Update: Not just a little snow. Snow coming down so hard that it looks like rain. Snow that blocks the view. Snow that accumulates on our plastic garden flamingos. (Note: not much later than this photo was taken, the snow had accumulated a bit on the grass, blocking the green.) Temperature is down almost 2 degrees F since I took the first photo just over an hour ago.

Ugh. Time to knit.

Pout. I am *not* a cold weather grrl. Thank goodness I like wool, it’s my primary consolation throughout the cold months.

(Yes I know it’s not much…and in fact it’s warmer than freezing right now. I just really love my summertime.)

I’m not the only one who is bummed out. (After all, in Lansing the snow does not usually stick until around Thanksgiving. Sometimes we get a dusting like this around Halloween, so we are about 2-3 weeks early here.) Sarah Peasley/Handknitter has photos, too… but it looks like we got more snow in the city than she did out in the eastern ‘burbs.

Maybe it will help my headache, though… Right now I feel good. I’ll take what I can get.

Well, the headache comes and goes but it’s much better than a few days ago. It really helps me to eat Altu’s spicy chicken so I ate it for dinner again tonight.

Last night I dyed 9 colorways of Tip-Toe sockyarn and overdyed two 100gm skeins of Cushy ColorSport. Tonight I plan to dye a good number of sockyarn skeins in Seaside, my beloved best-selling colorway. By the time those go in to steam, I’ll be busy re-skeining all the yarn I dyed yesterday.

You should see the house, I have yarn drying everywhere! There are not enough sweater dryers in this house for all the yarn and so it’s hanging from doorknobs or whatever I can find. Pretty amusing, really.

OK, off to make Seaside again. Then rehearse, then skein yarn. And skein and skein. And print labels. And sleep? Last night I slept fitfully, had two odd-to-frightening dreams. I’m accustomed to sleeping well but this beautiful time of year is always hard on my system. This, too, shall pass…

Meanwhile I’m drinking in all the beautiful colors! I tried some new dyes last night, and I mixed a bunch of colors off the cuff that turned out nicely. This means I won’t get that color again even if I try, but that is the fun of being an artist, isn’t it???

Photo: my last batch of Tip-Toe Sockyarn that I dyed in the Seaside Colorway. It was last spring… time flies!

Well, it was a slow-starting day for me but Tuesday turned into a productive one after all. I still had a pretty bad headache at 5pm but I was able to start doing a few things at home in the afternoon. Routine stuff like laundry and running the dishwasher, anyway.

I decided an allergy shot was a really smart move (I didn’t get one last week and my headaches are usually mildew related… with leaves on the ground and occasional rain, this is not a good time to miss allergy shots). So I went to the allergist and I went to Rae’s to pick up a special order. And then I played my best ace in the hole, so to speak. I went to Altu’s for dinner.

So at 5:20 I ate spicy chicken. This food has garlic, ginger, onion, and hotter peppers than this girl usually eats. But I know that this food that my dearest friend cooks, is made with love and skill, it tastes great, and it has many healing ingredients in it. So I sniffle and I eat, and it’s really good in spite of the heat.
Between the allergy shot, the spicy chicken, and some ibuprofen, I felt much better by 6pm. My helper really cranked today, she was only here a little over 2 hours but she got a lot done (she skeins yarn from cones so that I can dye it). I headed down to the studio… finally… to put color on pale yarn.

At 11:45 I stopped so that I could rehearse with Brian, and I have merely 10 skeins left to dye. They will all be in the Seaside colorway which I’ve done so many times before it should go quickly. I think that will have to wait until Wednesday morning now. But I currently have 9 colorways of my Tip-Toe sockyarn cooling slowly (so as to make sure the dye sets well) and that will make 10 colorways for the Saturday show at Threadbear Fiberarts.

