Ironwood Michigan was very good to us! We thoroughly enjoyed staying at the Sandpiper Motel. We met the owner, Annette, and had a nice talk. I love meeting people who run a small business. I find this sort of person so interesting… I have taken risks to be myself, and they have also taken risks to be true to themselves.

Annette said that she had grown up in the U.P. in the motel business, but had gone to lower Michigan for 16 years. At that time she decided that she wanted to bring up her kids in the environment she felt was comfortable and nourishing to them, so she moved back up to the U.P. and has now been running the Sandpiper Motel for over 10 years. I love the sign for the motel, we talked about that a bit. I took pictures of the sign and the neon “Office” sign over the door… but noticed there was a large crate with a large, more modern sign, in the parking lot.

She says that unlike Mom and I, a lot of folks are attracted to the larger chains and she needs to compete. So she will be changing the name of the motel to Classic Motor Inn and they are putting up a sign that looks more like those of the larger chains. Mind you, the place is adorable and clean and well-kept. But it doesn’t look like the Comfort Inn, and a lot of folks would like consistency rather than quaintness. She had orange juice and a nice coffee cake and really good teas and coffee for breakfast, as you might get at a larger place. She didn’t have a swimming pool, but I never use a swimming pool anyway… and I don’t really want to pay for amenities that I won’t be using.

We talked about the new sign she got. She really wanted neon but she could not find any supplier who could/would do it for her. Most of the signs she found were rectangular, and she did not want that, either. So she found a sign in the shape of a shield (the shape of a highway sign). She also paid extra to have a grouping of stars at the top of the shield. She said she really wanted the stars to be neon, flashing, but that was impossible to find and she had to give in to reality and get what was available.

Annette took the picture of Mom and I in front of Sandpiper, soon to be Classic Motor Inn. The day was lovely as we drove the last 90 miles to the wedding.

We got to Hayward in time to go into town for a few minutes. I had forgotten a card for the couple, so we found a little art gallery called Art Beat of Hayward, and got a wonderful card. Then I found a good cup of tea at a coffeehouse (see photo of flowers in coffeecup planter, from outside the coffeehouse) and mom got a not-very-good ice cream cone at a place that had a wonderful old neon sign. It’s a very quaint and lovely town, with many places pedestrians can walk easily and happily. I enjoyed our short time there, but it was time to head to the hotel, as it was getting closer to the time for the wedding.

On Friday Mom and I left at 10:30am on the way to Hayward, Wisconsin for the wedding of my cousin, Marc. We had really good weather in the lower peninsula of the state, then we crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula, where we eventually met up with some steady rain. It was a pleasant drive, all in all. Our state is so big, that we drove until after 11:30 pm our time, about a thirteen hour drive, and all in Michigan. We passed Michigamme, which is where my dance friend Marie is from. In the end we stayed in a lovely family-owned motel in Ironwood, right on the border of Wisconsin at the very far west reaches of the Upper Peninsula (known as the U.P. around here).

It’s funny, but I’ve found a way to feel comfortable being myself and dressing sort of funky and full of color, in Lansing… a not very colorful city. I also tend to compare Lansing to Chicago and Toronto and Boston… so I think of Lansing as a small town for the most part. But when we got to the U.P., the perspective changed a good deal.

The U.P. is green and is just as beautiful as nature can be. Much of the commerce and business in the U.P. is tourist-driven, which means that the folks up there live on slim incomes much of the time. There are a few good jobs working for the National Forestry services or the Michigan Department of Transportation. However, much of the business here is family-owned, doing their best to make things work out. I actually love that… I love eating in restaurants and sleeping in motels, where I know who gets my money. I love meeting other businesspeople, since I’m self-employed, too. In Lansing, I eat at Altus and Aladdins… on the road I like to find little diners and the like, where I like to buy my meals if at all possible (this is harder now that I am unable to eat so many foods, but I try to at least buy my cups of tea or soda pop at these little independently-owned businesses.

Friday it was funny… we got into the U.P. and I was wearing my typical wildly-colored skirt, a tuquoise blouse, and a hot fuschia/pink rayon scarf around my neck. Oh… and very large, dangly blue star earrings. So we started looking for a place to buy a soda pop. We drove for miles where it was just the road, and our car, and trees. Then we found ourself at a settled area which we found later called Strongs, on the map. In Strongs we found a little bar with two gas pumps in front of it, and in front of that there was a rack, like a clothing rack in a mall, but on it was hung all sorts of animal pelts for sale. There were pelts labeled XXL weasel, silver/blue/red fox, beaver, possum, raccoon, coyote, skunk and one bear. The skunk pelts were $25 and the fox were $80 or $85 if I remember right. Since I don’t really know anyone well who hunts, this was a sort of surreal thing for me.

I went into the bar while mom took a look at the pelts. Let me tell you, I looked like an alien I was so out of place in there! It was a large square room. In the front left corner, there was a cash register where you could pay for your gasoline. On the right wall, was a bar with a glass-doored cooler behind it full of soda pop. There appeared to be one person working there, a strong and sturdy woman who was behind the bar.

As I walked in, I noticed there were a good number of men at the bar, and a handful of men at tables, all the men at tables sitting alone with a drink. It was not smoky but it was a bit dark, and the juke box began playing “Louie Louie” so I started to dance to myself. The men would slowly turn to see who had walked in, and then they looked away pretending that I was nothing unusual.

Truthfully, I’m not comfy in a bar, especially when I’m the only female customer… I stood tall and proceeded to the bar, and asked the woman there if I could get a soda pop to go. She said yes, to go behind the bar there and get out whatever bottle I wanted from the cooler. Hmmm… in Lansing there is no place I have been that would let you behind the bar, but this was a lot like Hanksa, MN where my mom grew up, so it was not totally unfamiliar. I proceeded and picked my bottle. I asked for a glass of ice (I really prefer my soda pop to come from a fountain, with lots of ice to water it down a bit) and she got me a small plastic glass full. I then joined her at the other side of the room to pay for my soda after a guy paid for his gasoline.

I did enjoy dancing to the jukebox while I was waiting my turn to pay. I wonder if I gave the guys something to talk about when I left… I mean, even in Lansing my colors and my tendency to dance alone while waiting in line, makes me noteworthy… here, I was just plain a boat out of water. However, the bartender was very nice to me. I commented she had a lot of running to do today (between bar and gas sales) but she said that “this is nothing” and went back to her post at the bar.

When I came out, Mom said that she had just been watching a dozen or so men who rode in and parked across the road, all driving ATV three-and-four-wheelers, which are typically only off-road vehicles where I live. In this part of the country, you see folks driving these all times there is not a lot of snow, and during the winter people drive snowmobiles all over. We saw folks driving the ATVs in town, crossing a “main” street in one of the smaller towns. It’s part of the lifestyle here. By the time I got out of the bar, the ATV’s were roaring away to their next destination.

