Foster 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.

All the new yarns are now up on my site at http://ColorJoy.com/forsale/. I’ve sold a few since my first post, and have marked those items as sold for the time being. I have also added a handful of new items to the pages since that post.

Thanks again for your support. I’m loving my colors, and it’s nice to know other folks do, too.

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 MailArt stuff I used to participate with.

On the Freeform list, I found out about this: there is a new exhibit online called A girl can NEVER have too many handbags. OK, so I disagree with the title (I’m not much of a purse grrl, have had the same black nylon bag for both knitting and purse for several years now). But my own simplicity around bag-carrying doesn’t make the exhibit any less amazing.

In this exhibit, you will see Freeform Crochet, quilting, beading, felting, intarsia knitting, a recycled sweater, handpainted fabric bags and woven bags. There are over 70 pictures. Do check it out!

Photo is me wearing a pouch I originally knit as a water bottle holder, but here I used it as a small cash purse. It’s knit from Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted and Lion Brand Fun Fur eyelash yarn. My pouch is tame, tame, tame next to the handbag site… do go look, won’t you?

OK, everyone. The ColorJoy yarn pages are up. You can find them from the yarn link at http://LynnH.com or you can go directly to the Yarn Page One by clicking right here in this paragraph. Pages one through three are updated as of right now.

There are three more yarns I have not had time to put up yet, but it’s time to go to the post office and then my knitting guild meeting. Better that you have something to peruse now, rather than waiting any longer.

I’ll check in again as soon as the last few yarns are up, but meanwhile enjoy the bulk of my work while it’s still available. Much of the Cushy ColorSport, my signature yarn, was sold this weekend. However, the lighter weight of the same yarn type, Cushy ColorSox, still offers several colorways as well (ColorSox is on Page Two, which you find by clicking the link at the bottom of Page One).

Thank you for your support and enthusiasm! You can’t know how much it means to me.

See you soon!

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.

Anyway, the first picture (above) is the Jumers Chateau in Bloomingdale Illinois where we stayed.

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.

Anyway, why don’t you go read Knitknacks, the blog by my friend Sharon P? Lately I have had almost no time to read anyone’s blog, but took a minute yesterday to read what I could of Sharon’s. I tell you what, I just love how she writes! It’s just like talking with her. She’s a woman of passion, opinion, talent, and she is just engaging to read. Please go visit her in my absence.

Oh, and definitely also visit Sarah Peasley at Handknitter. She finished her lopi Einstein jacket. And it looks WONDERFUL on her. Go Sarah!

I would love to make one but I’m so afraid it will look bad on me that I don’t dare. I think that I need to follow my gut on that, after all Sara is tall and I’m short. Seems like the people who look good in Einstein aren’t shaped like me (unless perhaps Sally Melville is… she’s small but I think she has nice square shoulders and mine are very small and rounded). Trust my gut. I will instead make the Not Your Mother’s Suit Coat… someday. After I Dye the wool I bought to make it with. The shoemaker’s children have no shoes, right? And I never knit with my own handpainted yarns unless they are for publication. Can’t sell your income, I’d say.

Anyway…
I’ll try to take photos when I’m out of town, and post them. However, there is the very real chance that I’ll be having such a good time living in the moment that I won’t post till Bloomiefest is over.

See you when I can.

In case you thought I stopped teaching kids, here’s a lovely shot of today’s group.

I had eleven of them today, one boy. Three kids are very new, I met them at JoAnn and was so impressed I asked if they would like to come to knitting. Five of this group today are homeschooled, one other lives across the street. The last two are brought by their mom just especially to knit.

It was such a great group. They all are doing so well, even the ones who started last week, that they just sat quietly and knitted most of the time. We had a few finished projects today… one girl finished her first project, a wristband. Another (my youngest) is knitting blankets for kittens at the humane society, how sweet is that?

I love my kidz. Aren’t they beautiful?

Hi, friends. I’ve received a few inquiries about my new batch of handpainted yarns. I did a big batch in October and then got distracted by the holidays and my extra obligations, so I haven’t done dyeing since this year began.

I am just now drying yarn from the last batch for this weekend. (Well, maybe I’ll do one more batch of alpaca/wool since it seems to be screaming “me too!”)

I am going to Bloomiefest on Friday early morning. I can’t imagine how I could get a web page up before then to sell what I have just completed, or I would.

However, realistically I will get home Sunday very late and I’ll spend Monday putting up a web page with the remaining yarns for sale. There will definitely be some, as I have 17 different choices yarns/colorways right now, in addition to my wool/mohair rovings for spinning and feltmaking.

So tune in late Monday and you’ll be the first to see the new offerings. Thank you for your interest!

