Deb Robson/ The Independent Stitch/ Nomad Press went to Alaska. (I have mentioned Deb before… she is the Award-winning Independent Publisher, and both published and co-authored with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts the second edition of Knitting in the Old Way, a wonderful book.)

Deb took along socks she’s knitting in my Flammegarn sock yarn. So on her blog, she takes photos of Alaska… and after those, she shows a photo of socks on the needles made from my yarn. I feel famous.

Even if you don’t care too much for photos of unfinished socks, her other photos are worth the peek. Maybe you would like to go visit Deb’s Post.

I’m off to teach Needlefelted Embellishments at Threadbear in a few minutes, but here are a few more photos from Chicago to keep you going…

The main stage had been scheduled for outside and workshops inside (outside was bigger) but it rained in the evening and early morning. Main stage went inside and since we were on that stage we missed a lot of the open mic acts and workshops outside until later in the event. Uke Bros (Rod and Randy from Lansing) were outside first thing but then they did a second set late in the day. I put their photo in my June 27 post if you want another peek.

Also playing were our Detroit-area friends called Uke ‘n Sing (photo above). Here they are. I got one single photo of them before my camera lost battery so I hope they like the shot!!! Great supporters, good folks to jam with, always enthusiastic and a good time. I was glad to hear part of their set.

Our friend Alec from Canada (known as Alectrovoice) also played the open mic. He just gets better and better. He plays uke and harmonica, croons, whistles, eefs and does a mouth trumpet. One guy but a one-man band, very entertaining, and he chooses excellent material. We hadn’t seen him since the day we jammed in the park in New York City, late April. It was good to reconnect.

The end of the day was very moving. A group of musicians played both old and new-ish Hawaiian music. (I don’t know the bass player at right, I think he is from Hawaii or maybe California. The guy at left is Gerald Ross from Ann Arbor, MI on Hawaiian Lap Steel. Center is Kimo Hussey, I think from Hawaii, on ukulele.)

It was quite impromptu but first the hula teacher, Lanialoha, later joined by her students, did several hulas along with the musical performance… while the crowd sang a Hawaiian song in words I could not possibly understand. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It brought me to tears, sobs. When you can be in the presence of such beauty you need not be a king, it’s all the wealth anyone needs.

That night we had to break up and say some goodbyes which was hard. BruddaMark and Jeff (Smith?) of SanDiego were the main organizers and they really pulled together a remarkable show from long distance. Thank goodness some of us reconnected after we let out.

Gerald Ross, Brian and I went to Thai dinner (very nice) and then jammed a while on a bench in the downtown Oak Park area near their hotel. It got chilly so then we moved to a bench just outside the Hotel doors. We were joined by Fred Fallin and Neal (still not remembering his last name) and we enjoyed having passers by sing with us at times. Finally when the restaurants were closing inside, the manager asked us if we could stop for the night… in a very gentle way. We said our goodbyes and happily hit the pillows soon thereafter. And dreamed of an adventure in Chicago on the way out of Illinois…

I have a lot going on in the next several days and now is the time to say something here. I have more pictures of Chicago to post but I’m taking a little short interruption here.

Hat Class

Thursday/today (June 28 already) at 6:30 (I’ll be there sooner) I teach Basic Baby Hats at Rae’s Yarn Boutique. Choose from my Button, Button, Who’s Got the Hat? rolled-brim pattern (button on top instead of a pompom or whatever), or the brilliant Fruit Cap from Ann Norling. Both have rolled brims, the second has just maybe 7 rows of two-color knitting and looks like a little raspberry or blueberry with a green stem.

Very very cute. Especially with the fruit hats, my friends’ babies wear them until they grow out of them, and then said friends sometimes ask for a replacement. The button hat is simpler, though, for those new to circular knitting or those who need straightforward this time of year. I’m OK with either choice, have knit hands-full of both. (The picture shows them with a variation on my Fast Florida Footies. This was a very well-received gift.)

Sock Class

Friday I am teaching a one-day workshop on “Design Your Own Turkish Socks” similar to the one I just taught in Dallas. That class is at Yarn Garden in Charlotte, Michigan. Their website was down yesterday but either email me, call Lindsay at 517/ 541-9323 or just show up (since I know the class is definitely a “go”) at 111 W. Lawrence across from the old courthouse. It’s 30 minutes from my house in Lansing, and a pleasant drive.

For the record, students knit a small sock so that they can get through all the unique parts they need to practice. They go home with handouts/pattern to make full-sized socks when they have more time.

Here are two photos of student works in different lengths of this class. At right are fingering-weight socklets by Dallas students last April, we had one day/six hours. Below are more projects by students at Allegan/Michigan Fiber Festival last August. We had a day and a half so they could knit at night, and several folks got a good way into a second sock.

Music News

Also in Charlotte, musical news for Saturday! Here’s what I just emailed to our musical friends list:

We love the charming small city of Charlotte, Michigan. You can still get home-baked pies at the cafe/diner downtown, there is a lovely little yarn shop where I sometimes teach, and the library a few blocks away hosts great concerts.

We have attended several of these concerts during chilly weather, and now we are slated to play this Saturday in the park nearby, as part of the Library series of events. Interested?

Saturday, June 30, 2007
6:30pm

The Fabulous Heftones in the Park…
Moon, June Spoon
Oak Park, Charlotte, Michigan

• (30 minutes from Lansing, take I-69 toward the southwest, take a right at the bottom of the exit and head a few miles to downtown).
• The park is southwest of the library (which is southwest of the downtown light near the old courthouse). Go to the light, turn left until you find Seminary a few blocks down, turn right and go a handful of blocks. easy.
• It is surrounded on the north by W. Lovett, the south by W. Seminary, the east, S. Clinton; and the west, Pearl St.
• There is no entrance fee to this show. There will, however, be a donation basket passed to help re-roof the library.
• You may wish to bring your own chair. Typically there are simple refreshments at these events. (Cookies and drinks are standard.)

