Wheatland Music Festival: the big outdoor fest for us each year. It is always the weekend after Labor Day. Some years it is 100F degrees, others it’s in the 40s at night. One year we had a huge thunderstorm as people were trying to leave and the mud was so bad people got stuck for hours. It’s music heaven, no matter what the weather.

Everywhere you go, from the first greeter who takes your ticket to the last person saying goodbye, you hear the greeting “Happy Wheatland!” It can get tiring sometimes but it’s sort of sweet. This event has its own blessing for happiness. I think that is lovely.

We had all sorts of delays getting out of Lansing on Friday but we finally got to Remus (just over an hour northwest of Lansing, about 15 minutes west of Mount Pleasant) about 6pm. Brian got going right away finding us a camping spot and putting up camp. I went looking for information on open mic.

It turned out that they had allowed email and telephone reservations for open mic and those people had filled all the slots. We were fourth alternates on Sunday morning even though we were fourth in line on Friday night for the sign up. We decided that just freed up our schedule a bit, to play music elsewhere, but it was a little disappointing at first. Honestly, we got so busy with other wonderful things that it worked out fine.

The most wonderful musical experience I had all weekend, happened Friday night at the Centennial (second) stage. It was a concert by the incredible young artists Seth Bernard and Daisy May. They were accompanied only by one other musician, our friend Drew Howard (formerly of the Weepers and the Saltines) on pedal steel and other assorted stringed instruments.

Those two are just a power bigger than two people can be. Their voices, the heart, the spirit of it all never ceases to amaze me. This young lady is in her 20’s and already has a voice of power and soul, somewhere between Janis Joplin and Maria Muldaur. Yes, that comparison shows my age… but we are talking pure soul down to the cellular level, power behind the voice and heart behind that.

At one point Daisy May put down her instruments and used her voice alone, backed by Seth on guitar and Drew behind that. The crowd went absolutely crazy. If you could only harness that sort of electricity, the world would light up at all hours of day or night.

The late great Howard Armstrong (Louie Bluie) often said, “Soul has no color.” I could not help thinking those words when I heard this young lady belt it out, this tiny young thing with the voice of trumpets. Her voice alone literally brought me to tears. At that point I determined that I did not need any more music all weekend… that one concert was enough to fill three days.

Now, stop what you are doing. Go to the Earthwork Music website now. Listen to Daisy May singing “Shine On” for yourself. Then support these young people (who barely know me, I make nothing for this) by considering a purchase of their wonderful CD. Buy or not, but consider in any case. One place you can get it online is at Elderly Instruments. (Disclaimer… my Brian works at Elderly, but he gets no more or less if you buy this album or not.)
Photos: Daisy May, Seth Bernard and Drew Howard on stage with dancers below. More dancers! Dancers including a daddy holding an infant and mommy holding a toddler, at left.

Here’s a photo of the sun as it began to set, Friday night over the Day Parking lot at Wheatland Music Festival. Pretty, huh?

We are back from Wheatland Music Festival. The music was incredible, the company we kept was divine. The weather? Ugh. But two out of three made it worthwhile. (Prepare for a short whine, I’ll be back and cheerful by the end of this post.)

Friday afternoon it was 81F/27C degrees out, when we got there and for a good while after. This would be weather I could love even with sprinkles and the threat of real rain.

However, it cooled down Friday night, down to 54F/12C. It also rained, though not hard, most of the night. We are sort of used to rain at night when we tent, so that part was OK. It stopped before I got up. Rain even keeps dust down, which is really good for a festival. It was not too cold to sleep Friday night, once we got snuggled into the tent properly.

Saturday was the coldest I’ve been during the day at a Wheatland, and I’ve attended now for 11 years. It was overcast though not rainy. There was not a sense of where the sun even was, it was so cloudy, it was very hard to figure out what time of day it might be! And it only got up to 57F/14C during the day. With a breeze there was little chance to get warm. It even blew through the walls of the tent.

It seemed everyone was wearing every piece of clothing they brought. I wore long johns, leggings, two pair of wool legwarmers, wool socks, a tank, a tee shirt, a turtleneck, a sweater, two shawls, a raincoat, a hat and wristwarmers. I was sort of delighted with how many other folks wearing knitted shawls I saw in the crowd.

At night the weather got worse. We visited our Saturday Night Wheatland Jamming friends, crammed ourselves into a three-sided tent put up just for jam sessions, with friends who had a heater (these are the right sorts of friends on a night like this, we really appreciate them on cold years). Even with the heater, folks were wrapped up in blankets and afghans and sleeping bags, especially if they were not playing an instrument. We stayed up till 2am and headed back to try and sleep.

I do not tolerate cold well, my friends. I crawled into bed with all those clothes on, including my coat. We had an air mattress and a sleeping bag under us, and two sleeping bags over us. The tent is small and usually that means that the body heat we generate warms up the tent. I’ve been in 47F night weather at Wheatland at night before, with the same sleeping setup and same tent (minus the coat and with only one set of legwarmers), and not been this cold. This year it was 43F/6C, and that few degrees was noticeable.

