You have heard me tell of my roommate/husband Brian, before. We have been married a few weeks more than 10 years. He just keeps getting better. Me, I keep getting more eccentric and forgetful (at age 47, too young for excuses), but he somehow loves me consistently, in spite of imy warts.

Now, you’ve also heard me tell about how much I dislike cooking. Yet fate has determined that most of the food I eat must be made in my kitchen, because of all the zillion ingredients commonly found in this culture’s food that make me feel crummy. When I can control the ingredients, I feel great. It makes sense to do just that.

So I’m stuck in the kitchen a lot these days. I’m getting more used to the routine but I’ll never like touching, eating or even thinking about meat. Ugh. The crock pot is my friend!!! I can cook four turkey breasts or two cornish game hens or a dozen chicken drumsticks all at once, and then not have to cook more meat for several days. (Yes, I’d prefer to be a vegetarian but if you can’t eat cheese/dairy, eggs, nuts or tofu, it’s pretty difficult to get enough protein to thrive without meat. Pout.)

So late last week Brian and I hit a bunch of different markets/grocery stores and collected as many root vegetables as possible. I was craving parsnips for some reason, wanted some in a soup. (Kathy inspired me a while ago and I finally was ready to take action on that idea.) I’ve only eaten parsnips a few times in my life but they just sounded right. So I tried 3 places with no luck, and Brian went to Goodrich Shop Rite and brought home a whole lot of parsnips. Yeah!

Sunday I did my rounds and picked up/dropped off things at Threadbear and Little Red Schoolhouse on the west side of Lansing. While I was off and running, Brian not only fixed our faucet (it would leak everywhere when we ran the water, didn’t drip at all when shut off)… but he chopped so many vegetables that there was no more room on the counter.

I joined him when I got home. We ended up making TWO soups. One (in a pressure cooker) used some of the turkey breast I cooked earlier that week, and ginger/garlic and cabbage, sweet red bell pepper, turnip, and kohlrabi (one of my favorite vegetables of all time). The other was parsnips, sweet potatoes, sauteed onions, a touch of fresh organic spinach, and fava beans (an excellent meaty bean often used for a breakfast dip in Egypt, but is great in tomato sauce on pasta and even in salads).

I left that soup in the crockpot overnight and it is SO good!!! It’s good cold, it’s good hot, it’s hard to not eat the whole pot in one serving. Because trust me, when I cook, I make lots of leftovers so I don’t have to cook for a while.

I can’t tell you how great it is to come home and have more than half the prep for dinner already done. I guess my sweetie doesn’t mind doing it (he has a good attitude about everything, really) but this is the first year he has done much in the kitchen. I totally am loving the results.

I’m feeling happy and loved. And full!!!

I knit this piece in Africa, nearly two years ago. It was intended to be the bottom of a felted backpack that I had wanted to knit *before* I left, but it took all I had to just get ready for a trip I couldn’t plan. (How do you plan for something you can’t imagine?)

I tried to knit it while I was there. It’s from a pattern. I can’t knit from a pattern when I’m with other people, especially if they are bringing me into their home as family and talking to me in a language they don’t use very much (I understood them well, but I know it was work for them to talk with me for very long).

They did a lot of stretching to make me comfortable and I wanted to pay attention to them and everything around me. When I did knit in Africa, I knit socks. I can knit socks without looking at my hands, for the most part. I do have to peek when I do a heel or toe but most of it is just worry-bead knitting, repetitive motion for comfort. It helps me sit still, and I did a lot of waiting when I was on that trip.

So this piece was relegated to after everyone else went to bed. I spent a lot of that time writing in a journal, and as you know I tend to write a lot. I did knit but the bottom of the bag was all I accomplished.

I had intended it to be a neutral bag while on the trip. It is lighter in real life than it looks on my screen… that cream/light taupe marl that is sometimes called “Ragg Wool” color. I intended to dye it somehow when I got home. I’m clearly not going to do either, now. So Sunday I ripped it out.

I now have a ball of yarn weighing something like 85gm of yarn. I’m not sure where the rest of the 100gm skein went (or for that matter the other skeins I bought for the project). I am thinking I may use this for a Sassy Summer bag.

But I think this simple act of ripping is a continuation of my “throw away 10 things” day I had a week ago. I threw away more than 10 things, and I’m still looking at stuff around me with a more careful eye.

Today I found the lid to a saucepan I have not owned since I moved to Brian’s house 10 years ago. Dang. Every day a new discovery. Maybe someday we’ll be able to move around here without dealing with all the clutter. I have seen the changes my brother Eric and his wife Diana have done in a relatively few years. It’s a miracle, the change that is really working for them every day now. They don’t buy if they don’t know where it will go before they make the purchase. I’m not there (Brian thinks that way but I never have). I can get there, one day at a time.

Meanwhile I let go of a fragment of knitting I never loved in the first place. Sassy Bag, here we come.

Photos: Fragment which is now history; two street scenes in Ethiopia. It’s such a blend of past, present and future. I think both were taken in/near Addis Ababa, the Coke stand may have been on the way out of town toward Nazret (Nazareth) which is in the rift valley area. I will never run out of photos of africa to show you here… I took 1400 and I think I’ve ever shown maybe 125 between this blog and a PowerPoint presentation I’ve given a few times.

Brian and I had breakfast on Sunday at the diner down the street. Their first location was in Ann Arbor, about an hour away from us. This building was closed for a while and we’re very happy the Fleetwood folks bought it. It’s thriving… teeming on Sunday mornings.

We took a lot of photos when we were there. These struck me as the most interesting. Brian took the pictures of me and of the teacup. I believe I took the rest, with the possible exception of the photo at left (or just above, depending on your monitor settings).

The place is very city-like, more than most places in Lansing. It reminds me of places I’ve been in Chicago (but it’s much newer, the building is less than 10 years old). It attracts a great cross-section of Lansing cultural/social groups. You see old and young, affluent and working class, artful folk and business folk. I love that.

Brian goes to the Fleetwood about once a week. I don’t go there much because of my food allergies… I can eat a salad or order tea, and that’s all I can eat there. However, the waitstaff are always willing to accommodate whatever I want or need, whether it is on the menu or a custom order.

I’ll let the photos talk for me now. I did not crop anything. I did color-correct and feather the edges, but they are otherwise as taken from my point- and- shoot digital camera.

It is “Sun-day” and the sun shines in Lansing. The wind is wild, and though the walk to the Fleetwood Diner from our house is merely 5 blocks, we felt chilled as we approached their building. Good coats are essential on these days, snow or no.

Yesterday the sky was gorgeous around 6pm as we drove to Grosse Pointe (east of Detroit, on the waterfront, a 1.75hr drive from Lansing) to sing for a 75th birthday party. We had a blast at the party, where they sang with every song and danced to several.