PS… I just noticed this was my 1000th knitting-related post (since November 28, 2002). Time flies when you’re having fun!

Chicago was a whirlwind, we got there midpoint in the Friday night concert and jammed right there at the cafe’ after the concert. We ended up with a small circile of folks… Gerald Ross from Ann Arbor, Fred Fallin of Chicago (photo below left, of Fred during his Saturday-afternoon show), Neal (drat, his last name escapes me), plus Brian and myself and I think at least one more person.

Fred loves much of the music we also play… it was funny, he sort of led the song-choosing that night but he picked 3 songs from the playlist we had put together for our Saturday show. Even though we once played a two-person jam session for three hours (at Wheatland festival) without repeating a single song. Great fun, indeed.

We heard that some folks might be jamming in Oak Park after the cafe’ closed up. We decided that we had better rest ourselves and our voices, and go back to the hotel room and just sleep. I’m glad we listened to our inner adults, it made the next day work out much better.

Saturday was exciting. They started with a traditional Hawaiian hula, just a gourd and voice(s) for rhythm/music, and traditional dress including leaves on the head and wrists. It was just plain incredible. I’ve seen this type of dance before but never performed as beautifully as by these dancers.

Somewhere after that, Steven P. Slivka and the Boar’s Head Orchestra was before us so I did not get photos, but they are our cup of tea… Hobbit, if you are reading this, go check out this group!

Brian got a good breakfast from the cafe (I brought food I knew would agree with me) and we listened to Steven and buddies while getting ready. We changed into our stage gear (a tux or silk dress is not a day-long jam session costume, but it’s perfect for our act while on stage). We got up there and finished the sound check in no time so they let us start playing early. We got to play about 2-3 more numbers than we’d planned, which was great. It’s handy that our songs almost all weigh in at under 3 minutes!

We missed the opening act for open mic at the outdoor tent, our friends the Uke Bros from Lansing. We did get to hear them very late in the day, though, and this picture at right is of Randy and Rod smiling at something off stage, I think right after they had finished playing one song.

After us was a great lineup of folks. One group included commenter Jima (front row far left), a group of uke players taught by the same teacher as the hula dancers. Her name is Lanialoha (hidden behind hula dancers in first photo, and right front in group uke shot below left) and I can not say enough good about her The dancers were so beautiful I literally broke down and cried. She has a big heart and it is reflected through the work of her students. Meeting her and those who study with/love her, was the best thing all weekend.

I have at least three more photos to share with you. Because I’m still moving myself to the new laptop, I’m slow with positively everything else. If you sent me email, I probably got it and have not had time to write back yet. Today I even remembered to move over my fonts (very important when you do publicity for three businesses, you can not afford to lose a signature font as I discovered many years ago when my laptop was stolen).

I can live with the new palm device setup though it’s not ideal. I can live with fussing with printing (it will work if I open a file on the other laptop and print through the network, OR if I plug the printer into this new machine directly without a network, but if I use new computer through network I either get black and white or it prints an inch too low and to the right). As long as I know what fussing to do before I print things like ***patterns***, then i can deal with it.

So that is to say that I will post at least three more photos, but I can not get that done before I have to leave for dance rehearsal. Life is full of compromises, you know? At least we are fully into summer right now, and for me this is a wonderful thing. Summer loves me and I love it. It’s convenient we had rain to bring the temps down before rehearsal, though…

Catch you later with a few more photos… and then a travelogue of a one-day Chicago food/sightseeing adventure.

Thanks to sis-in-love Diana/Otterwise, I bring you this entertaining Youtube video from the mid-30s.

The band’s name is “Ina Ray Hutton & Her Melodears.” The bandleader is beautiful, and she sings and tap dances as her all-female band plays a hot number. It takes only two and a half minutes, and you’ll be smiling before it’s done.

Our friends from the Detroit-area ukulele club (I am pretty sure they are called Uke’n Sing) always, always, always support us in the most useful and loving ways… including taking photos of us while we are on stage. It’s sort of impossible to do that for ourselves, you know??? I don’t know who took which photos but thanks to you all, we love you back.

Monday has been a day of picking up the car from the shop, printing patterns, filling orders, catching up on emails not handled this weekend. There was a little sleep in there, too. I do have photos of our downtown Chicago experience from Sunday afternoon, as well… but for now I have ten minutes before I have to leave for work and my patterns are still coming out of that printer. It’s a high-class problem to have work, I assure you, but I do overwhelm easily. Today is beautiful and I will refuse to be overwhelmed for one day at least, but I can’t start writing a travelogue with ten minutes as my deadline.

For now, a photo of us during our set at the Chicagoland Ukulele Jamfest. My, what fun it was.

Saturday’s Ukulele Jamfest was much fun. We played our show, watched others, listened to folks give workshops, listened to open mic, made friends and more. After the show we found some Thai food and jammed until late. All in all, it was what we might have hoped.

Sunday will be an explore Chicago day. Indian food if nothing else. I’ll take photos and show and tell when I’m back in Lansing.

Brian and I (and our instruments and my new laptop) are in the Chicago area for the weekend. It is Chicagoland Ukulele Jamfest, and we enjoyed the first night.

Victoria Vox did the opening concert, with opening performers and friends playing with her on stage. If you don’t know this fine young talent, you may wish to get to know her now. Her voice is clear and melodic, sweet yet smart. She tours about 300 days a year, so she is expert at keeping an audience’s attention.

She is lovely to look at, as well as a very solid songwriter, just a together woman. Victoria has an active myspace page as well as some fun videos on Youtube… my favorite of which is Uking at the Wheel/Running from the Law.

The photo here shows Victoria accompanied by Kimo Hussey, a soft-spoken/incredible uke player. We met him a few years ago in Indianapolis for Midwest Ukefest. Wonderful.

Tomorrow morning at 11:15 or so, Brian and I play our set. We’re not first, maybe second, and I think the scheduled acts go through dinnertime (and there are also some workshops going on).

