Well, I didn’t make the midnight deadline but my ArtYarns are up for the world to see. I hope you all love my creative endeavor here, as much as I do.

I could do more. All my yarns are up, but I had fibers to put up and it is late. I’m calling it a night. We go to Ukefest tomorrow and I need some rest for my overworked voice, so I can sing.

I have put up three pages of my handpainted ArtYarns just now, including this beautiful periwinkle/aqua/lilac sportweight alpaca.

I still have about 15 balls of wool/mohair rovings for spinning and feltmaking, that I just did not get on web pages tonight. I will work on those pages on Monday, as I will be out more than in until late Sunday night.

I am taking my laptop with me, so I will do my best to check the status of any emails requesting yarn orders. Yarn will be shipped starting on Monday.

So here it is: I present to you, Page One of three ArtYarn pages (Ta Dah!):

http://ColorJoy.com/forsale

Scroll to the bottom of the first page, and you will find a link to the second page, and so on. I *do* want you to see all the offerings, you know!

Good night!

I’m working like crazy putting together images and text for my upcoming ColorJoy ArtYarn/ArtFiber web pages. By midnight tomorrow/Thursday (Eastern Standard Time) I will have a yarn site up for your perusal. Please excuse the short postings these days, while I prepare for this exciting event.

There are a few skeins left of the Seaside Cushy ColorSport yarn. A very few, maybe four. You (who read my blog) are the first to know. Check in tomorrow for current status of the project. Thanks!

I’ve recently joined an email list called If_the_hat_fits in Yahoo groups. They just finished their first online gallery of hats made using several different construction methods. You will want to check it out.

I followed a link from Annie Modesitt’s blog (well, her list of links) and found a project called Knitwork by Germaine Koh. (Warning: it’s a Geocities site so you may get pop-up windows.)

Koh unravels used garments and reknits into a 2-meter-wide knit piece that is amazingly long (it shows the piece going up the very long stairway to the gallery in one photo). The piece continues to grow, as she sometimes goes to the gallery and works on the piece during gallery hours. She says it will be done when her life is done, so the project is finite in that way.

How fine that this gallery (which is very forward thinking and has been for decades) would sponsor a piece of this magnitude which is “merely” ordinary knitting from used yarn. The piece is in the permanent collection. This says a lot for the piece and for the gallery. The photos documenting it are quite striking.

I love the Art Gallery of Ontario. It’s in Toronto, my first real city. And it was my first real Gallery/Museum, or at least the first that changed me, the first that reached me. I went there and I woke up. One day I walked into a passageway and there was a large canvas which was white with matte black paint sort of roughly applied in the middle. On that black area, was a brand new, shiny white bathroom sink (the type you might see in a public restroom, in groups of several on the wall). At first I didn’t get it, but I was entranced anyway, that someone would do that. It turned out to be work by Jim Dine, who is someone I later learned about when viewing a retrospective of some of his work at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. But I digress.

This was the first piece of really modern art (by a living artist) that really grabbed me. I bought a postcard of the piece and then forgot I’d bought it. perhaps three decades later, I was moving and found that postcard… and realized the piece was by Jim Dine. I can’t find a pic of that sink piece on the web tonight. But what it taught me was that an ordinary object could be beautiful, could indeed be art, yet we typically don’t see it as art unless it is taken out of context.

I guess that is a little bit what I am trying to do here on this weblog. I am trying to say that art is many things, art is everywhere, art is both ordinary and extra-ordinary. Many things we don’t consider to be art, be they the design of a shiny and lovely porcelain sink, a huge “blanket” made of unraveled used sweaters, or a well-made soup, go unnoticed.

On the other hand, people who can draw are practically worshipped. People go on and on about how they “are not creative.” Maybe they are not, or maybe they only recognize creativity when it involves a drawing tool.

It took me a long time to realize that I was an artist, because I do not work in two dimensions. I could go into a long story of why I don’t choose to draw or paint, but the fact is that I am very good with my hands creating things in three dimensions, items that do not fit on a wall easily. And many of the items are practical, useful objects in normal living… items not considered art in many circles these days. For that reason, I took a long time to realize that I was truly an artist… just one who chose not to draw.

Worshiping artists is a way of distancing ourselves from the magic of artful living. Those same people who worship a painter or someone who makes some sort of art that can be framed and hung on a gallery wall, may be incredible gardeners, seamstresses, cooks, listeners, hostesses. They may write excellent letters to their families. They may create a space in their home for relationships to bloom, either inside their own families or by inviting friends in. We all know at least one person who takes dressing/costuming themselves to the level of an artform. Painting a house is not considered art, but I have friends who have painted with the colors that they adore, inside and out, and have made an artful statement that way.

I guess I owe a lot to Jim Dine, and his choice to pull an ordinary object out of a restroom and onto a canvas at the Art Gallery of Ontario, one day in the late 1970s. I’ve never been the same again.

Image is the knitted outdoor installation piece “Schooner” by Annie Modesitt

Well, it was nice to have an extra hour to sleep in this morning, with the time change. I enjoyed that. I also enjoyed a few hours of sunshine when I did get up. But then the dreaded gray came in and gave me the blues.

Funny, when it’s gray I turn blue, but when the sun goes down I actually feel a little better. Maybe that is because I then turn on all the lights in the house. It seems an indoor light doesn’t make much difference until the sun goes down.

I need color, it’s fuel for me. At this time of year I have to make peace with knowing that it won’t be colorful for a good long time. The trees start turning green in late April if I recall properly. We do have some warm days in March to break the cold spells, but the color takes longer to come back.

Maybe it is not too late to go to the garden store and buy some bulbs that say “Very Early Spring Blooming” on the package. I never bother with any other kinds of bulbs. Only those which can take the winter away, as soon as possible, are worth the effort to me. I don’t like dirt on my hands but I’ll do it for the promise of a colorful spring.

I did spend some time at Yarn for Ewe today with some other machine knitters. I started a child’s sweater in turquoise and spring green, and the colors reminded me of spring. I enjoyed using those colors. Maybe I’ll get stuck on that colorway for a while again (I dyed a bunch of yarns those colors sometime last year, see picture).

Tonight for dinner we had roll-ups with asparagus among other things. I guess that was also my reach for spring somehow. For dessert, though, it’s sundaes with pumpkin sauce I made myself. I do love pumpkin. Pumpkin makes the fall season happier for me.

I also love wool and mohair and alpaca… thank goodness. The fibers can give me joy through the difficult gray season. I don’t like being cold, but I think it is the lack of color that bothers me most of all. No wonder I have been painting my house with more and more purple trim every year! And often in late December I end up painting something indoors with fun colors, as well!

Off to knit something, and do a little more preparation for my almost-ready handpainted fiber/artyarn sales web page. It will be ready soon, so watch for an announcement here in the next week. I will notify my blog friends and send out an email to those who have asked for a note when I have yarns, before I tell the general public. I tend to do small batches, so it’s only fair to give first dibs to those who are most loyal or have expressed advance interest.

May you have a cozy and wonderful day with an extra hour in it!

I guess Saturdays are just made for being jam-packed with activities.

Foster Center Class
Today I taught “Let’s Talk about the Internet” at Foster Center in the morning. It was delightful! I had a retired gentleman who has taken several classes with me in previous terms, and his wife. I had not met her before. With only two students, we got a lot covered and many questions answered. She has done a lot of email and some surfing and he has done virtually none. I think they both enjoyed their class. I sure did.

JoAnn Fabrics
I took a quick trip to JoAnn’s on my lunch hour. What an absolute zoo it was, there were so many people there it was unbelievable. They had one set of sale items for open till noon, and then noon to close. There was a 50% off coupon for one item only, good from noon to close. You could barely move in that store.

I had hoped they would have a row counter for my USM (knitting machine) that I could get with the 50% off coupon but they didn’t have any in stock. The second item on my list was some Wilton’s cake decorating dyes to use on some Lion Brand Fishermans Wool yarn in preparation for a class I will hope to offer in early 2004. I got turquoise and a leaf green. I must be wishing for spring already!