I knit in the car to and from the gig. I knit when we got home. The comfort/hug/wrap is halfway done now, not bad since I started knitting on Friday night. It feels really soft and that was my goal. Looks are not as important as feel for this particular item, though I do really love the colors with which I’m working.

It is interesting, though… Today I’ve knit on size 0 needles (socks at the diner) and size 15 circular needles (wrap). Boy, do I knit faster on tiny double-pointed needles! Circs always slow me down, I knit tightly enough that I have to stop and push stitches from the thin cable up onto the fatter needle part on the left, before I can knit for a while… then stop and push, then knit. And just the bulk of the needle slows me down quite a bit. Double points don’t have a thin part so I can just zip along.

The fabric I’m building is worth the clunkiness of the process, though. I enjoy every stitch because of the fibers under my fingers.

Here is a photo of the sky last night. Brian was driving and I took photos out the window on the way southeast.

I’m knitting with the softest, most comforting yarns I can find in my stash. It does my heart good.

Green for life. For growth, and thus hope…

Knitting photos when appropriate. Meanwhile, back to the knitting.

Photo: More from the Potter Park/Grand River series I took on Wednesday.

Kristi has the saddest news I can think of. I feel kicked in the gut. She’s such a great person, but “I am not in charge,” I can’t make her life different right now. I only wonder if I have any power at all to make her feel better… to at least know she’s loved.

Off to knit. Knitting heals some pain, so that’s what I do have power over at a time like this.

Wednesday on the way home from Foster Center (for a quick break) around dinnertime, I glimpsed a beautiful view of the Grand River near Potter Park. (This is somewhere around a mile from my house, closer to downtown.)

I found a deserted parking lot, pulled in, stopped the car, and crossed Pennsylvania Avenue by foot so that I could take some photos. I took maybe two dozen photos and I promise you, they are all wonderful. I just do not want to bore you with that many facets of the same jewel… so you get two.

This is facing east, standing on the Penn. Ave. bridge half a block from the entrance to Potter Park/Zoo. Can you see that we have lost almost all of the color except yellow around here? The grass is unusually green for this time of year, and in these photos the sky is uncharacteristically blue. It makes a great photograph!

At least the colors make the Fall season more pleasant. Earlier in the season we have a lot of electric orange, because we have a lot of sugar maples which turn to flame early in the season. Right now the only intense color is from “burning bushes” which turn a hot red. They are particularly intense this year, or so it seems.

The last photo is from Thursday morning. We got a hard frost for the first time that night. I don’t usually get up that early but here I was outside around 8:30am or so. The first hard frost puts all the “iffy” leaves on the ground in a split second! I stood there and watched the leaves fall on (almost bury) these cars across the street, like it was a blizzard with flakes falling. It was amazing how fast they came down.

I’ve been wearing my longjohns to keep my legs warm, plus legwarmers on top. I tell you, sometimes I just can’t get warm no matter what I do. I wore angora gloves with alpaca/wool wristwarmers out on my errands Thursday. The thickest socks were not quite warm enough.

Eventually my body will get used to heating up more, and I will be more comfortable in late December than I am right now. Until then, I’m layering wool clothing on myself like crazy. Thursday I even wore my super-thick sweater I made for camping at Wheatland, but I wore it indoors and it did not feel too warm at all!

Stephanie/Yarn Harlot has been on my mind all day (see previous post). Because of that, I remembered a wonderful and inspiring quotation by Martha Graham, modern dance pioneer.

Ms. Graham was a fierce and determined artist, and she fascinates me. I think I would have been afraid of her in person, perhaps… but those who danced for her knew they were changing history in one lifetime. I’m glad they did it, though it was not an easy life.

Here’s the quote (written to Agnes DeMille, another choreographer and friend, in a letter). These words got me through a lot of doubting moments when I first started calling myself an artist (having been one my whole life but not knowing it). In fact, most recently they helped me through the knitting/planning of my intarsia-knitted self portrait.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium…. It will be lost…. The world will never have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
—Martha Graham

(For the record, I added spacing in the middle of the block of text to make it easier to read.)

I love quotations. Many years ago I put together a website with poetry, quotes and lyrics that meant something to me at that time. If you like quotes also, you might be interested in my “Quotes on Creativity” web page.

Stephanie (also known as Yarn Harlot) has an amazing post today. She finished her wedding shawl (after the wedding, unfortunately) and considers how difficult it was. She ponders how difficult it is for us sometimes to admit to others (and maybe ourselves) when we do something extra special.

Her shawl is amazing. She designed it herself, knit every stitch. She had help blocking it, which still took hours. It is really really beautiful.

And there are many photos… up close, and from a distance. Even one with Stephanie, flying in the wind with her creation. Do go read what she has to say.

The sun is shining, Lansing is truly beautiful today. I really wanted to take photos *outdoors* of my TipToe Sockyarn before the sun went down, but my day is too packed for me to stop now and take photos.

Therefore, I give in. I took a quick photo of a table full of the colorways I dyed, on the way to the Threadbear sale a few Saturdays ago. I’ve done a quick edit to try and adjust it properly, though blue tends to disappear and purple always looks like dark blue. I’ve always said if you got a skein where the colors didn’t look as you liked when it arrived, I’d swap it for something else. (I know that turquoise does not do well on a monitor, it’s caused me trouble buying yarn myself.)

Usually people like my yarn colors even better in person… although it’s good for you to remember that I’m known as ColorJoy for a reason. All the colorways are more intense in person than they appear on my screen.

Here’s a photo of the yarn colorways I have in stock right now. Some I have only one skein, some I have piles of skeins. First come, first served.

They are 440 yards/100gm approximately, and will make a normal ribbed or stockinette sock up to about a man’s medium or bigger. Of course, the more cables/texture, smaller needles, taller cuff, the more yarn you need, but I’ve not seen anyone run out of my sockyarn yet.

The price is $24.99 per skein at this time. I ship priority with free tracking, so getting several skeins means you pay the same $4.05 shipping fee no matter. Three skeins for sure fits in one priority envelope for no extra fee, maybe four would also work but I haven’t tried it.

If you send me an email to Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com saying what you’d like, it’s first come first served. Colorways are (updated 11/3 for sold-out colorways):

1. Girly-Girl. Very hot pink and intense purple, with bits of white.

2. Seaside. Bold turquoise and bold purple, soft blue, and a little white.

3. (Sorry, sold Out) Peachy Flammegarn. Mostly solid with small (one or two stitch) blips of white for depth.

4. Oh, Wow! Hot green, soft yellow, medium but intense turquoise, and creamy white. Maybe my favorite.

5. Spring Sunshine. Pale yellow, pale purple, soft blue and spring green.

6. Sunny Side. Warm yellow with pale peach and blips of creamy white (half-flammegarn).

7. Butterfly. Mostly soft yellow with tiny blips of blue green and tinier white blips.

8. This color is sold out.

9. (Sorry, sold out) Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues. Turquoise, purple, white. Bold!

