For those who like to download patterns as PDF files they can print themselves, I’ve got good news. My latest three patterns are on KnittingZone.com today. The Perfect Hug Shawl (includes all three sizes), the Sassy Summer Handbag, and the Bags to Go! are all on the LynnH Patterns page at Knittingzone.

Maggie (from Turkish Sock Class) from Illinois writes:

…I learned more at your class than i expected to–I went to play and enjoy your company, LOL, now I know another toe, 2 new heels and that 3 needle bind off that I will use on the sweater…

AJ (from both Polymer Clay and Turkish Socks) from Wisconsin writes:

…your classes were great, and I wrote that on the evaluation. I also told them that you were the reason I came to Allegan – I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing and would try and come again, but would definitely come when you were teaching… Thank you for the great classes… Please stick me on the e-mail list for Midwest Classes… And thanks again for a marvelous time.

Friday all day, and Saturday morning at Michigan Fiber Festival, I got to teach a subject I adore. Five women joined me for a day and a half of learning about Turkish (toe-up is redundant) socks and how to create your own look within several knitting structures used in Turkey.

I own four pair of socks from Turkey. I had assumed before I received these socks, that all socks in Turkey were knit with afterthought heels (you knit a tube with a toe and then go back, open up the tube in any of many ways, and knit a heel as the last step). However, of the four pair I received, only one was knit with this heel.

The least perfect of the socks I received (loose gauge, simple patterning) was fascinating to me on a structure standpoint. It had a toe I had not seen before, and it had a heel that looked familiar but not familiar. I figured out from the Priscilla Gibson-Roberts book “Ethnic Socks and Stockings” that the toe was called a swirl structure (something like a star toe), and the heel was called a band heel (which is like a top down Dutch heel but with the flap under the foot, and without a gusset).

I made a pattern for Dawn Brocco‘s Heels and Toes Gazette with this structure, which has become my own “Turkish Toe-Up Socks” pattern. This pattern is written in a single yarn of DK weight. For this weekend’s class, I worked up a handout using the structure but not specifying any particular gauge or size, and helping students figure out how to make their very own pattern.

I also gave them a handout on using two-color stranded knitting/colorwork to embellish parts of their socks as they wish. I think they all did a great job making their own style show through!

Here I have a photo of socks from class. The red one in the middle is my own sample for the class, but the others were knit by students in class. They were able to finish or nearly finish one first minisock in the Friday session, then they went home and made a toe before class on Saturday. Saturday we learned about afterthought/peasant heels, and other possible ways to finish a sock cuff within this tradition.

The next photo is a group class shot. Left to right in back is Lorraine, Maggie, AJ, Gladys. Front row is Sue. Maggie and AJ took the class not so much because of the subject but because they knew about my work and chose to study with me. I am honored. Thanks SO much for taking my class, all of you ladies! I had the time of my life!

Wednesday I taught Polymer Clay Buttons and Beads all day at Michigan Fiber Festival (also called “Allegan” for its location). Fourteen people joined me for some “serious fun” working with color in three dimensions.
I had Brian and Terrie back from last year’s class and AJ, loyal blogreader, came in from Wisconsin. I had eleven other great folks as well. What a fabulous time we had, my friends!

I started taking photos of folks in class after some had already left, but I took pictures of work going in and out of the oven so you can see much of the creative output the folks made, whether you see their faces or not.

Of particular delight to us all were Brian’s amazing buttons. They look like silk shibori to me. It always intrigues me to see how we all have the same colors and techniques available to us and yet everyone’s work looks so vastly different!

I’m so glad Brian decided to return this year for more polymer, he just did such great work. And trust me, it was SO hot that others (including myself) were having trouble even slicing the clay. His work looks so polished I wonder if he had his own personal fan or air conditioner going at his corner. Didn’t he just do a great job?

News flash: I figured out how to use Flickr to hold my web-sized photos so that I don’t have to show you tiny thumbnail pictures here any more. Thanks for waiting while I figured it out. It’s all because I’m in transition between the old site and the new one, and I’m still glad I switched. It’s just that darned learning curve again!

