the schedule book about my program and I found six more people who might not otherwise have found my program.

Today I had 12 kids. It was wonderful! I had five new folks, a few kids I hadn’t seen since summer, and three of my regulars. Magic. Always magic.

I’ll write more about these remarkable children as the term continues. Today I’m wiped out from not enough sleep working for a client. I’m definitely crashing early tonight!

Today I organized my yarn stash. I have seven clear plastic bins, and I put all sockweight yarns in one, all thicker yarns in small quantities (for sox or hats) in another, large projects like sweaters, felted (fulled) slippers and felted bags in another, etc.

I have enough sockyarn to make 27 pair of sox, filling one box to the brim. I think I’m appalled, except I love every single skein. I remind myself that I did knit 37 pair in 2002, so it’s not even a year’s supply… never mind that I also have some fatter yarns wanting to be sox as well.

However, it is out of balance that I have two boxes of fiber for either spinning or feltmaking. At one time I did a lot of feltmaking (which takes a lot of fiber all at once) but now I’m spinning more than making felt, and that does not use up wool very fast at all. The problem is that I also knit much more than I spin! It is going to take me a long time to spin that wool, or I need to do a feltmaking project this year! I did spin a small amount again today, which made me feel a little better. (The picture is my first-ever handspun two-ply yarn. I dyed the wool myself before spinning it.)

After organizing the wool, I then organized my patterns by putting the ones that I could into plastic pocket protectors and into a 2″ binder The binder is now pretty full. How did I get so many so fast? (OK, they were mostly free from the Internet but I’ve only been knitting again since May 2001.) I often end up knitting without a pattern, but they do inspire me.

Finally (thank goodness) I cleared off my desk, because this is going to be a big work week for me in the computer business. It feels good to start the week with a desk in reasonable order. Too much clutter (my normal state) can eventually make it so my mind gets distracted. I can do emails with clutter, but client projects require and deserve a good clean desk.

My grumpy mood is turning around. After my Saturday walk, I made split pea soup and pumpkin bread, which felt constructive.

Brian and I had a nice dinner together at home. I read some, spun a little on the superwash roving that will someday be sox for my mother, knit three rows on my semi-eternal rug (I’m allergic to the yarn so can not work on it long), and then we worked on learning a new song.

I’m learning Telling it to the Daisies, a lilting melody Annette Hanshaw recorded in 1930 on Columbia Records. You can listen to it if you click on this link http://www.redhotjazz.com/Hanshaw.html and scroll down to find the title. You need RealPlayer to listen to the song, sorry if it’s a hassle.

I already sing Am I Blue and Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love. I have a few more of her pieces on the “someday” list, particularly Would You Like to Take a Walk? and You’re the Cream in My Coffee, and perhaps Button up Your Overcoat. I would love to have a “belting” voice like Sophie Tucker, but in reality I sound really good singing songs like those performed by Annette Hanshaw or Ruth Etting.

I can not express how lucky I am to have Brian as my partner in life. He is just right for me. The more moody I am, it seems, the more constant and dependable he is, yet he is never boring.

I never would be performing musically again if it were not for him. I was a music major in the late 1970’s and around that time I performed quite a bit. However, I had not touched an instrument nor sang in public for years until I met Brian. He just expected that I could learn to play the acoustic bass (I do a decent job of it) and took me along to band practices. Now we play as a duo as well as with the band. It gives me such joy!

The picture is of carnations Brian brought home for me yesterday. He knows I love carnations. They are more beautiful in real life, a warmish fuschia color, more orange than the web can show. I have the right man. Sigh…

OK, I did myself a favor and took a walk before the sun went down. Going for a walk is good for me sometimes. It was deserted, I didn’t even see the people who normally walk their dogs. It is not very cold, so I must have just chosen an unusual time of day.

What really made me feel better was listening to some music my husband and his friends recorded nearly 20 years ago at a performance. They used to perform once a week at a local restaurant, so the energy and connection on stage was fabulous.

What fun, what energy, what music! I’m in that band (Abbott Brothers) now, but we don’t perform much these days. We have two gigs scheduled between now and the Fourth of July holiday, but we jam a good deal more often than that. It is great fun.

I decided that tonight I’m going to give up the knitting entirely and ask Brian to help me work out a new song. I love Annette Hanshaw, whose version of Am I Blue? is just as wonderful as it gets. She recorded in the 1920s and as late as 1935, a classic flapper and expressive jazzy singer. (If you follow the Hanshaw link, you can listen to a good number of her tunes in Real Player format. I prefer her earlier recordings.)

I sing Am I Blue? but I have not worked up any more of her songs for performance. I think it will be a good exercise to pick a song and work on that instead of more knitting. I love knitting, but I get competitive with myself and try to finish more, more more more…!!! I don’t know why, since I’m not competitive in other areas of my life.

Right now the knitting is not fun, so I’m going to sing tonight, and eat good food with my very wonderful partner. The pumpkin bread just came out of the oven.

