Back to a Routine, and a New Design Coming
Thursday, March 18th, 2004Foster Center
Well, Wednesday I had eleven knitters at Foster Center, and it almost seemed quiet. They all knew what they were doing, and just came in and knit away. Two kids finished their first wrist bands but even that was relatively low key. The coolest one was a little boy who is probably six years old, who made a bulky hunting-orange wristband with a good number of what we call “hiccups” in it. He was pleased. He is liking this knitting thing, but he just doesn’t have it down to a routine yet. WHen I ask him to show me, he does it right. He just gets distracted very easily when I’m not right there. He’ll get it soon.
Another little girl, also six, started out like this boy. Now she just comes in and knits like a crazy woman, as fast as she possibly can. Her stitches are neat now, and she is busy knitting little blankets for the kitties at the humane society. How sweet. This week she didn’t say a thing, she didn’t need me at all. How far they can come in such a short time, if they really love making stitches as I do.
Today (Thursday) I had five knitters, but it was more active by far. One girl I had not seen since summer but miraculously we still had her bag with her name on it in storage. The kids remembered seeing it and they went to fetch her the goodies. She started in as if she had never left. I was delighted.
Artful Food with Altu
After Foster Center today, I stopped by at Altu’s restaurant for a delightful meal of mild chicken and lima beans on rice, with cabbage on the side. I tell you what, this woman is an artist with food. I was so satisfied with my meal. Not only that, I got a chance to talk a little with Altu and her husband (a quiet man, like Brian… the kind you really should listen to when they talk, because they have quality to what they do say).
Altu and I are planning a day together next week. We have said for over a year that we would take a weekend and get away from it all, go to Chicago or Toronto or something. We never do it (well, we haven’t since October 2002). Thank goodness we can talk over coffee from time to time. I really value her input, on both personal and business things. It’s so important to me to have friends who are also self-employed.
So we will have at least a little more time this week… long enough for a meal or two, and the time between. I think it will be enjoyable.
A New Design for Publication
Right now, I’m focused on designing my next sock pattern, to be published in a few months. It’s sort of fun but sort of nerve-wracking as well.
This one is more detailed than most I have written thus far. I think it is looking wonderful, but I always wonder how many people will want to knit something with any complexity. Yet, something too simple that everyone is able to knit, is perhaps too boring to bother with. I guess I’ll opt for beautiful and let things fall as they will. After all, Lucy Neatby doesn’t get well-known by doing plain patterns, does she?
I don’t want to downgrade simplicity… after all, I usually knit stockinette socks, plus I bought Sally Melville’s knit stitch and purl stitch books and love them. But beauty of all sorts can have its place. We’ll see what actually emerges when I’m done with it all. Essentially, I’m not in charge of my creative impulses anyway. I’m the conduit for something that I, in essence, bring into the world. It is such an unconscious thing… the overall looks of the design, anyway. Or much of it is.
Then after the looks come to me, comes the hard part. I have this architecture problem. I need to make the pretty designs fit a certain number of stitches, for a certain number of sizes. The more fancy the design, the harder it is to make it fit. It helps to have a smaller gauge, as that gives me smaller increments to work with. The time I was working with a DK weight yarn, and I made a sock in 11 sizes… well, that combination was enough to make me pull out my hair!
Off to draw more graphs of a sock. One square at a time, my design will emerge. Pretty cool, really.
Image is a detail of a cell-phone cover I made using Turkish Sock patterns from Anna Zilboorg’s book, Fancy Feet. Appropriate, because I’m doing more Turkish-sock-inspired work in this current pattern.


I recently joined a Freeform Crochet email list. I’m not participating much yet (although it was great that I could answer questions about Kool-Aid dyeing early on). Yeah, I don’t crochet much, but I’m good at making things up with a crochet hook when necessary (don’t ask me how to follow a pattern, though). This group is one of the most creative online groups I’ve ever met. It rivals some of the
Well, what a weekend I have had. Friday was the long drive and then meeting folks, setting up my table, knitting a little and talking a lot. Apparently sleep is not scheduled into these sorts of things, because I didn’t get enough sleep all weekend. I had a lot of great times, and I’m not really complaining, but I was not at all realistic about the self-care part of this weekend, I guess!