Lucia, The Knitting Fiend, has put up the voting pages for her Knitting Blog Awards. I’ve been nominated in the “Major Categories” under Sock Blog and in “Minor Categories” under Most Diverse Fiber Artist.

The delightful woman we Michigan folks visited in Ann Arbor recently (see August 2 entry if link fails in the new archive system), Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, has only one category for her wonderful Yarn Harlot blog: Best Over All Knitting Blog. Another winner, for me, is Marie Irshad’s Knitcast under Best Podcast in the Major Categories.

You can vote once at each page (Over All, Major and Minor) each day, until August 31. You can vote for one blog in each category on each page. You can speak your mind! (OK, I’ll calm down now.) Whatever floats your boat, as Mom would say.
I would, of course, appreciate support in the form of votes from you folks out there. Thanks.

Thanks to Shirley, Gina, Teresa, Tracy, Fae, Merry, Kit and Rachel for your interest in my patterns. If anyone else wrote me about patterns in the last week, I would love to hear from you. I think everyone has heard from me, and those who have sent payment will have an envelope with their name/address on it winging through the mail Monday. I’ll be available to check email more than not on Monday if anyone else writes or pays.

I’m soooo tired. I love being self-employed but sometimes it means working past 1am. Remember that, friends, when you are tempted to believe that “your own boss” thing, which benefits so many “snake oil salesmen” and not their customers. When you are self employed, every customer is essentially your boss. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I’m definitely falling asleep at the keyboard right now.

Goodnight!

Well, it’s technically Sunday night. I have seven minutes left, to be honest. I’m downloading my 400 email messages right now and will return all messages anyone sent me about the pattern sale, before I turn in for the night. If you think you sent me a message and you don’t hear from me in the next few hours, please write again.

I had a wonderful time. My students were the best, the classes went great. I socialized and ate good food (not on the fairgrounds, though), laughed, smiled, slept, knit, smiled again. I met so many new fine people. I guess I didn’t knit as much as I would have liked, but this was a work event, not a vacation. I’d say it all fit in the balance and I have no complaints.

Have I mentioned how much I love teaching? Oh, the joy of it all.

More tomorrow.

I’m at the Allegan Public Library and I’ve been on my email for an hour… which means time is up and no time to post anything real here.

I taught Polymer Clay to 14 people yesterday, two were repeats from last year and at least one or two were readers of this blog. Thanks SO much for coming, my friends!

And thanks to the commenters… and extra thanks to those who have ordered patterns.

More on Sunday night… even photographs, I promise…

Now comes a blatant advertisement, my friends…

I am heading to Michigan Fiber Festival right now, thus will be shipping all pattern orders I receive while I’m gone, next Monday when I return. To entice you to order (even though there will be a delay in shipping), I offer two special terms this week only:

1) No shipping on any pattern if you order by Sunday at midnight eastern time.

2) If you order five (5) patterns I’ll charge you for only four (4), maximum $24 USD for five patterns including shipping.

Even though my three new patterns are not listed on my LynnH Patterns page, you can include them in this offer. The new patterns are Bags to Go!, Sassy Summer Handbag, and Perfect Hug Shawl, (all three of them $6 each). You can see photos of these patterns by visiting my post for August 11, either by scrolling down on this page or clicking the date on the calendar at right.

I will be checking email irregularly until Sunday night, so do not worry if you don’t hear back from me right away. It’s this inaccessibility that is getting you the good deal. You can send me an email to Lynn *at* Colorjoy *dot* com saying which patterns you want, and I’ll send you one tiny invoice for the whole package, rather than you needing to pay individually using the “buy now” buttons on the web page (which will bill you for shipping, and you don’t want that).

For the record, just in case this changeover to the new server does odd things to my email, I will definitely check mail on Thursday sometime and Sunday night. Hopefully I’ll check more often, but at least those… If you don’t hear back from me at a reasonable time given that information, please write again or send me a comment here at the blog to alert me to the problem. Or send email directly to ColorJoyLynnH *at* gmail *dot* com which is an address I don’t usually use but it will work while I’m at Allegan.