I also got a few pillow forms to fill the pillows I have been designing in my mind for sale at the Art for the Soul sale. And a rotary blade to fill my paper trimmer. It was amusing, when I went to pay, the most expensive thing in my cart was the $4.99 blade so I got that item 50% off. I guess I didn’t qualify as wildly compulsive today, thank goodness!

It was actually quite heartening. That store was so packed you couldn’t get anywhere without a lot of “excuse me’s” being said by all parties. The lines were eight to a dozen carts long and there were at least a half dozen cash registers going at once. And there was not a single crying baby, not a single grouchy person, no angry faces. People knew they were there for a big sale and they waited their turns. I knit in line (some handspun I’m making into wrist warmers) and that made me happier. And the woman behind me was very pleasant to chat with. The lines actually went pretty smoothly, and when I asked the cashier if people had been grumpy she said she only had pleasant people so far. How cool.

This It made me realize one reason that Lansing is a good person to live. When you wait in line people can be pleasant. When you are driving, people let you in when traffic is tied up, so you don’t get trapped. We’re good people in that way in my city. This is a good town for people.

Computer/Knitting Lab
In the afternoon I worked a computer lab. I only had two kids, one computer boy and one knitting girl. She is the new knitter working on a backpack. She has finished the body of the pack and the eyelets. She was supposed to bind off a majority of her stitches and then start knitting back and forth in garter stitch to make a top flap. I had to give her too many instructions all at once when she left on Thursday, and she got things a little mixed up. So she came in and I took out a few stitches that were wrong and just reknit them for her (her Mom was due back any minute from a short errand) and had her do just the last six or so to be sure she understood. Then I got her going on making that flap. She had never knit back and forth using circular needles before, so that was hard for her to figure out on her own. She’s going great guns now.

She’s also (on her own) knitting some wrist warmers for herself. She was using some pink yarn I think she got on her own. Today she said she wanted to do the wristwarmers and then make a scarf to go with them. I had her pick out two oor three more coordinating pink yarns to go with it, to take home. She decided then and there that she was going to rip out the solid pink wristwarmer she had already started (she had knit at least six inches already) so that she could make them striped. Good for her! She loved her new yarn.

Fabulous Heftones at Altus
I ran home for a short while to change clothes and become “Lynn Heftone.” Brian came home and we had no time to waste, to get to Altu’s for our performance.

Tonight all sorts of folks we knew were there to hear us. My mom and Fred came, and Mom’s friend, and Regina who is a friend from Working Women Artists among other places. Regina hadn’t been there yet but she said she really enjoyed her meal. She also said that she heard we were performing tonight, because she had read my blog. Cool! (Hi, Regina!)

Also in the audience were Edna, Kathy, their friend (Denise? Diane?), Cynthia, Doug, Marna, two of Marna’s friends, my dance friend Maya and her friend, and Wally and his friend. All there to see us play. It’s so much fun to play for a room full of friends! My voice was a little weak today so Brian took more than his share of the singing, but I was able to sing harmony for our usual harmony numbers and I did a small handful of songs I knew would not stress out my vocal cords.

This is my worst allergy season of the year and with all the teaching I’ve done this last few weeks I have really somehow overstressed my voice. I need to watch that pretty closely. I was on total voice rest (not a single whisper) for 31 days about 9 years ago, and I am not eager to repeat that experience. But enough about the bummer stuff… we had a blast tonight and it was a lovely little scene there.

Cynthia took some pictures of us while we were performing. I was so aware as she was taking the photos, that she really loves us and really wanted to get some shots that made us look good. It’s hard to take pictures of moving targets, but here are a few that turned out quite well. The shoes are the real thing. Brian got them from a friend when that friend’s father passed away. Brian was the right size, so he got the goodies. He wore these shoes for our wedding, too.

Well, it was too cold to paint the garage today. I was not at all disappointed. I slept in just a bit and then ran a few errands. I finished my cashmerino sample items (still need to throw in washer/dryer) and then Brian and I went to dinner at Aladdins. (We ran into Tony at Aladdins… this is such a small town.)

When we got home I spent some time in the studio and made three small batches of handpainted yarns. They are in the process of cooling off right now. I tell you, waiting overnight to see what things look like is hard work! My childlike self wants to look at it NOW but I have learned that trying to hurry means that the dye doesn’t always set properly. I need to wait until tomorrow.

I have been knitting wristwarmers like crazy, for sale at the “Art for the Soul” sale on December 6. I don’t often knit finished items for sale, but I can knit wristwarmers while reading or doing other things I must do anyway.

Right now I’m working with some handspun I purchased from a Spinners Flock member last December. It is cream and magenta wool fibers sort of in a heathery yarn, and it is just beautiful if a bit itchy. I am going to wash the wristwarmers in humectant shampoo and conditioner and hope that they become soft and lovely to wear. I can wear scratchy wool (and I love how warm it is) but some people just can’t. We’ll see how this all goes.

Tomorrow I teach a class on the Internet in the morning at Foster Center. In the afternoon I have open lab, which could mean a handful of knitters and/or a couple computer kids, or it could mean I’m sitting alone knitting. Either way I will be happy.

Then at 6:30 Brian and I will perform at Altus Ethiopian Cuisine as The Fabulous Heftones. A dance friend (Maya, the one who was dancing in the picture with Mom and I at the Habibi fundraiser just over a week ago) just called to tell me she will be there with a friend. I’m excited to know they are coming.

Well, I’ve been a busy girl, but when I was home yesterday I was re-learning history on the Time site. Some of that was spooky, but the inspiring pieces were worth the “trip.”

New Purple Hat
So now I need to tell you what I’ve been up to. I finished a hat I started on my USM knit machine when Tony was here. It is in Woolpak yarn (the light worsted, I think they call it 9 ply but I’ve lost the ball band) in a very dark purple, almost black. I used the same pattern I tried last time when I used my turquoise handpainted yarn (which is slightly thicker) but since that hat didn’t have quite enough fabric in the top of the hat, I decided to hand-knit a ribbed hatband on the hat once I sewed it together (after coming off the machine). This is how the hats I buy look like they are constructed. I need to do that band on smaller needles next time, perhaps, but the concept worked really well and it fits fine, plus has a little extra fabric where I wanted it to have some.

It is gorgeous. The shape is exactly that of those berets I purchase in stores. The only thing wrong with it is that the store-bought hats are made of a much finer yarn, so they are more drapey. I am going to experiment with the USM and thinner yarns and see what I come up with. The machine theoretically knits sportweight to worsted yarns, but since I’m shrinking (fulling/felting) the knit item once it’s off the machine, if I can figure out the shrinking factor I should be able to create a pattern I like myself. This pattern has six sections and I would like mine to have twelve, ideally. It won’t have prominent corners that need to be rounded during shrinking, if I can figure out a way to do it with more sections.

Mid Michigan Knitting Guild
Tuesday was knit guild day. Tony and I went to the annual Show-And-Tell extravaganza, where everyone (and it is a big group) shows off anything they want to show, that they knit during the summer. The guild doesn’t meet from June-August so this is sort of a reunion meeting. Usually we have the show-off meeting in September but this year we had a Philosophers Wool trunk show in September so it was put off for one month. I had a pile of things to show as did several others. My items were small, though. It’s amazing how many sweaters and afghans some people can knit, and some of those women work full-time jobs and or are mommies as well.

Local Bloggers at Guild
I got to see several of Sarah Peasley/Handknitter’s projects. She had more stitches accomplished than any of us this time, she has been incredibly prolific this summer. Her Mary Tudor sweater is just incredibly beautiful in real life, both as an artform and as a garment that makes the person wearing it look beautiful. I wish I had found time to get over to her table and see some of the lovelies she brought. There are so many people in the guild, and several brought me things for my CityKidz Knit! program, that I got tied up and never got over to say hi to her. Sigh… (Photo of guild, see how many folks there are? Tony is just left of center wearing a hat, and Sarah P. is the very far right person, paying full attention to the speaker while I was not.)

Bloggers Tracy/Sweatergirl, Debi/TrixieChick and Daphne/Serial Knitter were all there. I did get a chance to talk with Tracy a little bit, but I was bummed that I missed talking to Daphne.

