Today (well, Tuesday… though technically right now it’s early Wednesday morning) I had a day off. Well, much of a day, anyway! When classes are slow, I tend to work on administrative stuff a lot more, and I worked last night and this morning on webstuff. (I made all my creative business pages have white backgrounds, except the LynnH SockTour which would not be worth the effort.)

I’ve had input from several folks in the last year or so, that my text was too hard to read on a black background. When my pages were mostly photos, I liked how the colors would “pop” against a black background. Now that I have a lot of text, I think white is more appropriate, but it’s taken until now to find the time to do the work of switching over. Every photograph needs to be airbrushed with white background, and it’s tedious to say the least.

I also added individual description pages for nearly all my classes (all the classes I have photographs for, anyway) and for all my patterns. If you start at my main home page, ColorJoy.com or LynnH.com (they are the same page, they just have two alternate names/addresses), you can link to everything else I’ve got out there, all easier to read now with white background and dark purple text.

So after that, I had a doctor’s appointment that forced me out of the house and on the west side of town. So of COURSE I had to go to Threadbear, which was literally two blocks from the doctor. I took them the needlefelted hat to put on display so that we can try that class again (now that people can see at least one example of what one can do with needlefelting). But, while I was there I had a moment of rebellion.

Now, this rebellion happens to me every February. I rebel against the cold. Not that I can do anything about it, really. (Rob reminds me that this is Michigan, and this is February… we’re just plain going to be cold for a while longer.)

What I almost always do this time of year, is go straight for spring green and pale turquoise. If I dye yarn, it seems to always come out in that colorway. If I buy clothes, they are spring green. If I buy yarn (as I did today), it’s green and/or turquoise (and today also bits of blue and purple, but mostly green).

I had the winter blues… and retail therapy did the trick, I’m ashamed to say. I bought five different yarns in this spring theme, and I have already knit about 3-4 inches on a sort of stole.

Now, I’m also in rebellion against complexity and even mere counting in knitting right now. I don’t want to do a ColorJoy stole because every once in a blue moon (about every 5-6 rows) that calls for a beautiful dropped-garter stitch, and if you don’t count your stitches on the next row you can end up with a mess and yarn overs or dropped stitches you emphatically did not want.

So I’m making up something in multiple yarns but simpler than the ColorJoy Stole. I’m preparing to offer a class for teens to knit a wrap for prom or other special events, but I have to figure out if I’ll write the pattern (probably) or use someone else’s (the only real contender would be something perhaps out of Sally Melville’s Knit Stitch book, because I definitely want to welcome brand new knitters in this class). I think that what I’m making will probably work, if I can keep them from picking yarns that they will hate to knit!

It’s a sight for sore eyes. Exactly the green of spring leaves with the sun filtering through them at sunset. The color I see when I’m lucky enough to be on my porch, in the hammock, during a sunset. The ultimate experience in my world, I guarantee you, is just that!

Anyway, I have a green brushed mohair by Koigu, and a turquoise textured cotton by Manos del Uruguay, and two ribbons… one smooth and one a railroad with little specks of silver. And the last is sort of an airy short-eyelash in polyamide (nylon) in the most wonderful intense green-with-yellow color I’ve seen in a long time! I think I’ll call it my “Spring Thing” because that’s what it’s in my life for. To somehow magically bring on warmth and sunshine, by knitting it into being. I know that is magical thinking, but isn’t knitting magic anyway? Making fabric from long noodles of fiber?

Okay, I give. It’s February in Michigan. Today it snowed most of the day, though I did see the sun once for about 45 seconds. However, it was really good, pretty, soft, warmish snow. The temperature was above freezing and the snowflakes looked like a Perry Como Christmas special or something. Two houses in a row on my block have snowmen… three snowmen on two lots, next to one another. You gotta love that… kids reveling in the moment. Wish I could celebrated it like they do.

The piece is more stitches than the ColorJoy stole, and on smaller needles. It’s more like a woven fabric than a crocheted one (people ask all the time if my ColorJoy stole is crocheted, I think because there are stitches that are loose and airy, lacelike almost, like so much crochet can be.

I’m falling asleep at my keyboard again! Last night I fell asleep around midnight, this time on the heatvent on the floor. Woke up around 6am, tried to go upstairs and sleep as I often do, and could NOT fall asleep at all. So there I go, a short night after a long night. I did lie down for about 25 minutes, didn’t really sleep but I did rest, around noon. But I’d just love to have a regular sleep schedule one of these days!

Pictures: 1) Yarn for Spring Thing, fresh from the store. I was still wearing my coat when I took this photo, and continued to wear my coat until I had the two hanks wound into center-pull balls. I was in a HURRY!!! 2) The beginnings of my Spring Thing. (The colors are too intense and too contrasted here, the yarn picture is more real on my monitor). I love it already!