We proceeded to Ironwood. Ironwood is on the border of Michigan and Wisconsin, the very very western tip of the U.P. By then we had some pretty heavy rain but we were in very unpopulated areas and had to keep going to a town before finding a motel. We asked around, many of the spots were full, but were referred to the Sandpiper Motel, a mom-and-pop type operation which was very clean and very pleasant. Best of all, the rain had stopped and we got to park right outside our room door. It was simple to unload and we slept like babies. I want to write more about Sandpiper but will do that another day. I’m typing this on the road and I pay by the minute when I’m dialing long distance.

Photos: Mom in front of a family-owned burger restaurant, only 5 tables and one employee, the cook/waitress. View of Mackinac bridge just before the center point. Mom inspecting a skunk pelt. Strongs Bar and gasoline station.

Well, my friends… it was a long haul for some reason, but I have eleven unique, one-of-a-kind ColorJoy Stole Kits up for sale on my Fiber/Yarn site. These all include five or six yarns, some of them handpainted by me, some of them handspun by me, all beautiful and ready to make a glorious stole!!!

And here is the scoop, for those of you who read my weblog to hear first: I am having a special offer. Anyone who buys over $60 USD of any ColorJoy/LynnH merchandise, whether it be yarn, patterns, kits, roving or books… they will get a free CD of The Fabulous Heftones, entitled Moon June Spoon. The CD is a value of $15 USD.

This offer is good until August 6 (paid by that date). I will be taking my Goddaughter, Sara, on a trip east on August 9 and will be unable to ship for a while (Brian will be home but he emphatically is not my employee). So get it while the getting is free!

Or don’t, and just keep reading. Just the fact that you are out there is wonderful to me.

Thank you once again, each and every wonderful one of you… for reading my ramblings here. I love writing and it is very rewarding to know you are out there reading. You make my life better, thanks.

I am still putting together the web pages for my ColorJoy Stole kits. It’s after 1am and I have a violent case of the hiccups. When that happens, it’s my body telling me to sleep. So tomorrow (Thursday) just became Stole day.

For your viewing pleasure, here is one (of many more I’ll post) picture of Irene’s garden. I went to Irene’s house for the weekly guild knit-in on Tuesday night, and got there in time to take photos while the sun was up. There were many beautiful angles just in her front yard, and I’ll show you more later.

Good night.

News leak… I’m preparing some ColorJoy Stole kits right now. I’m assembling yarns into groups that will each make a lovely ColorJoy Stole, with none of the fussing or worry you would have if you assembled your own. Each kit, of course, will include a pattern/guide to knitting the stole. Each will be one of a kind, never to be repeated.

I’m making these up from yarns I have in stock already, to see how they go. It looks like I have eleven kits in the making. If they do well, I will plan to do more in the future. This group of kits will be unique, as four of them feature yarn I handspun myself. I do not plan to continue selling my handspun, so this is first-come, first-served special stuff.

I am hoping to have the web page up by Wednesday midnight, but it’s a big push to make that timeframe. We’ll see. I’m out of town on Friday/Saturday/Sunday for a wedding… Mom and I are going to Wisconsin. Therefore, I will probably be shipping stole kits to their respective new owners on Monday.

Aaah, summer! About a week ago we picked our first tomato. Not just the first tomato of this year, mind you… the first tomato I have ever grown, any year. My friend Art says his tomatoes are not ready yet but his garden is by a lake where the temperatures are cooler than on my southwest stair landing. That landing has room for only one container, meaning only one tomato plant, but it has proven a good spot this year.

Art’s wife, my friend Marlene, is an incredible cook. She re-introduced me a few years back, to the fava bean. Fava beans are used a lot in mideast cooking. They are large and have a meaty flavor, without being grainy. And they look sort of like a little pillow with a dark line on half the edge… Marlene says they smile!

Well, fava beans are really easy to prepare, they come in cans ready to eat… just rinse and add whatever you love. Sometimes I add them to red spaghetti sauce for an instant dinner. Marlene makes an amazing fava bean salad. So I decided this was how we would celebrate the harvest of our first tomato… a fava bean salad.

It was perfect. The only things in the salad I didn’t grow myself, were olive oil and fava beans. I opened a couple of cans of fava beans (they had cooled in the refrigerator overnight) and rinsed them well. I added dill weed from the garden, some chopped parsley and swiss chard leaves (like spinach) from the garden, and the exquisite fresh tomato, just picked. I guess I also added some black pepper we got at the store, and then the olive oil. It was just wonderful!!!

Photos: Plant before the harvest (we picked the tomato furthest to the back), me holding freshly-picked tomato, fava bean salad ready to eat.

Well, I finally let myself have time to surf a little bit Sunday. I found a few links that you might want to check out.

From The Boogie Knits is how to make a bra from a pair of Men’s underwear. No, I didn’t make this up.

From One More Row and Another Latte is a link to the Knitting Tarot. I know a bit about the tarot (no, I do not believe it predicts the future and I do not feel it conflicts with any “traditional” religious practices) and this artist is right-on with the symbolism even though she’s using different words to describe the concepts.

On Mind of Winter, I found a link to a free pattern by Annie Modesitt, which is found on the Interweave website. The pattern is for a Fiesta Tea Set (in PDF format). Gotta love it… I’m a fanatical tea drinker. Now when will I find time to knit this? It’s far too cool!

Oh… stopped by Threadbear Fiberarts‘ new shop today. It’s full of boxes, shelves, boxes, yarn, boxes, books, boxes… and today there was one dog. The dog who disappeared last night. I’m delighted for everyone that Tate is back safe and sound (and acting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened at all). Whew! I did help check in a bit of yarn and some books. I used to work in wholesale and then in retail, and I really like doing physical merchandise work. It was fun. There were several folks I know from Mid-Michigan Knitting Guild there, helping out or stopping by to say hello.

After I went to Threadbear, I went to Emil’s Restaurant and had dinner with my dance friend Marie and her three children. We had a wonderful time. I love the kids… the two oldest clamored to sit by me, which was a big honor. I’m not used to all the activity created by three children (one of whom is not school age yet) but they sure are alive and fun and good company. I did some knitting as I was waiting for them to arrive, but no knitting happened (although both grownups and two of the kids knit at least occasionally) after the crowd arrived. That was fine, the conversation and togetherness was good enough.

I let the boys use my digital camera to keep them happy while we were waiting for our food. The first three photos today were taken by the youngest, a preschooler. The last three were taken by the older boy, young-elementary-aged. (Sister I believe will be in 6th grade next year.) Yes, their mom thinks it’s OK for me to post their pics here, I’ve actually posted one before.

It is interesting to see how a youngster approaches a camera. The youngest kept turning the camera around, pointing it to his face before pushing the button. We don’t know if he wanted to see the familiar side of the camera or if he is left handed and the button was easier to push that way. He got very excited when he actually could tell he had a photo of my face (picture 1). Actually, the older boy also got excited when he got a shot of the back of my head (picture 4) and my turquoise crystal bracelet (picture 5).

I sort of like how surreal the children’s shots can be. I’m posting them here un-cropped, and un-feathered at the edges. I did lighten them up some, and I changed the contrast on most of them so you can see detail better, but I did not change the layout of the shots at all. I also kept them small here so they would look more like the display unit on the back of the digital camera. This is how the boys viewed their photos… just a little smaller than I see them on my screen.

