Sara writes in her comment to the previous post, how impractical actually knitting that blanket for a horse would be. Thanks for the input, Sara.

Coming from me, a happy citygrrl only about 25 blocks from the state capital, with no animals, plants, children, garden… I saw this as an amusing art photo. I only know one person who has horses, and I am absolutely certain she would not knit this even though she is a knitter.

I wrote it too straight-faced, I guess. Saying “your horse” is like saying “your spaceship” to a citygrrl, it doesn’t feel real.

I can’t imagine how stretchy knitting would survive under a saddle (I did ride horses at camp in 1969, for the record, and learned how to prepare the horse and put blanket and saddle on it before riding).

I do think the horse looks beautiful in the blanket. As an artform, anyway. I like tree sweaters, too.

You can buy a yarn/pattern kit to make your horse a blanket with a circular yoke (like the Icelandic sweater Alda just made for her daughter). I’m told it’s good yarn and it’s only $88 euros, but it doesn’t include needles.

The site is in German, so the information above is by word of mouth. I can pronounce German, thanks to my voice-major diction class in 1977, but I don’t know what the words I’m pronouncing mean. That is a bit dangerous, I’d say!.

It’s a very stylish horse!

It is Rae/Extravayarnza’s birthday today! She is an extra-ordinary person, and I am proud to call her a good friend. Why not go to her blog and add to the long list of birthday greetings?

I love this photo of Rae, it shows her wonderful smile. She was modeling a hat for me, it’s not in her colors at all so don’t blame her for that, she was a real champ to do that favor!!! But isn’t she the cutest?

My sweetheart is usually a man of few words. He can make me laugh, though… he is a good observer and just saying the truth out loud can bring me a fit of giggles. For people who know us, though, they definitely observe that I’m the lively one and he’s more quiet.

But when you get us on stage, the roles reverse. I’m the romantic straight love-song crooner. He either wows the crowd with hot instrumentals (if your computer is set up to listen to MP3 music, listen to his own composition, recorded live at Altu’s, called Epley Breakdown) or he brings out the novelty tunes. The 1920’s was full of funny songs, often with risque’ undertones.

Brian has been enjoying my new camera in the last few months, and he has been recording short one-take videos for his http://youtube.com/heftone page. I must say I am biased toward the funny ones, I don’t much like instrumentals even when they are excellent… I am a singer, and that’s my angle on music. A while ago he did Your Baby ain’t Sweet Like Mine, which makes me smile from ear to ear. More recently he recorded what may be my family’s favorite funny one… If You can’t Land Her on the Old Veranda, You Can’t Land Her at All. Yeah, a little naughty but not explicit at all, innuendo all the way. And much fun! Also check out My Red Hot Gal.

So go visit Brian’s page and see if it helps you smile your way through the day. In this miserable weather, we need as many giggles as we can get!

The photo today is one Regina took of us at Altu’s Ethiopian Cuisine, probably over a year ago. I love this one!

Diana posted a recipe on February 5, for special oatmeal with a fruit sauce over it. You’ll want to check out her Remember Summer Oatmeal post.

I had one more day where I fell asleep on the couch not long after dinner. I slept till 5:30am on the couch before I went up to our bedroom to keep on sleeping. If this is what I need, and if I have the schedule to do it, I’m all for listening to my body. I am really hurting for quiet desk time, though.

I’m working on having 3 new patterns by Friday, that is the goal. The Kristi Comfort Wrap is already done. I am much of the way through the Party Stole and we have tested the Chippy Socks (like potato chips, you can’t stop knitting them) many times in many yarns. I have the basic measurements/stitch counts figured for the socks, which will be offered in the same eight sizes/gauges as my Fast Florida Footies (to be knit in either a washable wool or in Cascade Fixation cotton/lycra yarn).

My typical schedule is to do quiet deskwork after dinner. We usually finish eating around 10pm. I work at my desk a while, then we usually rehearse from about 11-12 or so, then I work at my desk again, usually until 2am and often till 3 or later. Sleeping at 11pm is really messing with rehearsal and pattern writing! I do have some things that I usually do each week that are not going to happen this week, and I am hoping those things will make up for the extra needed sleep. Cutting sleep short when I’m still really weak in the knees would not be a good plan.