After that, no doubt there will be much jamming until as late as possible. I am looking forward to that. Tonight we decided to be some kind of sane and rest our voices by going to the hotel and not jamming much. Tonight after the concert we jammed a bit with Fred Fallin and Gerald Ross for the most part, until it started sprinkling rain.

For those knitters who loyally follow this blog… I am finishing the heels on a pair of afterthought-heel socks for Brian right now, they are maybe 40 stitches from being done, plus some working in of ends. The Raven Frog yarn I showed you a few days ago has been transformed into a sock minus an afterthought heel, and about 3/4 of another like the first. I could easily finish these on the trip.

I brought along some yarn I wanted to use for a new felted bag design idea I have, but in the haste of leaving I did not bring any needles appropriate to the yarn/project. This may need to wait for another day.

I will be glad when the new computer does not feel so new, when I can concentrate on my “real work” rather than the administrative task of switching laptops (and learning about Windows Vista) . It has taken over my life, my time and my brainspace for a week and I’m not done yet. For the weekend I did bring the new machine but it’s not quite set up so that it can be my only machine yet. Slow is the way to go, one day at a time, yadda yadda…

I am sure to have more photos tomorrow (assuming I can get more batteries for my new camera). There will be much of interest, I’m sure. For now it is time to sleep.

I am doing the progress-crawl again today, but gaining a little ground. My palm device is synchronizing to-do lists (which I’ve not used before but may try now) and the very nice Calendar feature. It is not synchronizing address book (the calendar program doesn’t have a contact/address feature but I was hoping the palm would synch to the palm desktop addresses… no luck yet there).

I have sent an email to the calendar producer and also looked up my palmtalk yahoo group where I’ll post questions as well. I don’t edit address data often, so for now i can put changes on my to-do list and then manually update when I get home. It’s a hassle but I think it will work for my low frequency of use.

I also installed good old OpenOffice suite on the new laptop. It can handle MS Office (Word/Excel) files until I decide what to do with the MS Office version conflict. I have a perfectly good paid for version and will no doubt use that in the end, but I figure I’ll play with the new one for the 30 days I have.

I teach people who have all sorts of computer setups at home and the more I know about all these things, the better I can help with questions. Since I am something of a power user in MS Word I just can’t see letting go of it yet, but I have two or three knitting patterns that had so many photos that Word would corrupt during edits. I converted those to Open Office just so I could function and print.

I am used to many tiny little features that Open Office doesn’t seem to offer, and I am heavily into using keyboard shortcuts rather than my mouse for commands… either Open Office doesn’t have the shortcuts I expect or I can not find them. Still, OpenOffice is free and full of features, and it doesn’t corrupt my work. I love it for that!

I also finally got Adobe PhotoShop (version 5.5 upgrade from 3, purchased in ‘99 and still just what I need) loaded on the new machine and it works just great. I tested it with this photo of Applewood Gardens in Flint, Michigan, which I took about a year ago the day Brian and I performed there. It’s a beautiful place that is open to the public about once a month, with lovely old-fashioned gardens. I got a lot of good photos that day and never had a chance to share them all with you.

In a way I have a lot in the air right now. In another way, a lot is settling down. Not only do I have a new laptop and new palm device, my car is at the shop as well.

They will work on my bug Friday while Brian and I are out of town in Chicago. It has about 124,000 miles and it needs a new ignition because I always have a too-heavy keychain and the car is a ‘98 (which I got May 99). The car is in great shape and looks almost new, runs like a top, but needs care occasionally. These things are something to be expected and I’m glad I can work it out to get things done when I’m out of town for the most part.

My life is a few hours here and a few hours there, every day contains multiple locations. Being without a car in Lansing would mean not doing my normal routine. I am liking this new car shop so far, we’ll see how they do this time. I miss “German Automotive,” they were just my style but the owner retired and that was the end. Those guys drove old VW Rabbits, they understood that I loved my old car, too. I soo miss that place. Life changes sometimes… car repair shops and laptops and other things as well. Time to roll with it all, to find gratitude in the newness.

I may actually be set to take the new laptop on the road this trip. My Eudora (email program) mailboxes are still stored on the old laptop but I can check Gmail while I travel (which is safer for backup purposes, anyway). I can definitely blog as long as I can access a connection, which theoretically should work in a suburb of Chicago. We’ll see how it goes in real life.

Big city, here I come! (I’m anticipating the good food already…)

Thanks to Brian the Wonder-Husband, I am much further along now (with my new laptop etc.) at midnight Wednesday than i was at 4am only 20 hours ago. My old Handspring PDA/Lotus Organizer data on the old XP/SONY laptop is now miraculously on the new Palm Z22 PDA/Calendarscope on my new Vista/Toshiba laptop. I am still testing whether the data is synchronizing back and forth when I make changes or additions. So far, it’s OK. Not perfect but OK.

I do miss the “planner” feature that Lotus Organizer had. It had a graph like a year-long wall calendar, and I could put in music events and holidays and vacations, weekends where I taught out of town/state, and see them at a glance. The information is preserved and displays at the top of the seven-day spread but there is no one screen I can find where a whole year displays.

The new calendar, however, looks great and has a simple pull-down menu for filtering out categories. For example, I can have it show me just music appointments or just those flagged “business.” There is a category feature on the Palm but I have to choose one or the other, and I only have filtered things on my laptop in the past.

I guess if I can get my mail program to work on the new laptop then all I need to do is copy data/email folders over and I’ll be close to done. The laptop came with the new MS Word 2007 and it is vastly different than what I’m quite expert using, never mind different than what I teach in Community Education on Mondays.

I figure I will play with it for the 30 days or so I have and then let it expire, uninstall it and put my legally-purchased older free-standing MS Office disks on it for long term. Then I will put Adobe PhotoShop on it. I’ve learned through experience that PhotoShop wants to be the last thing installed, after Microsoft anything.

In other news, the weather is lovely. It’s not too hot or humid, it’s sunny. The only complaint is that flowers need watering… not much to complain about (though I complain anyway, it’s a bad habit). I sat in the hammock after dance rehearsal, around 9pm. The sun was still out and the light through the trees across the street was beautiful. From that vantage point it looks like we live in a park.