10. (Woohoo, found one more skein…) Lilac Flammegarn. Blips of white. Purple with lots of blue in it. Old Scandinavian dye style, modern color.

Thanks for your continuing support.

Wow, I sure stayed busy on Tuesday! I threw away several clothing items including some commercially-produced wool socks which had holes in them. They don’t even fit me that well, but at one time those were my only wool sox and I’d darn them. Now I realize I have many of my own handknits which are more worthy of the time it takes to darn. Off they went into the trash!

I put aside a few items to take to charity, and I recycled a bunch of things that had been waiting for me to have the energy to recycle them. Our recycle bin was full today on the curb, even though this family of 2 already put the bin out last week as well (it usually takes at least a month to fill the bin). In the last *two* days I ran three dishwasher loads (we have a half-sized dishwasher, usually perfect for this size household) and about eight loads of laundry.

One thing I made a priority was to eliminate as much dust as I could from the bedroom. This time of year when we have to close the windows and deal with furnace air from the basement (while outdoor air has mildewing leaves making it thick), is the hardest time of year for my breathing allergies. Brian has been sneezing lately, too (dust bothers him but not much else). So I stripped the bed down to the mattress, and I washed the comforter, the sheets/pillowcases, and the mattress pad. I dusted the floor (thank goodness we have a wood floor up there, it’s so much easier to clean well).

There is still much to de-clutter in the bedroom, but I’m thinking I gave our bodies a little rest last night as we slept. Or that is the thought that kept me going when I was working up there yesterday.

I also did some cooking. I made four boneless turkey breasts in the crockpot with some sliced carrots and a sort of long white radish I’d never tried before. It worked just fine. I swear, any root vegetable is good in a crockpot.

I can’t believe how huge those turkey breasts are! The good part was that they had no trimming to do, I could just rinse them and put ‘em in the pot. I don’t like the look, feel or idea of meat, so the less I have to “bond” with it before cooking, the better. My body is insisting on a lot of protein these days. With milk/egg allergies (and possible issues with some beans), that leaves me eating poultry and fish these days anyway.

I also made a batch of granola bars. Every time I make them, I change something. They are just getting better each time. This time I split the bars into three bread pans and I tried three different baking times, to see how much they would change from 25 minutes to 30 to 35. It was an interesting experiment. I like them all but the middle one I liked best, and they were indeed distinctly different. I’ve been putting unsweetened coconut in them lately and that is such a treat for me! Yum. Coconut is one of the flavors I sometimes crave… even though I could not tolerate its texture as a child.

At 5pm I picked up my helper and she stayed with me a little longer than usual. She is still working on re-skeining all my sockyarn from the latest dyeing session. I have been trying to get the photos in order for the yarn webpage. Then last night as she was here, I was editing photographs and my Photoshop crashed. My hard drive was complaining, it is divided into two sections and one was too full. Dang. I knew it was coming but I didn’t want to lose that work. I hadn’t done tons of work but any time I have for things like that is precious. Fortunately my helper will be back on Friday (she skeins yarn and stuffs patterns into page protectors for me, for the most part) and when she’s here I try to do admin. work related to the yarn dyeing business. Maybe we’ll get this going!

After my helper went home, I continued to be the “white tornado” as Brian puts it. More recycling happened, as did more laundry. I finally stopped cleaning around 11:30 and we rehearsed for an hour. Brian crashed, I dealt with a bit of email, and then I also crashed.

It was a good day. The house still looks cluttered and messy, but I filled a large garbage bag and a full recycle bin that are already out of the house for good. I have a few boxes of “stuff” that will go with me to Foster Center today. The laundry I washed is already put away, and anything else will have to wait for another whirlwind day.

Thanks to those of you who wrote in encouragement. It’s clear to me I’m not alone but it feels that way when I’m trying to “shovel” myself out of the mess.

Wednesday is a busy one for me. I have a class that rescheduled for today at Rae’s (Fair Isle Socks), and CityKidz Knit! and three hours of dance. There is SO much yet to do, my car needs a muffler (pout) and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get it in this week. Things that take me from my home office always throw me for a loop, as much as I like this life of mine (and all the people I get to see when I’m gone from home).

OK… I’ve printed all the handouts for my class today. Now I need to get on with my day.

Karla writes:

This morning on the Today Show they mentioned that today is Take Back Your Time Day and I couldn’t help but think of your day. You might want to check the web site, www.timeday.org and go to the Four Windows of Time. They even have posters to print to help promote it.

Today is “Lynn lets go of 10 things” day. Here are some options I have given myself:

Toss in trash (if at all reasonable, this is simplest).
Give away to friend (put in mail or deliver quickly).
Give to charity.
Put on curb and let neighbor or passer-by take it away.
Recycle.
Freecycle.

At least 10 things.

Send me good vibes. We’re really drowning in stuff we don’t use (mostly my clothing) and I must turn this around. I bought at least 10 things just yesterday at Target (wool/cashmere berets in raspberry are hard to resist and berets of any sort are only typically available before the snow flies). At least the new items were small things. Now I must get rid of more than I brought in.

Why is this so hard? I’m not close to destitute, never have been. Yes, I’ve worried about cashflow (bills on time) but never physical things. I do remember the days when I could move everything I owned, including a sewing machine, bicycle and bean bag chair, in my 1975 AMC Gremlin. I’ll never be able to do that again but I would like to head back toward that direction a bit.

I live without unsecured credit which means I pay as I go, don’t promise that I’ll have money tomorrow to pay something tomorrow. For someone in my lifestyle this is absolutely sane. Live in the moment, and all that. When I want something, I wait until I can buy it or I do without. Obviously, I don’t do without very much!

I have more than enough stuff to take care of my immediate needs and even my emotional longings, for the most part. There must be some inner thing in some of us that echos “scarcity” when we prepare to let go of (lose) something. Maybe it’s the hunter-gatherer deep in the cells that makes me afraid to let go.

It’s time to be clear about my real situation and not be controlled with vague fears of not enough. It is true that I’m self employed and some times of the year are better than others. However, I’ve never gone hungry for lack of food and I’ve never had a scarcity of clothing. I’ve always had a roof over my head. And I’ve had a car since I was 15 years old. My immediate needs (and many of my frivolous wants) are close at hand.

Off to see what abundance I can find. If I give up the extra “stuff” I can get extra space instead. I’m ready for some elbow room today.

I just added 2 photos to the previous post. They show us singing and a closer shot of the shawl, if from a side view.

Thanks to Joe Sundell for taking the photos for us. He’s in the Ban-Joes of Michigan, and was our contact person for this event.

