Sheri Kowalski was a student in my Feltmaking class at the Sierra Club Retreat last weekend. You can see her in the group photo in my August 26 post, standing right behind me wearing her sunglasses on her head.

We chatted a short while about my printmaking (a few examples of which you can see on my LynnH ColorJoy Art Page). I do block printing using what’s called a “soft block” but sometimes can be as simple as a plastic eraser.

Sheri does a few different types of printmaking including monoprints and collagraphs. Collagraphs are her current favorite. I am not very familiar with collagraphs… I have seen examples of finished works, but only using black ink. I am somewhat informed about the process but I have never done it or witnessed it being done.

Sheri does collagraphs using color, sometimes more than one color. I’m really thrilled to see her work. Perhaps you would like to go visit her blog which shows off some of her pieces:

http://sherikowalski.blogspot.com/

Brian found a fascinating web page that has a large number of photos of folks riding bikes in Amsterdam. I went there and found it fascinating. The whole culture is different there… from here in Lansing, Michigan, USA where I live, and also from San Francisco, which is where the photographer is from.

There are many women riding in dressy skirts, sometimes rather short, and often with heels or dressy shoes. None are indecent and none have skirts wrapped in spokes, both of which I would have predicted. There are bikes with many, many people all on them balanced precariously.

There are cellphone talkers, and one guy who was text messaging as he rode along. All at a very busy intersection with people, motorized vehicles, and bicycles competing for space (and no traffic light, stop signs or other methods of traffic control other than common sense).

I loved it. Maybe you would, too.

Brian and I went to the Dagwoods’ open mic night again Tuesday. We had soooo much fun, getting to know new people and seeing old friends. We had not seen Cindy Lehmkuhle in a while. Here she is below at right, with Jen Sygit singing backup.

When we walked in, Phil Wintermute was playing. We also heard the fabulous bluegrass group I photographed last time we were there, and some other pretty incredible talents. Loved it!

But the most fun for me was seeing the guy in the red shirt, in the review window of my camera after taking this photo (that’s Phil Wintermute under the lights on the far corner stage):

We are talking none other than Andy Wilson, of Steppin’ in It and Those Delta Rhythm Kings. I have known Andy longer than most other musicians in town, we met when I was still new at playing my bass. He plays ukulele some, and is expert at harmonica as well as a zillion other instruments (tonight he was playing trumpet).

Andy wasn’t planning to play music on the open mic but he did have his trumpet with him. We did a set with Andy as featured solo instrument (and backup). We played Paddlin’ Madeline Home, I Wanna Be Loved by You, Bye Bye Blues, and Till There Was You. Fun stuff, especially with Andy there.

Jen Sygit, all-around cool grrl about town, songwriter, movingly expressive singer, and our emcee for the night, took this photo. She often gets really great shots of us there. She is the best.

What a shot! Check out that Andy, such a pose.

I tell you what… I do not like to go to bars. We don’t usually stay long. Tonight we got there at 10:30 and left around 1am. And I work at 10am and I’m still here at my desk far too late editing photos and posting. It was SO fun. Between Jen as emcee and Pete behind the bar, there just isn’t a more friendly neighborhood gathering place in Lansing… at least not at that hour. At 10 am, I’d go for Gone Wired Cybercafe’, but that is another post.

What fun! Thanks to Andy and Jen and Pete, and everyone at Dagwoods. We’ll be back.

I finally got into the dye studio. I’m experimenting with some new green dyes I ordered recently, so three of the four colorways are green-influenced. The other is LynnH-influenced, I could not resist.

I used to have a helper in the dyeing business. She skeined the yarns for me. Now I skein myself and then I dye, then I re-skein to integrate the colors into the hank. This way you can see a little bit how the colors might mix together while knitting. You can imagine that this new labor division (I’m 100% of everything) slows down the process a little! That’s life, but I miss her company as much as her help.

I’ll have these skeins up for sale this week. If you want me to save a specific one (or more) for you, feel free to write me at Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com. Same specs and pricing as the other TipToe SockYarn skeins on my Shopping Cart. You guys who read me here always get first dibs. Since there are only 8 new skeins, they may go fast.