Thursday I have lunch with my friend Altu. We like to go out for sushi on Thursdays when we can (she has help in the kitchen at the restaurant on Thursday afternoons). I will enjoy that change of pace. She’s such a passionate and interesting person, I always enjoy our time together.

More updates as I have time to type them… back to one more synchronization between laptop and palm device, and then to bed. It’s my turn to sleep tonight!

There is a web page about the Jamfest including hotels and the works. The event is 10 miles west of Chicago in Mayfield, IL. I heard from one person, I’d love to hear from more of you!!!

I haven’t forgotten you. I started a post on our great day in Grand Rapids Saturday. However, most of my time at home this week has been trying to get the new laptop so that I can function again. I had to buy a new palm device/PDA and all the reports say it will work with the new machine. I want to synchronize the new palm with the old machine first, so that I don’t lose my calendar system that is my brain when I’m not at my desk. So far, no luck. It’s almost 4am so I’ll give it up for now.

I have copied a lot of documents and photographs to the new machine. When I tried to copy using the network (which should be faster) I had eternal complaints from Vista that I didn’t have permission to share the documents any time they were in a subfolder (or at least a subfolder with a name that wasn’t DOS compliant, go figure). I had to keep going back to the old laptop and share and share and share and share, since I have a lot of subfolders. I would be good on a kindergarten playground with all that sharing!

So finally I got this USB connector/program, which seems to understand that I can copy from one machine to another without contortions every two minutes. It means I can copy a huge folder with gigabytes of data/photos in it, and walk away and go to work or go to sleep, and come back and find it done. This is good but it’s a slower copy. The program that comes with the cable (PC-Linq) is a bit archaic but I’ll take it at this point. It works, and I’m all about that feature.

The new palm is freezing at the point where I try to synchronize it with the old settings/calendar. It knows I had a username of LynnH and I try to select that but when I hit Next it doesn’t do a thing. I uninstalled and reinstalled and the same thing happens. Pooh.

So then I tried to export the old calendar from Lotus Organizer (yes it’s old but it does what I want, at least until today). And it exports to a file but the new calendar program (Calendarscope which I think looks very good) does not recognize its format for an import. Pooh. I’ll ask Brian if he has any good advice when he’s awake. Meanwhile, I should sleep myself.

The good news is that I’m knitting anyway. I mostly knit when I’m not at home but there’s been a lot of that. I’m partway through the second sock on a pair from the skein I showed you last post.

I also am ready to finish the second heel on a pair of afterthought-heel socks for Brian. I have some sewing to do on a water bottle holder in Noro Kureyon from my Bags to Go! pattern, and I’m working on the tank top for the class I’m teaching at Rae’s. It’s a lot of little stuff, none of it done, but progress at any rate. I need progress at SOMETHING right now.

Music News and More Travel

Oh, and if anyone is in reach of Chicago this weekend, Brian and I are singing late morning on Saturday in a suburb, at the Chicagoland Ukulele Jamfest. Chicago is friendly, creative and has some of the most excellent food I know. I’ll be sure to get to Devon Avenue for some Indian food before we come home on Sunday. We drive down Friday. If anyone wants to meet up, please write or comment and I’ll do what I can to connect.

I’m spending lots of my at-home time these days, switching over (far too slowly) to my new laptop which has Windows Vista. Slowly, things are coming along.

Often it takes patient and calm help from Brian the wonder-husband who can fix anything without one worry line in his brow. Me, I can worry about nothing. Brian is much more stable than I am. I hope we balance one another out well, sometimes I think I’m far too much pepper for his salt but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He especially helped me with getting the system to print. Right now I can get it to look right if I connect the printer and laptop directly. Hopefully we will figure out how to make it work even when we are connected through network wires. If anyone out there knows anything I don’t, I would very much appreciate constructive advice.

I tried three different ways of transferring files between machines (fortunately I still had two more up my sleeve but I didn’t have to use them). I ended up with a linking cable that has a USB connector on both ends. I had to install a program and a driver on both machines, but then I got a screen that looked very comfortable… like an old FTP program or the old Windows 3.1 File Manager. I drag and drop from one machine to the other.

This all works, of course, when it works. If a file gets stuck transferring I have to cancel, reboot sometimes, and then figure out what copied and what did not. I have approximately 23 Gigabytes of photographs alone. That just plain takes time to move, no matter what method is used!

Thank goodness that through it all I have done some knitting to keep me happy and occupied. I have been working on a tank top which may become a tee, for a class I’m teaching. That’s all caught up and ready for next week’s session. I knit a bit more on Brian’s Birthday Socks (his birthday was in May), which only really need an inch or two of ribbing and then an afterthought heel. These things need time to compare the current sock to the first one I knit (long enough ago that I don’t remember what exactly I did on that first heel).

And the photo here? Yarn that my dance friend Arlyn/Maahtaab got for me when she visited Alaska recently. The yarn dyer is “Raven Frog Fiber Arts” and the yarn shop was Changing Threads, in Skagway, Alaska. Not only did Arlyn find a yarn shop (she’s a very skilled crocheter) but she found yarn I’d love, made sure there was enough for a pair of socks, and brought this skein home to me.

It’s washable wool in what appears to be DK weight. I started the toe Saturday night and by Sunday dinnertime I had put in a placeholder for a heel and was a few inches into the cuff on the first sock. I’m 1/3 of the way through the pair in one day! I can’t keep up that pace but much of it was knit on a 50-minute walk I took near my home. Maybe I need to take knitting along on walks more often. I sure am willing to walk longer when I have some wool in my hands!

The yarn is very beautiful, even more intense in person than it shows here. The blue positively glows like cobalt glass. It’s a perfect example of what “jewel tones” can really become. Gorgeous. It is a nice treat to knit for myself without any expectations, deadlines, patterns to write or the rest. I am appreciative of the very thoughtful gift. I love yarn that is this weight (both for knitting and for wearing), and will wear these socks over and over again!