I spent my childhood singing into the mirror. Practicing for when I’d be grown up and singing as my job.

I was right. I love it. The gig Sunday in Warren, Michigan, was wonderful. We’re talking a banquet room full of people listening to every word. Knowing that a really good dinner was coming soon but temporarily forgetting it and singing along with us, totally in the moment.

Singing for people who want to listen, is the best fun I can think of right now. I definitely was right when I was a kid. This is the best. And doing it with the man I adore and who loves me back… well, I never imagined life could be this great. It’s not great every second but when we’re on stage, time stops and I experience bits of heaven right there.

For the knitters who tune in here regularly… I did finally finish the light turquoise/hot green stole I started nearly 2 years ago, and I wore it for the performance. I mean, I bound it off in the green room backstage. Sometime between the sound check and showtime. Yes, I have been called obsessed before. Remember, I wanted to wear it *last* Friday at Magdalenas… so I was really intent on finishing this one and wearing it.

The stole is beautiful, perfect. It stayed on my shoulders and looked magnificent from a distance. The hallways in the building were lined with mirrors and I kept giving in to the instinct to look at myself wearing my handiwork. Yup, worth picking it up again after all that time. Love it.

It was a long day. We were gone more than 12 hours. It was worth every second.

I did not push too hard today. I slept in, then made teff muffins and pumpkin bread. The muffins were for breakfast, the bread was intended to be frozen for later snacks on busy days.

The muffins were good though I baked them a little bit too long. The pumpkin bread… well, I put baking powder in it instead of baking soda and it did not rise. At all. We’re talking DENSE though flavorful. More like pudding than bread. I’m not tossing it quite yet but it’s intense. Win a few, lose a few, I guess.

I taught First-Time Toe-Up socks to one student at Little Red Schoolhouse this afternoon. Very fun. Then I bought beads (for stage costuming) and yarn (a skein of sockyarn and three balls of laceweight mohair for a shawl, to knit along with gift silk).

Usually my rule is “I don’t spend more than I earned that day” but I didn’t follow that rule today. It didn’t break the bank, and I’ll use the beads maybe as soon as tomorrow for our performance near Detroit. Maybe. The sockyarn is already well underway as the sample I’m using in the class I taught. I guess I wasn’t too bad.

Then I popped by Threadbear Fiberarts. It was a fun gathering there. I got Laurie to once more model yet another sample of the Goddess version of my Perfect Hug shawl. If she tried on three Goddess shawls, does that make her a Triple Goddess? (Sorry, bad joke.)

The new shawl (for Threadbear’s display use) is in a fuzzy, brushed and handpainted mohair by Colinette… blues and purples and greens. Really pretty. It will be on display at their shop starting tomorrow.

Diana knit this one for me originally, maybe a month ago. It grew somehow, though it did not feel heavy at all. With the same number of rows as the other two Goddess shawls, same needles, and same knitter as one of the others, it became humorously out of proportion. I had to rip out a bunch of it and re-bind off so that it was wearable (a shawl becomes more like a blanket when you can not get your hands out from under it as it is worn). It’s lovely now… light but still plenty of fabric to wrap around and drape over goddesses of all heights and dimensions.

From Threadbear I went to Altu’s restaurant to have dinner and listen to Dorothy Cooley sing. Last time she sang, I heard only three songs. This time I got over an hour and it was wonderful. She is jazzy, bluesy, a bit country, a bit nostalgic. She scats wonderfully. We all enjoyed it very much. I look forward to having her return there again.

Brian joined me at Altu’s for a meal and then we went back home when the restaurant closed. We rehearsed for our gig tomorrow and now I’m just left printing a few Fabulous Heftones brochures, some business cards, and a set list. I think we’re all set for a fun day on the town.

Now if I can just figure out how to finish that stole so I can wear it tomorrow… and still get enough sleep? Good thing we have 2 hours in the car, I guess. Nothing like a little last-minute knitting to get the creative juices started early!

I did it. I stayed away from home from noon to 11:30pm. I had a good day.

First I slept 8 hours. Left almost no time to dress and go to lunch so I did a quick “dunk” in the tub rather than a leisurely bubble bath. Just the same, feeling clean and refreshed, if quickly, is important to a good day off.

Lunch with Sharon. Quite decent salad, adequate tea, wonderful company.

Knitting with Sharon. Knitting with Rae. Chatting with other knitters.

Completed knitting a full pair of wristwarmers… well, short of 7 stitches in the last warmer’s bind off. I ran out of yarn binding off the second one (even after three splices from ends I had on the footie socks and the cast on ends). Still contemplating whether I’ll rip out the bind off plus a row for both and then re-bind off… OR if I’ll take Rae’s suggestion to bind off with one row of a contrast color… OR if I’ll find a fun novelty yarn and do a short cuff of funky color before binding off in the fun yarn.

Went to Altu’s restaurant for dinner. Chatted with her very fine husband while eating the best lima beans in the planet.

Spent 10 minutes at the grocery store on the way home. My fave cashier was there so I was happy to say hi to him. The cashier that cashed me out used to be one of the computer Kidz at Foster Center. He went and grew up and got a job. How dare he! He was very polite and efficient.

Took groceries home, changed sweaters, went to Wharton Center. Play was fine. Some of the dancing was total New York/Fosse-style dancing and I ate it up. Honestly, the play was really fun to be in but the plot is sort of odd. The singing/dancing pulls it all through, and the costumes were fun to watch, as well.

But the great fun surprise with the show was… the part of Charlemaigne was played by Mickey Dolenz! Oh, my! He was my hero in the late 1960’s. He was in The Monkees. He was the fun one. He smiled, he laughed, he didn’t take things too seriously. Between the Fosse-style dancing and the ability to watch Mickey Dolenz act (just fine, I may add), well, that was worth $32 to sit in the nosebleed-high seats, back row of the balcony.

Now it’s midnight and I’m going to rehearse a few songs with Brian. Not a full rehearsal but just a few that need rehearsing every night while we nail them down cold.

And I’m drinking tea. Really good Ceylon tea from a box which has arabic writing on it. Really good tea. Tea makes me happy, have I said that lately? I mean, tea is really a simple pleasure but it brings happiness. It’s as good or better than a ball of alpaca, depending on my mood.

Off to tune my bass…

I need to chill out. This can’t keep going. I’m the boss and I’m not giving myself enough down time. The buck stops here, as they say!

I confused my schedule today, and that just is not my style. Sometimes I run a bit late but very rarely for paying work. I know I’m challenged in the “schedule department” so I check my calendar about a zillion times a day. I have a palm pilot on my person when I don’t have my computer (where the calendar “lives”). I am major paranoid about flubbing my appointments, since as you know every day is different for me and many times the same day the next week is also different.