Speaking of art, my beloved hubby Brian is artful with computer programming on the web. I had something like 2000 spam comments on my weblog in just a few days, most trying to sell pharmaceuticals to men. What a hassle!

Well, it took less than two days and Brian figured out a slow but effective method to remove the unwanted comments (we ran his routine while we were sleeping and in the morning the unwanted comments were gone). He also set things up so that it will be a little harder for the unwanted messages to happen again.

I am a geek but not in this area. I am really grateful for my beloved. Thanks, Brian! Comments are restored to ColorJoy again, and I’m grateful.

Well, I have been enjoying my snailmail lately! First I got a box of yarns from Cyndy and then I got an envelope from Laura. So many yarns, so little time!!! These are just gorgeous. I am definitely checking out the one yarn from Laura as a possible felting yarn (which is why she sent it). The brushed mohair in the same colorway (she dyed this herself) is also fabulous. You all know I adore brushed mohair… I wonder what this will become. It’s not a lot but could be a stripe in a legwarmer or a cuff on a glove, perhaps. Hmmm…

The yarns from Cyndy were out of the blue. She knows I use a lot of eyelash yarn, since she watches my weblog. So here she sent me some Crystal Palace Fizz (this is a wonderful yarn that comes in so many great colors) in color 7320, a cobalt. Wonderful stuff, which screams “Mom” to me. She also sent Plymouth Yarn DazzleLash, a poly/rayon metallic which is teal (on the green side, greener and darker than in this photo) with gold bits. The color number is 143. Totally cool, and totally me. Can’t wait for time to knit another ColorJoy stole just for me. This one could work great in a stole for wearing onstage. Glitter is wonderful on stage.

The last yarn is something I’ve never seen before. It’s a yarn called Potluck (150 yards, varying weights) and it is by Ellyn Cooper’s Yarn Sonnets. The label says “Hand-dyed yarns” but this is more like hand-assembled yarn. It yas bits of all types of yarn, from chenille, to brushed mohair, to glittery wrapped yarns, to a shiny rayon, a smooth wool and a shiny cotton, and even strips of woven fabric, mostly calico-flower prints. They are all tied together with overhand knots, clearly intended as decorative accents. Very innovative, think Crazy Quilt for yarn. It will need a swatch to really see what its best potential might be.

The color is called “Minty” but it ranges from mint/aqua to sage green to gray, gray-blue, soft purple and mauve. The colors look about perfect for a purse for my friend JoDee, but she is seriously sensitive to wool and mohair, so this is not to be. I have not a clue what this will become, but it seems to be purse material more than anything else right now. I’m thinking maybe of knitting it as one strand along with another solid-colored strand for stability and unity.

I’m so busy making my dyeing business get up off the ground that this will probably wait a little while, but I’m thinking…I’m thinking. It might be nice in a weaving of some sort, too… a table runner perhaps, mixed with other yarns. I’m not sure yet. When I find out what it is telling me it wants to be, you’ll hear it here first.

Photos: Laura’s handpainted wool and mohair yarns. Box from Cyndy… can she do ColorJoy or what??? Then the three yarns from the box… more color and more joy! Thanks, ladies.

I just spent two days in Ann Arbor. I didn’t stay the night, I drove home to sleep, but basically I did almost nothing else for two days.

On Friday, I did a shift helping watch the booth for Ann Arbor Fiberart Guild. I did not have any work in the booth this year but I just helped out on a shift they had found it hard to fill. It was fun enough and not too long to be boring. After the shift was over, I actually was fighting a headache so I did not feel like hanging out very long.

I did look up Kathleen Dustin (Polymer Clay Fine Artist), and she was there so I chatted with her a little while. She is a woman at the top of the innovators in Polymer Clay, doing work that is truly Museum quality work. If you ever check out Ornament Magazine, they often use her work in their advertising. She draws and paints on polymer often, usually women’s faces. Then she also layers and shapes and molds layer after layer, sanding and polishing and sometimes carving into the clay then filling the carved areas with contrasting clays.

Kathleen is an example of a true artist. She will tell you exactly how she did the piece, show you what she did, have examples of each step she took… and there is NO way you can duplicate what she does. You won’t come close. No matter what you do, you can not have her style… which is as it should be.

The truth is, no matter how well someone teaches you, you have your own hands, your own sense of touch (in polymer this is very crucial… how hard do you push, are your hands warm or cool, what brand of clay are you using). It’s a very personal thing. You can try all day to be someone else, but you just can not be them. You must be yourself. You will have your own style, your own touch, your own way of bringing the art to the surface. You can only create in your own way. You can not be anyone else, nor should you even want to. You can aspire to be that good, you can aspire to be that inspiring, that original, that polished. I mean, I’d love to be Lucy Neatby when I grow up, but I never will be. I’ll be LynnH. Period.

So… please go to Kathleen Dustin’s site and check out her amazing work. She is a one-of-a-kind innovator, a true artist of world class, museum-quality work. She is also kind to me when I’m not really in her league… a class act. Of course, when I was at her booth, there were people purchasing and I needed to stand back and let her make a living. However, we had a nice chat when things slowed down. I may actually possibly see her when I’m in Vermont in August. She’s doing the same large art fair as my friend Luann Udell (that fair is 10 days in duration), and there is a chance I’ll go to the fair in order to see Luann. We’ll see what happens once I get out there.

I headed home Friday after talking with Kathleen… before the show ended. I just could not shake my headache and I knew I had to get up early on Saturday to go down to the fair again and dance.

Saturday we danced at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair (The Original… the first of the four large concurrent fairs that now all happen on the same weekend). We danced near a fountain and near the tower. This fair is the juried fine-art fair that is very hard to get into (this is where Kathleen was) and it was I think the first time they had this sort of stage. Friday I saw the goodbye bows of what looked like a modern or jazz dance troupe, and a singer-songwriter who was very good but who probably was wishing she had a few more people in her audience.

Today we had a pretty decent crowd… the sound guy said we had the best crowd of the week thus far. That was wonderful! I had a little solo in the middle of a set of two dances, and that was very fun, I think I did just fine. The stage was black, covered with a rubbery surface which means we had no risk of splinters in our bare feet… but the stage had no tent or roof over it, and the floor was so hot a few girls got blisters on their feet from the sun’s heat on the black. Fortunately, my friend Donna/Maya had a pair of modern dance slippers… they are suede leather, skin colored, with just a pad under the ball of your foot and straps to keep them on . This allowed me to dance on my toes without a lot of discomfort most of the time. The things that happen in the great outdoors!!! Burned feet from a stage, who would have thought?

After the dance performance, most of the girls went home and I was going to go with them. However, Donna/Maya said she might like to stay and see the fair more. I didn’t have any other plans so I went back with her. We had such fun! I was delighted to find that I could eat the sweet potato chips so I bought them… they cost too much for junk food and they did not agree with me since I have not had deep fried food in about two years… but I enjoyed tasting them and having the outdoor-junk-food experience common at events like this. When I couldn’t eat any more, I asked the two young women behind me if they wanted the rest and they accepted. I like it that in the midwest you can offer your leftovers to strangers and have them accepted right away without hesitation.