Daphne brought a finished Koigu Charlotte’s Web Shawl and I really wanted to see it. I love Koigu more than any other yarn (though I have some in my stash so I’ve been good and have not purchased any in at least a year). I would adore a project mixing several colorways of Koigu, and wanted to see hers up close. I’m not sure I would wear a triangular shawl and I’m not sure I want to do any lace, but anything with Koigu could tempt me for a good while before deciding yes or no. I have enough to do right now, so that is a 2004 project if it happens at all.

Abundant CityKidz are Knitting!
Speaking of CityKidz Knit!, things are going great guns. Wednesday I had 14 kid knitters and two adult knitters besides myself. Today I had ten knitters. This pic is my Wednesday crowd. My group does change by the day.

I love this pic because I have four boys there, and three had not been around in a while. One boy was very excited to finish his wristband in one day. I was not confident he could do this, but by the time our session was up he had about four inches finished. At night, when I stopped by the computer room (I was at Habibi dance practice down the hall while Mr. Mike was working in the lab) and that lovely child was knitting again. He found the magic and was going for speed! Too funny.

In this picture I have fourteen lovely children and only four of them I had not seen in the last two weeks. All of them had visited my knit program at least once or twice at some time in the last year. This is a wonderful development. This summer I had a very transient crowd. I taught knitting for 8 weeks and had 32 children who came only one time. I had only one child who attended 6 sessions, and the rest came 5 or fewer, most of them 3 or fewer sessions. So I am really enjoying the continuity of the school-year crowd. I have younger kids this year, and I have more loyal kids. They are very enthusiastic and have all sorts of ideas.

Four of them have decided in the last week to try knitting in the round. Since all four of those kids celebrate Christmas, I suggested a Christmas stocking so that they don’t have to worry about it fitting and it will appear to go faster than a hat might. They are working top down on short circular needles, and will make a tube which will get a wedge toe and then we will add an afterthought heel. I have big hopes that at least a few of them will finish this fairly large project.

I have two other big dreamers who are doing well on bigger projects. One girl is knitting a top-down hat with mohair and a knit-along accent yarn, on double pointed needles. Another is on her third or fourth week of knitting and is most of the way through a backpack. She knit the bottom and the main body, learned to make eyelets for a drawstring, and is now knitting a top flap. She is really doing well and loving it. She says she knits even faster when watching TV. I’m glad she’s knitting while watching, that makes me feel good.

Planning New Projects
I stopped by Yarn for Ewe tonight after work. It was crowded, with two classes going on. That means the yarn shelves (which are on rollers) were pushed to the sides of the room to make space for tables/students. Wendy and I had a fun time adventuring between the students and the rolling shelves to find some Encore yarn in beeeeautiful colors for a little project I’m going to make soon as a gift (no more said until gift is given/received).

I also picked up two skeins of Noro Kureyon for a pair of maxi-legwarmers inspired by the Sally Melville Knit Stitch book. I am not as nuts over this yarn as some folks are, but the legwarmers are really colorful and I adore that. She uses two variegated colorways with very long repeats, and alternates them into subtly (randomly) striped fabric, and it is wonderful. I’m picky about color and lots of Kureyon has orange or yellow or brown, which I don’t want. However, tonight they had a turquoise/green/purple, colorway 40, so I got two skeins while they were available. (The pattern calls for 2 skeins of each colorway.)

The other day I was there and they had one skein of a hot pink to purple, but I needed two so I passed it by. I will keep looking as I travel from yarn shop to yarn shop (I’m loyal to all yarn shops, they all make me happy) and when I find that colorway I love, I’ll get it and make those legwarmers. (Anyone in Michigan know where I can find that hot pink/purple colorway? I prefer to buy at locally owned shops if at all possible.) Meanwhile, the skeins I got today will make me smile all by themselves. And this way I buy the legwarmers on the installment plan, so to speak… not all bad.

I think that Kureyon yarn almost looks prettier in the skein than knit up, if I may be so bold to say so. I would love a bouquet of it in a bowl or basket to decorate my table (if my table wasn’t already overburdened with the other yarns I’m currently using in projects). So beautiful!

Adventures in Cashmerino
Off to putz around with my Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino. I knit one mini- handwarmer with it and will do one more, then I will do the unthinkable. I’m going to throw them in the washer ***AND DRYER*** (this is not allowed according to the ball band, and I can find nobody who has tried it who will admit they did). I want to see how it comes out. I want to know if washable merino and microfiber with a little cashmere can handle the heat. My theory is that it will not shrink, but might fuzz or pill a bit. I’ll let you know how it works out.

A friend sent me a link to Time magazine’s 80 Days That Changed the World. I have been reading ever since. I just found some knitting I could do without thinking at all, and I’m reading every single page. I’m up to December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus (go, Grrrl!).

Some of it is heavy stuff, with bombs and Hitler, McCarthyism and British troops in Africa. Some of it is entertainment, such as Mickey Mouse, Superman, I Love Lucy and Elvis. Some of it is inspiring, such as Jessie Owens, Gandhi, Jackie Robinson, the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Rosa Parks. The only problem with the site is on regular pages, all the links say is a date, not what the subject is on that date. So going back through dozens of pages I’ve already read to find the link to Jackie Robinson, for example, is a real chore. There is an index page, though, which is some help.

All of it is fascinating. I don’t want to do anything else but read this, and I will have a hard time going to bed on time tonight if I don’t finish reading it all.

Funny, I don’t much care for the mass media, particularly television. I feel that much of the news over-focuses and dramatizes things that need not be over-emphasized. (The kids at Foster Center were afraid they would be killed by last year’s sniper, even though there was no evidence Michigan was a target. I think their fear was because of seeing the story too much, and it was so dramatic that they took it personally.) I also feel that much is left out of the news that might balance things out. For one thing, good people do good deeds all the time and that is not considered news. When a friend left a suitcase on the Toronto subway, she got it back. Why is that sort of thing passed by in favor of human distress? But I digress…

I somehow had lots of history in school about the American Revolution. I got very little world history. So this site is fascinating to me. It gives me short bits of historical information about several different areas of the human experience (entertainment, science, national and international events). They are all on the same timeline so it helps me piece together several areas of history into one picture.

I do admit that I am easily upset and I should not have read about wars and assassinations before bedtime. I also know that much is not covered in one-page stories about merely 80 events since 1923. I found it engrossing, even with these weaknesses.

I found another house in Lansing with Purple trim! Before this, I only knew about my house and my friend Ulyana’s house. I turned around in the middle of my trip across town, to take a picture. Isn’t it lovely?

Go check out Interweave Knits’ website showing knitted shoes!

Well, my inner 13-year-old took over for a few minutes today. I have a lot of colors of nail polish, which I use to decorate/paint items in my life, such as my thermos or cell phone. I don’t like the feel of nail polish on my hands, it feels like my fingers can’t breathe. I resist putting it on for Habibi Dancers’ performances. I put it on at the very last minute, and it’s the first thing that comes off when I get home.

But not today. Today I painted my five left hand fingernails all with different colors of polish. By the time the one hand was done, I was done as well. I’m typing this note with one embellished hand and one au naturale. It’s starting to bug me, that feeling I don’t like, and the polish will be off soon. But for some reason, I just got overcome with the desire to graffitti my own self! Funny how our impulses go sometimes.

It was an amazing day. The sun shone and at 4:00 it was 77.7 degrees F. It was just plain gorgeous. I want to get out on that porch in the hammock for a few minutes before the sun sets tonight, but I only have another hour or so. I am preparing yarn for dyeing today, but I can measure out the yarn on the porch just as easily as indoors. This will be delightful.

I found a dandelion in the yard a couple of days ago and took a picture of it. It’s a sort of bedraggled flower, not very beautiful, but it’s a sign of summery good times to me and I am glad it peeked out.

Then today I found a violet blooming next to the back steps. I love the violets here. They are weeds but they are prettier than the grass they are growing in, and they are always the first thing to bloom in the early spring. The picture is good of the leaves but a little blurry of the bloom. You can see a fall leaf in the picture, sort of a spring/fall collage.