Thanks to mamaliz, my knitting friend in Ann Arbor will have yarn to finish her sox. Thanks a bunch, Lizzy!

Isn’t this online community the best? I just love knowing you all.

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.

Unfortunately, she used a ribbed cuff and did a beautiful textured/cabled pattern on the foot. And that design used significantly more yarn than she thought it would. So now she is about three inches from finishing a gorgeous pair of sox, and I have no yarn from that batch left so that she can finish.

I have just finished drying a batch of yarn I’m going to call “Seaside: The Sequel.” I never intended to repeat the first colorway (therefore I have no notes) but it was so popular I gave it a try. The new yarn has the same “feel” as the first, from across the room. It is a little lighter overall, with the same purple, indigo and frosted white I used in the first batch. The turquoise in the first batch was almost pale emerald, and in the new batch that was replaced by a very lovely light turquoise/aqua, a little more blue than green. The new colorway is just as beautiful, but slightly different.

(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.)

If there is anyone out there who has a skein of the first dyelot/colorway and is willing to swap to help out my friend, we all would be very happy. Or if you have a small ball of yarn left over from a project, good to cover about a 3″ bit of toe decreases, that would work.

If you volunteer your yet-unknitted skein of Seaside, I’ll pay shipping back. I’ll also send you a bonus small skein of something fun when I send you the replacement yarn. If you have some small leftovers to donate to the cause, I’ll pay shipping and send the fun bonus yarn, but *not* send a new skein of Seaside.

Anybody out there who can help?

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.

Mom grew up with the challenge of some sort of learning disability, we theorize it is dyslexia though she has not been tested. Not only that, she was legally blind and did not get glasses until she was in school. She had been a premature baby and maybe her body just didn’t develop quite right but her spirit was not affected at all.

Mom has always had such a challenge spelling, that she always felt dumb. Her sister would do very well in spelling bees, yet in college sometimes she would answer a question in a test differently than she wanted to… she knew the answer but didn’t know how to spell the word, and she would automatically get marked down for her spelling so she would choose words she knew, even if they were not quite right.

So last week she took an impromptu IQ test while watching a TV show about IQ. And she came out very high on the test, very high. So finally she understands how smart she is. (Eric and I have known this a good long time, of course.) She joked that it was good that the test didn’t have any spelling words in it! Well, Einstein could not spell either… and how smart was he?

Then today mom wrote to me from Florida. She lives in Polk County where they have the largest Senior Games in the state. She and Fred participate every year. Fred is a very good swimmer and does well there, although there is a former olympic swimmer in his age group so he really can’t get a gold easily. They also do lots of dancing, and mom always participates in the 50 and 100 dashes. Not that she feels she is good at running, but to celebrate that she can run at all after surviving cancer for 7 years. Go, Mom!

So today her email said:

We took part in some more Senior Game Events. Fred and I got four golds in the waltz, polka, jitterbug and twist. We got silver in the tango and country two step. The bronze was in the fox trot and cha-cha. Fred also got a silver in the line dance. I did not take part in that. We never get a medal in the rumba and that is one of my favorite dances.

There were seven couples in our age group of 70 to 79. Fred is still able to pull me through his legs in the jitterbug. One of the judges dropped her jaw when that happened. No one in the 50’s or 60’s age group did it. Fred also got several medals in swimming. In the twist competition we were the only ones in our age group, so we got gold by default. There were a lot of really good younger dancers in the twist. We do it for fun and have a good time.

Well, I think it’s the mom who is supposed to be beaming about her kid’s accomplishments. However, today the roles are switched. Go Mom!

Wowie, there is a band in New Zeeland which put out a video where most of the images are knitted. There’s a knitted city with knitted cars and helicopter, the buildings are knitted with felt windows.

My modem is slooooooow so watching the video was less than satisfying. I played it twice and both times saw different pictures, it’s as if I didn’t get the whole thing each time. And the picture showed up as less than two inches wide on my screen, so I could not see much detail during the actual video.

However just going to the web page and looking at the blown up picture they are using as their promotional shot, is definitely worth a peek even if you have a slow connection.

Gotta love it. Sculptural knitting is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and this gives me some concrete examples. Cool!

The image here is a small cropped bit of the picture I think you will want to see in full, by clicking the link above. On their site this piece is a third larger, to boot. Do the artists the favor of seeing the whole thing, if you would. I’m sure they’d be delighted for you to visit… it is their debut album.

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.

Yesterday morning we noticed on the way to breakfast, that there was almost no snow left on the ground. There was a tiny patch at the corner of the diner’s parking lot, but all those inches we had all winter had finally melted with all the rain in the last week. Usually our snow comes and melts, and comes again and melts again. This year it came and accumulated, and stayed for months.