In the tent, my back could not get warm. I finally slept maybe 3-4 hours when I realized that if I turned my back to Brian and my face to the wall of the tent, I’d warm up some.

Fortunately Sunday was a good social-butterfly/music-jamming day. We stayed busy and distracted, and I did get two hot cups of tea to make me happier. The sky looked like it might allow the sun to come through, it even gave us muted shadows for a short while in the afternoon. Then it gave up and we had full cloud cover again, and we all were cold and wrapped up again in as many layers as we possibly could conjure up.

Looking at the National Weather Service website (they have 3 day weather history hidden in a link down and to the right on any local weather page), I see why Sunday never warmed up. We had an actual wind chill to deal with. Sunday afternoon the wind was steady at between 10-17mph, with gusts up to 25mph. Brrrr!

Thank goodness I had a reallyreallyreally warm sweater I knit just for Wheatland, and another almost as warm one as a spare when it acted a little warmer. I alternated the two with differing numbers of shawls/wraps depending on the moment. Most of the time I wore two sets of legwarmers, one over the other. I wished I’d brought a long skirt to wear over the leggings/longjohns/legwarmers. That would have been like a windbreaker for my legs. Since I usually only wear skirts on hot days, I had left them all at home. I survived.

I realize that in relatively recent history, lots of people lived essentially like this most of the time. I realize that some people work outdoors all year round (even in snowy conditions). I realize I’m a wimp when it comes to cold.

As I’ve said before, I am not lazy when it comes to the number of hours I’m willing to put in on the computer, correspondence, blog writing, pattern writing, publicity, you name it. I work more hours at my business than most people are willing to work. But physical discomfort? I’m not good at that at all. I definitely needed any distraction I could find…

…which was of course the music! The music was worth it all. I took 140 photos, not all turned out but I’ll be spending some time tomorrow editing those so you can see. And I promise to keep the bellyaching about the weather to a minimum in my next post, when I show you the photos.

(Photo here? Wheatland 2003, wearing my made-for-Wheatland, reallyreallyreally warm sweater. For the knitters out there, it’s knit with two strands of Lamb’s Pride Worsted, held together as one and knit at 2.85st/inch. In addition, here I’m wearing five other things I also handknit for myself. It was pretty cold that year but not windy.)

There are two blogs I read regularly, that is when I have time to read and not feel guilty. Those two are Yarn Harlot and Iceland Weather Report. I’ve spoken about Stephanie’s Yarn Harlot blog before, so even those of you who read this because you are ukulele people have heard of her… it is definitely a knititng blog.

Then there is the Iceland Weather Report. I have no idea how I found it, but I love this blog. The woman who writes it (Alda, she calls herself YT/Yours Truly) was born in Iceland but has lived in several countries, notably Canada for much of her growing up years. She now is back in Iceland. She’s a writer, and she can see her own culture with the eyes of an insider or an outsider, depending on the needs of the day.

I’m a week behind visiting her blog (at least) but when I went back to read this morning (waiting for the teakettle to boil) there is a great set of photos of Þingvellir, a beautiful and fascinating place (those interested in geology, go there and read more, those interested in pretty pictures, follow). And again this week, more beautiful photos of Iceland.

I just love this blog. Maybe you will, too.

Thursday I was busy busy busy… I did a lot of cooking/baking in anticipation of the weekend, and I had a class at Rae’s (Marcia came in from Williamston and we worked on Fruit Hats and other assorted goodies). After class Brian and I had a better dinner than usual and then I went down into the dyeing studio. I couldn’t put it off one more day.

I’ve had a standing request for some yarn that would make up a Cushy Blankie, from a customer at Rae’s who already bought the pattern. I think she has been holding her breath waiting for yarn for a month or more. I don’t really take orders but I sort of owe this woman a bit of a favor (she gave me the best advice one day, and I am grateful though I haven’t had a chance to say so yet). Therefore, when I finally got down and dyed some yarn, I first did something I hope she will like.

So I dyed three pounds of Seaside Cushy ColorSport and three pounds of a pink/purple Cushy ColorSport and I’m steaming it all as I type this. In the morning I will rinse it and put it up to dry… and then we are going away Friday-Sunday to Wheatland Music Festival. When I get back I will reskein it and sell it in half-pound skeins. I lucked out and found my same yarn already put up into half pound skeins. (I used to buy it in half-pound cones and have to skein it before and then again after dyeing. You can imagine how this is really helping my speed!)

My basement dye studio is a very efficient workspace which is aesthetically less than pleasant. I need to go down there someday and paint some purple and turquoise on the wooden beams or something, just to make it more “me” and more fun to be down there. Once I actually get my (gloved) hands on the yarn I don’t notice anything anyway, but prep time and cleanup would be so much nicer with a bit of color.