Confusion

So today I thought it was Wednesday or I thought it was summer or something, and I was 45 minutes off getting to Foster Center. Nobody was mad, they were glad to see that I was safe, but that is just NOT how I do business. (They did have my cell phone number but thought they did not… I had my cell with me.)

My worst nightmares (not figuratively, but actual ones I dream at night) are the ones when I’m supposed to be one place and I’m at another, or I have the wrong day. Then today I did just that. Pooh. I guess it all just has to get better. It is a warning that I need to slow down. Period.

I should have seen it coming… yesterday I accidentally gave my Post Office guy two $20 bills instead of one. I often don’t even carry two $20 bills. They stuck together.

He’s the coolest dude, I do lots of business there (it’s a drive-through post office) and he first just joked that he didn’t think I liked him *that* much. Then he warned me to be careful driving home, “the way your day is going.”

Decisiveness

So. Time to turn it around!

Thursday I got home from Rae’s, made a decent quick dinner, cleaned the kitchen (ugh) a bit and sat still for an hour. We rehearsed for a little more than an hour, then I snuggled in on the couch under my Ethiopian blanket and a comforter I made myself back in 1980. And looked through knitting books as I sipped tea.

I enjoyed my books. I checked out the Bev Galeskas book on felted knitting, and then my One Skein book (I must make that tank top with the leftover lace yarns from my self portrait… overdyed of course), and Weekend Knitting.

I wanted to eat the shortbread cookies in the weekend book, but it looked like a lot of work. It takes 5 cups of flour and a pound of butter. It yields 120 cookies. Man, that sounds like hours in a kitchen. I guess I’ll go back to my granola bars or brownies, which don’t require as much labor before putting them in the oven.

I do feel much more relaxed than I’ve felt in a while. Maybe I’m just dead tired, but either way it is good.

Friday’s Plan

OK, checklist: I did my promo/press release work for the week and I only have 2 classes to reschedule (hassle but better than canceling classes) in emails, one which will be settled next week with a single student and one where I’m waiting to hear back from two students. I did my bill paying and invoicing for the week. Dyeing will wait till next week soonest. No musical appointments until Sunday. All the tasks I must do this week are done.

Tuesday used to be a day off for me and this Fall I have not been able to work that out. However, I think I can actually just relax this Friday. I might even go to Pippin at Wharton. The back row seats in the balcony are $30 (ouch) but it’s a dancing show and you can see the dance formations well from up there.

I could work on my shopping cart but I’m just at that breaking point where rest is important or I’ll get sick. The shopping cart I started in June (dang) and one day more will not be a big dent in the already-huge delay.

Knitting or the Lack Thereof

I didn’t knit enough Thursday. I did work on the red tie… and once more made some purls where I was not supposed to put purls. Not a fun project, friends. It’s growing nicely but I’ll have to run down a column at a time to fix about 16 mis-purled stitches. I am already eager to be done with this project!!! It will happen in time, though, and I know that.

I also knit a little on the brainless sock, so that I could do a bit of relaxing. I realize that I started sock #2 on a different number of stitches (toe up… 6 rather than 8 stitches) than the first. I decided I’m going to practice not worrying. My feet will not notice the difference. These are not for a pattern, publicity or anything. I tell students all the time that knitting stretches and forgives small errors. Since I’m making things up as I go I don’t take notes and sometimes I get it wrong. Two stitches. I’ll get over it.

Knitting Plans

I really feel I need a one-day project I can fly through or at least complete Friday. I need completion, success. Maybe bulky wristwarmers, or maybe I’ll try to finish my stole that I finally found (and would love to wear at our performance Sunday). Then I can go back and fix the red tie.

Immediate Action

Now it’s time to sleep. Then I’ll get up slowly, take a bubble bath, and meet Sharon P for lunch and some knitting on the east side. The Better Health grocery store has a deli with a good organic salad bar and I’m planning to enjoy not cooking lunch Friday!

For now, sleep is the best gift I can give myself. I *do* get eight hours of sleep almost every night, sometimes even more. That is one big gift of my current lifestyle. I spent decades not sleeping enough. One friend says she has to “hit the feathers” when she goes to bed. I don’t have feathers but I think that’s a pleasant image. It reminds me of the John Denver song “Grandma’s Feather Bed” from the 1970s.

And with that, I’ll go get horizontal and make ZZZZs…

I just don’t know how I get this busy. I do get a full 8 hours of sleep most nights, but then from the moment I wake up until midnight or so, I’m booked solid.

Last night when I got home from dance rehearsal I think I did not sit down for about 30-40 minutes after I got home. I think this is a temporary thing but it is very tiring!

What do I do? I did not cook dinner yesterday although I did prepare breakfast and pack a lunch. I did not do any laundry or other cleaning. I did write a blog and edit a single photo for that.

I had to go to a doctor’s office to pick up something, had to go to the post office, grocery store, teach CityKidz, take a dance class, rehearse with Habibi dancers, then for dinner we dancers went to Emil’s restaurant because one of our dancers is moving north and it was her last night with us.

The only thing in that list that took more than one hour is the rehearsal. It seems to me that I didn’t do much, especially since only two of those hours were for pay. But I did pay two bills online in the morning, and I had to call to activate my new debit card, all of which took a little time.

Today I have to get an allergy shot and drop something off at a shop. Then I have my weekly lunch with Altu (relaxing but it does have a timeframe when I’m expected) and three hours at Foster Center, with CityKidz and computer lab supervision.

After that I go to Rae’s to watch the cash register for a couple of hours during knit-in time, while Rae is working backstage at Wharton Center. I usually go there for knit in on Thursdays anyway, as many of my loyal students knit there and they often have questions on their current LynnH/ColorJoy project (they flatter me by knitting my patterns often). Right now a handful are knitting Perfect Hug shawls.

So here I sit at 12:04. I need to be at Altu’s at 1:00. Already this morning I have confirmed two musicians for Altu’s restaurant and sent a press release to the papers and DJs, I’ve sent a thank you email and confirmed a meeting with a friend, another email to try and reschedule a class, and replied to a thank you by a woman who had hired us to sing for her party last weekend. And I’m writing this (and edited the photo above).

I’m not dressed, and I need to take half an hour to get an allergy shot. I’m SO glad I live right in town and it doesn’t take me a half hour commute as it did for the dozen years I lived in Williamston. I love being right in the middle of my world.

Friday I have the day off. All I have scheduled is to drop off a shawl at Threadbear, coffee/lunch with Sharon P., and perhaps I’ll go to the musical Pippin at Wharton Center. I was in Pippin in Lansing around 1991 or 92 and I loved being in that show. It’s lots of singing and dancing, a lot like Godspell, a real 1970’s sort of show. For this child of the 70’s it is heartwarming, like coming home.