Off to the porch, after I find that nail polish remover!

Sunday I set aside for friendship. I was to have breakfast with Altu and then lunch and afternoon knitting with Tony. It turned out Altu had to reschedule for later this week, but I had a wonderful time with Tony (and got to sleep in, which I thoroughly enjoyed after two short nights).

Tony popped by in the early afternoon. He’s doing swatches to see if he can make a garter-stitch hemp sweater based on the baby sweater in Weekend Knitting. We surfed a little to see what kinds of yarn/twine he might use if he dives in. I am not much on plant fibers so I had never knit with hemp. He showed me two swatches, one before and one after submerging in water. It is sort of amazing how much that stuff puffs up. I guess it gets really soft but maintains its strength, after several washings. OK, so it’s brown (I know it comes in colors but that wasn’t what Tony had) and it’s not fuzzy soft like wool, mohair or alpaca. I just can’t love it, but I can see the attraction. I don’t like blue jeans, either. What can I do? I’m just who I am…

I showed Tony a bit about the USM (Ultimate Sweater Machine) knitting machine that I have on loan from the JoAnns where I teach. I did a little mini-demo and then set him loose on the thing with some acrylic worsted weight yarn. Neither of us really likes acrylic but hey, if you use up half a skein practicing on something you will never use, there is no heartbreak losing the yarn as there is with stash yarns.

While he was learning all the possible “hiccups” there might be with a knitting machine, I made us pumpkin soup. We took a break for lunch and ate the soup plus some Irish soda bread he made for us in his bread machine. He likes to experiment with lots of types of bread. It was a bit of a challenge for him to change his soda bread recipe to not have buttermilk (which I can’t have) and a few other things, so the bread was very dense but it was quite satisfying. (Link above is to my mother’s soda bread recipe.) Toast, tea, and soup, with a friend. How ideal is that?

After lunch we went back to the machine. I started a new beret with some very dark purple woolpak yarn from New Zeeland (I got it at Yarn for Ewe over a year ago). It is about a DK or light worsted weight, and I think it will shrink up perfectly.

I would have done better with a lighter color of yarn, so we could see the stitches better as I was explaining. However, I wanted that to be my next hat and figured I would “kill two birds with one stone” that way. So I showed Tony how to follow a machine knitting pattern with short rows, using the hat pattern.

After he left I finished knitting the hat and kitchener stitched the two long ends together so it looked hatlike. I added a small I-cord at the top of the hat. Now I just have to sew a small hem for the hat band and put some cotton yarn in that hem so that I can snug it up to the exact size of my head before fulling/shrinking it. Therefore, I have two more things to make it right: sew hem, shrink. Should be possible by tomorrow night. It is so dark (almost black) it may not photograph well at all, we will see.

Saturday I played with knitting a new yarn, making a small item as a sort of swatch. It is a sort of secret (I’m already preparing for holidays and my family and friends read this blog) but I liked the yarn and didn’t like what I made out of it. I think a few adjustments will make it good, though. A good yarn goes a long way in making a project succeed. I need to just tweak a small detail and I think this will be lovely. Maybe that will be tomorrow’s project.

Picture today is the Mt. Hope Cemetery at Aurelius. I pass this cemetery on the way home from Foster Center sometimes. It is bicycling distance from our house, perhaps 2 miles. It’s an old fashioned, lovely cemetery with a few hills in our mostly-flat city. I thought the colors were quite nice. I Hope you like it.

It was a good Saturday. Saturday is usually a workday for me, during the school year, but it’s usually enjoyable. I don’t like getting up earlier than usual, and I do on Saturdays, but the sun shone today and my classroom has wonderful windows. I even opened the windows in the afternoon, when it had warmed up a bit.

I had a computer class for two people (what a change after having 9 people on Thursday) and we had a blast! I ran over to a client on my lunch hour (she lives about 5 blocks from the center) to take a part out of her computer so I could know what to buy to replace it. Then I ran back to Foster for my two-hour computer lab/sometimes-knitting-lab.

I was alone for perhaps 45 minutes in the lab (it was so pretty outside many of our kids were playing outside… in fact the kids across the street were amusing themselves stuffing their hats and coats full of fall leaves and calling themselves scarecrows). Then the kid who comes to see me most often came in, a boy from the neighborhood who is a delight. He likes computers a bit better than knitting but he does both.

Then my dear knitting friend, Tony, came by. I had invited him to stop in but had not expected him to come. He had recited a to-do list that was quite long for the weekend and we are planning to play with the knitting machine tomorrow afternoon already. But there he was, with a couple of books in hand (he always has a new book, it seems) and some ideas for knitting this or that project.

He has a fairisle sweater partly knit that he has decided to turn into a pillow (I think that is a great idea) and we talked about how he might steek the sweater into two pieces so that he could use a plain back and get two pillows. Maybe even machine knit the backs. Perhaps throw the knitting in the washing machine and full/shrink it. I think this is a great idea. Tony loves starting things and doesn’t stay interested long enough to finish sweaters, for the most part. Might as well use what you have completed in a way that shows it off well!

He also brought the Weekend Knitting book by Melanie Falick (isn’t she good at books?) which has wonderful projects in it. There is a baby sweater in there, knit in DK weight hemp yarn, that is garter stitch from side to side for the sweater body, but the sleeves are knit with the garter stitches going from shoulder to cuff. This seems to me less likely to stretch all out of shape than a cuff-to-cuff garter sideways-knit sweater. It looks great. We talked about how to perhaps take that idea and make an adult sweater (for Tony). It was fun thinking of possibilities.

I was so glad Tony came by when my neighborhood boy was in the room. I really love this child, he’s a thoughtful and kind boy who is about age 11. He’s very smart and figures out the computer games really quickly, and is always willing to help other kids who need assistance with games he has already mastered.

Well, I know that the knitting boys (including this child) tend to only want to knit if there is another boy knitting in the room. I have told them about Tony but only two of the girls have met him so far. I was thrilled that Tony and I sat down and dove into knitting projects for over an hour, while this boy listened and observed. He got to see first hand that yes, men do knit, and enthusiastically at that.

I was delighted when the boy sat down with us and started to cast on for a new project. Tony asked him what he was making and he thought it would probably be a scarf (white acrylic). But he may never finish the project… he just felt comfortable enough that he could knit with Tony the Dude Knitter in the room. And that made me feel very good. I cherish my boy knitters, and this one is particularly special.

Oh, after the lab I went back to the client’s house and finished fixing her computer problems (she had the blaster worm, and while I was there fixing that I noticed that her cooling fan was on its last legs so we replaced that, too). She was so very grateful.

I just love working for people who value what I know. Among the geeks I hang out with, I’m sort of normal, not a hot-shot but I know plenty enough to be a good team member. However, what I have over other geeks is that I am really good at translating computerese (I call it “Martian”) into English for scared retired women. And they love me for it. This woman was delighted to write me a check for doing my job (rounded it up, how sweet was that) and I was delighted to work for her. If only all work was that pleasant.

I took this photo in the Groesbeck neighborhood, just North of Foster center’s Eastside neighborhood. This is a street very near where my client lives. We are so lucky, we have had an extra week of color and sunshine than was expected. I, for one, am drinking up every single color.

We (Brian and I, also known as The Fabulous Heftones) are seriously considering going to the Midwest Ukefest (Ukulele music and related fun) in Indianapolis (at least for one day). It’s the weekend of Halloween, from Friday, October 31 to Sunday, November 2.

Is anyone out there reading this, within meeting distance of the Indiana State Museum? It would be cool to meet someone while we’re out on the road. We probably wouldn’t have lots of time to chat, but the event should be its own reward.

Ukefest will feature a large variety of acts, from the elegant and jazzy Jim Beloff to variety and novelty acts, to traditional Hawaiian music, and Deb Porter playing the songs of the Carter Family. There will be no way to be bored.

I wish we could go for the whole weekend, but I schedule my classes at Foster Center months in advance (I’m already committed through the end of March) and we didn’t find out about Ukefest until I was booked.