At least long ago I got some really good lighting, and that really makes a big difference. This way I can dye at 3am and still see what colors I am working with. Lights were definitely the right first move, and I did that before I dyed a single strand of yarn.

Purple trim, though, that has always been in the back of my mind. At least that one wooden post in the middle of the space is really begging to be prettier. But time is so precious it seems a waste to spend studio time painting a post rather than dyeing yarn. I’m sure you’ve felt that way about something, too.

So now my yarn is steamed and it needs to steep in the steam overnight to make sure the color stays on the wool. It is sleep time now, and that no doubt will be followed by a crazy morning. We like to leave by noon, I hope I can make that happen. I have my food packed (and Brian does the packing of camping gear, bless his heart) but need to throw a few clothes in the backpack and grab as much yarn as I think I could knit in three weekends, and I should be ready to go!

Photo: The first batch of my colorway “Seaside” that I ever dyed, drying on my porch and knit up into my Turkish Toe Up sock pattern. Everytime I make this colorway I use the same three dyes, but in different intensities/proportions. This pictured batch was heavy on the blue and light on purple. The current batch has intense purple and intense turquoise but it is somewhat easy on the blue. I love it. This colorway continues to be my best seller, no matter what the proportions I use. I think humans just respond well to this range of colors, when used together. It’s sky and sea.

Altu’s Mom and Altu’s sister (they both live in Ethiopia) are here. They have been in the USA for maybe 4 weeks (for another sister’s wedding), but I have been gone a lot and they have been traveling between two cities in Michigan, plus Galane went to New York City (lucky girl).

I saw “Mama” once earlier, the day before Altu’s Dad left to go home. Tuesday night I saw Mama and Galane very briefly and found out that they would be leaving Lansing Wednesday after dinner. Wednesday daytime was my only chance to spend time with them.

Luckily, I’m clear about priorities. Loved ones are more important than anything, though sometimes there are deadlines and conflicting schedules that get in the way. Wednesday I was going to be at my home office/studio (which I’ve really ignored with all the travel lately). End those plans, go see my loved ones. How lucky that this day it worked for me!

i also called my mother to let her know we had one chance to come meet these great ladies. I invited Brian to take his lunch hour at Altu’s restaurant. He had met Mama but not Galane, and my Mom had not met either of them yet. They both came out and we had a grand time!

For those who are new to my blog, Altu took me home to Africa over the holidays in 2004/05. We were gone 38 days total. We saw three countries: Ethiopia, Kenya and Egypt. We had one week each in the last 2 countries, but spent the rest of the time in Ethiopia. And whenever we were in Addis Ababa (the capital city), we stayed with Altu’s parents. Her sister hung out with us when she could, and she arranged and took us on a trip to the northern historical parts of Ethiopia early in our trip. Altu’s family treated me as if I were kin during the whole trip and I am deeply grateful for their love and hospitality.

I went to Altu’s restaurant around 1pm, and they arrived just after I did. I had a few final gifts for them including a CD with photographs from our trip to Africa. I stayed up until the wee hours Tuesday night organizing the photos. I took 1400 photos and Altu took nearly as many, and I had them all to sort into folders that might make sense to them when perusing alone some day. It was worth the effort, though, I’m happy with it all.

Food to Celebrate
I also made muffins. (Mama loved me on that trip in part by feeding me, since we don’t speak the same languages… it was my turn to love her back.) I recently purchased a bag of Bob’s Red Mill brand “Whole Grain Teff Flour.” I suspected it was not really flour, because Teff is such a tiny grain (100 grains of teff equal the size of one wheat grain). However, when I went to Bob’s website they indicate they have to mill it specially because of its size, but it truly is ground flour. Teff is also a very highly nutricious grain, with more protein than you might expect.

What is Teff anyway? It’s a grain common in Ethiopia. They use it for their special stretchy flat bread (it’s something like a sourdough) which is a traditional food for all language groups in that country. It of course would have 83 names for the 83 languages in Ethiopia, but the ruling group speaks Amharic and so that is the official national language. The bread is called injera in that language.

The bag of flour I bought had a muffin recipe on the back of it, with odd ingredients which are meant to make a good muffin without gluten. For anyone out there reading this who deals with a celiac (gluten-free) diet, I can vouch for the original recipe, which is exactly how I made the muffins the first time. Yum! At Altu’s restaurant we devoured the dozen muffins I made in that first batch. Excellent.

However, I then thought of you guys out there who probably don’t have arrowroot starch in your cupboards. So I played a bit, and made a version of the muffins that worked out pretty well, using Teff and spelt flour (which can be substituted for wheat flour, particularly whole wheat pastry flour). Those turned out well, with a good crusty outside, but a little more dry.

I have a lot more Teff flour. I will be experimenting to see what I can do to make a recipe that works for folks who don’t want to go to the health food store and get a cart full of ingredients that you will use only for this muffin. (Note that you can buy the Teff flour online if you don’t have a healthy-ingredient local grocer.)