So what did I do when I was awake Tuesday? I had my third session with the after-school knit club at Dwight Rich Middle School (in Lansing, Michigan). I am liking these girls very much. It’s a group of the same girls week after week, and although socializing slows down their stitch-making progress at times, we had two girls learn to bind off this week. The photo today is the first wristband of the program. This girl was very happy with her pretty orange-and-glitter fingernail polish and even more happy to have a photo taken with both polish and new wristband. Yup, this is fun stuff!

Wednesday and Thursday I’ll have CityKidz Knit! program at Foster Community Center (City of Lansing Parks and Rec, a walk-in program) and Friday I will have my second week with elementary-aged students at Wexford Elementary school (Lansing Public Schools). I am not sure how I ended up the kids’ knitting person… I made sure I did not go for a degree that would put me in an elementary school (Mom taught 1st grade, I knew something about it) and yet I’m working with kids under age 14, four days a week. Go figure.

I guess we are what we are, and in the end we can not defy our destiny. Or something like that. The good news is that for the most part it is really satisfying work. It’s one hour then one hour then one hour, etc… it does not add up to any real income by itself, but I know I am passing on my passion for making fabric with yarn and sticks, and this feels important. The side benefit is that the kids see me as a bit odd but they like me, and I think it is good for kids to know someone who does not fit in, but who they also respect. This is maybe better than the knitting lesson!

Since I slept through my blog-writing time on February 6, I have decided to retroactively post a sunny photograph. It has been a while since I have shown you photos of my trip in Africa (two years ago). This one was taken near Bahar Dar, in Northern Ethiopia near where the Blue Nile starts and also where there once was a great waterfall (before they diverted the Nile for electrical power).

To someone from Lansing, Michigan, this can almost look surreal. It is normal terrain in that area of the world, and strikingly beautiful, I think.

Both Sunday and Monday I got home and fell asleep on the couch many hours earlier than my typical bedtime. At least I’m listening to my inner self saying “sleep.”

I do feel better than I did. Wednesday will be a month since I got sick the first day. I have no fever, I don’t cough as I did, though a little cough is left. I don’t need boxes of facial tissue though I need a few tissues. My legs are still weak and rubbery when I try to walk further than my driveway, or when I have to stand to teach a lot. Since Monday is my day for standing up 4.5 hours at once, I’m not surprised I fell asleep early.

Tuesday it appears that I’m working for Rae at her yarn shop for a few hours. Sharon got one of the bugs going around and Rae needs to go to school, so I’ll open the shop. Now I’m pretty happy I fell asleep on the couch just after 11pm (this from someone who normally can not fall asleep before 1:30am no matter how hard I try)… I woke up for a tiny bit (which is when I got the email from Rae asking me to sub for Sharon) and then am heading back to bed so I can open the shop at 11.

At least the weather was nicer Monday than anticipated. We were supposed to get a high of 8F but it went up to 20F around 3pm. Definitely a heat wave for a second. It was back into single digits after dinnertime, though.

OK, back to bed… I just had to write something so you folks wouldn’t worry.. Goodnight!

I don’t read blogs often… when I do I read several days at once to catch up. I just am reading Yarn Harlot for Feb. 2 (Groundhog’s Day) and she posted a wonderful poem.

For the second year I missed the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent poetry reading. That is, on the right day. But I will share a poem anyway.

This one was written by Ben Bohnhorst, a wonderful man I have not seen in several years. I met him when he was over 70 years young. His wife, Marie, never was much into poetry, though she clearly always adored Ben!

For Marie
©1994 by Ben Bohnhorst

From his book:
A Service on the Sufficiency of Feeding Finches and Other Poems
Ridgeway Press, 1994

Another thought concerning Spring –
And this one is a lovely one
With quince and plum so showing joy
That girls and boys must twine their hands
And touch while such abundance blows.

We watch new lovers everywhere,
The young among the blowing blooms,
And see it is not really true
That April is a cruel month.
Not nevermore — no, evermore –
Desire renews, and Spring returns,
And April is desire’s sweet time.

This further thought about desire:
Once young we may be ever so,
Like that old cherry there, the one
Where two young lovers stand and reach
Their hands up in among the boughs
And shake the showering blossoms down.

We had a great time at the Mid-Winter Singing Festival Saturday. We took handouts with 25 songs on them, and sang 21 of the songs. In just over an hour! Most of our songs onstage are between 2 and 3 minutes, but some of these songs had several verses and we still just plain cranked through a lot of great music.