Oh, while Donna and I were wandering the booths on Liberty Street, I got talking to Betsy Youngquist about color. She is an artist I had not met before, it was her first time selling at Ann Arbor (she is from Illinois). Betsy makes incredible “paintings” and sculptures in a mosaic technique, but she mostly uses glass beads rather than tiles or glass pieces. She gets really excellent subtle shapes this way. She had a beaded otter, maybe 2 feet long, perhaps longer, that was exquisite. Her wall pieces look like they are constructed on ceramic sheets, but they could be watercolor with a shiny glaze to make them shine like ceramic. You might like to check out Betsy’s website and see her excellent works..

The photos today are: the Ann Arbor Fiberart Guild booth (on left) in the middle of the crowd on State Street, at the corner of North University; the beautiful mall area just behind the stage where we danced… elephant ears (large fried pastries) on right, fresh fruit smoothies on left, Potters Guild booth straight ahead, artists to far right and behind, past the stage; two pictures of Habibi Dancers… I’m in the purple on left/front in the first picture, and the second shot is other dancers; and me eating one huge sweet potato chip… really, this was all one piece of potato.

Someone on the Quiltart list posted a link a good while ago, to Right Brain Workout pages. Looks really fun and interesting. Don’t blame me if you lose a few hours over this!

Well, in the last day and a half, I have received 1200 spam comments to my weblog. Most of them are advertising drugs of some sort, some are sexual in nature. I had something between 500 and 600 comments, in the last year and a half combined. Then I got 1200 in not even two days. I got so many, it would have been very easy to miss a legitimate note from one of you wonderful readers. It makes me just ill.

I had to do it: I removed the link from the weblog that let you click to comment. I’m really bummed. As it is, I get fewer than one comment per entry. Now folks will have to go out of the way to switch to their email program and type in one of my email addresses (Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com) to send me a comment. Just because someone figured out how to write a computer program to send me spam faster than I can delete it.

Sigh…

Wednesday was our concert in the Park at Meridian Historical Village. We got there and the sky was growing darker. They asked us to start 5 minutes early and play only a half hour rather than 45 minutes, hoping that this way both bands would play.

Well, it was a pretty nice crowd especially given the looks of that sky. In fact, there was a severe thunderstorm *warning* but nothing raining at the time we got there.

So we got the sound check and started playing. We played maybe 20 minutes, perhaps 25. At one point it looked like we might luck out, I could see an actual raincloud pass by to the north of us, while the wind whipped around like Dorothy’s house flying away from Kansas. Well, the wind died down but then the rain came. I had to stop in the middle of a verse to Paper Moon, and we all ran for cover in the barn nearby where they keep the electrical equpment.

It was a shame… the main band, Honest D and the Steel Reserve, did not get a single note played. They have been promised first priority next year, because tonight was the last concert of the season.

I was delighted to see some familiar faces. My Mom and Fred were there, of course. Sharon P and her beau Lynn were there. A very talented gentleman from the poetry community was there, and he even bought a CD while we were hiding from the rain. Our dear friend Bob McCarthy who is in the Abbott Brothers band with us, was there. It was great to see him and give him a big hug!

A man who used to be a neighbor when I was growing up also came, and it was nice to see him again. Of course, Diane Grettenberger, our contact person, and her husband George, were also there. I’m sure I missed someone and I hope they forgive me.

After the concert, I ran to Foster Community Center for the end of the Habibi Dancers’ rehearsal. We are dancing at Ann Arbor Art Fair on Saturday so I needed to be there, as well. I wanted to have a clone but in the end it worked out OK.

When I first got to the room, Anne/Nyla was sitting with her daughter at the other side of the classroom. I was delighted when the child looked up and asked her mom “Is that Lynn?” How cool is that?

I gave my ColorJoy stole to the child to play with, while we danced. I tend to give her things to play with when I see her. She *LOVED* the stole. She wrapped it around herself all sorts of ways, she played peek a boo, she had a wonderful time. I had to dance so I only got one shot, but isn’t this sweet? Anne loves her baby!!! Raising a confident and happy child is the highest artform there is, and this picture reflects a bit of that art.

I can not see this child without remembering that she started out at only 3 pounds and 1 oz. That is just plain tiny! She is doing very well in all levels of development, except that she is pretty small. If that’s her only problem area, she is doing just fine in my book. I’m so happy she’s healthy and thriving. And look at her mom’s face… love. Lucky kid.

Tomorrow I visit a few knitting friends, then I go to work at Foster for a few hours, then I have dinner with Sara again. I love that kid, speaking of a confident and happy child. She’s wonderful. We are really working on her stick shift lessons and she’s doing well. I am looking forward to seeing her.

Photos today are: Brian and I at the Meridian concert, photo taken by Lynn (Sharon’s beau). Unfortunately, I gave him my camera set to take close-ups. Don’t blame him for how fuzzy it is (see Sharon’s blog from the link above and see another photo from the concert). Second shot: Anne/Nyla with her delightful child, playing with my ColorJoy Stole.

Wow, so many things to catch up on here! It’s 84 degrees and only 10:30am, we are going to have a hot one. Brian and I are scheduled to play at Historic Meridian tonight at 7pm. We have a 70 percent chance of rain, so everyone cross your fingers if it pours, it does so before or after the concert. So far they have had excellent luck in this department and we are planning on that to continue one more time.

I got a notice from Michigan Fiber Festival (Allegan, MI) that my two classes are doing well with registrations. Polymer Clay on Thursday is 14 people, and Knitting with Novelty Yarns (ColorJoy Stole) is at 10. I think my max is 16 so if you were hoping to be in those classes you might want to get going with your registrations. Or just wave as you go by my workshop, if I happen to notice you are there. I tend to get very focused when I teach, the only real time that happens for me.

It looks like Annie Modesitt and I will be rooming together at Allegan. I’m thrilled! We tried to meet last September when she had the Seaside retreat, but I got really sick and had to stay home. We’ve been corresponding for several years and are both excited to finally meet up. Once she had one of those Myers-Briggs personality test things on her website… where you could find out how alike you were… and we were something like 97% compatible. Very strange, since our type is only 8% of the population, and because we both do approach knitting design very differently. Anyway we just will have to be sure we don’t stay up all night talking like a slumber party, because we have classes to teach.

Yesterday Brian and I performed at a luncheon my mother had for 37 of her friends that she knows from Florida. Most of the folks she knows there, summer in the north and winter in the south. So these folks came in from Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other more local places. She has done this for three or four years now, and they have a very nice time. They are a great audience for our sort of music, and we had a nice time, as well.