It’s summery today. The sun is hot, there is a slight breeze and a few clouds. I started the day too early after a very late night trying to transfer files over to the new laptop.

I didn’t sleep much at all because I met some Habibi Dancers for a rehearsal at 11am. Well, just after 11. I don’t dance really well that early, but it was good to start the day that way.

The transferring is going slow but no corruption so far or anything. The only program hiccup so far is the palm device synchronizing software. I think I need a new Palm Device/PDA. I can not find ANYONE in my local scene who has used a palm and Vista. Jan in PA, you’re the only one I know with experience… I’ll be writing you soon for more details!

It has felt like I lived a whirlwind here this week: a million errands, a million stores, yesterday a new key for the car hoping to avoid replacing the ignition. Today groceries at three stores including the vast asian market on the very east side of East Lansing. Picked fresh rhubarb at Mom’s house, too. Will try a few new foods this coming week, which will be pleasant.

We (Brian and I/The Fabulous Heftones) go to Chicago next weekend for the Ukulele Jamfest, after a few weekends at home. Fortunately this will probably be only one overnight.

Next weekend is also the first outdoor music festival of our year. Charlotte, MI has a bluegrass festival each year and it brings folks from all over the US and Canada at least. I’m not really big on outdoor anything (other than my porch) but the music and the people bring me back every year.

Maybe we will go jam at Charlotte on a weeknight… Brian plays very good banjo. I’m pretty terrible at trying to jam with bluegrass (or old time fiddle music for that matter). He likes it when I go with him although I feel like a fish out of (musical) water. The people are friendly and welcoming, it’s just that I feel pretty clueless trying to play along with songs/tunes I don’t know and which have different chord progressions than I usually play.

Anyway I’m trying to get into the polymer clay studio here and I guess I just avoided it for ten minutes as I typed away…

The photo is our side street behind the house, just as the summer sun set a few days ago. Look at that light filtering through the trees. At times like this the country invades my city neighborhood and I have the best of all worlds.

I’m working with two laptops on my desk right now. I tell you what… having the old one in working order and in-hand is so much nicer than replacing a broken or stolen machine (having done both). Fortunately I do back up all important data every night and I can restore, but installing programs is more touchy than data, especially with old or downloaded (rather than purchased CD) program installers.

The Good:

• Instant connection to the internet via both Ethernet cord/cable and wireless.
• Keyboard is rugged and a little wider than my previous 3 laptops.
• Eudora (2005) installed and ran, though I haven’t tried to transfer my current data over yet. This was my most important concern.
• My File Transfer program (for copying web pages to the internet from my hard drive) works (2004).
• My HTML editor (web page writing program) Arachnophilia 4.0 works… and it’s copyright 2000.
• Firefox Browser, current version 2.0, is really happy. That was sure to be a no-brainer but it pleases me anyway.
• Lotus Organizer 5.01 (copyright 1999) starts up like a champ.
• The touchpad/glidepad mouse works well for me. It is smallish as compared to my VAIO and other similar machines. The smallness did not agree with some reviewers when I read reviews online. I declare it just fine.
• I was able to burn a CD successfully (this almost never worked on my last machine).
• Vista is still very pretty. Color can soothe this savage beast, and it’s a good thing it can.

The Bad:

• This monitor is the same measurement, 12.1, as my last one. I did see that it was “wide screen” in the specs but did not realize how much of a typed page that would cut off at the bottom of the screen. In web pages and word processing, I’ve lost screen real estate unless I go to a seriously tiny font that doesn’t work well with bifocals. For example: I can not see Knitty’s full front-page photo unless I scroll down. Pout.
• Since I use my laptop as my primary (only) computer, and I work a lot with printed 8.5×11 paper/portrait which is much taller than wide, this screen disappointment is not a happy discovery. I don’t watch movies (they do benefit from the wide screen), and this machine is not really intended as a game machine, so I am disappointed. I do admit that same width makes a larger keyboard if I look at the bright side. That will be good when I’m on the road and do not have an external full-sized keyboard plugged in. At home the extra width will give me no advantage.
• My Palm Device (Handspring Visor NEO) has synchronizing software which is copyright 2002 and it will not install. It worked fine in XP but actually aborts the install with a DLL file error. Not fun. I probably will need to buy a new Palm device, not the end of the earth. If I need to pick this or Eudora as my big problem, I’ve got the right one.
• The laptop itself is sort of ugly, which sort of bums me out when I first approach it. Part is black, part is silver. Very business, very conservative, boring beyond words. I miss the purplish-gray (color, if subtle) of the VAIO machines. I’ll get over it. As I said, I can decorate it with fingernail polish in a year, once the warranty expires.

At this point there is no need for a title “The Ugly” and I am grateful. I still need to install Quicken 2003 (I have a CD version so that is great) and Microsoft Office, as well as PhotoShop which I don’t expect to be any problem. There is a version of MS Office 2007 in demo mode on the machine right now, as well as Works 8 which may also be demo software.

I may play around with them and take some screengrabs before I uninstall and go back to the older version I paid for outright. It is VERY different, even menus are hidden and vastly changed. It even saves in a different format than the one we’ve had in MS Word since 1997. Yuck. I’m not ready for that at this time.

So far, my worst nightmares have not come true, and I figure I will adjust to the less irritating issues. I wonder if anyone out there has a palm device (palm operating system) that they love and that is not super fancy. I don’t want a $400 gizmo, I want a simple and lightweight carry-along. Any advice?

Brian told me there was an article in BusinessWeek (magazine) about Etsy.com (website for selling hand-crafted items). I found the article online if you would like to read it. I find it very interesting.

At the end of that article there was also a link to another article about Etsy sellers. I found the interface confusing, because if you click “read the article” you go back to the article I mentioned first. However, if you click on the little individual photos at the bottom of the page, each photo is attached to a little profile of an etsy seller. I liked it.