Thanks to those who have already sent comments. I really appreciate you guys! If you don’t hear from me right away I’ll try to get to you on my slow day at Allegan. They have a wonderful Library where I can check my gmail account if I can’t find a wireless connection somewhere in town.

For those who asked about an RSS feed, the recommended feed is now:

http://colorjoy.com/weblog/feed/

Brian just fixed it so that the old feed should still work, but it won’t be updated as often as the one above.

I appreciate the input on the hard-to-read comments on Mac/IE browser. I’ll have to dig through the nasty code of CSS templates when I get back and have time to slog. We don’t have a mac in house anymore so could not test that. Thanks for letting us know, we could not have known without your notes.

OK, so I’m working on getting to Allegan before dark today. I’ve printed all but one handout for my students, did laundry, packed food and the samples I’ll be taking for my classes. Now I need to pack my clothes, yarn, needles, polymer clay, and finalize that last handout so that I can print it and be done with paperwork.

If you don’t hear from me as much this week, you’ll no doubt hear far too much when I get back.

I’ve moved my weblog to a new host, and with that move I’ve started writing the blog in a different software program. (I had Moveable Type and now I’m using WordPress.)

The most cool thing about this is that I can accept comments again. Woohoo! The second cool thing is that if you have Internet Explorer, you will not have to scroll right to read the text.

I want to make several cosmetic changes to the page (navigation around my site will be at the top of the page, I’ll doublecheck links on the right, maybe rearrange the items at right, maybe also make the text a little wider) but I’m leaving in less than 24 hours for Michigan Fiber Festival and we can’t get everything together before I go.

For the record, Brian is the best. I’m a raving maniac today, with no sleep, weary body from standing up for 3 days in a row, not enough alone time for a good long while, and far too much to do to get packed for five days away from home. I got a lot of it done today and have tomorrow but that’s all.

Meanwhile, I’m being awful to live with and Brian is patiently plugging away at my website changes. He’s the right one for me, my friends. I’m not sure how I got this lucky but I guess it was my turn for good luck.

So why did I change this over at this very-busy moment? Because Lucia/The Knitting Fiend is having a knit-blog contest. There are zillions of categories and you can make up new ones (though being nominated for twenty categories doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me). And in order to be considered, I had to have comments enabled. So there you go.

I can’t really tell where I fit except perhaps “Most Diverse Fiber Artist.” After all, I hand knit, machine knit, crochet, dye yarn, make felt, needlefelt, embroider, spin, design patterns, write recipes, teach, sing and belly dance. Not that belly dance is fiberart or anything, but it’s diverse. Right?

Of course, Lucia suggested the obvious. Sock blog. Well, if I’ve knit 130 pairs since 2001, I think I can be called a sock blog. Socks are still my passion though I knit them less often than I did before knitting became my profession.

I know I have a lot of loyal readers out there, and for the most part I don’t know who you are. I have been stuck without comments for over a year (I turned them off in November 2004, when I left for Africa). Maybe you’d pop a hello into the comments now… and later perhaps you’d honor me with a vote at Lucia’s blogsite. Voting starts Wednesday the 16th.

Thanks for the consideration.

I’m frantically (I wish this word were too strong but I think it is not) getting ready for Michigan Fiber Festival. I leave tomorrow night, I teach polymer clay on Wednesday all day.

I’ve taught polymer dozens of times, it will go great-great-fabulous and I already know that. There is no such thing as a bad day teaching polymer.

It’s not that I’m fussing over, I just always have a crazy day or two before I go on a trip. I love travel, I particularly love Michigan Fiber Festival. I just am a little too tightly wound some days, I guess!

Then Friday all day and Saturday morning I’m teaching “Design Your Own Turkish Socks.” Now, this could be a month-long exploration so I’m picking some of the simpler options I know to start with. I’ll bring all sorts of wonderful knitted artifacts (I almost can’t believe I have four pairs of socks from Turkey and four Andean hats, among other lesser colorwork-knit items). We can look at the possibilities.