Directions to the Saturday Sale

Karla wrote to ask where Threadbear is, she might make it here for Saturday (and maybe others are also wondering). It’s on the west side of Lansing (Michigan). Take highway 496 to the Waverly exit and head north (turn right if you are coming from downtown Lansing or east of town). You will go through a light (St. Joseph) which has a couple of gas stations and a Quality Dairy. On the right side you’ll see a Burger King and then an ice cream place. The ice cream place is the last building before the parking lot for the strip mall where Threadbear is.

Threadbear is the furthest north/left business in the strip (they do not have a sign out front, but there is a quilt shop and auto parts store also in the complex). If you get to the pet hospital you have gone too far.

The sale is from 10am to 5pm. I’ll be sliding out of there fairly quickly at the tail end, because Brian and I have a private musical performance the same night.

I would love to see as many of you as possible. Do let me know if you read this blog, especially if we have not met before.

Photo: One Half-Pound skein (of 2 in stock) of Peony Sky Rainbow colorway, Cushy Colorsport DK-weight washable merino. I love this colorway!

I taught (Computers to Adults) in Haslett Monday night and by the time I was leaving the room I had a major headache. That’s the third week I’ve had this happen in that room.

This time I got home and I had only enough energy to eat dinner that Brian made and fall asleep on the couch. Significantly before Midnight. When I usually stay up till at least 1:30am.

I slept until 10:40. (I awoke once at 8:30 but my head still hurt so I went back to sleep.) The elephant is no longer standing on my head, but there is a sort of shadow of the pain and I need to move slowly. I’m drinking some strong tea which can be miracle stuff for this sort of pain, and I will go get spicy chicken from Altu’s restaurant for lunch. That stuff is serious medicine, with garlic and ginger and spices… all healing stuff.

I am really in crunch time. On Saturday I’m selling my yarns at Threadbear Fiberarts (there will be several vendors there including my friend Trish Bloom). I do have one full bin of Cushy Colorsport, ready to go. And I’ve had about 3 dozen skeins of sockyarn skeined up and ready to dye, for far too long… but my life has been fairly complicated and I have not found time for dyeing. I was going to start with it last night so I’d have dry yarn today to skein up when my helper comes.

However, I’m not in charge of many things. I needed a “sick day” and I took one. The timing was not good, but health comes first. I’ll do what I can today. And I’ll have yarn Saturday, though I don’t know how much I’ll have. If I have time, I’ll bring some handpainted sweaters as well. That was the plan but now we will see.

Off to take a long hot bath. That is the best medicine I know. Then food from Altu. On the way home I’ll get an allergy shot, and then I’ll go at the work. Sort of like rebooting the computer, isn’t it?

Photo: These were two of my knitters at CityKidz Knit! program, at Foster Community Center last Thursday. We started again last week after a whole long summer off. I love my kidz!

Last Thursday, Altu had a special guest from North Carolina come into town. The three of us went to MSU Gardens and then out for lunch. We had a wonderful time.

The gardens are beautiful every time of the year. I just love seeing how colors look next to one another, and how nature can serve up such a splendid rainbow just in the plants.

The rose garden was still blooming profusely (I showed you a close up photo of one bloom a few posts back). It seems so chilly these days, I was surprised to see how healthy those roses looked. My father and his mother both loved roses, particularly red ones. I can not see roses without thinking of them. They would have loved this. It’s not as formal or as large as the Frances Park rose garden (which goes back to the 1920s) but every bit as colorful.

The main entry to the gardens from the parking lot has a semi-circular area with benches, protected from midday sun when we have some. Actually this day was fairly sunny, but it was chilly enough that we did not need shade.

There are also walkways around the areas, which would seem to make the gardens pretty accessible to someone in a wheelchair. I sometimes feel sad in natural beauty areas because they can be so clearly inaccessible. (Fenner Arboretum in Lansing has one long path that is paved, but the Nature Center in Kalamazoo looked relatively hard to manage if one was in a chair.)

The entry to the rose garden is a wooden structure painted white. I guess it might be called a covered gate. It must have a real name but I can’t come up with one.