Yesterday evening it snowed a little, enough to have to wipe it off the car before driving. This morning it was pretty much gone. But I don’t mind the snow as much as the lack of color.

This photo was taken out my south-side window. You are seeing the last two of five white houses in a row, then a taupe/beige house, then two more white, then a pale yellow. On our side there are at least three white houses in a row as well, including ours.

And then there is the sky! Notice that the sky nearly matches the white background of this web page, perhaps a little more gray. I did not do anything to change the color, that really is how it looks. Can you see why I am so focused on bringing color into my life? Color is not around me for about half of the year, unless I make sure I bring it in myself. And I positively wither without color.

In good news, I finished a pair of sox yesterday (turquoise Heirloom Easy-Care DK, peasant/afterthought heels with rolled cuff). I’m really close to finishing my Mountain Colors Bearfoot sox as well… just some ends to work in.

In addition, yesterday I dyed a couple dozen skeins of yarn. Today I plan to dye at least 3 dozen skeins as well, and I did 18 skeins earlier last week. I’m preparing for Bloomiefest (a knitters/fiber artists’ retreat) in Bloomington *Illinois* which is near Champaign-Urbana, this weekend. I arrive around noon on Friday, and leave Sunday night.

I’m having a table at Bloomiefest to sell these delectable yarns. I hope others like them as much as I do. I have a few special ones made of alpaca (blends and 100%) and an angora blend yarn that will be beautiful for a shawl. And of course, I’ll bring as much of my signature yarn as I can… that is, as much as I can create between now and then with just me doing the dyeing.

Anyone nearby want to come for the day perhaps? I can get you information if you need it. I’m surprised to find it is only about a 5-hour drive for me. It must be within reach of many folks.

Back to creating color. It’s too bad when my basement dyeing studio is more lit-up and colorful than my southern-facing office, but I’m making the most of it.

This morning Brian took me to the diner five blocks from our home. It used to be the Great Lakes Diner but they closed in April, and I grieved. We really loved being able to walk to breakfast once or twice a week, and the service was so friendly and good there, that we kept going back even though the food was sort of normal American fare, something we don’t eat much of.

The diner building was purchased by folks from Ann Arbor. They own the Fleetwood Diner on Main Street (the same Main Street Bob Seeger sings about in his popular song of many years back). It’s a legend. It looks like an old diner, and it is. Maybe 1940’s perhaps? Metal box with nearly no room to sit, but that is part of the charm. Open 24 hours. Love that part, 24 hours. With my schedule, that is a Very Big Deal. And the cool thing is the new place has the same hours.

So the new Fleetwood Diner in Lansing is in a very new building, only a few years old (it looks in the old style, to give it credit). A beautiful building with much more space than they have in Ann Arbor. And every seat was taken when we were there, except just a few seats at the counter. And it turned over, too… people kept coming and going. A different crowd than before, perhaps less yuppie and more working class. Suits me just fine.

And the food is different, at least some of it. The expected eggs-and-toast stuff you find at any breakfast place, of course. But then they have a bunch of Greek food, including Gyros and Moussaka and flaming cheese. And they have their famous Hippie Hash. It’s a whole bunch of lovely-looking veggies including broccoli (yum) fried with some made-in-house hash browns (infinitely better than frozen potatoes in a bag), and with a couple of eggs. You can even get tempeh with your hippie hash. Tempeh is a soy food that is cultured with something like yogurt, and it makes a sort of crumbly food that works great in chili to replace ground beef or the like.

I was encouraged by the first visit today. I’m really excited that they are 24 hours. This is really good for our neighborhood. I hope all the theatre people get the word about this place. If they do, it will create a steady stream of late eaters which is very good.

I looked like crazy on the web for a picture of this place. There was an article in the City Pulse this week about the diner, but it seems to not be online. I guess it’s too soon, they haven’t even been open a week yet. I did write a blog entry about it, when it was still Great Lakes Diner, and there is a picture there. Also I found a review of the Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor, written by none other than our friends in the band Steppin In It. They actually have a page reviewing diners all over Michigan, a very cool thing indeed. Check out their page for the diner reviews, and then go over to their schedule and see if you can catch them live in concert… they are great musicians, great performers and a very good time indeed.

Lansing-area folks, come on down! It’s just south of the intersection of Cedar and Mt. Hope, very easy to reach by 496 if you are out a ways, or take the Holt/Cedar exit from 96 (exit number 104 if I remember right), pass the first street which is Pennsylvania and merge right onto Cedar… it’s at least a mile or even three miles, on the right side of the road just before a stoplight.