Photos: My mother Liz, me, Altu’s sister Galane, Altu’s mother, Altu. Thanks to Charles (Altu’s brother in law, who works at the restaurant) for taking the photo. Second photo is a teff field after harvest. Notice the different shapes of “haystack” type storage they used.

(Detour from normally-cheerful ColorJoy posts…)

My brother (the Internet Support guru) tells me I’m not the only one… but Yahoo can not seem to send me mail. They keep turning off my account for Yahoo Groups. They say my mail is bouncing.

Never mind I’m listmom for two (relatively inactive) lists… and that as far as I can tell, everyone else seems to be able to send me mail just fine. I’m frustrated.

It started August 19. I have had to reactivate my account approximately every other day since then. As I said, Eric/bro told me that Yahoo is having troubles. It doesn’t help that I changed servers for my domain around that time as well. That makes it harder to pinpoint the trouble.

At least the blog is stable, as is your support.

(I’m also in the process of writing a post that is optimistic and happy, I promise that will be up soon…)

To make this post more palatable, I’m including a photo I took last Saturday at MSU. It was taken just south of the intersection of Farm Lane and Mt. Hope Roads, facing northwest. This area is being turned back into a wetland, and it sure is looking good. What a glorious, beautiful day it was!

I am offering a one-session class at Rae’s Yarn Boutique: Ann Norling Fruit Hat (link takes you to the class page at Rae’s website, which lists yarn requirements, etc). It is the cutest, most fun thing ever. Class time/date is Thursday night at 6:30pm, which might be *today* depending on when you are reading this. Yes, I’m clearly behind in my class promotion. I don’t have a secretary, of course, and I got behind with nobody to take up the slack. Sigh...

There are other cute hats out there for kids. There are other *fruit* hats. But this pattern is amazing. It is simple, makes a statement from a distance, is not fussy. It is so well-planned that the pattern (with two variations for seeds in colorwork or knit/purl texture) fits on two sides of one page. And it’s easy to read, easy to knit. It’s just a wonderful thing. I can finish one in a day. Fun, fun, fun!

No, you do not need to know how to knit with two colors on a row. I’ll teach that. This is a great project for learning two-colored knitting since it does not need to be stretchy or flat when done. You do not have to do the little green seeds like the one shown here, you can do it with a plain color hat with only leaves. You can also substitute a little purl detail instead of the color, for the hint of seeds without the extra yarn.

No, you do not need to know how to knit in a circle. You can do most of this on a 16″ circular needle which is easy to handle, and I will show you how to join “without twisting” (which may be the most mysterious phrase in modern patterns). And when we get to the very top and use double points, I will be there to help you learn any part of that which may have confused you if you tried it alone. After all, that is what taking a class is for.

I have knit this hat many times for friends who had babies. Sometimes I get requests for a replacement when the first one is outgrown. Considering how little yarn and time it takes, I count that as about the most perfect gift I could make for a child.

The class is definitely going to happen, but there is room for someone (or two) to join us. Please consider just that!

Photos: 1) Hat for Mandy’s baby, 2) Hat for Isabel (lightened up a bit), 3) Isabel wearing her hat at about 6 months old. My, she has grown a bit since then! 4) Makena in her second hat, her first was pink.

Monday was a holiday in the USA… we stayed home for the most part and tried to stay healthy. I took a long walk (me and my knitting, that is) and really enjoyed how my neighborhood felt during a holiday… kids on rollerblades, a couple with toddler on the porch barbecuing, a couple on another block enjoying the view their corner lot affords from the leisure of a shaded brick porch. A few people were walking dogs. Nothing was loud or wild, but there was a sense of quiet activity and it was sort of perfect weather for that.

I threw some salmon, spaghetti sauce and zucchini chunks into the crockpot, then Brian chopped an onion and added it to the mix. It turned out pretty good several hours later on rye pasta spirals. I liked the no-fuss thing the crockpot gave me once more. Of course, anything is better with spaghetti sauce on it! Or so it seems to me.

While the crockpot was working up dinner for me, and Brian was working yet again on mixing the recordings we did earlier this week, I ran to Threadbear Fiberarts. After all, if a Local Yarn Shop is going to be open on a holiday, I might as well go over there and make them glad they made that decision.

I paid for my Sally Melville Creativity workshop, and picked up some Ironstone Streamers ribbon yarn. I’ve had my eye on this yarn for maybe 2 years (it is 48% wool, which makes it have quite a wonderful body to it and the colors are wonderful). I finally got one ball a week ago to swatch, didn’t swatch, and went ahead yesterday when I had 2 gift certificates to enjoy, and bought enough for a small cap-sleeved top.

When I got home I swatched. It’s funny, I don’t seem to have many needles between sizes 8 and 13 right now. I either knit socks and legwarmers/wristwarmers (up to bulky weight but densely knit) or I do loosely-knit wrapsl Well, I do have a few circular 10.5 US needles for felted bags but I could not find them for the life of me. That’s the nature of my life.