There is even a water fountain, which was still in operation. In this area, fountains have to be drained for winter weather, and we’re expecting some cold this week so maybe we got in on the last few days of the fountain this year.

I met Bliss Blood originally in the Pocanos at a Ukulele festival several years ago. We reconnected last year at the NYC Ukefest, when my table was next to hers and we sat watching our CDs (and selling each others’ CDs when one of us needed to get away or go on stage).

Bliss is a knitter and crocheter as well as an amazing musician. We hope to schedule a public knit/crochet in at the next NYUkefest in April 2007.
On stage she is focused but not rigid… and I’ve never seen her blow a chord (oh yeah, I do that with regularity but with a smile on my face). She does music full time and it shows, she is a pro and then some.

She just left a comment last night (on the Anniversary post) so we had a few emails go back and forth. Brian made sure I let her know that her “Live in Baden Baden” CD was in the CD player at the moment her comment hit my inbox. It’s definitely one of my fave discs and I put it on repeat when I need to dye yarn, it keeps me upbeat and moving forward.

She is actually in several bands, most with a focus on music from the 1920’s and 30’s. The band we see is called The Moonlighters. If you love to hear folks sing in harmony, this will be your sort of treat! She and Carla sing like songbirds together.

If you are in/near NYC, you can get on her email notice list and go see the band perform. They often play Barbes and the Rodeo Bar.

There are some MP3s you can listen to if you go to her website. Check it out: BlissBlood.com

Photo: I swear I took photos at the Moonlighters’ performance in NYC but I can not find any shots on my hard drive. Here’s a street scene not far from the Theatre… a poor substitute for a photo of the band (which includes two beautiful women and two fine men) but at least it gives you a feel for the neighborhood. (I could live there in a second, if it didn’t cost 5 times as much for a one-room hole-in-the-wall as my house here…)

The other day I had errands to run and not a lot of time, but it’s so beautiful here I had to slow down for a moment. I pass the Mt. Hope Cemetery almost every day, sometimes several times in a day. I’ve taken photos of it from across the street several years in a row, because the fall colors are so beautiful. This time I decided to drive in and see it up close.

Wow. Lansing has very few hilly areas but this cemetery is full of hills and valleys. And it’s very old so many trees are mature, with much variety offering many colors this time of year. R.E. Olds’ family mausoleum is in this cemetery, as are plots for many of Lansing’s early families. I saw headstones that bore last names from many of our city parks, for example.

It’s a very big place, much bigger than I imagined from the outside looking in. There was a woman there jogging with her dog but we were the only ones there on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I’m glad I took the time.

I feel lucky. I worked Sunday, had three different engagements that kept me busy from before noon till 9pm. I got home and Brian had chopped up a zillion veggies we’d bought at various farmer’s markets, and made soup with a little leftover chicken.

There is something really big to me, about having someone cook for me. Come home, dish up soup, eat dinner. No fuss, no delay. OK… load dishwasher, but that is nearly nothing next to cooking.

After dinner I did end up making some brownies to freeze and some one-layer, unfrosted cake to snack on in the next few days. At least a snack is not necessity… you need not *bake* to survive but you had better cook real food… you know?

I have not had such a snack instinct (in years, anyway) as I have had since I can’t just buy a snack anymore (because of food allergies). I figure if I know I have something in the freezer (I froze brownies once before and it worked very well), I may not crave a treat just knowing there is abundance. It’s the feeling of scarcity that makes no snacking hard to take.

Mind you, I went 3 years with no sugar once so I can do without and I know it. But honestly, in the last 10 months I have been hungry too much. I find myself on the road with no option other than to wait for food another several hours.
So when Brian made soup? Oh, he gained many many good karma points with his beloved. And there are three bowls of soup left, one for lunch tomorrow and two for the freezer for later days.

Nothing like a freezer full of easy-to-eat food, to make me comforted. Yup, I got the right guy in so many ways.