I am on Etsy as seller colorjoy, Rae is on etsy as seller extravayarnza. If you are not familiar with the site, you might want to go take a peek.

Whew.

I bought a laptop. It is not as cute as the first 3 laptops I owned. (The first 3 were adorable SONY VAIOs and the first one was particularly purple and particularly tiny at 3 lb and an inch thick.) However, it has all the hardware specs I wanted, and a price I was really amazed with given those specs. I figure as soon as the warranty expires I can decorate it up as much as I want… Like this palm device I decorated (with fingernail polish) for Altu in 2005.

High-Tech Local Shopping

A cool thing happened… I was able to find out online if my local store had one in stock. It did, I reserved it on a web page and had a day to pick it up. I printed out the confirmation screen, took the page to the shop and got out of there faster than I would have if I needed to find a sales guy who was free. Very, very cool.

Stuck, I Guess

I got good advice to buy a Mac (Apple MacIntosh) which maybe I should have taken… but this box was less pricey for the same specs, compared with a Mac laptop machine which I would then have re-set-up to run Windows.

I’m really stuck with Microsoft, I teach folks to use Windows programs and spent 6 years in corporate training so I really really know many Windows programs (especially Word, Excel and Access) backward and eyes closed. I feel today as though I can’t afford a learning curve even if I were not teaching Windows one day a week.

It has Windows Vista. I should be celebrating but until I install all my normal important software programs (Eudora Mail, Lotus Organizer/Calendar program, Quicken, Firefox browser, Arachnophilia HTML/Web page editor as well as Microsoft Office XP, Access 2002, and a few others I don’t use as often)… and see if they work OK, well, I’ll be a bit on the edgy side.

Hurry Up and Wait

I have a busy life until tomorrow night, so for tonight I just started the laptop and got it running briefly. I changed the colors (end of that average blue) but that was about all I did so far. I am able to surf wirelessly using MS Internet Explorer. Could be worse, for sure.

The biggest deals are Lotus Organizer and Eudora email. A friend works for the government and she has Lotus Organizer 6 and synchronizes it with Windows XP to a newer palm device than I own. I’d be OK if I had to buy a new version and a new device… that would be easier than learning a new program. When I did a really thorough search a year and a half ago for a calendar program, I did not find anything that did the few most important features I use in Organizer. Cross fingers there.

And Wait Again…

For the record, it takes forever to start up Vista the first time. There are about 3 stickers with legal notices on the box before you can open the box. Then when you open, there are three stickers with more legal notices before you can open the plastic bags containing the laptop.

Once you start the computer you wait and wait and wait for the “first use” of Vista. Then when it wakes up you get a legal notice with something like 32 detailed items you must agree to before clicking “I accept” or you can not use the machine you just paid for.

I am willing to bet that the attorneys who write those notices would not read the blasted notices sometimes. It took me forever. I read them and did understand for the most part but it did not make me happy. It’s a lot like making a deal with the bully on the playground so you can go home via the fastest route, when the bully doesn’t own the playground in the first place.

What Got Away

I do understand why more folks are going to Linux every second. Brian was right, if I’d stuck an Ubuntu (one “flavor” of Linux which is a ***free*** operating system that works on the order of Windows or Mac OS) CD in that machine I would have been up and running in a very short while. Instead of reading the ninety-fifth paragraph (or so) of legal warnings associated with fearful legal departments and the like.

Enough grousing here in writing. I don’t like to whine here and I’ve done too much of it.

The Good Stuff

But for the record, Vista has pretty colors. My screensaver looks like bubbles (think Lawrence Welk if you are old enough) but rainbow-colored over the screen. Pretty. Microsoft does pretty very, very well.

Oh… and I did have a good omen. When I was in the checkout lane buying the laptop, Julie (knitter, contra dancer/caller and Folk Festival employee/organizer) came over to say hi. She’s shown here with two pairs of socks she knit in my First-Time Toe-Up sock class.

Julie is a ColorJoy woman if I ever met one. She is rainbow colored a lot of the time. If Julie was there, that bodes well for the purchase. Or so I say.

My brother, Eric, is a thoughtful and creative man. He’s also a very geeky guy, who has always loved gizmos of all kinds (he handles a sewing machine better than most… making blue jeans you can’t tell are handmade) including computers. (First photo here is November 2006, family holiday dinner with Eric seated front left, me standing at right.)

It’s no surprise that he has made a career in the computer business. He was the first person I knew who had the word “Networking” in his job title, back when computers usually did not talk to one another or even share printers at a workplace. He has worked in operations, programming, network adminstering, and other areas of the computer biz.

In the last many years he had to sort of start over after his last job/department sort of dissolved leaving nobody behind. He has been doing customer service… dealing with phone calls all day, angry people who are frustrated because their computer is not connecting properly with the internet for any number of reasons, none of them Eric’s fault.

He is not a big social butterfly like I am. It surely has been rough some days for him to get through a work shift, but he has maintained a good attitude and done an excellent job.

Well finally, on Tuesday Eric got to start a new position with the same company. Working with gizmos and other employees in the Engineering department, rather than angry customers. I can’t think of anyone who deserves this switch more than my brother.

For his last day on the job in the call center, Eric got a special hairdo. He went to a salon and had them give him an “80’s punk” spiked blue hairdo with four blue braids in his beard. He thoroughly enjoyed the reactions he got from his co-workers and others in the building.

And now he’s where he wanted to go, the day he hired in to that company years ago (sporting his regular look). Go, Eric!

Back

When I first got online about 11-12 years ago, I mostly chatted using a local chat machine, with other locals. We went to each others’ parties and met for coffee and the comedy club.

One of the shortcuts we would use when chatting was AFK… Away From Keyboard… meaning we had to leave the chat for a little while. When we came back to the screen (it was painful to get logged back in so we didn’t sign off) we just wrote ” Back.” I feel right now that I have left this chat with you for a little longer than I’d like…. Back. No photos but an update or three.

