Hi friends. Well, I missed a day of blogging. I had not missed a column since November, and I was proud of that. However, yesterday I had to teach at 9am, followed by a computer lab, a dance rehearsal, a dance performance an hour out of town, and then a drive home. I was gone almost 14 hours. I just plain konked out, fell asleep before even thinking about my computer. And it was a good thing, because I needed some rest before teaching the second session of my ColorJoy stole class.

This noon, three of the four women who had been here last week for my pilot ColorJoy novelty yarn stole class, came back for the second half. The fourth person could not make it at the last minute, so I will be meeting with her this week privately (we actually volunteer together for another guild so that works out well).

It was exciting to see what people had come up with. We all had very different colorways going. Lili had a darker version, with purples and some gold and black, and a bluish turquoise eyelash for contrast and interest. Sharon P. is making a beautiful stole in some of her favorite colors… purple and turquoise, but one of her yarns also has a sort of hot magenta/purple and a hot yellow-green for a little bit of oomph. She was a little nervous to add that green, but it really brings the piece alive.

Emily told great stories about her stole. She is doing colors that she normally does not knit, because it was yarn she bought for a friend with auburn hair. The colors are beautiful copper/auburn, and teals/turquoises with a few bits of orange and green. It’s funny, we are so set on what colors we look good in, that we don’t always open our minds to other beautiful color combinations. Emily’s grandkids were hoping the stole was not for them (both the colors and the texture of the eyelash yarns were not something they had seen Emily knit before). I wish I could tell her stories as well as she can, it was quite amusing how the kids indicated they didn’t want this piece (she often knits for them, so they automatically assumed that it was for one of them).

When she finally finished telling the stories of her stole and her family’s resistance to the colors, and then she brought out the stole itself… well, I was flabbergasted. It is absolutely gorgeous! Stunning. It makes me want red hair so I could wear it perfectly. Funny how if we look good in certain colors, we just have a hard time opening up to other colors even if they look great on someone else. And conversely, we can love a color so much that we can think it looks great on someone when in fact it’s not really as good on that other person as some other colors might be. Color is such a personal thing!

I did start a stole but since I was preparing swatches for the class, I didn’t get much knit. Mine is based on a blue cobalt mohair with metallic and eyelash. It also has some turquoise and magenta accents. My stole has much more mohair than I usually use, and I hope it will be very warm.

I’m ready for warm! Last night it was 14 degrees below Zero, F. This morning at 8:45am it was 2.8F according to my thermometer. It did get up to 12 or a bit higher later in the day, but even that is incredibly cold with even a tiny breeze. I’m so ready to be done with winter, and it hasn’t really kicked in fully yet. Mom called from Florida today, where they don’t have to shovel at all. Lucky her!

I had a luxurious nap today after class and before band rehearsal for Abbott Brothers band. That is such fun! I love jamming and I even more enjoy performing. We’re at Altus this coming Saturday, from 6:30-8:30. Local folks, consider coming out. It’s great fun, with many styles of music represented.

I think the picture here today is self-explanatory. These are the stole bits that folks brought to class. You can’t see how much teal is in Emily’s stole for some reason (see Sharon P’s blog, Knitknacks, to see a much clearer picture of the colorway). The stole I identify here as mine, is the one I wear all the time. My blue mohair one had only about four rows in it so it was not photogenic at all at this point.

It has been snowing all day. Everything is white, there is no color and no sun. It makes me inclined to get in the car and head south. Or alternately, stay in bed where it’s warm! I’m resisting. I guess I’m a grownup after all.

I had a day free from business appointments and so I spent a bunch of time preparing financial records for tax time. I sure have a long way to go, but at least I started. This is not my favorite part of being self employed!

Brian and I had dinner at a new place tonight, a sushi place in Hannah Plaza. He got a gift certificate for this restaurant for the holidays, and we just got around to going tonight. I think I will never be a huge fan of this sort of food (I love tempura, that lightly-breaded deep fried vegetable/shrimp stuff, but this restaurant was using an oil that I couldn’t eat). Brian got a nice platter with all sorts of taste treats. I got some edamame (green/fresh soybeans) steamed in the pod (yummy), and then I ate vegetarian rolls. Some of the rolls were avocado/rice/seaweed, some had asparagus instead of avocado, some had “pumpkin skin” instead (it was good, but didn’t taste like pumpkin).