And this coming week we have three musical performances in three days. Two are private engagements, one a formal dinner and one a party in someone’s yard. Friday is a public event, at Magdalena’s Teahouse in Lansing. But you knew that one already, if you read here much.

We have such fun singing together! It will surely be a great week.

Photo: I took this photo at a garden at Michigan State University on Thursday. It may be the last week for roses here, but I can call this one “Summer’s Last Rose” even if that is a bit of an overstatement. It sure was beautiful!

Rae asked if I’d let you all know that she’s having a sale this weekend. The prices are even lower Sunday, and if the Tigers win she’s likely to really mark things down…

Rae’s Yarn Boutique

We’ve (Brian and I) got a show coming up this next Friday at Magdalena’s Teahouse! We’ll be playing a double-header with the Two Hearted String Band: great folks, incredible musicians.

It will be a regular East-Side extravaganza! (Magdalena’s is a few doors down from Emil’s Italian Restaurant and across the street from Green Door and Gone Wired Cybercafe, the best block in Lansing.)

If our Altu’s schedule (Saturdays at dinnertime) doesn’t typically work for you, this might be a better match. We start at 8pm and there is a $10 cover (for 7 musicians). Magdalena’s has a healthy-food kitchen and many types of tea, so you may want to come early for dinner.

Please consider joining us.

Rob at Threadbear asked me to model two garments last weekend when I was at the shop teaching. Being the ham that I am, I said yes (see photos to see how much a ham I can be). He included links to the photos in his weekly news-email that he sends to customers and friends each week. You can be on the email list, too… just write Rob and he’ll get you on the list.

Click links here to see them as a large photo if you want more than just a peek. Rob gave me permission to put these here, too, so you can see them without going over to his site.
The first sweater is a cardigan in my favorite intense turquoise color. The yarn is Cascade Pastaza which is a wool/llama heavy worsted or Aran weight singles (one-ply) yarn. Really soft, warm, fuzzy, delightful (a favorite yarn of mine in the wintertime). I was just sure that sweater had been in my closet before but Rob wouldn’t let me take it home.

The second one was a sleeper. One of those garments you could wear almost any day, but not super artful, just comfortable and useful and SUPER cushy. The color was actually a zillion colors spun together with an overall look of that dark red ketchup color that has been pretty popular the last year or two. It’s a mock turtle style that could be worn with a suit or jeans.

The yarn is called Extra Stampato, whatever that means. It felt like a DK weight (lighter than standard sweater worsted) and it totally stretched with me. The softest, cushiest, sproingiest merino I’ve felt in a while. Rob says it’s washable on gentle.

This yarn comes in a few colors I really love so I’m toying with the idea of at least a pair of socks. There’s always room for another pair of wool socks. (And I’m really clear these days that I like fatter socks on my feet, they just are more cushy underfoot when I’m standing up so much.)

Thanks for feeding my ego for the day, Rob!

I took time to edit/develop a photo of Brian’s anniversary socks. Peek at yesterday’s post, I put the photo where they belong with the story.

They are my pair #135, in Socks that Rock Heavy weight yarn, with teal and pumpkin as the primary colors, I don’t remember what the colorway is called.

I got the yarn at Rae’s Yarn Boutique and yes, she has a few more skeins. There is so much yarn that I gave Brian 7.5″/19cm K3P1 cuffs (longer than I usually knit them) and I will surely get myself a 4″/10cm stockinette cuff pair for myself. He wears a men’s extra small and I wear a woman’s extra small… but it would probably be easy to get a Mommy/Child pair out of a pair even if mommy had a large foot and liked a good-sized cuff.

The yarn machine washes/dries well. It is 100% merino, no nylon, so it does benefit by being knit densely (much smaller needles than you would use for a sweater on the same yarn).

So much to do… and I slept 11 hours so I am short on my work time. We have to go out of town tonight for a family gathering, I will have to take some knitting or my laptop in the car and get something done on the commute.

Thanks to so many of you who commented and supported us on our 10th wedding  anniversary. Yes, we’re really lucky folks and we know it. And having friends like you makes us a different sort of lucky. You are the best.