I must own a small fortune in needles, but since I have so many projects in process I seem to only have a few needles free. Most of them are tiny double points, I have a bunch of size 0 needles not being used right now!

I did find an unmatched set of straight size 10 needles and swatched with those. Then I found some size 13 double points (no doubt from the September-to-September sweater’s sleeves). I tried those and the fabric was awful. Then I took the size 11 needles out of my shrug in progress and tried again. Not bad, but the gauge of the size 10 needles matches a pattern I’ve got exactly, and the fabric is just fine. I have enough yarn to make the pattern at that gauge so I’m set. I’m not sure when I’ll knit it, but the plan is in place. And it was such fun knitting the swatch!

Tuesday I’ve got much planned and the day is already partway done. I took a walk with April and Isabel, I answered a bunch of emails, printed/put together a mailing for Working Women Artists, baked something I’d mixed up yesterday and put in the refrigerator overnight.

I need to do some work for the music business, both The Fabulous Heftones and Altu’s Restaurant, and then at about 3pm I have a helper coming to do whatever she can in the yarn/pattern side of my life. I’m not sure how long she will work with me but she stays on task well so I really appreciate her.

And while I work I’ll dream of knitting… what will I knit when I can sit still once more? Continue with the nearly half-done shrug? Start a summer ribbon shell (I’m warm now, so that sounds great) or maybe the Aspen bulky sweater I started last year, and which would be so warm and soft when it chills just a little more than it did this weekend? We’ll see when the time comes.

Well, Sarah was right, it was pleasant to reknit the triangles I’d made in the wrong direction. (I had not thought ahead as Riin did, when knitting the Equilateral Vest… she labeled each triangle with a numbered piece of paper. So logical!) In the end I finished all 15 required triangles at midnight. First thing Monday when I got up I sewed it together. It looks like a hat now (it isn’t blocked so it’s a bit uneven, but it fits on the corner of the rocking chair on our porch anyway).

Unfortunately, I seamed it one stitch over from where I should have sewed. It did not take long, and I really enjoy working with a sewing needle, so it will be no hassle to do again. It’s actually good for me to make all these hiccups while making a sample for a class. By the time I get it right, I’ll be in good shape to help my students do it easily the first time.

The pattern now gives several options for an edging or small brim. I think I will opt for the smallest of them all. For one thing, I have exactly 5 feet (appx 1.5m) of yarn left from that skein. If I do not have to break into the second skein, I will be delighted. The pattern says I can use a different yarn for the edging so I may go for that.

After the edging/brim it also calls for a lining of a thinner, softer yarn. I have a lot of Debbie Bliss Alpaca/Silk DK yarn from hats I knit last year, so I’m thinking I will go ahead and knit the lining from that. Luxury leftovers, for sure! And significantly softer next to the skin than the Kureyon, which is beautiful in color but rustic in any sense of the word.

I am slowing down on my need to knit nonstop. I heated up those needles for three days solid and now I think I’m ready to do a few other things. We were going to attend a party out of town today but Brian woke up with a bit of a cold so we are staying home and making sure he takes it easy.

I’ve made him some green tea and he’s good about staying on the Vitamin C so hopefully he’ll kick this before we go to Wheatland next Friday. There’s nothing worse than camping for a weekend when you don’t feel well. And we do want to play music and sing a lot, so we are working toward that goal.

Today for lunch I made us some of those incredible pancakes I made last Monday. I can not believe how good they are. I added a little more oil this time but left the rest the way I published the pattern recipe a week ago here. I’ve had my second cup of English Breakfast tea and cleaned the kitchen a bit, the dishwasher is going, and I think I may go back and do some baking later today. I have some good tart apples that are begging to be baked, and if a holiday is not a day where I can spare time to bake, when else will I do it?

At least today is a sunny day, although there is still a chill in the air. I may also take a walk at least around the block. We are heading into long months soon, where I will not want to go outside most of the time. I had better seize the day!

Photos: Hat in progress on porch chair, Lucy Neatby teaching in Lake Orion, Michigan (June 2005).

Sunday. It was good. We socialized and we sang. And I knit.

Any time I was not singing, even some of the times I was chatting, I was knitting.

Yes, I’m a bit obsessed but it’s the right kind, the constructive kind of obsession. I just need to do the handknitting-as-fast-as-I-can thing this weekend. I don’t mind listening to my inner voice when there is not a true deadline for a while. My inner voice is begging to knit and knit and finish and knit and finish something yet again.

First, I did rip back five triangles on yesterday’s hat and reknit until I had all 15 triangles done properly. I finished at midnight. Aaaah, it will be a sweet sleep tonight.

I also picked up a project I haven’t worked on since there was a spring chill in the air. It’s a snug-fitting ribbed shrug knit in Berrocco Foliage, one ball of which I purchased at Yarn Garden in Charlotte at least a year ago… and the additional two balls I’ll use came from our trip to Minneapolis in early August.