It was fine as a special date/occasion. I still prefer Altu’s Ethiopian food, or Aladdin’s Lebanese food, any day. I’m not into pickles and salty things (soy sauce) very much, and I adore beans when cooked properly.

However, it turned out that Pat (a musician acquaintance who was in The Weepers) and his wife Terri (who is a knitting-guild colleague and friend of Sarah Peasley) sat at the next table. We talked to Pat a while until Terri joined him. Pat is in a new band with our friend Drew. The band is called Saltines, if I remember right. They play a regular Monday night gig at Mac’s Bar and it sounds pretty fun. I’d love to go and see them sometime, smoke or not.

I keep forgetting to take pictures when I’m out and about. The picture today is of the final concert for The Weepers, with Pat on drums behind the Bass (played by Steve). Drew, another Saltines member, is in the picture at far left).

I hope to have some new pics tomorrow, because in the evening I’m going with a group of 6 Habibi Dancers to perform in Alma, an hour north of Lansing. (The costume I’m wearing was created by Phaedra.) I’m guessing there will be some photo opportunities there. I’m dancing one piece I have not done before, wish me well.

Well, I wished for more than one day off. I need to be careful of what I’m wishing… I got scheduled for only one long shift next week at JoAnn, and somehow that was a day when I had told them I could not work. Voila! A week off from one of my most time-consuming jobs!

It will work out fine. I need to dye more wool. I have a few things coming up where I will be selling yarn, assuming I *have* yarn to sell. I sure have a lot of stock that hasn’t been dyed yet, so I just need to get busy. I think it will be delightful to be alone more next week. I’m sure some errands will get in the way some of the time, and I sure need to do my financial paperwork to prepare for the tax season. However, I will be able to make some dyed yarns and perhaps start on a pattern that will be due in a month and a half.

Tomorrow I’ll be busy, making swatches for Sunday’s class, among other things. We will be learning how to fix mistakes in garter stitch as part of the class. I’m really hoping this will be a great thing for the students. We will do it on smooth yarn swatches before messing with fancy yarns. I’ll do the stockinette swatches on the sweater machine, but I need to do the garter by hand.

Oh, in CityKidz Knit! today, they were very impressed with my nosewarmer. One girl went home planning to make one. Another girl stayed a couple hours, so she had time to not only think up a way to make a nosewarmer on her own, but time to make it from start to finish. She loves making tassels so she made one for the tip of the nose. Very cute, a present for her 3-year old little sister, who will love it. This child is in 4th grade and since she learned to increase, decrease and purl this holiday vacation, she is now making up patterns. I’m impressed.

And me? I’m tired… I get to sleep in tomorrow, what a luxury. Nevertheless, even as tired as I was, I got more knitting done on my sock. A few stitches here and there while in between answering kids questions at the knitting class today, helped me make progress.

Today I had eight different commitments, and I’m reeling from the schedule after only 5 hours of sleep. I tell you, I need to start giving myself some more days off sometime soon.

The good thing was that even though I spent a lot of time waiting in doctor’s offices and the pharmacy today (nothing wrong, all routine stuff), I did get some knitting done. I have about 4-5″ done on one sock cuff and the other is about 3″ done because of last night’s train crossing delay and then knitting guild meeting. I just started these last Thursday, so that makes me pleased.

I also did start my ColorJoy stole to knit along with my students. The most important yarn is a three-strand Ironstone yarn based on a cobalt blue brushed mohair, with a long eyelash and a shiny strand in there as well. I got the skein at Yarn for Ewe, probably late last fall. Beautiful stuff, but I don’t often wear cobalt. I ended up with a nice collection of yarns to go with it, including a turquoise/green eyelash and a fuschia brushed mohair with bits of color in the binder, and a shiny railroad yarn that is predominantly aqua/turquoise. I also used some Brown Sheep Handpaint 100% mohair in worsted weight, a beautiful smooth single-ply yarn in multicolored jewel tones.