For the record, the two colorways closest to the camera look about right color-wise here. The bright green is reading hot yellow, so the back two green colorways are not true. I’ll get better pictures after the car shop lets me free later this afternoon.

I got those peaches Saturday and couldn’t stand to waste them. If I eat them fresh, I get hives. Brian can eat them, and I want him to do it just on my behalf… but this is a LOT of peaches even for someone like Brian who often eats a few pieces of fruit a day.

I had to go back in my mind for things I used to do with fresh peaches. They have always been my favorite fruit, assuming they were grown so close to home and grown on the tree until so ripe that they can get slightly squished on the way home. I love them sliced on oatmeal with a tiny bit of dark brown sugar. What else?

I really wanted to think of cooked peach goodies. I know folks make peach butter but that doesn’t excite me like baked goods can. Then I remembered! I used to make upside-down-gingerbread with peaches. Find any gingerbread recipe that fits a square or round pan, basically enough for one layer of a two-layer cake.

Then cut relatively thin slices of peach, the cake does not need all the fruit from one large peach so enjoy the leftovers fresh right there. Don’t bother peeling the fruit, as it is unnoticeable after baking.

Then put the thin slices on towels and dry out the fruit, top and bottom, so that it’s not running with juice. I like white woven dish towels with smooth texture, but even paper toweling can work. If you skip this, the bottom layer of the cake batter will stay like batter after baking.

Oil or grease your pan. If you use a stick of butter or margarine and smear it rather generously on the bottom, this will interact with the brown sugar and make a sort of caramel which is lovely and much better than sprayed-on oil. (Oil the sides, too, because you will turn the cake out of the pan after baking.)

Arrange slices of peach, and sprinkle with dark brown sugar if you have it, or maple sugar (not syrup), or any other sugar. Again, it is there to make a bit of a caramel next to the peaches.

Pour the batter on the fruit and sugar, distribute properly. Bake as directed (it may take an extra 5 minutes with the extra moisture on the bottom. Cool a short while, 5-10 minutes until it’s more firm but not totally cool. Place a cake plate on top of baking pan and invert. Hope that the baking luck is with you and it stays together well. It’s Soooooooooo Good!

Saturday I taught at Camp Miniwanca near New Era Michigan (not far from Silver Lake, where we spent the 4th of July), on Lake Michigan. It was the Sierra Club’s annual retreat. I’d never been before, and honestly I did not get to stay very long this time. I went there long enough to have a very nice salad, teach, and go home.

I car pooled with a very interesting guy from Lansing… we had four hours of chatting on the way there and back. He’s interested in color, and told me about some resources I had not known before on the subject. I am excited to check into that. I don’t take time to read enough, but will need to work that into my schedule now.

The grounds were beautiful. The food was also beautiful… real, healthy food including great salad fixings and baked potatoes with a number of possible toppings, and sandwich fixings and pasta salad for those wanting typical lunch fare. I sat down with my plate of good salad greens, carrots, water chestnuts and olives (I brought canned fish to top it with) and talked with a few folks at the table. It turned out that the two who obviously were cooking, were from Ireland and Turkey… and the two others at the table were from Russia. The first two were quite willing to chat.

The Irish woman had only been here a few months and was still getting accustomed to the different cultural situation, and the differences in her version of English versus ours, particularly considering she has spent a life working in food service and yet there are many things we call by different names here in that realm. Surely she’s in some of the hardest adjusting time for a move to a new continent/culture, and I wished her well in her experience here.

The woman who talked the most with me was the lady from Turkey. She has been here in the USA a long time, she lived in New York City (and loved it) for I think she said 11 years. She goes back whenever she can. We talked knitting and socks and Kilims. She would not use the word “rug” for a Kilim, it’s distinctive enough to have its own name somehow. One of the distinct things about Kilims was that the fibers are all colored with what we call “natural” or “vegetable” dyes. I want to look up more information about this, perhaps one of you reading this will be able to direct me to a good resource.