Originally I got the yarn thinking I’d do some scribble lace. This shrug is perfect, though. It’s a lofty wool/acrylic blend, slowly self-striping in very odd intervals, turquoise, green, purple-pink and navy. Sounds odd but it’s pretty and soft and fluffy. It’s wonderful in Knit 2/Purl 2 ribbing on needles that are maybe size 10US at first glance. For a socknitter, knitting with this much air in the fabric is an unusual experience. This yarn makes me very sure I’m on the right track. It’s almost like whipped cream!

I started the shrug thinking I’d make it with 2 balls of yarn (never mind I only owned one at the time). I started at the center back and worked out, figuring I’d stop knitting the first sleeve when the yarn ran out. However, the yarn is fat and with the rib it did not go as long as I had expected. Therefore, when I got the extra yarn I got two balls and will split the third between the arms.

This snug-fitting sort of shrug is perfect for the dance room at Foster Center. It seems every other dancer warms up when they dance but it can take me over an hour to not feel chilly, so I wear legwarmers and shrugs. The shrug I wear most often is a commercially-knit nylon tube I got at a discount clothing store. It fits fine but is thin (about leotard thickness) and not quite warm enough. This new one will be wonderful! I’m eager to see if I’m tempted to wear it other times besides dancing.

It’s great to go back and finish up something I started months ago. I love that feeling!

Sunday we were invited to four gatherings, but by the time we got out and about we only made it to one. It was a great time, and we had such fun I forgot to take photos. Well, the one time I thought I wanted photos I was singing and playing bass. End of that idea. It’s good to sometimes live in the moment, I’d say.

At the gathering we did attend, I was delighted to look up and see Susan Luks. My friend from the 1960s, really and truly a friend for nearly a lifetime. I almost never see her anymore, though we do write emails intermittently. She’s just far enough out of town (and we are both busy, at mutually exclusive times) that we just seem to always miss out on meeting in person.

Sometimes a hug is more special than ever… hugging Susan was like that tonight. There was so much to catch up on, in a whole house full of people, also worthy of attention. We did talk a few times, and made plans to catch up with one another, perhaps over Thanksgiving weekend if all works well.

Photo: Susan wearing one of her masterpieces. She creates fabric, from which she then creates garments. Magnificent!

Saturday I found myself at Frandor for a few errands and stopped in at Rae’s while I was there. Lots of folks I know came through, including Priscilla who recently test-knitted a Perfect Hug Shawl for me, and Sophia, who has been in several of my classes.

Sophia plays harp. She performed at a wedding Saturday and stopped by the shop after the performance. It was the debut of her Annie Modesitt Knitted Corset, which she had finished the night before.

Sophia is a relatively new knitter. She really wanted to knit this corset but at first was afraid to attempt something with as much detail as this includes. Rae and I were able to encourage her… I believe if you love something as much as she did this design, and you have the resources to get through any “hiccups,” that you should dive in and go. Your passion for the project will get you through the rough spots if there are any.

So here she is, friends! She is beautiful in the corset, don’t you agree?

Do you notice the harp at her side? She brought it into the shop and gave us a short concert right there. She’s also holding Arpeggio, her tiny therapy dog who goes with her nearly everywhere. He’s so quiet and sometimes he sits in her purse so unobtrusively that it can take quite a while to realize he’s there.

It was delightful to see your work of art, Sophia. It was equally as lovely to hear you perform. Thanks for popping by at just the right time that I could enjoy your visit!

I stayed up till about 2am finishing a dozen triangles of my Lucy Neatby Equilateral Hat. Guess what? Yesterday afternoon sometime, I followed the map wrong and put a triangle on the wrong side (each triangle is built on one side of the previous one). Yes, the mistake happened while I was fully awake. That’s how it goes sometimes.

I kept wrapping the hat around to admire it the whole time I was knitting it. And somehow it looked as though it fit together just fine. But this morning I got up and eagerly began to sew the strip into a hat, or most of one.

But one triangle is wrong. And that means I can’t put it together as planned.

The triangle I mounted incorrectly is number 8. In the photo above, the sewing needle marks the spot where I goofed. I have also highlighted it here in the map I was supposed to be following.

My mistake, I think, was in sewing together the top of the hat too soon. I was worried that I would not be able to do the proper graft/seam and so I jumped in and did that part… also that made it a little easier to manage the strip as I was knitting. But that made it harder to see that I had turned right where I should have turned left. Whoops!

If it were a solid color, I could snip the yarn and do some grafting. However, with this continuous color change (and only 5 triangles to reknit) I think I’ll be ripping this thing out and starting over at triangle 8. So much for staying up till 2am!

Note: The yarn is Noro Kureyon, Color 180, Lot A. I got it at Rae’s Yarn Boutique. I know someone will ask!