I’m grumpy today. I just don’t like winter, and it sours my feelings about other things at times. I’ll be too busy to think next week, with two client deadlines and the beginning of my term at the community center, but right now I’m trying to enjoy a morning alone at home. I’m not enjoying it enough, I guess.

I just couldn’t stand to rip out the hat I talked about yesterday (from the yarn Mandy gave me, which came out too small). I had to let it “age” before I could bear to tear it out, for some reason. I am not always like this but I am this time.

So yesterday I cast on with some very yummy Dale Baby Ull, for the Mamluke socks from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. I have been interested in these sox for a long time. As I wrote to the Socknitter list this morning:

“I used two colors of Dale Baby Ull, a light robins egg blue and a sort of soft peacock blue that is darker. I usually go for more contrast but I’m sort of in a turquoise mood and the originals were blue and grey.

“I had to make them at a much tighter gauge than the pattern calls for in order that they will fit me, but then if I don’t knit Baby Ull at a really tight gauge it wears thin more quickly than most other yarns (it’s not sock yarn anyway). So I’m on size zero needles, knitting two sox at the same time on two sets of DPNs. I’m halfway through graph B. It’s going to take a while but I really think I’ll enjoy these.

“These sox are much more than beautiful knitting in my mind. I dance in a middle-eastern dance ensemble and I feel a real connection to those who speak Arabic, especially in these times where we seem as a nation to suspect anyone with mideast roots as possibly untrustworthy. Ugh. I want to wear Arabic prayers (the sock says Allah in Cufic writing) on my feet to connect me to my Arabic sisters and brothers. I guess that was much more important than ripping out a hat, after all.”
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Then, my well-intentioned and idealistic post inspired a reply letting me know that some modern Muslims believe that “walking on Allah” is disrespectful. Rats! I will continue knitting these sox but I will replace the Cufic writing on the foot itself with a zigzag band (they both have an 8 stitch repeat). That way I will not be walking on Allah to those who find this important. I can’t see God as that angry, but that again is my personal belief system, and the reason I wanted to do these sox was out of respect. Rats. After all, these sox were designed based on historical examples, so it was acceptable and perhaps common at one time. I had no idea.

Not only that, but I didn’t follow the graphs in the right order from the book. I don’t use graphs very often and these aren’t that hard, but I guess I needed to read through more carefully before starting. The picture of the sock is on one page, and then you have to turn the page before looking at the graphs so you can’t compare. I could see that I had too many stripes between stitch patterns, but that didn’t bother me enough to go back and rip. However, what happened was this…
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Today would be my father’s 70th birthday. He died at the age of 40. I was 14. The picture here is his high school graduation photo. That’s me in 4th grade below his picture.

My face is the spitting image of this man, especially his eyes. I’m built like mom, and my eyes are brown like hers, but the sparkle in them is pure “Pete.”

My father loved me deeply. He especially encouraged my poetry, because he was a writer/journalist/communications professor and loved words. He also encouraged my music. I remember him teaching me to sing harmony. When I finally got it, it was magic! I’ll never be the same. Now I sing harmony with my husband Brian, in our duo The Fabulous Heftones.

Daddy used to joke about the color purple. You really couldn’t find anything that color in the 60s. If something was silly or odd, he’d make a joke about it being purple.

My father never spanked or hit me, but he used to tease that if we were bad, at Christmas we’d get a purple whip in our stockings. Who knows where a gentle soul came up with that idea! But the story continues…

Our family opened gifts on Christmas Eve, as did the other Norwegian relatives. So on Christmas morning, to make it a bit more fun, we would buy each other “stocking presents” to open. For years the limit was $0.50 per gift, later it went up to $1. We would go to the next town where there was a five and dime, and split up, one kid with either parent, looking for gifts for the other two folks. Then we’d switch parents and shop again.

One year my brother was perhaps 4 years old. As he and mom were shopping for Dad, the kind lady at the store asked if she could help. Eric said “do you have a purple whip?” My mother was mortified, and had to explain the whole thing to the clerk. They looked and looked all over that store for something purple, and the only thing that they could find was a washcloth with lilac and purple stripes. Mom had to let dad in on the joke so he could laugh appropriately when he opened his gift on Christmas morning.

Last year, I painted my porch and my front door purple. It was the only color that would really be right. Daddy would understand.

May he rest in peace.

I got so excited about the mohair hat, that when I had two hours at the community center watching the computer lab today, I cast on for a new hat. I used the yarn that my friend Mandy had given me for Christmas. We work together at the center, so it seemed the right task for the time I had.

It feels great, it looks beautiful. I swatched and took a measurement, but the “gauge of the hour” struck again and got me when I was not looking! The mohair hat was just a bit too big so I rounded down, but once I paired that with the gauge change I ended up with a hat way too small. It could fit a child, but I want it to be mine.

It could be one of those fashionable beanies that fit the head tightly, except that my style is not that sort of fashionable. I guess I’m “stylin’” but not in fashion. And that is as I wish it to be.

If you like knitting it, you’ll like knitting it again! (I say that a lot sometimes.)