I’ll bring books I have on ethnic knitting, particularly colorwork. I’ll bring more than enough reference materials for my students. I hope they don’t get overwhelmed with all the paper I plan to give them, as much of what I’ll bring will be reference rather than classroom outlines.

And then we will dive in and do some knitting! We will work on mini-socks, as we all know that a day and a half isn’t enough to make a full-sized sock in stranded knitting. Well, at least that’s true for most of us.

I plan to do all sorts of demos of other options they can try once they get a feel for the basic sock. For those who are speedy, they can try a second mini-sock or even a third, or do a fragment to try out a different heel type or something. I’m eager to meet my students and make an adventure together!

Ummm… I have packing to do and I’m typing instead. No wonder I stress out!

Whoops, I Started to Say…
And the meaning of the title today? I’ve got a new blog look coming in the next few days… look for it. I’ll have comments again! A website is never right, never exactly as you like it, never finished, but I’m very happy to be moving in this direction.

OK, back to packing…

Photo: Turkish socks actually knit in Turkey, handspun single-ply yarn and folk intarsia. The structure of these socks is what we’ll be working with first in my class this weekend.

We’re still hanging out at the Great Lakes Folk Festival for one more day.

Sunday I’ll be at Altu’s food booth (EL Parking lot 1 on Albert) from noon to 3pm helping her serve food, and from 3-6 I’ll be at the Mid-Michigan Knitting Guild tent (behind People’s Church). My self-portrait will be at the booth the whole day. Yesterday a few folks went to the guild table but didn’t see the portrait because it was hung very high, above eye level. I’m not sure where it will be hung today. I also printed out postcards with the portrait on them if folks want to walk away with a souvenir.

Here are a few photos of Saturday night. There’s a photo of Feufollet on stage at the dance tent, a photo of our friends Art and Marlene, and a pic Brian got of me with Art behind me. Also last but not least, a photo of CityKid knitter Mariam dancing on the dance floor. There were actually two other CityKidz there. Altu’s neice told me that I know everybody! I guess when you go to creative things and you’re a creative person, you’ll know people. I dance, I am in the music community, and I knit. I saw folks from all those realms and more. I saw a ocmputer student there, and someone I went to high school with.

And Rainbow Julie, who works for the festival, was there walking briskly but she did have a smile on her face. The weather sure helped the moods of many of us! Just perfect sunny weather with a tiny breeze. Wonderful.

OK off to the fest once more…

This weekend you can find me at the Great Lakes Folk Festival, downtown East Lansing, Michigan. I’m working for my dear friend Altu all day Friday, Saturday and Noon to 3pm on Sunday. Her food booth is in East Lansing parking lot #1.

On Sunday from 3-6 I’ll be one of the assigned booth watchers at the Guild booth (it’s not just our guild, but basketmakers and weavers and quilters and others I don’t know yet). This is behind the People’s church in the public parking lot there. My self portrait will be displayed in this tent for all day Saturday and Sunday, then it returns to Threadbear Fiberarts for a few days before I take it to Michigan Fiber Festival.

It is very hard to find parking, since most of the events are in parking lots and they have blocked off a lot of the streets. If you want to park in the Grove Street ramp, you have to go down Abbott from the North (Saginaw or Burcham). When you hit the barricade, turn left at the church and go one block to Park Street. If you turn right there, you will drive through the police parking lot but you can turn left past that and get into the ramp that way. You can’t get there on Grove street, go figure.

Or you can not turn on Park, go two more blocks to MAC and turn right. There is a security person who will let you in if you say you are parking in the hotel ramp.

Or if you feel like walking a bit, you can park for free on some streets in the neighborhood west of Abbott near the Hannah Community Center, or North of the hotel near Charles and Linden. On Sunday you should also be able to find parking at MSU near the Student Union.

Please come to the festival. Admission is free and we have world class acts from literally all over the world, four different stages going constantly, and excellent ethnic foods also influenced from all over the world. It’s supposed to be perfect weather this weekend and I encourage anyone local to get out and enjoy it.

Photo: Last year at Folk Fest, The Latino Projekt with a guest from the audience.