At least today offers many opportunities to knit. I’m finding I can’t knit the tie with anyone around, but the socks are coming right along as could be expected. When they look like something I’ll have photos.

For now, though, I’m off and running to get everything done for Thursday. Catch you later.

Photo: the Grand River yesterday. Note the typical Lansing cloudcover. Some days we can not tell where the sun is in the sky, but this photo makes it look quite mystical and beautiful. I wish you could see the colors of the trees better, but the sky took over in this shot.

Yarn Shop Fun

Here’s a photo of my yarn booth, my friend Irene, and my friend Trish Bloom at her booth, at Threadbear last Saturday. I thank the Boyz at Threadbear for the opportunity, I had a lot of yarns available to sell, and enough sold that I was very happy to have sat there one full day.

Nevermind that the people in the shop that day were great company and it would have been fun, sale or no. Barb Hranilovich was there with a booth, and I had not seen her in a very long time. She is such sunshine! She’s a kindred spirit, in our relationship with color.

My Regular Knitting

I’m cranking away on no-brainer afterthought-heel socks on size 2 needles, finished all of the first (toe up) sock of a pair, except for binding off and the heel. I need to dig out the second skein from the pile so I can keep going on these.

They are an odd colorway, with magenta/ turquoise/ black/ purple/ yellow (Rob commented on them at Guild last night) but I’ve had this yarn in stash a long time and honestly it was in 50gm center-pull balls, so I could just grab and go, no effort at all to get knitting.

The Challenging Project of the Day

The red tie is grueling to knit. At least I’m enjoying the smallness of the project (on size 0 US /2mm Brittany birch wood needles). These tiny, bendable needles are kind to my hands.

I have completed 38 rows and I’m at 58 stitches wide right now. It’s not fun at all. I’m doing it flat, with knit/purl texture in the pattern of argyle. Very few purls, really, but I keep putting them in the wrong place. I think I’m at about a 66% accuracy rate. Thank goodness there are only 4 purls per row.

I actually spent a long time yesterday unravelling one column of stitches at a time and re-chaining them back up with a 2mm crochet hook. I un-did a bunch of purls, changed my mind about how I wanted the patterning to go. It was too confusing and life is too short! Teresa Lee helped me figure out where I’d gone wrong, last night at guild. I figured I could do it again (make that mistake, that is).

Ugh. Counting purl texture stitches. How do people do this? Some people appear to be able to do it in their sleep. I swear, for me intarsia would be easier because the color screams at you where it is. The purls hide because they are the same color, until five rows after you thought they were right, and placed other purls near them in relationship to the incorrect spot. And then you have to undo dozens of stitches to fix it all. Ugh. I think I do have this set up a little better, and now that I can see the previous patterns a bit more, maybe it will smooth out for me a bit.
Optimism

The good news is that the pattern called for a single crochet at the bottom of the tie and I did that right away yesterday. It does look good (I was afraid it would look clunky). There is something about small yarn and small tools that makes things look more refined. I’m happy with that part of the project.

I’m still a little worried that the stockinette will not want to block flat, but water on it made things much better and steam should take it to the next level.

Reality

I probably will not get much knitting done today. There are three long-ignored errands to run before my public appearances begin. I have to teach a private lesson, then I work with the Kidz for one hour, and then I dance for 3 hours. It’s not too easy to knit while dancing!

Cyndy writes:

How are you supplied for CityKidz? Please let me (and others) what you need, want and/or don’t want.

I have enough regular solid-colored acrylic yarn right now. What the Kidz are asking for these days is feltable wool and multicolored acrylics, plus really bright colors of acrylic. Kids love color, so anything very colorful goes really fast.

Specifically we can use (if it’s not on this list, please don’t send… I don’t have a lot of storage space and the boss doesn’t like messes):

• Feltable yarns, worsted weight or larger, bright colors
• Any natural-fiber white/pastel yarns (either washable *or* feltable, for Kool Aid Dyeing)
• Bulky yarns that are soft enough for kids (not rug yarn)
• Multicolored yarns, even standard discount acrylic, brighter is better
• Tote bags (canvas ones with advertising from conventions are great)
• Needles, sizes US 6 to 11, straight or circular (do not have to match or have both needles, I have an assortment of singles already)
• Circular needles US 6-13 small enough around for hats and small bags (12-24″)
• Darning Needles (pastel plastic ones are ideal)
• Small scissors for cutting yarn ends (Don’t buy especially for us, we only need a couple pair)

What I do NOT need:

• Lion Brand Homespun or Boucle… or other loopy novelty yarns, they do not work because they split/catch so easily
• Neutral-colored yarns (unless it’s dyeable wool)
• Fuzzy yarns, fur-like yarns and dark-colored yarns (too hard to see stitches)
• Mildewy or mouse-eaten attic/basement leftovers (Unfortunately, I am getting good at recognizing mouse droppings)
• Thinner yarns than worsted weight. Kids have little patience and are still developing finger coordination. They want to finish, quickly.
• Novelty yarns (we do use them in small quantities but I have more than I need right now)

If I haven’t said it recently, the best thing I do all week is teach the CityKidz Knit! program. These kids are normal, everyday kids in many respects… but in my room, they shine and they are fun, funny, brilliant, creative. They love me and they know I love them back.

And they make amazing things! Last year I had three children making socks, one girl finished two pair and started on two more. I’ve had lace and intarsia lessons. I’ve had kids make up patterns many times.

They go in phases, sometimes the group wants to do bags, sometimes, hats, sometimes wristwarmers, a few times backpacks. I let them follow whatever muse speaks to them, it’s very much a “study hall” more than a class.

The Kidz never cease to inspire me. I learn how to explain and how to help them think for themselves. We’re all lucky to work together.

Cyndy, thanks for your continuing interest in the program. It’s a worthy cause.

Oh… donations (small boxes better than large) can be sent to:

CityKidz Knit! c/o LynnH
Foster Community Center
200 N. Foster Ave.
Lansing, MI 48912

I’m trying to get my knitting ducks in a row. I have had such a mess here that I wanted to start back knitting on a pair of sox I started for Brian over a year ago… I tried to pick them up to take them with me… but they were tangled so badly with the yarn on the pair of sox for me (yarn was a gift from Cyndy long ago), that I could not get them free quickly enough to take them along.

When I could not grab and run with either of those projects, I ended up grabbing a new ball of yarn. I started yet another pair of sox for waiting-room knitting. As if I need another unfinished project? I do always end up finishing socks but they sometimes do take a while.I also have had a pair of alpaca/wool footies on my desk waiting for me to find 5 yards of yarn to finish the ribbing and bind off. And countless other longer-ignored items… such as my Knitting Olympics vest that needs only about 1/3 of the front pieces reknit, my equilateral vest, Alpine sweater and my ribbon cap sleeve top, a funnel neck needing seams, a few wraps/stoles where I bought yarn and a dream but have never even started, and, and, and, and…

So Sunday when I gave myself a day off I spent an hour or two after dinner just looking through my UFOs (un-finished objects) to see what was up in the air. I found the alpaca/wool and finished footie #2. And I found a red ball of sockyarn. Destined for a tie I promised a friend maybe a year ago.