Our crowd was fun. We had a lot of folks there who we had not met before. Later I talked to Beverly, a professional singer from the Detroit area, and I hope we will see her at the Kalamazoo Fretboard Festival (at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum on March 25, more details soon). She was only one of our new friends.

We knew several folks in the crowd. Sophia (the harp player/singer I know from Rae’s shop) and Anna (young uke player/contra dancer) came… with Anna’s mom, Barbara and Anna’s friend whose name I have not memorized yet. They knew every word of even the introductions, because they have our CDs and listen to them. That delighted me.

So many friends were at the festival. Julie of the colorful socks was there, and our beloved loyal friend/fan, Regina was volunteering all day, helping to take payments on behalf of the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse, a partner in putting on this event. I also saw my friend Ulyana, which was a real treat. We just do not see enough of one another.

Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy the music biz? What fun it is to sing in front of a group, whether they sing along or not. There is not much more fun for me than the things I do for my job. Teaching and singing… lucky me. It *is* work, but the best kind, I’d say.

Regina took the time to take our photograph down in the food/social area, the first photo shown here. She really got us just right… and since she was sitting down, we look so tall!!! Love it.

The second photo was taken by Anna during our workshop. Thanks for being so willing to jump in and help, Anna!!!

It is 1.6 degrees F outside right now, according to my kitchen thermometer. That is -16.9 C for you metric folks. This is the kind of cold where the snow just blows like powder and when you walk, the snow squeaks beneath your feet. And now we have wind on top of the cold.

A few days ago the snow coming down was perfect, the fluffy sparkly kind coming straight down… the kind you see in commercials for Christmas things. Today it’s looking instead like mean, ugly, colorless gusts of ice-crystals blowing in your face, on your glasses, through whatever you are wearing. Two pairs of wool socks, two pairs of longjohns and a pair of legwarmers were almost enough, but not quite, today. Even when the sun shone, there was no color and it seemed to show the gusts even more. Thank goodness it can not last forever.

This is the time when I’m really glad I bought two men’s full-length wool coats last year at the resale shop… for ME. The heavier one I wore today, it has a quilted lining and the fabric is really dense. The fabric is a sort of cream and blue-gray tiny herringbone, not my favorite, but when it’s cold I choose quality and warmth even if it means wearing a too-bland color. The one with a heavy but not quilted lining is more beautiful, sort of a tobacco brown/charcoal herringbone, maybe 1/4″ or a little larger (6 or 7mm). It’s a true Harris Tweed, a really dense wonderful fabric… but today I needed that lining and skipped the darker/richer coat in favor of warmth.

I am very happy that we got a new furnace last year. This is the time of year that old furnaces get grumpy and I would not want to be facing problems in this weather.

And I am very happy for my collection of chunky wool socks. It’s interesting, I had this conversation last week at Rae’s with one of my students… she had thought that “fat” wool socks might mean “scratchy” wool socks. It is SO true when you talk about commercial socks, unless you get into the really expensive brands. I tolerate scratchy wool on my feet just fine, but commercial wool socks almost never come in my size and even less often in colors I like. I’ve been making fat wool socks in washable soft wools and wool blends, and they are heaven on my feet. These days “fat wool socks” does not mean scratchy unless I specifically chose for it to mean that.

I do make a few pairs of scratchy heavy wool footies each year, to wear on top of my regular socks at home. They make my feet warmer, and they take all the wear and tear as I go without shoes or slippers in the house. I just do not like slippers, I have discovered. They make my feet perspire, and yet they are not warm enough. There is nothing worse than damp, cold feet… but several pairs of wool socks fix that problem well. Of course, I like bulky alpaca better (it’s warmer *and* softer) than bulky wool/mohair yarn, but the wool/mohair lasts a lot longer.

So it’s no surprise that when I finished my Bizarre yarn socks tonight (fat washable wool) I cast on for a pair of hot yellow-green Bulky Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride slipper socks. I already have one pair I seem to wear so much I might as well repeat that success. I have plenty of this yarn, so that was an easy choice!

I took photos of pair #147 Saturday. I edited the photo, and when I went to save it, PhotoShop did its crazy crash thing again and I lost everything. I lost heart and gave up for the moment. Now I need to photograph the Bizarre socks, too. Those are pair #148, the fourth pair of the year (2nd pair for me). We’ll see if I get the courage to try again soon.