We had a good anniversary. Word was out that I had a personal holiday and when I showed up at Rae’s for Thursday night knit in (where my last week’s students were there with questions I needed to answer) they were surprised. Brian and I both work after dinnertime almost every day. We went to dinner around 9pm, so work and fun co-existed in the same day. Which is how I think grownups do these things, right?

I knit Brian a pair of socks for our special day (he got me 2 music CDs). I used Socks That Rock heavy weight so that I could knit fast. Both Brian and I have narrow feet so with fat yarn his sock was 40 stitches around. Talk about fast knitting! As in, I bought the yarn at 4:30pm on Tuesday and I worked the last yarn end in around 8:00pm on Thursday.

There is enough yarn left over to knit me a pair, also. On 32 stitches, a very quick knit if I ever saw one! I’ve already knit one sock (toe up with afterthought heel) with about a 4″/10cm cuff height. I then left that one on the needles and started the toe of a second one from the other end of the ball. This way I’ll get my full value out of that ball with no leftovers. At the end I’ll just keep knitting back and forth between the two socks until I run out of yarn. Woohoo!

I don’t feel 100% healthy right now, there are so many colds going around I think I’m working on deflecting a few right now. I tried to take a nap today but the phone rang downstairs. Again. So today when buying cardstock at Staples I picked up a phone of a sort I’d not seen before. It has one base which plugs into the wall jack downstairs (and the electrical outlet as well), and then another base upstairs that needs only electricity, but it’s an extension that receives transmissions from the downstairs base unit. So I can put in an upstairs phone without 50 feet of phone cord trailing down the stairs.

Cool, huh? (OK you knew about these phones 5 years ago perhaps, but I don’t shop often and it was new and wonderful when I saw it today.) Maybe now I can answer phone calls when I’m upstairs without bolting downstairs only to get there after the telemarketer already hung up. Ya know?

Anyway I coulda used a nap today to fight off this achey whatever it is I’m fighting. Tomorrow I stay home during the daytime and work on the yarn biz. Maybe I’ll get something accomplished? You never know.

Oh, happy birthday to my Mother in Law yesterday, and my knitting-fiend sis-in-law Diana/Ottergal today. Great folks!

Brian and I were married ten years ago today. I can not explain what a comfortable thing it has been to live together this decade. He’s such a good person, easy to live with. When I’m acting unbalanced he just watches from the wings until I come to my senses. He doesn’t try to fix me, he doesn’t yell, he doesn’t tell me what to do or not to do.

I knew I could marry Brian when I made homemade cookies and then realized I’d eaten the last one without worrying, even thinking of what he’d say/do if I left none for him. I was not afraid of him or what he’d say/think/do if I surprised him by not leaving him the last cookie. This was symbolic of the rest of our relationship. I could trust him to take me just as I was. I did not have to try to read his mind (which would not work, anyway).

That may not seem big to you. I had my share of fear and unhappiness in the first several decades of my life. Nobody ever beat me up but words and attitudes can make a person shrivel inside. Brian treats me with respect even when I’m acting more like a toddler than an adult. He gets it that I can live like a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and it’s not about him. He doesn’t have to fix me, and if he waits long enough the familiar adult Lynn will re-appear. We have a relationship with boundaries that work.

And I’m crazy ’bout him! We just sat for over an hour and rehearsed our music. It was the most fun jam session I’ve had in a long time. Just me and my sweetie, a large handful of really fine songs, and enough time to play as long as we wanted to play.

Life’s true meaning is about the little things. Music with your sweetie on one day, after a previous day working together on making the house more workable… well, that works for me. Simple everyday pleasures are where we can create our overall feelings about life.