This stole will be very different than my others, since it will have three mohair yarns in it (two brushed) and only 2 eyelash yarns, both longer and made of polyester (usually I add a nylon eyelash with the look of feathers, as well). But hey, I adore mohair and this is a great way to highlight these incredible skeins of yarn. And I think this stole will be considerably warmer than the more froofy multiple-eyelash stoles.

No illustrations of my yarn or process yet tonight, I’m wiped out. So here, instead, is a photo of my “graffiti” that I did on my palm device a few weeks ago. I typically have an impulse to add color to something (usually by painting like this, sometimes by painting walls in the house) right after the holidays. This year was no exception.

I painted the plastic of the case with fingernail polish of different colors. I had tested first (maybe a month ago) on my old broken palm device, to see if the polish would stick properly. It worked great, so I was ready to go when the mood grabbed me. Cool, huh? I figure if anyone took it, I sure could prove it was mine!

Let’s hope I get a few hours of sleep tonight. I can’t decide what sounds better, a hot bath or sleep. See you tomorrow!

I enjoyed my day today. I did not have any business appointments, but since it had been several weeks since I’d had a day free, I had many tasks waiting on my errand list. I did get to sleep in a little… and I had three tasty meals, plus I was alone a lot, which I really enjoyed. I don’t know why I thought I’d have time to knit all day. I had so many things I had put off until later. Today was the later I’d waited for. I got things done but not much knitting.

After dinner, though, I joined my friends at the Mid-Michigan Knitting Guild. I was delayed by almost 20 minutes by a train stopped only two blocks from the meeting (I knit an inch and a half on my sock while waiting, so that was the good part)… they finally had us back up and make a U-turn to get out of the gridlock and go around another way. Several of us got caught and were late together.

I took my newly finished sox (the yarn is Trampoline – see picture) with me for show-and-tell, and the single child’s sock I made on my knitting machine… as well as my Turkish sox which I had not shown to the group before.

I also took a nosewarmer I knit, inspired by the nosewarmer pattern Amy put on the Knitty site. (I forgot to mention this piece during show and tell, but did show it around after the meeting to a few folks.) As usual, I can not leave a pattern alone. I did knit one with her specifications but I could not get the tiny gauge she was getting (9st/in) so I just ripped out that one. I added ribbing at the edge to keep it from curling and cast on a lot fewer stitches. I also did it in one color, even the braided ties, and I did not put a tassel on the tip of the nose. I guess mine is positively low-key for a nosewarmer (I keep remembering red and white striped ones with tassels when I was a kid… I never had one but that is how I remember them.)

I actually have two patterns for nosewarmers, knit quite differently. I will see if I actually wear this one, and if I do I will consider trying a variation on the other pattern as well. Such fun! Mine is in Debbie Bliss washable DK merino. Great stuff. And hey, a nosewarmer takes very little time to complete. For this grrl, who just loves to finish things, that is a big plus.

The guild meeting was about intarsia. Sweatergirl (Tracy A) did the presentation. I learned a lot, including that I need to wait until I’m less busy and I should not start with cotton yarn (which I don’t like as much as wool anyway).

I am sure I’ll end up doing this technique someday because I love color so much. When my love for color overrides my distaste for purling, I’ll do it. Maybe I can do a seed stitch intarsia. That way only half of my stitches would be purl on each row. I just don’t like purling more than about 5 stitches in a row, but I don’t mind alternating. I don’t know why, don’t ask me… it just is. Oh, the picture here is Irene hiding behind her amazing sweater, and Charlotte trying desperately to see it. Irene LOVES intarsia, you should have seen all her projects.

Oh… also Sarah Peasley brought her color block sweater which is just beautiful (it used to be on her website but I can not find it right now). And Luann, who has helped me many times, many hours with CityKidz Knit!, brought a half-circle shawl she finished using Helen’s Lace yarn from Lorna’s Laces… just beautiful. It was exactly the right pattern for that yarn. I took a picture but she was moving so fast, the shawl was flying and I cut off half of Luann. Sigh… She also is partway through a beautiful lightweight mohair shawl. I can’t wait to see that, either.

Sharon P. took a photo of me clowning around wearing my nosewarmer. I’m guessing in the next day or so you will be able to see a picture on her blog.

Today in the USA, we honor the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He dreamed of a world where people were valued for their insides and their actions, not their color or appearance. I share that dream as well.