Well, I have some old pattern booklets from 1932 to 1949 which were given to me by my beloved student Helen (may she rest in peace). I have been wanting to knit something from these books to honor her memory. She did in fact give the patterns to the right person.

So I dug through the books and found a tie that was intended as a standard argyle pattern (three colors of yarn). My friend wants red, not three colors. So I started him a stockinette tie where I am purling the stitches which would have been the accent lines and/or the edges of the argyle patterning.

It looks pretty good but at 60 stitches wide on size 0 US /2mm needles, it is going really slowly. Especially when it is knit back and forth, where half the stitches are purls and I have to keep watching to see when I’m supposed to do the next accent stitch.

Other people do knit/purl patterning all the time. It’s what they like to do when they knit. Me? I’m miserable. It’s the most tedious knitting I’ve done in a long time.

The tie is going to be great and I’m going to continue working on it, but ugh. I honestly think my self-portrait was more enjoyable knitting… at least it had more color in it. OK, I didn’t know if it would work so there was tension in the air but that was not about the knitting process as much as the end result.

But hey, I have made a promise. It took so long to find the exactly right fingering weight solid red yarn, that I need to get on it now that all the stars are in alignment.

I’m sort of wanting to get as many loose ends tied up as I can, because I sense another design-a-bunch-of-patterns phase coming on fairly soon. And designing takes so much emotional/intellectual energy that I want to make as many of these almost-done items into finished items. To take a few distractions away from my cluttered though enthusiastic mind, you know???

Now I have to go do a publicity packet and a confirmation email for our musical act, and then I get to sleep a while. Life is never boring in ColorJoyLand!

Photo: Not related to this post other than knitting content. One of my CityKidz from Foster Community Center (5th grade) made this button scarf for herself in 2 days last week. It was made with donated yarns, a plain worsted weight acrylic and a super soft nylon furry yarn held together. She’s delighted with how soft and warm it feels.

Rae referred me to this amazing photo… thousands of pairs of Latvian mittens (we are talking incredible colorwork on very small needles). For the Nato Summit guests. Handmade. With pride in Latvian culture.

Here is the beginning of the article:

The NATO Summit Latvia Task Force has received the first half of 4,500 pairs of hand-made mittens that Latvia is preparing as a gift for the NATO Summit guests coming to Riga for the summit in November.

Each of the thousands of NATO Summit visitors to Riga will be presented with a pair of uniquely-designed hand-made mittens. Latvia’s Ethnographic mittens are a strong tradition and important vessel of Latvian culture…

Update (thanks to Rae again) in the wee hours of Monday night/Tuesday morning: If you go to this page, it answers a lot of the questions that might come to mind. It tells about the knitters, the yarn, the patterning and the reasons they wish to do this. It does not take long to read and is worth the time.

Check it out. You can read the rest of the article or just look at the photo… it’s eye candy even without the NATO story behind it all. Wowie, we’re talking some beautiful knitting!

Alda of the Iceland Weather Report blog, posted the most amazing sunset picture.
One word: Wow.

Here’s a photo of Brian and me at the Lansing Country Club last Thursday. We got there significantly early so they put us in the dining room to wait, which we had to ourselves. I propped the camera on a planter and set the timer to get this photo. I think it’s pretty good considering how it was taken!

I’m wearing my Bloom Shawl in a Multicolor (slowly color-changing) turquoise brushed mohair. I love this shawl, I wear it almost every day. Until yesterday. Somehow when I took it off at Threadbear, there was what looked like a 2″ cut with scissors from the crochet edge toward the neck.

It’s pretty bad, my friends, with a cut through both the crochet and knitting. I am good at knitting repairs for sweaters and dense garments, but this is as airy as lace and I don’t know how I’ll hide ends even if I did find the right section of the multicolored yarn to match it. (I am pretty sure I have a half a ball of the yarn somewhere in my stash.) I’m heartbroken.

I don’t have to figure it out today. Maybe for now I should get out my fuschia multicolor yarn, same yarn but different colorway, that I bought but never worked up into another Bloom shawl. The fuschia would go with most of what I wear… nevermind that I love turquoise best of all.

Today I do not have to decide what I will do. Today I have many other shawls I can wear. And I can finish the hot green/light turquoise stole I just re-discovered, which needs maybe an inch or two of knitting to be done.

Letting Go

My favorite mantra, when things happen and I can’t control them, is “I am not in charge.” It’s sort of a one-line simplification of the Serenity Prayer, one version of which is:

“…grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”

Its essence boils down to… I can’t change much, and if I can’t, I need to let go. Or, if I’m not in charge, I need to not try to control things. It’s an acceptance of the natural powerlessness which is much of life. For me, it lets me save my energy for those times when it really does matter what I do or say.

So today my brother Eric and his wife Diana both woke up with a bad cold. So much for family Thanks-Christmas today. I talked to Eric and we worked out another date for the event. Now I have two pies and new plans.

A Simple Meal, Good Company

Mom is going to have Brian and I come over for chicken stir fry dinner, but not a long family day. She has been planning and cleaning and grocery shopping and cooking. Not a fancy meal, but it still required thought, and Mom plans better than most.

So Mom and Fred and Brian and I will enjoy a dinner together. That way I can let go of one pie anyway! Mom and Fred can have any leftovers.
Baking Once More

I put a little coconut milk in the pie (instead of all soy milk) so that it might set up a little better. I can not believe how lovely the pies look, cooling in the refrigerator.

I’ve become the queen of allergy-free baking and this recipe keeps evolving. I think the crowning glory of my baking/ recipe-writing experiences is the pumpkin pie made with no egg or milk. I mean, pie that is so good that people with no food limitations eat it and really enjoy it as though it were made normally. My buckwheat pancakes are really good, too, but the pie amazes even me. Custard with no dairy or egg. Cool!

Lazy Day Thus Far

So far today I’ve had a wonderful, lazy and relaxing day. I slept till NOON (wow) which still leaves me one hour short from the night before but I feel good. Then I made tea and read a whole knitting magazine from cover to cover. I enjoyed the magazine so much, the tea was almost cold by the time I remembered it was there.

Then I made buckwheat pancakes for the two of us. These never cease to satisfy. That little kid inside of me never tires of pancakes!
Now I’m filling the tub for a nice long bath. We have a claw-footed tub, the best thing in a house of this age. I love long, hot baths and this tub makes me really happy. Since I’m not very tall I can get really warm in this very deep tub.