Brian and I don’t usually expect gifts for holidays. If we give them, they are typically small and it’s fine if one person gives and the other does not. Brian has taught me to skip the gift if it is not “right.” Better no gift or a late one, than money and time/energy expended on something that really does not have meaning or value.
My mother very much wanted to throw a party for us, for this milestone anniversary. She’s so happy for us she wanted to invite both our families and have a celebration. We may still do it, but for the actual anniversary day we both work till about 8-8:30pm and we will just take ourselves out to dinner after work. We’ll enjoy peaceful, quiet time together.

I tell you, my life just keeps getting better. Brian is a very large part of it. Believe me, I let him know how I feel. Life is short and I make sure to speak my feelings out loud.

I may not post a blog entry in the next 24 hours. If I don’t, you need not worry. I’ll be back.

Photos: 1)The only wedding photo I have that is scanned into digital format. I scanned it so long ago that it was in .gif format and it lost a lot of detail in the process but you can see we’re happy. (Note that my wedding dress was a turquoise silk gown, it’s really beautiful and I still wear it when we sing on stage sometimes.) 2)Me, as Eudora (my dance persona), dancing at Aladdin’s restaurant last April. That’s Brian in the back watching me dance. I love this photo. (This dress I purchased in Cairo in December 2004… it has quite a story of its own.) 3)Brian and I performing at our CD Release Party at Magdalena’s Teahouse last June. (That’s yet a third turquoise dress, for the record.)

There is something related to my needing to cook 90% of my meals now (after a lifetime of enjoying quality foods at family-owned restaurants), that means I need to focus on the house more. I’m not domestic… that is a significant understatement. I don’t enjoy cooking or cleaning though I admit I like the results after I’ve put in the effort. I have structured my life to not have much maintenance… no pets, children, houseplants. And now I can not avoid the cooking any more.
For some reason this makes me look at my whole home/lifestyle. I’m trying to simplify my environment to make the extra tasks fit in my life better. So today I threw away 3 pair of shoes I’ve had, one of them since 1985. Shoes I’ve not worn in so long I can not remember.

And then I cooked a wonderful dinner, and I cooked too much on purpose so I can just heat it up later. And there was not one place in the freezer I could put it. The freezer was full of food I put in there when I cooked, before I became allergic to so many foods.

So Brian and I braved the cold, literally, in the freezer. We regained a sinkful of covered glass dishes. We discovered what was in there that I’d bought relatively recently. And we put in the leftovers from today.

I did work toward dyeing yarn today, by grouping yarns in nylon net bags (for soaking, which is the first step before applying dye). My helper could not come today so after that point I changed gears and worked on the house and catching up on several errands. I think it was a decent choice.

I also wore the footies of my own Cushy ColorSport yarn, today. I finished knitting them on August 5 but I just worked in the loose ends last night. They feel good. I think this is the first time I’ve worn my own handpainted yarn. It’s such a luxury, you know? The yarns are for sale, not for use. I’ve knit with them for samples but have not worn anything before. I like these very much.
I’m having a hard time letting myself imagine wearing my new sunny socks. I need to still work in the ends and then take a deep breath and put ‘em on. They *are* an artform but they are also intended to be worn. I’ll get over it.

It looks as though I never posted a photo of the footies here. Drat, one more assignment I need to do. Sigh…

We have had precious little sun lately. I have also been cold. Not that it’s as cold outside as it surely will be in a few months… but that my body is just not yet switched over to warmup mode. I’ve been really contemplating warm socks and over-sock-footies recently.

Hoarding Yet Again

I realized Monday when I went to type in my new pair of socks into my sock log, that I have made 11 pair this year, nine for me. And then I realized that five of them (including the ones pictured in Monday’s post) I have not yet worn.

In fact, I’m sitting with a pair on my lap that I just finished working in the ends (bulky wool/mohair footies for winter) and another pair of experimental low-riding footies in my own Cushy Colorsport yarn, for which I still need to work in the ends. Those ends are the next task on my list. Tonight yet!

OK, I just went away from the keyboard (AFK) and finished the ends. Now I have “new” semi-warm footies (my feet are cold even in summertime) and super-warm footie/slippers. Cool.