However, the class that I have scheduled that weekend doesn’t have enough people signed up (yet, anyway) to “go,” so we have a slight chance we will have a few days that weekend free.

I’d just as soon make a living, of course… a self-employed person such as myself embraces work heartily. However, if a class cancels, what a great consolation prize it will be! We can go play music for a while with others who understand that we play what we play because it suits us perfectly, and we are serious about it. Not serious as in grim, but serious as in focusing on this artform and giving it our best efforts.

Somehow when we show up at gigs with a ukulele and a Heftone, people are not sure if we are some comedy act until we actually start playing and singing. (OK, maybe I’d be confused, too, because the visuals are somewhat goofy. That’s why we usually dress in formalwear, to make a point.) Once the music starts, our focus is clear. We smile and have fun, but we are no joke.

I am sure we can go for one day, anyway. It will be a lot of driving but we enjoy traveling together. And Brian is so sweet, he often drives a lot of the way so I can knit in transit. (I have the right man in my life… have I said that in the last few days???)

Indianapolis bloggers/blog readers, are you out there?

Here is a leaf I found on the sidewalk at Foster Center yesterday. We don’t have to go very far to find art in our lives, do we?

It’s sunny again, a real gift, and I’m awake far earlier than usual. I looked outside and something looked strange. I’m not used to seeing sunshine coming from the east! The light seemed wrong to my eyes, but that was all it was. How funny!

Brian tells me if I am upset that the days are getting shorter, I should wake up sooner and be awake for more of the daylight hours. I think my body rejects that idea violently… I’ve been a night person all my life… but I think he has a valid point.

Have a great day. I hope you also have sunshine and colorful leaves.

I followed a link today from somewhere, which found me at a site full of quotations, called Wisdom Quotes. I love quotes, I collect them from time to time. Here is a wonderful one:

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning….
Gloria Steinem

Well, yesterday was jam packed for me. On one hand, I had a pattern deadline for a publication (cross fingers, she said she wanted it but I know I’m not published till the issue is public). And on top of that, the Habibi Dancers had a fundraiser last night at the 5th Element in Grand Ledge.

I dressed up as Eudora again yesterday. I had not performed since Labor Day (August 31) when I went to the Renaissance Festival. I have not really pushed myself very hard since I started feeling better two weeks ago. I have attended one dance class, and did some aerobic scraping and painting of the house with my hands over my head last week (really… that was exhausting after a while).

So last night it was fun to put on all the glitter and glitz of Eudora, and dance again. It wiped me out, but I loved it. We had a sell-out crowd. My mom came with Fred, and Brian came, and several dance friends who are not in the troupe. And a couple who we camp with at Wheatland Music Festival (Brian sat with these folks).

I got home and fell asleep on the couch. I do this from time to time, it’s sort of a luxury to me. But usually I wake up at 3am or so and go upstairs to bed. This time, I woke up at 8:45 when the sun was streaming in the windows. Lucky us, we only had one day of rain when they predicted four! But that just illustrates how wiped out I was after dancing four dances last night. I tell you, dancing does not appear to be an athletic event, but it can be.

Here are two pics Brian took last night. The first is me as Eudora, and the second is the crowd dancing at the end of the show. We got as many people out on the floor as we could. On the left is dancer Maya, then me as Eudora, then the back of my Mother’s head. Doesn’t she have the prettiest hair you’ve ever seen? I don’t understand why so many people cut their hair short just as it becomes luminescent. Good thing Mom knows about real beauty and doesn’t bow to the styles of her peers.

It was a good time for all. I just wished I could have sampled some of that good food! Maybe another time, we’ll go out there and eat dinner. They have blues music sometimes, so folks we know perform there. Maybe we’ll go when they play. Could be a fun date.

This website, Japanese Kimono Design Techniques, was mentioned on one of my dyeing lists. It shows different types of kimono embellishment, from dyeing techniques, handpainting to embroidery and even gold leaf. The shibori tiny tie-dye patterns always catch my attention.

The site is quite worth some time. Check it out.

It has been an absolutely gorgeous week and a half here in Lansing. The fall colors came practically overnight, and everything is shades of gold and orange. The sky has been blue and the sun was very bright today. It is heaven.

We are supposed to get rain tonight at 2am and it is supposed to rain solid for at least 4 days. I felt such a deadline approaching… the end of the beautiful leaves. The rain will make them all come down on the ground, wet and messy. But today, it was beautiful. And I determined to make the most of that last beautiful autumn-colored day.

I went to Fenner Arboretum briefly today so I could take a few pictures. I also went to Scott Woods Park, a gem hidden behind a hospital on the South side. It is truly woods, a quite large area left ungroomed, and totally unexpected in a fairly busy end of town. (For those in Lansing, it is in the neighborhood directly behind the parking lot of what was once called Lansing General Hospital on Pennsylvania. I didn’t know it existed until Brian told me about a year or two ago.) Fenner is a larger mostly grassy area with some wooded areas and a stream, which is home to a good number of deer among other wildlife.

Both Fenner and Scott Woods are run by the City of Lansing Parks and Recreation department, if I remember right. Both of these locations are actually an easy bike ride from our home. There are some things that are pretty wonderful about Lansing, and the large number of trees and green areas count among the goodies here.

Scott woods was green and brown, for some reason. I had expected yellow and gold like those trees Tony and I saw on the way to Chelsea on Saturday.

Actually, Fenner had a few orange trees in one area and the rest was not all that colorful, either. I did get some beautiful photos of Fenner, in that area. The first one is a water hole in the center of the shortest path I’ve taken there. The second photo is the path. One wonderful thing about this path is that it is paved, and thus it is wheelchair accessible. Yet I am sure if you took the path to an area near the wooded part and sat still long enough, you would see deer. One time I took Sarah (my Goddaughter) to Fenner and we surprised a doe and two fawns. It was magic.

Even downtown Lansing was beautiful today. I went down there to go to the bank (and then the bank was closed for Columbus day so I made the deposit in the ATM). I got a great parking spot, no doubt because of the holiday. The bank is a treasure in Lansing (used to be Bank of Lansing, now Comerica) which I think has architecture up to that in any city like Chicago. I’ll have to take pictures and do that as a feature in this blog one day. But meanwhile, one of my favorite downtown buildings, as far as facade goes, is at the corner of Michigan and Washington, and is pictured here. (It sits kitty-corner from the beautiful bank.) The light fixtures on this building are brushed metal, I wish you could see how beautifully they reflect light and color.

Oh, I did go to Eaton Rapids for the warehouse sale, too. I got some cotton/wool/nylon on cones to use for my long-dreamed-of longjohns. I may have purchased enough for more than one pair, but at $2 a pound I decided to be extra sure I had enough yarn. I also got a cone of boucle for dyeing. I had hoped to find display units for selling at art shows, but didn’t find anything I wanted this year. Last year I found a good one so I won’t complain too much now.

I went next door to Old Mill Yarn (same building, different owner) and got two skeins of somewhat-scratchy wool yarn in about sport weight for super warm sox. This yarn was $2 a skein for something like 250 yds. I got bright green and medium blue. I’m thinking of doing Tiit’s Socks from Folk Knitting in Estonia. I’ve wanted to do those for a long time. For $4 for the pair, they can sit and wait for me to decide. However, I have a feeling that those sox would go fast for me. The two-color stranded pattern would be extremely easy to memorize and I bet I’d get entranced.

After the whirlwind photo tour (which was after the yarn trip, which was after a client meeting) I had to go home and beat the sunset. I had a couple more windows to paint purple, and I realized that the peeling paint on the garage should really not be left that way for the winter. I scraped and primed the garage (I hope I’ll have time to paint over it before winter but if not, it’s still more protected than raw wood under a bubbling bit of paint). Then I painted the front set of 3 windows and the little window I had forgotten about yesterday, on the back of the entry. It looks good.

You know what? I was going to look for autumn colors to photograph in the neighborhood. Then I looked up and down the street, and I realized that our maple tree in front of our house is the most vibrantly colored tree for many blocks. Lucky us! So here is a pic of our tree (the side that is a little more greenish… you saw the orange side of that same tree in yesterday’s photo) and the house with purple windows. If you look carefully you might see the salmon pink trim on the bottom ledge of all those windows.