A few days ago, my cousin Karen sent me information on the Barilla Pasta website… if you download their Celebrity Cookbook they will send money to Second Harvest. Here is what the Barilla site says:

Every time you or a friend downloads a copy of The Celebrity Pasta Lovers’ Cookbook, Barilla will donate $1, with a total donation up to $100,000, to America’s Second Harvest - The Nation’s Food Bank Network, a national charity that secures and distributes more than 2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually.

They do require that you register to download, but they give you a chance to either get the e-newsletter with recipes monthly, or decline that option. They also have a link to their privacy policy (as to what they might do with your email address once you give it to them) which seems to me as good or better than most… you can read it if that’s a concern (I tend to read privacy policies regularly, and “opt out” from having my information shared as often as I can).

Second Harvest is a wonderful thing… I know some restaurants participate, sending food that can not be sold as part of a menu item but which is still nourishing, to food banks. I know that when I post recipes here, you folks respond enthusiastically. I’m a big pasta fan (and Barilla is a really good quality product… their spaghetti sauce does not contain corn syrup, for example), and this looks like an adventurous cookbook for those who want to put something other than red sauce on their pasta from time to time.

Thanks for the lead, Karen!

There is a new blog by a ukulele musician who appears to be from Texas. The blog is called “Tim’s Take” and I found out about it because one of his earliest blog posts quotes me (dated Jan. 31). Imagine that!

He found my telling of our main stage performance at the New York Ukefest 2006, to be inspiring. Of course, I was telling it from my own perspective and since he quoted a relatively large chunk of the story I’m not sure which pieces were most important to him.

I talked about allowing myself to feel a full set of emotions while I was on stage. About how was able, at least during the small duration of our performance, to really be in the moment and just experience the joy of it all. And how much I enjoyed it, got choked up, savored the reality that I was doing something so wonderful that I might choke up about it.

Tim, thanks for giving me a chance to revisit that experience again. I tend to love all cities, but singing in NYC is about at the top of my list of possible city experiences. I’m looking forward to going back to NYUkefest again this coming April. Woohoo! The best of times…

(I tried to leave Tim a comment but that requires registering for multiply.com so I gave up… I hope he sees this.)

Wow… I’ve sent out postcards and emails twice now but somehow I never blogged about what Brian and I are doing tomorrow (Saturday). In East Lansing we have a Mid-Winter Singing Festival and this year Brian and I are doing a workshop on Saturday afternoon.

We’re calling the workshop Moon June Spoon. That’s the name of our first CD, which contains many songs with lyrics including the word moon (and many rhyming words such as croon & baboon, for the record). The CD contains fifteen songs, ranging from the very early 1900s through 1922.

Our songs for the workshop range from around 1903 to perhaps as late as 1957, though all but two are from before 1930. Many of the songs come from our first CD, a few come from the second one (Tiptoe through the Tulips and April Showers) Our handouts include lyrics to 25 songs. It’s unlikely we can cover all 25 of the songs but that keeps things flexible, we do not know what songs our crowd will know at this point.

The Saturday workshops start at just after noon and go until 4:00pm (our workshop is 3-4pm). There is a concert tonight/Friday (Tom Paxton, what a treat it is to have him here) and another concert which is even more of a sing-along with more local leaders, on Saturday night. I will be attending the Saturday night concert but Brian has a dance to play with the Scarlet Runner Stringband and so I’ll be solo in the evening. Well, solo in a room full of friends… and with knitting in my bag. I’ll clearly be happy enough.

Saturday workshops are only $5 for a wristband which admits you to three sessions. That is the screaming entertainment deal of the month, I’d say! Night concerts are an additional fee: $25 for the general public, $20 for members of the Lansing Area Folk Song Society members and $10 for MSU students and children under 12.

Our friends Laura and Brandon have been singing/performing together a lot lately. They have a MySpace Page for their act. I just went there and listened to their song “Backwoods Baxter Chapel.”

I have heard Laura sing this many times in person, but listening without watching her at the same time shows off even more her wonderful, expressive voice. The song is about a church, but you can enjoy it as touching storytelling even if you do not share the same faith as those in the story. Listening to the song gave my morning a boost. I highly recommend you check it out.