I have another pair of alpaca/wool footies waiting for me. I need to knit 140 more stitches on this pair, and I’m out of yarn in this ball. Three rows of ribbing and one row of binding off and they will be done. And I have another ball somewhere. I can’t seem to find it today.

This surely will be solved soon while I’m looking for yarn for something else. The second ball will become a pair of wristwarmers and there is plenty of yarn for that, even if I do take several yards of yarn from that ball to finish the footies. That’s how it goes.

A Plan for a Sassy Bag

I got yarn at Threadbear Sunday after my wonderful ColorJoy Stole class with Delaine. The yarn is Cascade 220 and is destined to be some version of a Sassy Summer bag for their display.

I am very happy with the response to this pattern! It is selling like hotcakes right now. The more I’m in this business, the more I learn that I know nothing. You think you know what will be the next big item and you end up wrong. No problem, I can go with the flow… I thought Perfect Hug would be bigger (maybe it still will be when it gets colder outside) and was not at all sure how the smallish felted purse would do. Gangbusters! Go figure.

Therefore, more samples of this pattern will be just the ticket. Threadbear sells so much Cascade 220 for felting it’s the logical next experiment. Little Red Schoolhouse has 2 samples and Rae’s just got a second sample. Now the Boyz will get their second sample. Sometime, that is. When I feel like starting something new instead of finishing old projects. Because finishing things is really driving me right now and that’s a good thing!

Wearing My Creations
OK, back to unworn socks. I just put on my green bulky Lamb’s Pride footie slippers. They are toasty warm over my other thinner wool socks. And I commit to wearing one pair of socks tomorrow that I have not worn yet. I’m hoarding again. That’s not a healthy habit. After all, you can’t take ‘em with you… right? Might as well try to wear them enough that they might wear out.

My Sweetheart Needs More Socks

I must admit that it should be time for me to knit Brian a pair very soon. I have started at least 2-3 pair for him and they sit there singing in the corner trying to catch my attention. Tangled up with other ignored projects, of course, so it’s easier to start a new pair than untangle. But I need to do that for my sweetheart.

After all, Thursday is our 10th anniversary. He still is the sunshine in my existance. He definitely deserves some new socks. (His old ones are literally starting to wear through and need darning… and I’ve only darned a few pair so far.) I won’t be able to finish his socks (he likes fingering weight yarn and his feet are larger than mine so they take longer to knit) for the anniversary but I can at least take time to dig them out by Thursday.

I appreciate the kind comments from everyone. I’ll get that photo to Yvonne as requested, when I can dig out the original from Bloomiefest 2005.

I remember that maybe it was 2005 when all of us at Bloomiefest got a gift pattern from Yarnfairy, a thicker-yarn sock with a very short cuff that included a funky furry yarn. I need to dig through my patterns (they are all thrown into one big box with no logic at all, unfortunately) and find that pattern.

It would feel good to knit her pattern, and I truly do need warm sockies like that this time of year. I wear through 2 or 3 pair of fat warm socks every winter (I don’t like slippers so I wear fat alpaca (or wool/mohair) footies on top of my other socks during cold weather). Why not make one pair from my friend’s pattern? Must dig, must dig…

I stayed up till 2am last night, until Yarnfairy’s candle burned itself out. It seemed the right thing to do, I felt like I could do something in an otherwise powerless situation. While I waited, I knit. Things turned around and the sock pair started looking as I wished it to look.

This morning I ripped out the first cuff (from a few days ago) and reknit it. It appeared the same size as last night’s cuff, but felt tighter (and the patterning was much different, indicating that the tension was somehow different). I wanted them to look mostly the same.

Now I have a pair of socks. A pair that actually looks like a pair. This completes my pair #134 since spring of 2001.

This pair started with my First-Time Toe-Up sock pattern, for the foot. I’m calling this cuff “Sunny Sock Cuff” which uses a slip stitch pattern 4 rows high by 4 stitches wide. At least in this yarn, it is sunny looking. The sky right now is anti-sunny in Lansing, so it felt like a good name. I’m defying nature, but what the heck!