Teaching and Socializing 

I taught Saturday in Charlotte, a one-day First-Time Toe-Up Sock workshop. It was wonderful. The photos are still on the camera, but trust me that we had a great time.

Sunday I went to Threadbear with Brother Eric and Sis-In-Love Diana, then went to Japanese dinner with Mom and Brian as well as Eric and Diana. Diana lived in Japan for a few years and really enjoys Japanese restaurants of all sorts. It was fun.

Shopping, Ugh!

My computer is really on its last legs (it is 4.5 years old and I push it very hard, that’s a long time for a laptop to keep on keeping on). I am in heavy-duty research mode. I found a machine that looks like great features for a good price (on sale this week) but it has Windows Vista rather than XP. I have several old software programs that probably will not work with Vista.

I’m very excited about the computer itself, just not the version of Windows. My laser printer does offer a Vista print driver, thank goodness. My palm device is really old and synchronizes to a calendar program that I love but that was developed for Windows 3.1 (that was before Windows 95) and that is sure to not work anymore if I go with Vista.

I am also absolutely married to my Eudora email program, it’s where I organize my life. I don’t trust Microsoft Outlook to keep me virus-free, and most email programs do not have an interface I can really work with. I’ve tried a few others over time and actually I do use Gmail for spam filters but then I download the Gmail messages to my Eudora. Yes, I’m stuck in the dark ages but I know the program better than the back of my hand. Sigh… I don’t know if it will work in Vista, they just stopped selling the main version in May.

Many things will indeed translate fine, the only way to know is to try it. I feel as though after I have traveled so much, I don’t have time to mess with all this. I have so many things waiting on the “Important and Urgent” section of my to-do list that I feel guilty when I get tired and need to sleep.

Change is Difficult

I can adjust to the whim of the moment when I knit. I am sometimes stuck in a rut. That is, when it comes to the tools I use to organize my life (which sometimes has more appointments in a day than some people have in a week).

I don’t have to decide anything right now. The sale is on for a few more days. For that matter, I could actually buy a copy of XP and install that instead of the Vista that’s on it when purchased. Just for today I don’t have to make a decision.

Upcoming Classes and Events

I’m teaching a lot more this week… Monday I taught computers, Tuesday is the summer program at Foster Community Center and then a private lesson at Rae’s. Thursday I’m teaching Diagonal Tank/Tee at Rae’s as well.

Because of Fathers’ day I’m not teaching this weekend, though I’ll be working in the studio. Then on Tuesday the 19th I’m teaching Sherbet Socks (summer footies at Little Red Schoolhouse). I have a few more private sessions at Rae’s, as well. I’m still working on getting my new summer schedule all up on my schedule page, but it’s not all up yet.

For now the right move is to go to sleep. If anyone out there has been using Windows Vista and has actual experience, I’d love to hear your take on how it went .

This post on a blog called ColourLovers (British/Canadian spelling) really got me thinking. The site is clearly deeper than I can understand on the first read, but they are discussing the color palettes used on the covers of children’s books.

It looks like you can make palettes of your own when commenting. Fascinating. It will take more time than I have right now, to figure it all out. In the meantime, I am guessing some of you out there will really enjoy this.

(Added Later… could not resist, so I registered for ColourLovers and made my first palette. It was pretty fun and did not take a lot of time. It could eat up all “spare time” for a month but I am going to work on discipline…)

Alda of The Iceland Weather Report went on vacation recently in a part of Iceland where she doesn’t live. She is an amazing photographer, I really love it when she posts Flickr Photosets.

This group of 65 photos includes scenes of the great outdoors (mountains, water, clouds), close-ups of beautiful flowers, animals including horses, cows and sheep, interesting homes, garden gnomes, and my favorites, colored sky (not really sunset as usual, but midnight sky in the summer near the arctic circle… many photos of the midnight view including water and mountains).

These are really peaceful and beautiful. I highly recommend you check out Alda’s June 2007 Cottage Flickr photoset.

I am very busy catching up with myself now that I’m back home for a little while. Our next trip out of town is the weekend of June 22-23 to Chicago (we are performing a showcase at the Chicago Ukulele Jamfest that Saturday). Until then I have much to do.

I’m working on my schedule, it’s a constantly-changing target and it is never done. I scheduled three new classes yesterday, and now I need to move another one to another date due to a conflict I did not anticipate. when it’s all done I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile I have two private classes today and one is in a half hour… I’m off!

Karla asked if I had photos of the rosebushes I’ve been tangling with lately. I have some from two years ago (last year we did nothing to trim them and it shows this year, thus all the marathon trimming sessions recently).

I got this photo from a post I wrote in late June of 2005, of our back garden on the garage, when the hot pink roses were blooming. These are the climbing bushes so popular in the 1920’s… lush and wild, where the blooms group themselves in bunches. The blooms are no more than 2 inches (5cm) across.

The bushes climb… they grow up toward the sun until they fall over from their own weight (that is, if they don’t get supported by a trellis). Then they root into the ground at the point where they hit and make a new plant. They also propagate by sending out roots horizontally. There are now at least five places where these roses are, around our house, and when I moved in I think there were two. Two Brian started intentionally but the other just came up on its own, or so it seems to me.

These are beautiful from a distance, you can see them from another block when they are fully blooming. When we sing I like to put them in my hair. Here’s a photo April took of me, maybe the same day as the other photos, certainly the same week.

Last year I did almost nothing in the yard, almost no gardening at all. This year it has been hit or miss, but I did plant seeds for two kinds of dill, cilantro and spinach, and they are all peeking up not yet an inch tall. I hope they turn into something good. The swiss chard plant I bought is already looking happy and ready for me to start harvesting a little at a time.

The one bush tomato I purchased in a container did well for a few weeks and even has a half dozen green fruits on it. This week something bad hit it, first leaves turned yellow and now somehow the stalk looks weakened and discolored. I trimmed it back to the healthy parts and I hope it will regain energy.