It is sweater weather still. It is like someone turned a switch and we were dealing with fall/autumn. I still can not find my gray cabled alpaca sweater, it’s somewhere in the piles and piles of off-season clothing. I’m drowning in clothes, I love them so much they are choking me out. I need to let go…

But for now I’m wearing long leggings/stretch pants, wool legwarmers, wool socks, tank top, turtleneck, thin sweater, and bulky long jacket/cardigan, with a heavy woven wool shawl and angora beret/hat. My knees are peeking out above the legwarmers and feel chilled yet. My hands were cold earlier but right now with the layers and a cup of Kukicha tea, they are OK at least while typing.

I am finding that I had planned a few things this week and I just need to give myself permission to change gears. I need to knit. I just need to make as many stitches as I can right now, I don’t know why. Yesterday I made a whole sock. Today I’m making Lucy Neatby’s Equilateral Hat. It totals 15 triangles and then a trim and lining. I’m more than halfway through the 9th triangle.

I wanted to spend today on the Knitting Machine, but that requires a learning curve and what I need now is steady repetition and speed. Since the KM is not work related, and the knitting I’m doing is for store samples, I have actually worked 2 days instead of the one I had intended.

Also, tonight Brian had me record bass and voice tracks for some songs we’re recording just because. We don’t really have another CD planned right now. Licensing fees for songs 1923 and later add up fast and we will want to sell more of our In the Garden CDs before we dive in again… never mind lack of space to store more boxes. But recording is one of those things you just have to be in the mood to do, sometimes. If Brian’s into the idea of recording, I’m into the idea of doing my part.

On stage, I play bass and Brian plays ukulele. When we have recorded in the past, Brian has for the most part played the bass parts himself. This time I really want to do my bass-playing bit even on the recordings. It was easier for Brian to just do it when we were on deadlines, but I’m starting to just want to be more involved. This time around we have the leisure for me to do it.

It actually felt like it went pretty well tonight. Brian can spend all the time he wants/needs to edit the music tracks with no CD-release deadline. Then when we decide to make another CD we will have a lot of the work done.

OK, back to my wonderful hat (in a Noro Kureyon colorway with turquoise and orange, primarily… very intriguing). I love Lucy Neatby, and this hat is no exception. It’s well planned, simple to execute, written as if she were sitting there chatting with you, and the product is bound to flatter.

Good night, and stay warm!

Just a post to interject that I have the best possible partner in life that I could have. I’m such a piece of work sometimes! He’s as steady as I am intense, and he shows me his real self in the most quiet ways. The ways that show true intent… when nobody else is near to notice.

Never mind that since he plays ukulele so wonderfully, I get to sing professionally. This was my childhood dream. But I’d love this man to pieces whether he was a musician or not.

Back to regular ColorJoy programming. Well, this post was certainly Joy, if not color…

Photo: Brian and I at Niagara Falls just over a year ago. He was holding the camera in his right hand, it was a silly moment but great fun as well. I think Brian doesn’t usually like the photos taken of him, so I picked a pic of us enjoying time together.

I had Friday planned out. I changed my plans. So what did I do on Friday?

1. I went for a walk with a 2-1/2 year old.

2. I made LynnH’s Sinful Coconut/Vanilla Tapioca Pudding.

3. I cast on for a sock.

4. I delivered patterns to Rae’s shop.

5. I had dinner with Brian at Altu’s Restaurant.

6. I took a nap.

7. I finshed the sock.

Now, this sock is in DK-weight yarn on size 3 needles, so it’s a fast knit as they go. For you folks who don’t knit socks, it’s rare to finish one in a day, especially with a full-height cuff. I made it bigger than my normal size 6 US/narrow size because it’s a store sample for Rae’s shop rather than something I plan to wear, but the yarn size helped me zoom ahead and the color also really helped me stay on task.

So what is the pattern? The foot was knit with my First-Time Toe-Up Sock (it will be a sample both for my class and some yarn Rae carries).

The cuff is a slip stitch pattern… I like what slip stitches do to handpainted yarn. I had to go up two sizes to a 5US on the slip stitch and it really could have gone up another size or two… slip stitches are not as stretchy as plain stockinette. However, it goes on fine over the heel in this very stretchy yarn, so I’m satisfied.

The yarn is by Blue Moon/Socks that Rock (in a thicker weight than their standard sock yarn). I think they call it worsted weight, but it sure acts like DK (one step lighter than worsted) to me.

If you had some of my “Cushy ColorSport” yarn in your stash you could do the same thing with my yarn and get virtually the same feel, though my colors are applied differently and not typically as many colors on one skein as this neon rainbow you see pictured here. Yes, it’s at least as intensely colored as it looks on the screen.

And for those Socks that Rock fanatics, yes… Rae just got a shipment in and has really good stock levels right now, both the sockweight and the DK/Worsted weight I used here. No, I don’t make a penny if she sells it or if she does not, but you are bound to ask about availability, the yarn is sometimes hard to find.