No knitting yet today. Last night I fussed around with the first legwarmer of what I hope will be a pair, that I knit on the knitting machine. It’s based on a Berrocco pattern but the colors/yarns are very different than what they specified, and my legs are distinctly shorter than the model’s legs so I knit fewer inches. They still are the longest legwarmers I’ve ever had, all the way up the thigh. Very cool.

The striped pattern in six yarns turned out well, but they did not look good when I seamed them the first time (mattress stitch, it should be smooth and beautiful but I think I need to try this with thinner yarn that is not super dark. Maybe I can find some sockyarn in the right size/smoothness and try again. The seam looked great until I stretched the legwarmer. Does anyone know if there is a better seam than mattress stitch for items that take a lot of stretching?

Actually, I’m really tired and I still have one more job to do for a client. See you tomorrow.

Today I spent the whole day outside painting the trim on our windows. I surprised myself a few days ago by choosing purple as the main color, I thought I had decided that purple was the accent color (next to a sort of salmon pink). The purple looks good.

I finished all the windows on the main floor except a grouping of three windows which are on the porch (I counted those three as one window when I counted yesterday). I found an extra window I’d forgotten, on the back of our entryway/mud room on the back of the house. That window was sadly in need of scraping and priming, so I did that.

Brian also carried and positioned the two-story ladder with stabilizer, up to the second story window (which lets sunshine into my printmaking/mailart/polymer clay studio). That window was peeling badly at the base, so I climbed up there and scraped and primed the whole thing (see picture). When I was done with the priming and the purple paint, I used the salmon paint to trim the bottom ledge board of all the purple windows. I think it looks good.

I’m feeling really good about how much I got done. I had been scheduled to go to Detroit to a few art galleries today, but the trip has been postponed until spring. It would have been a glorious day for driving, for sure. Yesterday Tony and I really enjoyed the tree colors on the highway, gold and orange blaze all the way to Chelsea and back. Last year we didn’t get much fall color but this year is making up for it. But as it was, I enjoyed the blaze of my own maple trees in my own front yard, and I put more color into my environment that will last long after the leaves are gone.

I realize I still have a little bit of primer left to do. The back window of the entryway has glossy black trim on the window, to make it look less old fashioned (from when small windows became uncool and large plate glass windows became trendy). I need to do just that small bit of black trim, and I also have a spot on the garage which needs priming and repainting.

I spent so much time (two years in all) totally scraping and priming and re-scraping and priming and painting that garage… I just find it hard to believe that it could ever peel again. I can not believe anyone could have done a better job than I did. I guess that goes to show how much nature is in charge, how little we have control when it comes right down to it.

So I need to do yet more painting if I can eke out any time before the cold comes. It was 77F yesterday when I was painting. Today it only got up to 67 but by the time I got inside it was down to 59 or thereabouts. Downright chilly! I use very good paint which can be applied down to about 50 degrees. I have pushed very close to that temperature limit more years than I care to admit. One year I painted my back door and then dried it with a hair dryer when the temperature cooled down before it had formed a film!

I’m hoping this time I can get the job done before I’m crossing fingers for a warmer than average November day! It would be great to just get this done quickly for once.

At this point if I ever wanted to be anonymous and invisible, it’s too late. I’m finding out I stand out no matter where I go, but until recently my homes have escaped that uniqueness, at least on the outside. In this neighborhood where there are 5 houses in a row painted white, on both sides of the street, the small bit of purple is a dead giveaway that an artist lives here. As Brian says, it looks like “Lynn Lives Here.” Could be worse.

What a day I had! Tony and I went to the Spinners Flock guild meeting (we decided to skip the warehouse sale so we could have more time at the guild, and he didn’t want anything from the sale… I’ll consider going on Monday). That was great fun. He tried out a different sort of wheel that someone brought. He enjoyed that.

I ran into Carla at the guild. She brought her kids and they were great. It was good to talk to her if only briefly. I had not seen her since the day we took crochet class together, maybe two months ago.

At the guild, we have vendors who sell fiber and related goods such as books. I try to get my books and magazines there if at all possible, to support these lovely folks. I got an INKnitters magazine and the Maggie Righetti book “Crocheting in Plain English.” I love her books, they are so no-nonsense and understandable. I am actually reading “Knitting in Plain English” from cover to cover, I’m a little over half way. She’s wonderful. I figured if I were to get only one book on crochet, this should be it.

We found traffic backups in three places on the way back to Lansing so it took almost 2 hours instead of an hour to get home. Brian reminds me that in many places, this is commonplace. I am not used to so much as a slowdown except going out of downtown Lansing around 5pm. Even so, we don’t have a “rush hour” we have “rush minutes” in this city, and I know I’m spoiled. It stressed me out to be late, that is just so rare that I didn’t expect it at all.

I got to Foster at 3pm and I had kids waiting for me. One girl came and waited an hour to knit, and had just left just before I got there. That saddened me, but I know she did get the news that I was stuck in traffic so at least she knew what happened.

However, once I got there, it was so much fun that I totally lost track of time. My computer lab is open from 2-4pm on a regular Saturday. I figured I just would work one hour today and close at 4 as usual. Then I had three kids finger crocheting, one kid knitting and two kids playing computers. I knit a little on a wristwarmer I’m making to inspire the kids to make their own, then I did a little single crochet on the scarf I started at Borders last Tuesday. By the time I looked at the clock, it was 4:45! We all were having such fun, the time just flew by. How lovely.

I ran home to change clothes and prepare for our Abbott Brothers’ performance at Altus. Then Brian got home and we loaded his car and headed to the concert. It was fun. My mom and Fred came, and then Brian’s parents walked in not long after. We had other friends who came and that made it a very friendly crowd. The place was pretty busy and the audience was wonderful. And after the performance we got to eat a wonderful vegetarian combo plate as a group. Yum!

Oh, we asked Brian’s dad to sit in with us on one number (see picture, left to right: Brian, Me, Dad, Bob). He sang “Just Because” and he played the Heftone Bass I usually play. He invented and built the instrument, and he’s rightfully proud about it. Since I didn’t have an instrument, I sang harmony with him. It was good fun!

Today I readied myself to paint trim on the house windows, and realized that there was some boring white primer I had to do first. Not only that, but the primer is oil based which is a sticky nasty mess, and it required climbing up to our second story on a ladder.

I had not been able to reach part of the porch overhang with the equipment we had last year. We had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what we could do to make it so I could reach. Then when we were at one of those mega-house-fixing stores, we found a “ladder stabilizer” which basically is a sort of U-shaped thing you clamp to the ladder and it holds you out about a foot from the house, as well as making it harder for the ladder to fall down. It was not all that expensive, but it did the trick. Until then I thought our choices would be to a) hire someone, b) rent a scaffold, c) rent a “cherry picker” automated lift. None of those choices sounded simple or affordable. This solution was just the ticket.

The good news is that I finished the white primer and then I got to paint two windows on the side of the house. I had thought I would paint them salmon pink and then do a little purple trim. I realized that the front porch had a salmon horizontal line because I painted the ledge at the top of the porch wall that color. So what I ended up doing was painting the windows purple (which echoes the rectangular purple doors) and then I painted the bottom ledge under the windows with the salmon paint. Now there are unifying horizontal salmon shapes and unifying rectangles in purple. I may need to do a little more salmon to balance the percentages but I will decide that when this phase is done.

It looks pretty good so far, although the house has ten windows… one I painted last year, two I painted today, and eight more need paint before winter. I am booked solid tomorrow so I guess Sunday will be the day. My plans for Sunday have changed anyway so that will work out OK.

My arm is now tired from being over my head so much today. My hair is full of sticky drips of primer and paint. I need to get cleaned up, and then tonight I get to play! I will either spin some yarn on my lovely Louet wheel or I will perhaps start a project on one of my knitting machines.

Oh, and my beloved Brian took me out to dinner tonight after all that work. I tell you, I married the right guy. No cooking for me after all that painting today!