Last night I went to Ann Arbor for the Borders knit in. I went early, though, so that I could have dinner at Exotic Bakery (a Syrian deli) with my brother, Eric and his wife, Diana. They are just about the best friends a person can have. We talked a LONG time, then I went to the knit-in, then I went over to their house in Ypsilanti and we talked more! I got home late but it was very worthwhile. I didn’t get much fiber work done yesterday but it was a successful day, nonetheless. And I did actually do a pretty good job of not worrying.

Pictures today are: Brian and I entertertaining the crowd at lunch, Mom and I at lunch (can you see where I get my ColorJoy?), a Monaco “retro” vehicle someone drove to Mom’s house for dessert, Antonia at Borders wearing her finished sweater… knit on size 2 needles out of French cotton boucle’ (you should have seen the suit and cape she has worn on previous occasions), and the Ypsi/Arbor Bowling neon sign on Washtenaw. I’ve always wanted to get a photo of that sign but I never have gone by with a camera in the evening. Love that sign!!!

I am committed to not worrying for 24 hours. I wrote this to my friend Suze in TX, and she sent me a link with quotations about worrying or not. The site is called Quote Garden. Love the name. I had not found that site before.

Here is a sample:

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
     ~E. Joseph Cossman

Do you want to join me in my no-worry day? I would appreciate company.

Hi, friends. I promised Regina (hey, grrl!) that I would put up the information here, about our performance on Wednesday night (tomorrow)… and as much as I know about my dance performance on Saturday, as well.

Brian and I are playing, as The Fabulous Heftones, at Meridian Historical Village on Wednesday, July 21. Our performance is 7:00pm to about 7:45. After us is the wonderful Honest D and the Steel Reserve, from 8:00 on.

Meridian Historical Village is behind the Meridian Mall. Drive past the mall on Marsh Road and at the corner of Central Park Drive, you’ll see a huge clock tower/fancy cellphone tower. Behind the tower is the Meridian Township offices and behind that is the Farmers’ Market… and behind that is a bridge that takes you to the Historical Village. It’s actually sort of behind Nokomis Center, but you park at Meridian Township.

It’s outdoors so the usual warnings for bug spray, etc., apply. I talked to Diane Grettenberger, our contact person, today. She says that they have had excellent luck with weather this year, even on rainy days they have been rain free during the actual performances. So please come out if you are in town, we’d love to see you.

I have to leave immediately after our performance, to go rehearse with the Habibi Dancers. We are performing at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair on Saturday. The time is 1pm and it’s at Ingalls Mall, wherever that is! Actually, there is a map on their website to help you find it. If you are familiar with Ann Arbor, it’s between Washington, Thayer, North University and Fletcher, not far from the Burton Memorial Tower and a fountain.

Photo here is us (The Fabulous Heftones) playing in Midland on May 7 of this year. It was our first performance after we finished our CD, Moon June Spoon. What a good year it has been for us!

There is a new online spinning magazine, handspinners.com, and it has a worthy article on risk taking for fiberartists, authored by Deb Behm. There are also other articles that might interest you, but this one is just excellent.

Photo today is a picture of my Reggio Purple striped afterthought sox. This is my 95th pair, amazing! I got the yarn at Yarn for Ewe with my gift certificate not very long ago. Nice stuff, I really like it. It has a little more wool in it than some other sockyarns and it’s a little thicker, as well. A really nice-feeling yarn on the foot!

Friday night I joined Brian in Evart, Michigan, for the Dulcimer Fun Fest (warning, this website plays music in the background). Neither of us plays any variation of a dulcimer, but it’s basically an acoustic music festival where we fit in well. Brian has taught ukulele workshops there for perhaps three years, and they are well attended and well reviewed.

He had been there since Wednesday if I remember right. I just went for one overnight. It is another of those camping places, where we slept in a tent. I’m not big on that part, but the music was great fun.

Actually, my instrument is the big hit at this show. Everyone wants to know about my bass (it looks like a huge banjo) and where I got it and if it’s for sale. Brian’s father, Larry, built it and has built a good number of other ones but as a hobby. He’s retired and has many interests, not just making Heftone basses. But I sure need to be my best sociable self when I carry that instrument around a festival! It is not for the meek, believe me.

We got to play a lot of music Friday night. We found a small group of folks to jam with for a good long while, and a few other times we just played music by ourselves. We had a great time. We met a few other musicians who were new to us, and we delightfully ran into a bunch of old friends. In fact, the first music I heard as I entered the festival grounds, was “The Flaming Ukulele in the Sky” being played by perhaps a half dozen ukulele players… some of whom we’d met at the Midwest Ukefest in Indianapolis last October. It was great to see them! They said they are planning to go to the Ukefest in the Pocanos mountains of Pennsylvania this September. We’re going, too! I am excited about that.

I think I have more pictures than things to say here… but the first picture is our friends playing ukulele as I first arrived. Next are two shots of folks doing a traditional-style circle dance Friday after dinnertime, and the last two shots are Brian’s beginning ukulele workshop on Saturday morning.

My sister-in-law (Brian’s youngest sister), Jennifer, lives in Washington DC these days. She is a very interesting person and I could write a long time about her work. (She has training as a landscape architect and her specialty is working with large cities figuring out how to make them more friendly to do without your car. She rides public transit or a bicycle to get around, and tries to make it easy for others to do the same.)

I guess the job she has now is good enough to stay in DC for a while, because she bought herself a condo apartment. It’s an efficiency apartment but it looks bigger than the one I had in the late 1970s. She ordered a Murphy Bed (the kind you pull down out of the wall) to make it more roomy and comfortable during the day. The Murphy Bed will have bookshelves on it, for storage, that somehow work even when the bed is down for the night. Sounds like excellent use of space to me.

Anyway, she has put up a page with pictures of the space, before and after. I think she did a great job! She says she wishes the color in the kitchen displayed better. It’s a light yellow-green, greener than it shows in the photos. I think she said that the walls in the living room are all painted slightly different colors. She has a lot of the light green, and she also somewhere (the hallway?) painted a few variants on orange.

The transformation job is quite effective I think. I haven’t seen such impressive before/after pictures since we gutted our bathroom.

Congratulations to Jennifer on her new home!

This is a quick note to acknowledge a very wonderful gift I got from Cyndy in the mail this week. It’s a box full of fun yarns, and I’ll take photos later. Right now I have a day full of obligations, and a tomorrow full as well. I’ll be back with photos before you know it.

Thanks for thinking of me, Cyndy! That was so sweet of you.

Wednesday night, the Habibi Dancers had a group photo session. We all got to dress up really pretty and have fun with being girls. We got to take a few snapshots at the same time. Of course, mine are not as good as the photographer’s shots will be, but mine are quicker to access, he’s still getting the film processed.

The first shot here is my friend April and her baby Isabel. Don’t they look just as beautiful as can be??? Isabel had a fun day, because everyone was holding her and talking to her and making sure she was happy. She was just gurgling away as happy babies do. It was sweet.

The second shot is the three new Habibi apprentice members. On the left is my friend Marie, who I’ve pictured here before. Second is Jennifer and third is Moriah. These ladies are all excellent dancers with wonderful stage presence. They also are good to hang around. I’m glad they are in my life.