I’ve really been missing socknitting as I was making all those bags and shawls for my last group of patterns. Today felt like “old home week” as I knit and knit and knit on my sock. I cast on about 4pm and bound off around 1am. I loved every stitch.

Sigh…. I’ll sleep well tonight.

(Late addition… in the morning after blocking, I still did not like the look of a standard bind-off at the top, seen above. I unpicked the edge and instead did a backstitch bind-off. This is a common procedure in machine knitting, not as much in handknitting, but it’s stretchy and lies flat. It looks better now.)

Photos: Sock, Detail of slip stitch pattern.

Sparrow Hospital (which is near Foster Community Center in the East Side Neighborhood of Lansing) had diversity days this week. Three of us from the Habibi Dancers performed at lunch hour on Wednesday. It was a particularly enjoyable show.

April, who lives across the street and who is also a Habibi Dancer, works at Sparrow. Mike, who lives a few doors down from Foster Center and supervises the computer lab there on Wednesday nights (and sometimes Monday nights) supervises the Medical Library at Sparrow. Both of them were in the audience, as were a good number of other folks on their lunch hours.

We did what we could to perform dances that had some sort of influence from several countries. Yasmina, our director, did a Saudi dance and a Turkish dance and an Egyptian-style cabaret piece. Sara did a Turkish piece and a fusion piece with some Spanish influence, plus a dance with a veil (which is an American embellishment that has now made its way back in small doses to the clubs in Egypt).

I did a cane dance (canes are seen all over the middle east and north Africa) and a basket dance (I danced balancing the cane or the basket on my head among other things). I also danced to music from western Sudan, though my dance was not Sudanese.

For our first number, all three of us did a piece that was choreographed by our own Zubaida, with finger cymbals. Our last number was a piece I think is Lebanese influenced. We had fun, and so did the audience.

The show required that I be there earlier than I usually have to function, and thus I forgot my camera at home. Yasmina told me several times that I looked good (as my dance persona/alter-ego, Eudora) in the particular costume I chose that day. When I got home I set my camera on timer, up on the porch… ran down the stairs to the yard and posed.

I almost didn’t have enough time in the 10 seconds it gave me, and it turned out that the lighting behind me (the street) was overexposed behind my face and underexposed near my feet. I like the pose/costume, though… so I’m sharing it with you here.

I’m telling you… any woman out there who is considering middle-eastern dance and has an opportunity to study it, I highly support that idea. I’ve never been in such good shape in my life as I am now, and I’m nearly 48 years old.

Not only that, but moving in a way that really celebrates being female, has really helped me to love my physical self in a way I never experienced before. You have to make friends with your hips before you can learn to shimmy, you know? In a society where elementary-aged girls are dieting in large numbers (often without medical reasons), it’s a very good thing for us to learn to love our bodies, no matter what shape they might be. After all, women were meant to have curves. This is normal, even beautiful. Most of us were not born shaped like Twiggy (who, by the way, looks like a woman rather than a boy these days).
I have done other types of dance, but I was never all that good at them. Tap dance is almost a brain sort of experience, and ballet is perhaps too meditative for someone like me. I loved modern and jazz dance, but never mastered them.

However, this dance that was developed by women, for women, is the most empowering thing I’ve done in years. (In many cultures they did these dances in groups of only women, and it was a technique for developing their muscles so they would have less trouble during childbirth when drugs weren’t available. In some places your friends might come and dance for you while you were in labor, to help distract you and help you through the experience.)

This type of dance strengthens a body, it does not tear it down like other types of dance. My mother injured her toe in tap dance class after she retired (she still ballroom dances), and many ballet dancers need to stop dancing in their 30’s. Yet in Habibi Dancers we have a beautiful dancer, she’s skilled and lovely on stage and off, who is retired and probably around 70 years old. (And she wears the same size costumes as I do.) How wonderful is that?

Yes, Hollywood called it “Belly” dance. Well, often our bellies are covered. There is a rhythm called “beledi” which I expect was the inspiration for that promoter at the Chicago Columbian Exhibition (if I remember the history correctly) who started really getting the American/Hollywood version of the danceform out into the public eye, calling it “Belly” dance. The dance uses hips (and arms and shoulders) much more than bellies. It was named that for pure sales potential, I’m afraid.

Certainly it can look like we dancers of this sort are objects, perhaps. But we are in charge of how we dance, for whom and when, and for the most part how we dress (the costume changes depending on the intended audience)… we dance to celebrate our female-ness, if that is a word. If the celebration is attractive, perhaps that is a good thing. After all, I grew up not particularly thrilled with being female. Maybe if I had seen dancers in shiny/colorful clothing celebrating their womanhood, I would not have been so disappointed.

For now, I’m making up for lost time.

Photos: Me as Eudora, in Wednesday’s costume, at New Aladdin’s restaurant with my mom’s friend Fai as photographer, a group shot at the Renaissance Festival (I am second from left), and Yasmina and I in spring of 2005, dancing for a 100th birthday party.