Tomorrow Tony and I go to Spinners Flock, and then I have a lab at Foster Center. I get out of Foster at 4 and then we perform at Altus at 6:30. Whew! It will be busy but fun.

And that warehouse sale I mentioned somewhere last week… I thought it was last week but it’s Saturday (tomorrow) and Monday this week, I think 9:30am to 2pm according to my notes. It’s at Davidson’s, the warehouse next door to Old Mill Yarns in Eaton Rapids. Huge bins of coned yarns sold by the pound. I went last year and there was little to make a wool fanatic who mostly knits socks, happy. As I recall it was mostly cottons and tiny, tiny, weaving yarns. If Tony wants to go tomorrow, I’ll check to see if there are any yarns for dyeing or machine knitting. And if I’m lucky I’ll find a display unit or two, as I did last year. Since I am planning to do more shows, that may be a worthy purchase.

The phone for Old Mill Yarns is 517/663-2711, I don’t have an address but it is just south of downtown Eaton Rapids on 99, turn left at the Little Caesar’s pizza as you leave downtown (just past Burger King on left) and the store is at the end of the first block on the left side, an old red brick warehouse. Warehouse on left, store on right.

Off to play with yarn.

I spent most of my day at Foster Center today. My computer classes are going great, after three long terms of slowing down almost to a standstill. I love teaching, I’m very good at it, and it was sad to not teach much this last year. I’m thrilled to be back at what I do well, for people who really appreciate it.

Mostly I have retired smart women, who haven’t ever been trained to use a computer… how to turn it on and off, how to click a mouse, how to save a document. They are usually quick studies and soooo appreciative! My students often bring me gifts in appreciation. it’s lovely to do what I do. I also offer advanced topics, but the ones which fill up time after time are the “I don’t want to be scared of computers” classes. And anyone signing up for a class like that, is going to be a very interesting person. I love my students!

After computer class was knitting/computer lab. This brought me about 8 kids, mostly knitters. Yesterday I had ten. It’s great. One girl just started last week and fell in love with knitting right away. She took home her wristband to finish and today came in with really too much knitting for it to fit well, but I could tell she just had not wanted to stop!

I asked her what she wanted to make next. We went through the usual suspects, which are beanie blankets, small purses, more wristbands. Thought of a scarf but that sounded like a lot of knitting to her. Finally we got out the Melanie Falick Kids Knitting book and she just had to make a backpack.

I had a whole bin of Lopi-type yarn that is bulky and perfect for backpacks. She chose four colors and dove right in. I taught her to cast on and that went well. She had already knit about two of the four and a half inches she needs to complete before she sees me again. Her mom said they would come in on Saturday when I have computer lab, so she can keep on going. With a kid that enthusiastic, and a mom that encouraging, this child will make a backpack easily, second project or no!

Another girl, the one who has already made several backpacks, is working on a mohair hat. She had to learn how to purl which she did easily. She had to learn to use stitch markers to remind her when to increase. She had to learn to use double pointed needles (we are working top down so she doesn’t need to do a gauge swatch before starting the project). She is doing wonderfully. And the mohair, donated by one of you out there (bless you), is a gorgeous pastel rainbow of fluff. She is loving every minute of it, even though she has to really watch her stitches more than she ever has before.

Oh, and it was so cute. The three-backpack/hat girl is the oldest of at least four girls in a family. The dad drives them in from a nearby town to knit with me. Well, the four year old has been finger crocheting with us for the last few weeks. And now the one younger than her wanted to come and sit with us. She just sort of doodled with some yarn while the 4 yr old made her a finger-crocheted bracelet to tie around her wrist. It was just adorable. Dad was in the room the whole time, so I didn’t have to really watch the little ones, but they were very well behaved and loved being there.

I love days like this.

Tomorrow I paint the window trim on my house. I painted the primer last year around this time of year and then it got too cold. (Brian took this picture of me behind our house yesterday morning. Notice the side windows are still white, though the door and back window are colorful. Someday I’ll paint the back steps purple, too… but that will be a big job and I am not looking forward to it.)

This year I was going to start earlier and then I was sick. The weather is good this week and is not supposed to last. So tomorrow is big push day! I need to go to sleep. Daytime will be precious to me tomorrow.

I was occupied with work, both computer and knitting today. I had 10 kids knitting at Foster Center, and 3 were boys. That was great fun.

I guess I have little to say today so I’ll offer this picture. A friend just got two Sheltie puppies and I took a few pics of them earlier this week. How cute is this? They are just adorable… untamed as yet, but adorable. I love their energy. What is it about fuzzy beings with big eyes, anyway? I’m entranced.

Tonight Tony and I went to Borders in Ann Arbor for the knit-in. It was fun-fun-fun, as usual. I love that group. My friends Mary and Fran and Riin from Spinners flock were there. (Fran and Mary just won awards for skeins of yarn they spun at a recent show… how cool is that?)

Tony talked to Heather for a long time and I met a new woman, Renee, who has only lived in Michigan for a few weeks. She has lived all over the world and is a musician. I really enjoyed our talk.

I hadn’t been there in a while, so I had a lot of things for show and tell. We sort of laughed about that… the two weeks I was sick, I really finished a lot of items. Since I hadn’t been there in two months, I could have probably taken up an hour with show and tell myself… I had to keep it as short as I could. I brought my cabled sweat socks, my Fast Florida Footies, my Turkish-style Seaside socks, two stoles, my September-to-September sweater, two pair of wristwarmers, the machine knit French beret and some of my handpainted yarns/fibers. What is nice is that everyone is genuinely appreciative. I don’t feel as though I shouldn’t have shown it all, people are interested in everything. What a nice group it is.

Some folks there gave me more yarn for my kids at Foster Center. Since I forgot my current socknitting project and had no knitting with me, I started crocheting a scarf from a more fluffy yarn that might be hard for the kids to manipulate. I’ll make that a project I can do in the classroom during quiet times and then it will either go with our donations to the homeless or I’ll make it some sort of prize for one of my knitting kids. I’ll have a bit of time to decide what it will be, as I am working on it. I’m doing it in a single crochet since I like that stitch and so it will take a bit longer to do than if I did double crochet. The yarn is very tweedy and looks absolutely gorgeous in single crochet. Yippee for that!

I spent all last night rearranging my yarn stash. It was kept in about 9 clear Rubbermaid boxes (two full of spinning fiber and handspun yarns, one with yarns destined to be sweaters, one full of fingering weight socknitting yarns, one with fatter yarns for socks, hats or legwarmers, and one only half full with decorative yarns and alpaca… and the rest held unfinished projects or leftover yarns from all sorts of projects I’ve completed).

We got new storage units (sort of for our anniversary) which hold about 3 of the plastic boxes’ contents per unit, and so I sorted and sifted and threw away a little tiny bit, and emptied six boxes. The new units function as window seats as well as yarn storage so this makes our living room look much less messy. If the living room is where yarn must go, it might as well not look like the garage or junk room, I figure. I’m so very bad at being “Suzy Homemaker.” (Suzy Homemaker was a brand name on a line of toys for girls to practice ironing, cleaning house and the like, when I was a girl in the USA in the 1960’s… I never got properly trained/indoctrinated at a young age and I’ve not adjusted well since, either.)

I’m sort of between big knitting projects. I do have some sox in process about 3/4 done for Brian, the yarn from Threadbear in green, orange and navy. In addition, I want to do another machine-knit hat. I want to do some machine-knit legwarmers.

And I’m sorely tempted to try knitting the cover sweater-dress from Sally Melville’s new The Purl Stitch book, out of some mohair yarn I have in storage intended for sweaters. I have two different mohairs, one lightweight and one heavyweight, both fuzzy brushed yarns. One or the other is sure to work up OK in a gauge that works for that dress.

However, that dress idea probably will need to wait until after the holidays. I’m now in “oh no, I’m selling at art shows this season” mode. I committed to doing a show called “Art for the Soul” which is the weekend after Thanksgiving. I need to crank out some merchandise between now and then. I have some handpainted yarns/fibers but little else. We’ll see what I come up with in the meantime.