It is sad to say that every holiday which gives people the day off (not everyone here has MLK day off but many at larger organizations do), turns into a retail frenzy. I’m working at the store today for 7 hours. I’m sure we will be swamped. I hope that those who spend their holiday shopping, also take a moment to consider the important work that Dr. King did, and which needs to continue without him.

Thank you, Dr. King, for giving us a moment to reflect on how far we have come, and what yet needs to be done. May you rest in peace.

I taught four people today, the first session of two in a Novelty Yarn/ColorJoy Stole class. We covered the different attributes of color (hue, value, chroma/intensity, transparency/opacity), discussed the many possibilities of texture, and then explored different ways to combine multiple yarns.

I was surprised that we got through as much material as we did, so we got started on how to work with my pattern (more of a guideline than a pattern in this case, because we all have such different yarns) and talked a bit about the nitty gritty of knitting the piece. A couple of them were cast on before they left, and although not everyone felt that they had all of the yarns they would be working with in the end, we had a good sense of where to go with it all.

The class is a pilot I am doing for a session on knitting with novelty yarns I’m going to be teaching (drumroll please) at Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Michigan, USA this summer. The four ladies I invited to the class all have different experiences with knitting and instruction (two are experienced with technical editing/instructional publications, and two are teachers… one of whom is a relatively new knitter). They have consented to work with me, to ensure the class (including the pattern/glossary) is as good as it possibly can be.

I’ve taught for years… first as a volunteer, then training folks on the job, then formally as a trainer/instructor. I’ve taught computers and art/polymer the most, though I’ve done demos and classes on feltmaking, dyeing silk with Kool-Aid, scarf-tying, and soft-block printmaking (and no doubt other topics that elude me at the moment). I have taught knitting in a group situation for perhaps a year and a half. I’m a good teacher… yet knitting is different than polymer or computers. The challenge is explaining how to move one’s hands, you know? Actually this class is more about color and texture for half of the time (I could teach color for a week and not repeat myself, but I did keep it contained today).

Since I could have a large group at Allegan (up to 16, a number I’ve done for polymer classes several times) I need to be sure my handouts and my schedule are planned out as well as possible. I’m happy with how things went thus far. I am particularly grateful for the new knitter, who really helped me out with excellent suggestions to be sure nobody feels left out if they are inexperienced.

It was really fun, we had my kitchen table full of novelty yarns, to the point of skeins falling on the floor from time to time. It was great fun to try different yarns together, and then to analyze why one yarn that might seem that it should go, somehow did not.

Next Sunday we will work on how to fix any “hiccups” in the knitting, and we will discuss how it is going so far. I am sure most of us won’t have the stole close to finished. However, we will have enough fabric to start working on finding mistakes and fixing them (which is a challenge with garter stitch fabric even when not using novelty yarns).

I had a fun time. My voice is very tired, though… after a long shift on Friday at JoAnn, then 13 or so hours working at two locations on Saturday, and then my class today.

After all the excitement of class, tonight Brian and I rehearsed with Abbott Brothers band, in preparation for our January 31 gig at Altu’s. It was a challenge to sing my three songs with my tired voice, but at least I can sing a little bit.

Tomorrow I get to sleep in, work a seven-hour shift at JoAnn (it’s a work holiday so we will be busy, but I got a great shift, neither opening nor closing), then I am going to a spinners’ gathering. It’s just four of us, folks who have known each other socially but who have never come together to spin before.

I am looking forward to this spinning gathering. I don’t spin much at home, since I would rather do either handknitting or machine knitting. I do like spinning, though… I just seem to require company to get the spinning wheel out. Since I have such a nice “new” wheel I might as well make a bit more yarn!

(In fact, last Monday I went to a different knitter/spinner gathering with many more people, and when I can get back to that group I’ll be taking my wheel as well. I think I had so much going last week that somehow I didn’t mention this gathering. I met a woman online who invited me, and was very glad I went.)

No pictures of today’s class or rehearsal, I was too busy experiencing things in the moment. However, Sharon P. took pictures in class. Check out what she has to say at her blog, Knitknacks. (Pictures here are five different stoles I have knit in the last year.)