The third photo is part of the troupe all together. Unfortunately, my friend Anne/Nyla can only be seen by her hand holding a sword in the front right corner. I might be missing someone else, as well.

You can find me in the group shot, in the back row toward the left. I’m wearing purple but not wearing my glasses.

There were four of us in town who were missing from the photo shoot if I remember right. (One was Sally/Sara, who was busy having her baby… a girl, Beatrice Noel. Congrats go out to Sally and family.) You can see we have a crowd of dancers! It is a fun crowd, indeed.

My sister in law, Diana, sent me a new link. It is called Design Addict, which they label “retromodern.” I love this stuff… plastic storage columns with slide doors, beautiful chairs and couches, links to exhibitions including one coming the USA called “A Plastic Presence.”

I just checked out a book (and returned it) from the library, on 1960s design. Twiggy, rocketships, inflatable chairs, mini cars, all sorts of fun furniture and architecture. Love that stuff.

Enjoy the link.

WooHoo! I finished the web pages for my new batch of ColorJoy yarns. I will be announcing them just after midnight, to the Socknitters list. However, you loyal folks get the first notice if you want them. If you don’t need yarn, I understand. But several of you have been very loyal and I wish to be loyal to you in return.

The top skein here is called Kathy The Confident. It is named after a friend who encouraged me to actually use the colors I loved again, at a time when I was wearing black more often than not. That was 1985 and I’ll never forget the loving words she spoke to me. She said… “Lynn, if you love turquoise and want to paint things turquoise in your house… Go for it!” She kept telling me to go for it (regarding using colors I loved), until I listened. I owe her much.

The second skein is called Mom’s House. My mom has surrounded herself with calming blues and greens in her home. Everything is simple but beautiful. She often wears brighter colors than this, but her home is calming and serene.

The half-pound skeins in ColorSport (knits to DK gauge) have 450 yards, and can make a baby sweater or one to two pair sox. If you have small feet and knit shortish stockinette cuffs, you’ll get two pair. If you knit cables or texture, if you like taller cuffs or have larger feet, you can get one pair for you and a smaller pair for a kid you love. Or enough yarn to combine with a second yarn for a scarf, perhaps… or a small purse/cellphone holder. Or wristwarmers! I love wristwarmers!!!

The half-pound skeins in ColorSox have 875 yards, a lot of yarn. According to my resources, this will make a sweater up to about a 29″ chest for a child. Two skeins would make a luxurious baby afghan. One skein is enough for 2 pair ladies’ sox without worrying about running out (in comparison, Regia 4ply has 229 yards in one 1.75oz skein, and I always have leftovers from 2 balls, even if I’m knitting for Brian who wears a size 8 or 8-1/2 shoe, the equivalent of a woman’s 10 or so).

Oh, and I do have some smaller skeins in both ColorSport and ColorSox, left from the last offering. Some colorways sold out but some did not. I also have some of my once-only yarn offerings left, including some wool/silk yarn in pinks and purples, and some ballerina eyelash in a light version of Seaside.

A Night with Other Knitters
I went to the knit-in last night for the Mid Michigan Knitting Guild, and went home with four skeins fewer than I had when I got there. That was encouraging and exciting. The anonymous woman who finished her In the Garden sox this week, bought another 100gm skein (3.5oz) in a new colorway for her, which I still had in stock from the last batch. It feels good when people like my work well enough to come back again. Thanks, Anonymous!!!

I don’t often go to knit-ins for the guild, as I have so many Tuesday guilds out of town, and classes to teach when I’m lucky. However, I was able to make two weeks in a row this time! I don’t know when I’ll ever feel comfortable in a large group like that… I like all the people but I get sort of overwhelmed trying to listen to more than one conversation at a time.

I am much happier having coffee with Sarah P or Sharon P or Tony or some other individual friend, one at a time. I don’t lose track of conversations that way. Structured guild meetings are different, even though they have more people. There is one thing going on in the room most of the time, and I can enjoy that easily. But I am just getting less and less happy with gatherings where I can not keep up with all the conversations going on within earshot… especially when I find them all so interesting.

I saw Sarah’s finished sweater! She wrote such humorous things about her process of finishing it, that I figured she enjoyed the process (of knitting most parts at least 2-3 times to get them just right). Maybe she didn’t enjoy it so much, but I think she will enjoy wearing the sweater. It has a wonderful texture.

You know what? It seems that every time I see Sarah P, she has a new finished sweater. What is with that? Either she knits like a speed demon or I don’t see her enough. I wonder if it might be both…

The last photo here is a picture my friend Vince took when he visited us a year ago next week. (He gave me permission to put it on my weblog.) It shows the turquoise color of paint I have been using, in four different homes, since I took my friend Kathy’s advice to go for it. It is a lighter color than I usually wear, but houses do better with more subtle colors than people do, in my estimation. That peach color I’ve also used since the mid-1980’s.

I picked these colors originally to go with some natural wood trim that was a bit orangey, in the first house I ever owned (with my ex)… but the colors have looked great in all my houses since then. Can you see the little bit of purple on the baseboard? I added that when I bought myself a house after my divorce. The outside of our footed tub is painted that color right now, with turquoise feet. Such fun!

I’m off to dance rehearsal tonight. Actually, we are having a photo shoot for publicity photographs. This means we get to all dress up, one reason we all enjoy dancing so much! Dress up for grownups, you gotta love it. It should be fun. See you tomorrow.

Today I’m focusing on getting a web page together for my current batch of yarns. The page will hopefully be up tomorrow, definitely by the 15th. Therefore I will amazingly keep it a little shorter and without photos today.

Monday I met Sharon P of Knitknacks, for an iced tea at the outdoor tables of Beaners on the South Side. For a few minutes it rained and then it immediately got so hot and sunny we had to go inside. It was great being outside at all.

Sharon is knitting two beautiful things. (See photos on her blog.) One is a sunburst purse (knit like a short-rowed beret, where it looks like sections of a pie) out of a soy silk ribbon. It’s dyed beautifully, a perfect summer rainbow.

The other is a pair of socks from Koigu’s Kersti yarn. That yarn is so heavenly, I get tempted every time I see it. Fortunately I don’t see it often!!! I need to make yarn to sell, not buy more for my personal stash. I hope that soon I’ll be using my yarns to design a few patterns specifically for ColorSport. I hope. My dance card is already a little over-full so I don’t know when that might happen.

Anyway, Sharon told me that there has been a Monday knit-in at Schuler’s Books at Eastowne Mall for a while, and she was planning to go for the first time. I thought I might check it out, too… I’ll be booked on Mondays during the school year but could do it this week.

So I went, a bit late since I had some other things to finish first. And I got there, and Sharon P and her beau Lynn were the only ones there, at least in the knitting realm. We sat and knitted and talked for a while, and then gave it up when it was almost 9pm. That was too bad, we thought we might meet new knitters. We *did* have a good time, anyway!

In unrelated news, I was sent a quote today by Anna Freud. It was originally written in German, but fortunately for me it came with an English translation as well.

English - Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

German - Kreative Gemüter waren schon immer bekannt dafür, jede Art schlechter Ausbildung zu überleben

Sunday night, I harvested my pot of leaf lettuce. I also harvested some baby leaves of swiss chard, and some amazingly healthy and huge parsley that was actually shading the swiss chard in my tiny garden.

I made salads with the above ingredients, plus some red bell pepper (thanks, mom!) and some flavored-baked tofu (added after I took the picture), and some gomasio, which is ground up sesame seeds with sea salt. I topped it with an absolutely wonderful olive oil that we had purchased at Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor a while ago. Dinner was delightful!

Here are pictures of the garden from a distance, the garden close up (notice the huge, dark green parsley in the back, it must be 8 inches tall next to the swiss chard in front of it, which is about 2.5 inches), the lettuce in its container before I harvested it, and the best garden surprise yet this summer… a tomato that turned red overnight. I have seven tomatoes on this plant, one only an inch across, but this larger one decided to turn red. We decided to let it ripen a little more before picking it. I don’t even know how to tell if it is ready!!! I’m not much of a tomato eater but the plants are so beautiful I wanted to try it.

This food gardening stuff is really wonderful. I really enjoy it. This is the first year I’ve harvested anything but a few herbs and one lone bell pepper. I can see that I’ll be trying lettuce and tomatoes again next year, because they do fine with the sort of care I give. Plants that can’t be ignored for 2-3 days in a row, do not thrive in my yard. Yet Laura told me that I should not water every day, that the roots get stronger that way. I’m glad to know it. I won’t feel guilty any more!!!

Today I also bought some petunias, four nice plants that are almost a foot tall already, in white and salmon. I had one container on the front corner of the house that apparently gets too much sun for the impatiens to thrive, and the johnny-jump-ups are very scraggly there. I’m going to add these four petunias so that the pot won’t look scrawny for the rest of the year. The petunias in the sun on the back side of the house are thriving, so I’m hoping this pot which is a little less sunny will be OK for them as well. We’ll see. If it doesn’t work, next year I’ll try something else.

The title of today’s blog has meaning in my family. For a few years when I was in elementary school, my dad tried planting a few food items. We also had a good number of dwarf fruit trees in our yard. And every time we would eat something he’d grown, he’d say in a loud voice: “Grown on our own farm!” I thought it was just a saying, like “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” After all, we were in suburbia and there was no farm within walking distance.

Well, I was wrong. Dad was echoing my mother’s father. Grandpa Bakken had been a principal of a school when the depression hit, so he went back to the farm where he was raised. That made sure he could feed his family of six, when others were struggling. Apparently Grandpa was very proud of his farm. So when they would eat food he (they) had grown, he would say: “Grown on our own farm!”

And now it’s my turn to say the same thing. I’m not in suburbia, I’m in a city neighborhood with a lot that can’t be all of 40 feet wide. Yet I still have some soil, unlike my friends in Chicago and Boston, and at least this year I am fully taking advantage of this fact.

It feels good to grow real food with one’s own hands. I loved eating our own produce for dinner… even though it was not quite enough, we thought it really tasted just great!

My friend Marlene Cameron had a 50th birthday party this Saturday. I really enjoyed myself. They have some really wonderful friends, some of whom we only typically see at Wheatland Music Festival.

It was a relaxed and enthusiastic crowd… smart people who are not self-centered, interesting people who are easy to converse with. Talented folks… especially when it comes to cooking and music. The food was gorgeous as usual… it’s just a great food crowd. Homemade pies, all sorts of wonderful salads, bean salads, fresh fruit, you name it.

And we played music (actually, one of the children assigned herself the master of ceremonies, it was quite amusing), and laughed and smiled, and sang, and danced. Ben Hassenger, who is a member of both Mystic Shake and Blue Jello (they play at Altu’s on August 31), was the guitarist and kazoo player and singer and creator-of-instant-songs. The rest of us played different percussion instruments, as Marlene and her husband Art tend to collect instruments so there were plenty to go around. Ben made up songs about nearly everyone in the room at one time or another. Very funny, very entertaining.

Marlene is quite an artist in many ways. She and Art have these magnificent gardens (he is a Horticulture professor at MSU). She has been making mosaic stepping stones for the garden, including this eggplant one I photographed. And although it was pretty dark when I was taking the photographs, you can see how lush their garden is on the front bank of their yard. (Notice the reddish nasturtiums in the middle of the photos… hers are thriving!) This area is nearly vertical, a sort of interesting garden challenge that they met with flair! To illustrate how vertical this is, you can see in the second photo, at the very top toward the left, the crowd of people on the deck off the back of the house.

Marlene also spins and knits. She dyes wool, silk, rayon, whatever. She taught me how to dye with commercial dyes on wool, back in August of 2001. She and I share the work of publishing the Working Women Artists newsletter. She also has illustrated a knitting book, at least a decade ago. She’s very talented. And she’s a gentle, kind, thoughtful, artful, colorful person, a real treasure in my life.

Happy Birthday, Marlene!

Saturday morning, Tony and I went to Spinners Flock. I had missed a month I think, and I’ll be missing 2 months after this. I was very happy to go. There are some great people there and I like to buy my magazines there when I can. I like to support our regular book/magazine vendors who are women like me, running a fiber business from their own homes.

This time I got a Spin Off and a INKnitters. I love INKnitters, it is an intelligent magazine with thinking knitter articles. I don’t always love the projects, but then I never seem to knit from others’ patterns anyway. But the articles are fascinating.

We got back in time for Tony to get where he needed to go, by 3pm. I somehow acquired a headache and so I took a nap, then fed myself some good protein and drank a bunch of water and some strong black tea. Miraculously, the headache went away. I’m guessing it was about lack of sleep or lack of good food.

I then went to the Yarn For Ewe Knitters’ Night Out. I had planned to go there at 4pm so I could hang out a little and knit. Instead I picked up a donation Ruth left for me to take to Foster Center (thanks, Ruth!), and chatted a short while with many people. It was very flattering, because a couple of folks wanted to ask me about socks they were knitting.

Even more flattering: two women I knew there had purchased a skein of my ColorSport yarn when I put up the sale pages June 15. Well, the first of those women (who chooses to be anonymous) already finished her pair of sox, from the In The Garden colorway, which has already sold out. I asked if I could see them and take a picture. Aren’t they beautiful? That’s her foot and blue jeans, in front of the display at the store. (Very yummy yarn on display, I must add… yarns with glitter! Makes me want to do another ColorJoy Stole, but I’m already drowning in projects.)

The second woman was most of the way through her first cuff, using my colorway Cool Summer Breeze (it’s on the same page as the above colorway, just scroll down a little bit… still three skeins available). Once she told me she was in the process of knitting the sock, I asked to see it and take a quick picture. Here it is. Isn’t she doing a great job???

After I left Yarn For Ewe, I went to my friend Marlene Cameron’s birthday party. I had a wonderful time there. However, it’s late and I’m tired… so I’ll write about that tomorrow.