Even though I’ve been gone a lot and I have not planted all the seeds I purchased, I am already doing better than I did last year. I really like nurturing the yard in the few minor ways I know how. I weed a little each day and I water every two or three days if it does not rain. I moved some groundcover (myrtle/periwinkle) and it looks happy. Maybe I will also find time to plant the flower seeds (nasturtiums and morning glories) and some beans, yet this week. I hope.

I loved Columbus, I loved being at the TNNA trade show, I loved being with Rae and her mom and other friends of hers and mine. I loved it all.

I was relieved, however, to read that Kristin Nicholas opted to stay home from TNNA and the Book show where Deb Robson and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee went. She says it takes her a week to catch up from being gone a 3 day weekend. I totally understand that thought.

I’ve been to Dallas, New York City, Toronto and Columbus since mid-April. I loved every trip and every city. I am SO ready to stay home a while, though. And we’re heading into summer music festival season so this may not work as well as I would like. Another high-class problem!

Today I had much catching up to do. I went to two yarn shops, two restaurants, two post offices and cooked three meals (two are still cooking in the crockpots overnight). I also attacked the rosebushes again, which did attack back and I am pretty sure the roses are winning. Another SEVEN paper grocery bags full of old rosebush pieces, most of which were totally dry and not green or budding at all. On top of the seven I did before, on top of the bits Brian did before.

Monday night I fell asleep on the couch with an un-tasted cup of green tea beside me, before 11pm. I usually sleep at 2am or so, therefore you know I was wiped out. Today I got up before 9am but I ended up taking a nap around noon for half an hour, in the midst of all the things I listed above and more. I filled my day completely.

Tomorrow I have as many as four appointments. It could be quite busy. Off to bed. This photo is one view of Columbus, Ohio from our hotel room, 4th floor Red Roof Inn.

My blog friend Deb Robson/The Independent Stitch is an independent publisher of books. She is (was?) at the big BookExpo of America that another internet friend, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee/Yarn Harlot, also attended. It is held in New York City.

Deb has published some seriously wonderful books. The most precious of them on my own bookshelves is the new version of Knitting in the Old Way, which was originally written by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts. The 2006 revision also lists Deb Robson as co-author, there were so many changes/additions to the book. It’s fabulous just as a historical text about knitting evolution even if you (like me) almost never knit sweaters. There are no socks, only sweaters, and it’s just a fascinating read to this socknitter.

But today’s news is big, bigger, biggest. Two of Deb’s books of 2006 won THREE awards this week. Spinning in the Old Way (one award) and Arctic Lace by Donna Druchunas (two) took home industry recognition for the work Deb has done (with her daughter who is also partner in Nomad Publishing).

I am here to remind you if you ever forgot, that being self-employed is a lonely choice much of the time. You are not working with peers, there is nobody to let you know that you are NOT going crazy, that you WILL make the deadline somehow, that you will somehow be able to make the bills and that the choices you have made were wise.

It is a very very big deal to have your industry recognize you. *Especially* after you went all the way to the finish line, in spite of any doubts and the multitudes of challenges inherent in this sort of lifestyle.

Deb, you have much to be proud of! Go, grrrrll!

Friends, please consider going to Deb’s post about the awards, and leaving her a comment. Even a few words will mean the world to her, I assure you. And consider also leaving a comment on Donna’s Blog…

I’m enjoying the city of Columbus, Ohio very much, even though we are in a conference center all day for 3-1/2 days this weekend. The conference center is right downtown a block from a wonderful market where one can buy many types of ethnic foods, healthy grocery items, and wonderful splurge items.

I have gone out to that market for lunch two days in a row and been overwhelmed with the wonderful experience. I purchased organic chicken and jasmine rice at two vendors yesterday, and chicken with collard greens plus some hummous and saffron rice today.

I also had “bubble tea” which has another name I can’t remember… huge tapioca pearls at the bottom of a glass filled with green tea. For me nothing else in there, no milk or sweetener or flavorings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and got some two days in a row.

While waiting for my tea today I heard a man break out in song from the upstairs balcony. A fully-trained opera singer was enjoying himself up there I think with piano background. He wasn’t just standing there singing, I could see his arms gesturing as he sang. very fun. I burst out in a small laugh and said “This would not happen in Lansing, Michigan.” The guy next to me said “I used to live in East Lansing!” He and his wife(?) and I chatted as we waited for our drinks. It was most pleasant.

And on the way out, I realized I needed batteries for my camera. I wanted to find a pharmacy or something ordinary, rather than a gift store in a hotel. I asked a woman in the parking lot if she knew anywhere. She thought maybe Kroger but wasn’t sure how far it was, if I should walk. It was beautiful out so walking sounded good to me.

I started in walking and a few blocks later she pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride. I accepted her kind offer and we chatted as she took me to the grocery store. It turns out she used to live in River Rouge near Detroit and has been here now long enough to figure she’s here for good now. That was very pleasant.

I got my batteries and walked my way down the street on the way back. I enjoyed looking in some of the stores and restaurants. I popped into a record store to see if they had scissors I could borrow to open the package of batteries. I had a nice chat with the two young ladies behind the counter.

Finally I walked further until I saw a bus on the way. The girls had told me the buses pass every 15 minutes so I decided to get on board. For one thing, I love to “collect” public transit trips in cities I visit… so that was one more.

The afternoon was a lot of pounding my poor feet on the floor in the sales area of the yarn trade show. I’d find Rae and her mom, then lose them and then find them again. I ran into all sorts of folks I know, including Rob and Matt from Threadbear Fiberarts in Lansing. I had a lovely chat with Debbie Bliss, whose yarns please me greatly. I had a brief hello again with Lucy Neatby who I’d seen the day before as well.

I’ve met many people I’d not known before, too many to list here, but I’m enjoying this very much. Tomorrow is more connecting and talking and meetings and yarn experiencing. I will enjoy it.

My computer is not cooling itself very well this weekend so I will end this now without photos and turn off the laptop. Thanks for staying tuned in…

And thanks to my first Etsy buyer, who happened to be from the United Kingdom. I love how international the internet is!!!