I promised yesterday I’d share photos with you today. First, Faye’s amazing self-designed colorful mittens. This class just ended at Threadbear, and we had a wonderful time together. She had a black solid and a multicolored self-striping yarn with VERY long stripes. So long that the colors did not repeat even once per mitten, to be exact. She let them be “fraternal” mittens, and she has a son in law waiting impatiently to wear them. He’s a musician and leaving for europe on tour soon (if I remember the story properly) and he wants to wear the mittens on his tour. How sweet is that?

Next is one of my wonderful CityKidz. I have just an amazing, productive group of kids this year. First is a girl who had started making a baby blanket, then realized how long that would take so adjusted her plans to a small “pillow.” However, when we got talking about wristwarmers, I showed the kids how they can knit a rectangle and sew it together to make a wristwarmer (using her pillow piece as my example).

She decided to make the piece into a wristwarmer right then and there. It’s pretty exciting to wear your own knitting, you know??? So here she is with her wristwarmer on. Cool, I’d say.

Last photo is another CityKid. She just started with me at the beginning of October, no previous knitting experience. She has been going full-speed ahead knitting wristbands. She was wearing these 7 wristbands to class last Wednesday, and she had given several away as gifts as well. Go grrrl! I’m so proud, and she’s proud of herself, too… which is much more important!

Oh, so many things packed into a single day! How will I ever find time to sleep?

(Oh, yesterday I did make it to Yarn Garden with my sample hat, eat dinner with my brother Eric in Ann Arbor, and go to Borders’ Books knit in, and I got home after midnight. That is, it was another packed but wonderful day.)

I started Wednesday with my last session of my Colorful Mittens class at Threadbear, and Faye and I just had a heart-to-heart about everything while we knit. Her mittens are wonderful. I did take pics, will post tomorrow when I have more time after work.

Then I had a lesson with Officiallyaknitter, and she just got a new kitten. I adore kittens. So we talked Alpaca wristwarmers and we talked kittens, and he purred and he played and it was fun.

Then I ran to Little Red Schoolhouse to drop off a sample hat for my upcoming pattern. (Class will be first taught at Yarn Garden in Charlotte (MI) next Wednesday, a week from today. It’s 10am-noon, for 2 sessions (Nov 9 and 23, two weeks between sessions).

The hat I dropped off was knit from alpaca she carries in her shop (bright grass green, dark forest green, yellow), so she’ll have a sample to support the yarn right away. Later we’ll do classes and soon, I hope, I’ll also have a pattern (for me to sell, as well as my shops). For now, it was good to see Linda for a few seconds as I blew in and out.

THEN I taught CityKidz Knit. One of my girls made a garter-fabric wristwarmer out of sherbet-rainbow acrylic yarn and was pretty happy with it. Picture tomorrow.

And then I was done teaching for the day, but after running to the bank and the post office I danced for the rest of the night. Usually I dance till almost 9pm, but I got out early. That meant I could make it before closing, to get dinner from Altu’s restaurant (take out, yummy dinner without the fuss). At Altu’s, Zach Chartkoff (poet extraordinaire) and Shelby B (knitter) struck up a conversation with me which got wonderfully in depth.

Zach and some other great local poets have put out a book called 4 Against the Wall that just got onto the Barnes & Noble online catalog this week, he said. He told me that my favorite poem by Ruelaine Stokes is in the book.

But B&N is listing only three poets on their site for this book (Zach, Sam Mills, and Robert Rentschler, all wonderful writers), and Ruelaine seems to be missing from the list. Pooh. How did they leave out Ruelaine??? She’s a wonderful poet, even better performer of poetry, and as I have mentioned here previously, a wonderful photographer. Let’s hope that B&N gets things straightened out soon.

I went home where Brian was rehearsing with Scarlet Runner String Band. They have a performance at Altu’s restaurant on Saturday, November 12, from 6:30-8:30 if any local folks are interested. They rarely play a concert venue, usually they play for dances. I love to hear them sing, not just play “tunes.” Can’t wait for the 12th.

And now I’m fading. I’m so tired I’m nodding at the keyboard. Yet, I am committed to a post a day when I’m in town, and so I’m making good on that committment.

But pictures will have to come tomorrow. Goodnight.

Well, yesterday my friend April brought by her daughter Isabel in a pink piggy suit. Adorable. Isabel is a year and a half old, so she was not quite getting the dress up thing, but she loves it when people tell her how cute she is… so she went along for the ride.

I almost forgot Halloween. I was home at 6pm when they started and went out to the dollar store promptly. I bought two packages of 90 stickers. I cut them up into 2 stickers each, and gave them away. And I ran out at about 7:15. We had 90 kids in about an hour. I’m sure it had to do with the great weather, because some years we get over 100 and some years we get 30. I just turned out the light on the porch, it seemed nuts to go to the store again. I was glad I found the stickers, because feeding children large quantities of corn syrup makes no sense to me.

Today is Tuesday, my day off. I thought I had taken Monday off, but in reality I sat at this desk all day Monday without a break. I worked until about 6pm writing workshop proposals for Michigan Fiber Festival (Allegan) which were due today, and sent them out at dinnertime via email.

After that, I wrote my long blog entry on the Midwest Ukefest (I’d processed the photos the night before, when we got home from our trip). So I spent all day Monday writing. It was a different work than I usually do on Mondays, but it was not truly a day off. At least I got to stay home, which I really enjoyed.

So today I am going to Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti to see my brother, have dinner with him, and then probably go to the Borders Books (Arborland, just off the I-23 Washtenaw exit) knit in. I must say, though, that seeing my brother is perhaps the most important thing I could do. If I end up staying with him till midnight and skipping knit-in, well, that would be a good detour and worthy of a change in plans. We’ll see how busy he is.