Knitting Plans

I thought I’d lost a shawl in progress (almost done, actually) and was sad because I’d wanted to wear it Friday for the Magdalena’s show. Well, darned if I found it put away where it should have been all along. So I hope I’ll finish that today after the bath. Maybe even before we go to dinner at Mom’s.

As Zen as I Get

I’m all for letting go sometimes, and giving in to what is. I’m not in charge of weather or nature or illness. I am in charge of my attitude given whatever circumstances are in front of me. And when I’ve had enough sleep, “I am not in charge” is a wonderful phrase of letting go to the moment. It’s not exactly zen, but it’s pretty good for a typically over-charged artful woman like me.

I hope you get some time with those you love today, and a little time with whatever activity makes you happy… be that music, sports, knitting, cooking… eating. Yup. I’m going to really enjoy eating that pie!!!

I had a great time at the Threadbear special event on Saturday. Thank you so much to those of you who came out to see me. It was worth all the hustling and staying up late and worrying.

And for those of you out there waiting, there are still plenty of skeins left for you. In fact, none of my new colorways sold out. Things sold very evenly between colorways, surprisingly.

After the sale, Brian and I had a private musical performance. Then we went to Altu’s for dinner… and THEN we went to Magdalenas (for not long enough) which deserves its own story if I can find time.

But we went home because I had to make pumpkin pie. You see, my family will have what we call Thanks-Christmas tomorrow. Nothing like getting the holidays over with before it becomes a hassle! I did have a class scheduled for the morning but for several reasons that class will be rescheduled for the two people who had signed up.

This means that I could conceivably sleep in tomorrow for the first time in a really long while… assuming I have the pumpkin pies already made. The (non-allergy) pies I make must be cut after they have cooled so they need a lot of lead time in the refrigerator.

I put the pies in the refrigerator just before 1:00am, which may seem late, but now I can sleep as long as I want tomorrow. I have had a very productive week and I’m glad to say I’m giving myself a day off. Imagine that!

In the morning I can sleep in and laze with my sweetie, maybe I’ll make pancakes for us for breakfast. I’ll plan to take time to look through all my recent knitting magazines. I love to take the leisure of flipping through, being inspired by the photos and reading what delights me.

Then in the afternoon we’ll have a holiday with my family. No gifts, the ability to be together is gift enough (and we’re all trying to lighten the loads in our homes so this is the right plan).

Oh… finally I’m trying to catch up on photos. This is my pair #136, the pair I knit for myself from the leftovers of Brian’s anniversary socks. I still have yarn left!!! This pair was knit toe up with afterthought heels. No, I did not dye this yarn, it is Socks That Rock Heavyweight.

I have two more skeins to re-wind before I can stop and start putting labels on the wound and twisted skeins for Saturday’s sale/event.

I have more sockyarn that isn’t re-skeined but I have a decent sense of what usually sells and I’ve prepared more than is needed for a one-day sale. I’ll take along the dyed but not prepped yarn, in a box in the car, in case someone wants more of a colorway than I’ve wound, but this is somewhat unlikely. Most likely, the yarn in that box will become yarn for those of you out there reading who can’t make it to the sale (hi, Deb!).

You know, no matter what you do to make things work out you find hiccups in the process. I had over 50 skeins dyed, and I have 33 I’m taking skeined, twisted and labeled. Two more skeins I planned to take had flaws in the yarn that were not apparent until I was reskeining after dyeing. I guess I get to keep those skeins and make them into samples, but it was disappointing to get 3/4 into a skein and realize that the time I’d spent on that could have better been spent on something else.

Here is a photo of a skein that actually was rescued from the discard pile. Its only problem was that it wound itself incorrectly on the skeinwinder (about 1/4 of the way through but I did not notice until I was ready to pop it off the winder). I had to unwind much of the skein onto the floor in a relatively orderly pile (yes, really, that mess was easy to rewind back where it came from no matter how awful it looks in the photo). That one is now ready to go.

I’m printing labels as I type this. It’s nice to sit down for a little while, as my skeinwinder works best when I’m standing up. I will love every moment of sleep tonight!

I hope to see a few of you at Threadbear Saturday. The sale is from 10-5 (and for once I’m leaving at 5pm on the button because of a musical performance).

Two special events are today and tomorrow for me. I’d love to see you folks there. Both are in Lansing, Michigan.

Tonight (Friday), Brian and I (as The Fabulous Heftones) are playing at Magdalena’s Teahouse with Two Hearted String Band (woohoo, they are great). Showtime is 8pm, cover is $10 (nobody will be turned away if they are short a few bucks).

Saturday I’ll be a vendor at Threadbear’s Fall Fling event from 10am - 5pm selling my yarns. I have something like ten colorways of sockyarn and probably six or 8 colorways of my Cushy ColorSport DK weight washable merino. I may have some polymer clay buttons… if I can find the box I put them in when I cleaned house for overnight guests (sigh).

I’m brimming over with yarn, nearly 60 skeins of sockyarn at last count… so when the sale is done I’ll photograph the rest and put them up for sale to those of you who don’t live close enough to drive to Lansing.

Photos: Fabulous Heftones, Two Hearted String Band, Tip-Toe Sock Yarn skeins (not balanced for proper color yet, but from the current batch).

Candy just finished her First-Time Toe-Up sock class at Rae’s. She finished a whole sock and almost half of a second one, in three weeks.

These are for her husband and she knit them on size one needles. Her first pair. This is love, my friends. We are talking a LOT of stitches.

This sock was on my lap when I took the picture so the heel looks folded funny. It really is “just right,” as Goldilocks would say.

I think she did a great job! Three cheers for Candy!

OK, it’s not even halfway through October. It snowed All Day Long.

Here is a photo of me looking down at my feet in the grass after coming home from our musical performance at the Lansing Country Club (a private event).

And here is a photo of our mailbox and two of our plastic yard/garden flamingos near our back step.

When we were at the club, I noticed that the snowcover had lines in it. They obviously mowed the grass recently and it was the indentations of where the wheels had passed, where the lines showed. We have had really green grass for the last few months, very unusual for this time of year. Often we do not need to mow grass much if at all in October. This fall, most people have been trying to keep things from looking like a jungle.

And then overnight it turned white. Very odd.

The National Weather Service for Lansing says that we might have snow as late as Saturday late afternoon. I hope it stops before that, as we are playing music for an outdoor party (yard and garage and tent, or that was Plan A anyway) Saturday dinnertime. I’m pretty sure the hostess said she had a Plan B (and we know that Plan B is often a good idea).

I’m grateful for my boring but warm gray (store-bought) alpaca sweater. And my legwarmers, and my handknit warm wool socks. And my wristwarmers… and… and…