By the way, it looks as though Laura and Brandon are playing a concert at Magdalena’s Teahouse (Lansing’s Eastside Neighborhood) on February 16 (Friday) at 8pm and at Scene Metrospace (Downtown East Lansing) with Head and Toe and Breathe Owl Breathe on February 17 (Sat.) at 8pm. I highly recommend getting out to hear this wonderful duo if you can.

Starting Over

Every day is a new day. Today I tried to get back into the swing of my normal life. I was mildly successful.

I had morning alone at home. That meant a lot of small tasks including taking photos of new merchandise, checking my Paypal account, talking to Diana about priorities for sample knitting (I get about 3 times more done these days now that she’s doing most of my sample/test knitting, because she also keeps me more on track than when left to my own devices)… a bunch of other desk things that are boring but necessary. I printed a bunch of patterns which will all be stuffed into page protectors on Sunday when my helper comes again.

Oh, one cool thing… I bound off my 3rd pair of socks in 2007 (the first for me) while I was on a planning phone call with Diana. They are lovely, no photos yet… but I will enjoy wearing them when the ends are worked in and photos taken.

My Kidz

Then I taught the CityKidz Knit! program at Foster Center. I have one very good knitter who will have her last day with us Thursday. I’m sad she’s leaving but she is at the point where she will be able to figure out a lot of things on her own. I will miss her very much, she is one of my most regular attendees. Sigh. Life changes and we are not in charge.

Getting Vertical Again

I went to master dance class, deciding to at least try to do the warmups. Remember, I’ve been sick since January 7 and could not think straight for about 2 weeks. My brain has been on-track for about a week but I only feel normal when I am sitting down. Walking very far at all means my legs feel all wobbly, like rubberbands. I was not sure how dance would go but I could not know until I tried.

I did get through warmups. She taught some new moves I had not done before, so for most of them I got up and did them a few times when she was breaking the moves down slowly. Once they were up to speed and repeating numerous times to make it automatic, I sat down and waited for the next new move. It was pretty exhausting. It is so frustrating, I was starting to go on a walk every day, at least the 5 minute walk around the block if nothing else. Right now thinking of going around the block does not sound very do-able even if it were warmer outside.

However, I’m still clear this is a temporary thing. I got a virus. Many people are still feeling less than 100% even 8 weeks down the road, so I am still in the realm of what the winter 2007 bug is doing to folks. I know several folks who have had relapses because they thought they should be able to go back and do normal things, before they really were ready.

I had to give up my dance performance for Friday. Sally/Sara is going to take my February date at New Aladdin’s, and I will dance in May instead. It’s what needed doing and I appreciate her stepping in like that.

New Socknitting Project

Oh… I started a new pair of socks at 7pm. I’m using the new Mondial Bizarre yarn. It’s approximately a worsted weight, in a cabled (tubelike) structure, washable wool (but no dryer, I guess). Mine is turquoise, fuschia, vivid bright orange… and gold/brown just a tad darker than the Crayola crayon called goldenrod. I want to call it Raw Sienna but you could also call it bronze.

In any case, this last color is NOT my style. The reason the yarn is called Bizarre is that they put a color in that doesn’t normally go with the other colors. I don’t mind that so much but I wish the bizarre color was a small percentage of the skein. The first ball I got was about 1/4 each color, maybe a little more turquoise. What I did was I broke the yarn and shortened the bronze so that I could stand to wear the socks. Thank goodness I have small feet so that I can spare some yarn even when it’s a relatively large gauge of yarn.

The first sock could already be bound off any time. I knit the whole foot and 3.5″ (9cm) of a cuff, which is enough to make me happy. I put the stitches on holders and started the second sock. I think the second ball has more of the bizarre color and I want to be sure both socks are the same height, though they will not match as far as where the colors are on the foot. You should see Rae’s Bizarre socks (scroll way down), one was missing a color for more than 3/4 of the ball.

I looked through the balls of yarn a long time. I found one that was the same color sequence from outside to inside, as another from inside to outside. I just finished the outside-first ball and am now knitting the inside-out ball, I’m maybe halfway up my foot (toe up). So far they are the same but I can not believe they will stay that way.

Time to Rest

OK, I’m tired an hour or two earlier than usual (which is good, I have been staying up till 3am or 4am lately and that is too late to interact with the rest of society). I am glad I tried to dance, and I’m also glad I am not dancing as a soloist on Friday!

Goodnight for now.