Seven years ago, Brian and I were married. It seems like yesterday, yet it seems as though we’ve been married a lot longer at times, too.

I was unhappy for many years, for many reasons which do not need to be spelled out here. However, I am happy now, and a big reason is because I have Brian… who totally believes in me.

What else can I say? I’m grateful.

Great day starts at Foster Center
What a great day I’ve had. I got up early to go to work at Foster Center. I had expected three students but when I got there I had five. How wonderful that was. The students were just perfect for what I teach. I enjoyed them, and they appreciated what I was teaching. (This is a class for computer novices to learn what Windows is, how to interact with it starting with how to click, drag and double-click, and ending with how to work with menus and a brief overview of what a program such as Paint looks like.) I am very good at this sort of basic class (my students are typically smart retired women who never had a chance to learn computer skills on the job, they drink in the information eagerly) and I just haven’t had many students in the last year. This week I had eight on Thursday and five today. I was thrilled.

Knitting Kidz
After the class was out I had a little lunch hour and then my computer lab was open to the public. It was me and two lovely neighborhood kids I have worked with for several years now. They are sisters who like both computers and knitting. They started by playing a computer game and then they asked to knit. In the end I taught them how to make tassels. The younger one made nine large tassels before she was done. The older one made a few tassels and a few small pompoms.

These elementary-aged girls have a brand new baby sister in the last few months. Well, as I was working with the girls I was putting away some new donated items. I found one bag which looks like it was donated through Yarn for Ewe. It was maybe 30 by 16 inches of a wavy pattern, mostly garter stitch, which looked like it was the beginning of a baby blanket. The donor had put the remaining yarn in a bag, pulled out the needles and put the blanket in the bag with the yarn. I put the live stitches back on a circular needle, and bound off the piece while the girls were there. It was a good size for a sort of “binky” blanket that a kid might drag around for comfort. I gave the piece to the girls to take home to their brand new baby sister. They were pretty pleased.

I often give out prizes to knitting kids, so this was sort of in line with the prize idea. It made us all feel good and now I know that the knitting that donor did was not wasted. The leftover yarn will be used by another child for another project soon, as well.

Tapestry Crochet Discovery
After work I went to JoAnn fabric briefly, trying to connect with my supervisor in the education department but I was too late. However, I found a magazine I might not have noticed six months ago. It’s called “Crochet Fantasy presents Fashion Accessories.” Well, it’s a lot of things in lacy patterns (shawls and stoles for example) and a few hats, belts and handbags. But the prize, and the reason I got it, is almost the last project in the magazine (number 18 of 20). It’s called “Gone to the Dogs Purse” and it’s done in tapestry crochet.

Tapestry Crochet! Now I have a name for the wonderful technique I’ve tried to explain to other people for a long time. This is how the cotton multicolored berets I wear all summer are made! The author of the article is Carol (Norton) Ventura, PhD and I guess she has put out two books on Tapestry Crochet by Interweave Press over the years. She learned about this type of crochet in Guatemala in the Peace Corps in 1976. I’m so glad she has taken the time to share information with us.

She has a little tapestry crochet necklace pouch pattern on the internet (picture above), for those who want to give this technique a try with only two colors and not a lot of time investment. I don’t really need more things to do on my “pending projects” list, but I bet I don’t put this off very long.

A Dinner Adventure with Brian
When I got home I curled up on the floor (we have a large old-fashioned heat vent on the floor where I sit all winter, like a cat might) and started reading the article by Dr. Ventura. I didn’t read long before Brian got home from work himself. He brought me a bouquet of hot pink carnations, my favorite. How sweet he is. He brings me carnations occasionally but went out of his way to do it this time, since it’s our anniversary tomorrow. They are just beautiful.

We decided to hurry ourselves over to Altu’s restaurant because it was 7:45 and Temesgen Hussein, the Ethiopian musician, was playing but only until 8:30. I’m so glad we went.

The place was packed. Every table was full and there was that wonderful sound of people talking to one another and really enjoying the company of friends. I just love that sound! The food was good, the music was good, the atmosphere was great. We ate every single bit of food on our plate. We got the family style meal, mild chicken with an onion-based sauce and garlic lentils (the Saturday special, a wonderful dish). It comes with salad and her wonderful cabbage as well. I’m still full and it’s two hours later! Yum.

Now we’re home and Brian is learning a new tune on his banjo so I have live music in the house. That is a luxury I know most people don’t get. I’m planning to go back down to the dyeing studio and rinse out some wool roving I started earlier. Then I may just sink myself into the floor on the heat vent again with my Tapestry Crochet article, or I may start planning the next project. I have had a few projects in the wings and maybe tonight is when another one gets a chance at making it to reality. We’ll see.

Well, I hand-fulled (felted) the beret by hand today and it turned out better than I expected. It’s almost round (rather than having obvious points at the corners of the six knit sections). It fits my head. It is almost too small on top and that is perhaps my fault being so thorough with making the texture of the top and sides match. The brim/headband looks nearly identical to those on my factory-produced hats, and is pretty comfortable.

All in all, I think I’ll wear this hat. What about that??! However, there is room for improvement, as expected. The black ones are still much better. For one, they are half the thickness. They are soft. They are drapeable. But I am delighted to be this close to my ideal.

I will try this again. I’m not sure what to try next, though, as I think I will want to try two strands of a light fingering coned yarn I have (Brian got it for me in Toronto when he got me the Fortissima Colori). I know it will felt, but I’m not sure what gauge/size to knit pre-felting, in order that the lighter weight yarns would be the right thickness and width. Perhaps I’ll contact the guys at Threadbear fiberarts, because they do a whole lot of felting/fulling knitted items.

No doubt it will be my luck that I’ll have to make my own pattern for my ideal machine knit hat. That would be my style. I insisted on making up my own sweater pattern, for the second sweater I ever knit. It took me forever (well, one year) to finish that sweater because I had so many decisions to make, when I hit snags or questions. (That sweater is the one I’m wearing in these pictures, actually… I’m wearing it much more often than I had expected.)

But this hat I made with the lovely free pattern, not only taught me a lot about machine knitting but made me a wearable hat. And it perhaps gave me a better shape for a hat than any I’ve knit before (as I said previously, so often a pattern is called a beret but is really a tam, which has a different shape). It’s only the second hat I’ve made that I would wear, so that is a good sign.

I’m wondering if I make the next one with more sections, if it will show the corners even less. I mean, a hexagon doesn’t look like a circle at all, but a shape with 100 equal sides looks almost like a circle. So the more sections, the more round it will appear. I wonder how able I will be at this early date, to create my own pattern to make it that shape?

The next hat project is definitely not for today… I’m really tired and I have to teach at 9am. I’m not a 9am sort of person, so I need to go sleep very soon!

Wrapping up Sheep & Wool Sale
I met Deb/Scarlet Zebra (and her hubby, Jack) tonight at Borders in Flint. We talked a good long time, they close at 11pm and I was there at closing although Deb and Jack left a little before I did.

I got my leftover yarns and fibers back from her from the weekend wool sale. I sold a lot more than I expected, since I did not really have a lot of stock to start with. I took her two and a half boxes full, and got one box back. Both yarns and rovings sold, but yarns were a bit more popular (perhaps because there was a sample pair of sox so that people could imagine some for themselves). I’m pleased with that result.

I’m cranking out more dyed wool and yarn in my studio this week and will be putting together a sale page for it (and the remaining Seaside yarn) soon. Stay tuned.

Knitting Progress
Today I finished a pair of wristwarmers which I like a lot. I also undid the unsatisfactory bind off on the machine-knit beret, replacing it with a grafted seam 30 stitches wide. Not great fun, but I did it in bits and pieces during knitting time at Foster Center. I’m hoping to do the fulling/felting/shrinking experiment soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. I hope it works out OK. I’m tired of my hat experiments not working out just so.

The wristwarmers are made of Berrocco Hip Hop that I got at Yarn for Ewe. These are a major hit. They are lumpy bumpy and make my hands look big, but the colors are so beautiful it doesn’t matter. The kids at Foster took turns trying them on,