Today (Friday) I had too much fun and not enough work, I’m afraid. I had lunch with Altu, at Seif Foods, the Egyptian booth at the Lansing City Market (corner of Cedar and Shiawassee). I introduced Magda, the owner of Seif, and Altu, and they had much to talk about.

We ate mujaddara… lentils and rice with spices, and the amazing tomato/garlic sauce Magda puts on it. Wonderful. We also had baklava for dessert, and tea. We both love tea.

Then I actually did go home and work, I dyed more yarn… and then it was time for Brian to go perform with Wally at Fountain Square. I had planned to drive myself after Brian left… I figured I would pop in to New Aladdin’s and watch a little of the performance there by my Habibi friends, then I’d head over to Fountain Square. But at the last minute, Brian asked if I wanted to go with him. I sort of did… we spent a lot of time apart last week and will have a lot of time apart next week. So I went with Brian. I ended up helping Wally sell CDs (he could take time to autograph them, while I was selling them. I felt useful and I enjoyed it.

They had great weather and a good crowd. I saw Regina, a friend from Working Women Artists… and Sharon P, with her beau Lynn. I swear, those three are everywhere I go these days! They sure do get out to all the happening things in this city! I sat with my Mom and her friend Fai (the one who took pictures of me at the parade last Saturday). In the third photo here, you can see mom in the foreground (with the gorgeous silver hair) on the right, and Fai on the left, taking pictures as she loves to do.

Oh, somehow in the middle of all the other things I did, I also got out to look at my yard and in particular my nasturtium flowers on the very front corner of our lot, between the street and sidewalk. I tried growing these last year but started too late and they died from heat and lack of moisture. This year I now have five dark orange flowers! And you might be able to see in there, I also have a little yellow bud from the Stella d’Oro lily. I planted 5 of them last year and none of them bloomed… four came back this year but they were so tiny I was worried. Now I am realizing that it takes transplanted plants sometimes 2 years to look like they are alive, much less thriving. I’m excited that this one might bloom soon!

Oh, I did come back home after the concert and work again. I did another two pounds of yarn after dark. I think I’m getting more accustomed to the process of my new job… the job of wooldyer.

I hope I have a little time to dye more again tomorrow… between Spinners Flock and Knit in, that is. We’ll see. I’m taking my yarns to Spinners Flock tomorrow, we’ll see what happens. I won’t be able to make the next two meetings so I’m happy I can make it this week. And time with Tony is always enjoyable!

I somehow forgot to mention that Brian is playing with Wally Pleasant Friday night (that’s tonight) at Fountain Square in East Lansing. Concert is at 7:30. These guys really work well together on stage.

Brian has been backing up Wally for occasional gigs and tours for years now, but this time all the press included Brian’s name on the billing. That was Wally’s doing, and very sweet of him. So in the papers it says Wally Pleasant and Brian Hefferan are performing tonight. Brian’s not like me, he doesn’t need to be on stage like I do… but he’s a fine musician and I think it’s cool he’s getting some recognition. It’s still Wally’s gig, Wally’s songs, Wally’s playlist/schedule. But they really do make a fine energy on stage together, an energy a bit bigger than two people might normally project. Here’s a picture of the two of them performing last May at the East Lansing Art Fair.

Also tonight, two of the Habibi dancers are dancing at New Aladdin’s restaurant in Frandor. Lorice and Amira are scheduled tonight. Shows at 6:30 and 8pm. Maybe I can catch the first show and then pop over to Fountain Square. That could be quite the luxurious evening, couldn’t it?

Tomorrow, Saturday, is Spinners Flock guild in Chelsea. It looks like maybe I’ll be going to that with Tony. Then starting at 4pm there is a Knitters’ Night Out at Yarn for Ewe. I’m going to the very beginning of that. And then I’ll be going to my fiber friend Marlene Cameron’s 50th birthday party. She’s so important to my life these days (she taught me how to dye with commercial dyes, for one thing). I definitely want to celebrate her.

What a jam-packed day I had! I started in the morning, rinsing out the yarns I’d dyed the night before, and setting them out to dry. I left the house just after noon and got home at 9:45pm, and then did a bit of skeining more yarn for tomorrow’s dye session. And here I am typing my weblog at midnight.

The good news is that although things were hectic before and after I went to work at Foster Center, I did not get many kids even in my early (and usually really busy) kids lab. I even got a little knitting done. This is a miracle, because I usually do not sit down for two full hours.

My second lab, the one for teens and adults, was even more quiet. I had four kids total and an adult visitor. I’m happy to say that I actually finished my Reggio purple afterthought-heel socks. It’s sort of odd, because I still have another pair for myself that need heels to finish, that I started first. But that’s the nature of the creative process.

I did get some dyeing done yesterday, and I wound a bunch of skeins of yarn in preparation for more dyeing tomorrow. This session has actually been quite enjoyable. I am not trying to do anything I can repeat. I am literally playing with color, to get to know my dyes better. And I’m pretty pleased with the results thus far.

No photos yet… I’m so tired I’m falling asleep at the keyboard again. Perhaps tomorrow. I need to show you the new socks when I can.

I’m also very happy that my nasturtiums had two flowers open yesterday (let’s hope the flowers are still there when I have time to take a picture). This year has been rewarding in the gardening department, thus far.

Goodnight.

Drat. I was planning to ride my bike to Foster Center today, for Habibi dance rehearsal. they were not expecting rain for 2 days. Now, they are predicting thunderstorms. I could tell it was changing… the breeze picked up and it cooled off in mid-day. I’m so bummed!

I work at Foster tomorrow but I now have a dinner date/stick-shift driving lesson with Sara immediately after work, so I can’t ride my bike tomorrow either. Good thing I went on a little spin around the neighborhood a few days ago. That bike is so fun, and I just am not using it as often as I would like.

In other news, I am in the beginnings of another dye batch. I am doing larger skeins this time, at least three skeins that are about a half pound of yarn. The ColorSox (thick fingering) is about 875 yards. Considering a small ball of Regia sockyarn is about 229.5 yds, it’s about 3.85 balls of Regia 4ply to one of my half-pound ColorSox skeins. For us, that would make two pair… one for me and one for Brian, and no doubt a good bit of yarn left since we both have small feet.

Half a pound of ColorSport is 450 yd. This is essentially two of the 8oz skeins I’ve been selling previous.y. It will help out those who don’t have small feet, or who want to do cables or lace, or make a tall cuff.

This size should also be good for those who want to make baby clothes, or a tank top, or hat/scarf as Sharon P did last year, by combining the ColorSport with a few other yarns. There also will fewer ends to work in, for those doing larger projects than sox. We’ll see how it works out.

No pictures yet, the yarn is still wet and I’m not done with all I’ll be dyeing. However, here is a picture of the first harvest from my tiny garden, about a meter/yard wide by half of a meter/yard deep. We have parsley, which is going nuts, extra healthy and large. We have a small spring of dill weed that came up from seed from last year’s dill (the dill I planted this year from seed is still only less than 2 inches tall). And we have baby Swiss chard with red stems. I used these items in a salad we took to the 4th of July jam session.