I do have some yarn left that I am making web pages for, so you folks who didn’t come along can get some goodies, too. Estimated date of arrival was Monday, but now is Tuesday. Photos are all taken and edited, I just have to get the text and pricing up and we’ll be live.
I’m really tired (OK, now why am I surprised?), so I slept in this morning and then took a nap this afternoon. And now I’m tired yet again! I guess I need to remember that slumber parties are for teenagers, or something.
The second picture is my little booth/table while it still had a lot of yarn on it. Aren’t the colors electric? I enjoyed them so much!
Following that are three pictures of the group on Saturday, I believe. Probably these photos will only be interesting to those of us who attended but you can see we were busy knitting, using a drop spindle, spinning, you name it. One person was doing needle felting as well, I think it was Sue.
Then come four pictures of our dyeing experiments using food-grade dyes in crockpots and an electric roasting pan. Several folks dyed wool roving for spinning, and a few dyed yarn. We used Kool-Aid, Wilton’s Cake frosting colorings, and Easter egg dyes. The first picture shows the “before” of some yarn that turned out just great, but I did not get pictures of it when it was done.
The second and third pictures are before and after, of some roving that was done with Easter Egg dye and sprinkled Kool Aid over the top. Didn’t it turn out beautifully?
The last dyeing pic is Sue (suespinz) showing off her yarn. It had started out a light butter yellow, and she dyed with blue and green which turned out just beautifully.
The last two pictures are of us the final day, Sunday, settled around the fireplace at one end of the lobby. You are seeing Sue, Fran, Chelsea and Lynn (Mom and daughter) in the second-to-last photo. Chelsea was very fun, our only High School/young person. They live in town so drove in both Saturday and Sunday for some fun. They got at least one drop spindle and Chelsea got this great scarf kit with eyelash and ribbon yarn, in our little gift exchange. You can’t see it very well, but she had just started that scarf the night before and was really going to town on that!
Oh, and in this picture what you see on the left is Sue teaching Fran how to do tatted lace. Sue showed me a few things about tatting when Fran was done. I’ve done just a few knots but never finished anything, and Sue was very helpful to me. I still need a book or something, I’m still confused a bit, but she was an excellent teacher.
The last picture is Michelle, Cathy R. and Karen. Michelle was one of my roommates, and is from Evanston, Illinois, a place I have been a few times (just north of Chicago). Karen was from a closer location but I don’t remember exactly where. Cathy R. lives less than a mile from my house in Lansing! We met online but have met in person a few times before this retreat.
Hi, all. I’m busy getting ready for a long day of driving (5 hours, according to Mapquest) to Bloomiefest. I’ve been labeling and pricing yarn for what seems like 24 hours. It’s not as interesting as actually making the yarn into pretty colors, but that’s part of the process. And there is something satisfying about tying little labels on skeins of yarn, for some reason.
In case you thought I stopped teaching kids, here’s a lovely shot of today’s group.
Hi, all. I need some help. A friend in Ann Arbor bought a skein of my Seaside yarn a while back. She saw the mostly-stockinette sox I made with only one skein of the yarn. Since she was using smaller needles, she made her cuffs shorter to conserve on yarn. We both thought she could get a pair out of a skein that way.
(Photos: on clothesline, Seaside Dye Lot #1; in hank, Seaside: The Sequel. You really can not see how many shades there are in the purple, in particular, but you can see these are very similar.)
Well, this week I really get to reflect on how cool my mom is. Too bad we have to be grown up to understand all this, but I’m glad we both lived long enough to have this new relationship.
Wow, it is such a colorless, dreary day outside. I am sitting next to my three southern windows. I can not tell what time of day it is, because the sky is covered in white clouds from corner to corner. We are getting a touch of snow but it doesn’t seem to be accumulating today. 