There is so much to do and I’m so overwhelmed I am tempted to act like a child and play rather than working. I have phone calls to make and there is nothing I avoid more efficiently than phone calls. I think I’ll make myself a good cup of tea and step up to the inner grownup… and make those calls.

May you find some sunshine in your day. If it is not in the sky, find a beautiful color and really drink it in.

One step forward: I knit most of a sock.

One step back: I realized I knit it on the wrong size needles.

Another back: I ripped it out.

Step forward: Knit entire new sock, foot on smaller needles, cuff on larger needles. The cuff on size 6 needles, just like the first sock. Theoretically I should have a pair now.

Back again: The cuff is waaay too small, as in nearly an inch smaller than the other cuff. I need to rip it out and do it on needles even larger.

It is my dratted gauge-of-the-hour problem again… I just can not seem to stay consistent from one day to the next.

I think I’m stressed way out. When I am tired I knit tight, I think I’m fighting the instinct to sleep… and it has been a week with almost no alone time. I do NOT do well when i don’t get to sit alone a few times for a few hours each. This was a week with none of that. I usually get Monday and Tuesday mornings alone, and often Friday midday as well. With the odd life I live, I rarely get a whole day off but I cherish my chunks of silence.

I guess I’m a good friend, because I did a lot of things this week that helped out friend after friend after friend, guild after guild. I did these things because I chose to do them, and I really did want to do them, and I enjoyed the week, though it was very different than a typical week for me.

But now I’m wiped out. This week needs to be “selfish week” for LynnH, or poor Brian will take the brunt of my tired psyche. And our 10 yr anniversary is next Thursday. I want to be a pleasant roommate and spouse!

The good part this week was that when I was here or there or the next place doing things for guild or friend or guild again… I knit. A lot. And I am really finishing up some things, finally. I still have so many unfinished items that they are tangled together in spectacular messes, at least a few which are pretty amazing. I’d like to untangle a mess or two.

And I still really want to sew together the Sally Melville Funnel Neck I made a almost a year ago. I made it on the knitting machine, which made the knitting fast but the edges defy my sewing-together skills though I really enjoy sewing as a whole.

Not all of the challenge is the selvage (or lack thereof) but the diagonal seams where I have to make judgement calls as to where the sewing would work best. I’ve started this a few times and it took more focus than I had. I’d really love to finish it. After all, we are definitely into wool weather again.

Meanwhile I did spend time with Brian tonight trying to figure out my new shopping cart. Aaaaargh! It’s not frustrating to Brian but I just don’t have the patience for it after the week I just had. I need more knitting! Knitting is worry beads, but fuzzy. My sort of pastime!

My friend who called herself Yarnfairy, died last week. This was not unexpected but it is sad, oh so sad.

Since my Yahoo email is still messed up I just found out today. Fortunately, today was a day folks who loved her online set aside to honor her. It was a memorial service all over the continent at the very least, maybe the world given the nature of the online knitting community. Folks released balloons, blew bubbles, wore silly tiaras (this was a favorite thing for our Yarnfairy) and did other things to honor her spirit.

I was working during the timeframe which was indicated by those who wished to do this together. However, I came home, had dinner, and then lit a candle for my friend. It felt like the right thing to do.

I’m comforted by knowing that if we feel strong emotion when someone passes on, that means that we had a connection that was meaningful. You don’t grieve for those who did not influence or affect you in any way. Only those we love can bring real feelings of loss. I was lucky to know her, she was a generous and caring soul.

May you rest in peace (and giggles?) Yarnfairy. I miss you already.

Photos: The candle I lit tonight; a group of us from all over the USA (Indiana, Illinois, California, Texas and Mass. in this one photo if I remember right), wearing tiaras and knitting at Bloomiefest 2007. Yarnfairy is seated, second from right with red sweater and matching sequin tiara.