I asked her about socks. In her area, men knit socks in the winter after dinner as they socialize together. She said women didn’t knit socks where she was from. This is in contrast to the one pair I own from Turkey where I know a story behind them. The pair I have were knit by the grandmother for the mother’s wedding, and the daughter sold them to my friends who bought them for me.

I asked about the symbolism of the colorwork patterns in the socks. She said they were individual, meaning different things to different folks who knit them. I interpreted her information almost as if the people were knitting a visual poetry, with lots of subtle symbolism inside. She stressed several times how knitting is done without patterns, how every single thing is made differently, made up on the needles. (This is how my friend Altu from Ethiopia/Africa learned to knit, as well.) I thanked her for the information and company, and then proceeded to set up for my class.

My students wandered in, curious (they can come to whatever classes they want without pre-registering). I ended up with seven folks, six pictured in this photo which was taken by an aunt (I think of the youngest one in the photo) who came in as we were preparing to leave. We had a marvelous, creative time.

I only wish we had more time to spend together, there was such enthusiasm in the room. I’d asked for 2 hours or more, and they said they’d schedule 1.5 hours and put me in the room when nobody would follow me so we could bleed over and stay there longer if we wanted to do so. Then when I got there, they had scheduled someone to start teaching 1.5 hours after me. We did what we could with our time.

One woman (see photo) did a great job making the finest, almost paper-thin, lacy felt in her first attempt (red). It was like glass, you could see through it. The second one she got thicker by adding more layers of fiber, and I loved both.

The last two photos are of Rose from Ann Arbor. She really loved the needlefelting process which was an option to try after they made a small piece using the “wet felting” technique. Here in the first photo she’s still in the classroom (which was hot as an oven, but had a spectacular view of Lake Michigan from the back windows you see in the first photo).

The last photo is a close-up of Rose’s piece as I left the grounds. She took her supplies outside the classroom building and settled in on a bench to keep working on her needlefelted masterpiece. I sent them all home with a baggie full of wool, yarn, ribbon, beads and other goodies to make more pieces at home or later in the retreat. She did not waste any time getting into it again, and I think this piece looks rather spectacular. You’d never know she had not done it before.

I thank the Sierra Club retreat people, especially Lisa and Wendy, for inviting me to teach at this excellent event I really enjoyed the students and I hope they contact me and say hello. At least a few said they would email me. For the record, all of you reading here, I do have an email list which I don’t use very often… but if you want to be on the contact list for classes I teach all over the state and country, and significant updates to my website/shopping cart, please send me an email at Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com and I’ll get you on the list. I promise I won’t overwhelm you with emails and I won’t sell your name.

(The photo of the peaches? We bought them on the road to camp. It was a table full, with a box to deposit your money in and instructions to take a bag and leave the basket. We each got one of the smallest size, still a lot of peaches to consume in time, when they are this ripe.)

I have always spent time with children belonging to other folks. I remember very clearly when my godson Michael was maybe 5 years old or so (he’s in his 20’s now) and when told no to something, he’d complain “But I want that!” And my response was: “Sometimes we don’t get what we want, Michael.”

So Saturday I had to be very adult and defer my own gratification. I didn’t get what I wanted, at least for about 24 hours.

You see, just before I headed to bed on Friday night, I read a message from Debra Robson of Nomad Press (her blog is The Independent Stitch). Deb said that I might have an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) of her newest publication in my mailbox by the time I got her note. That one of the priority mail envelopes shown in her blog about this book’s ARCs, had my address on it.

Oh, man! That was a tease, and I could not make it to my PO Box to get that book that night, nor for about 24 hours. Pooh! This required all my adult common sense, of course… I wanted to get dressed and go to the PO (my box is accessible 24 hours a day but it’s about 3 miles from my house), and get the book. Except then I knew I’d want to stay up all night looking and reading and dreaming.

You see, if you have just recently met me you need to know that I’m very interested in Ethnic Knitting, especially Turkish Socks, Andean hats/bags, and Scandinavian works. These areas work a lot with stranded color, sometimes a riot of color. It’s definitely my favorite cup o’tea.

I was a good grownup. I went to bed, got up earlier than usual, drove 2 hours to my work for the day, taught, drove home 2 hours, got a wonderful house tour (more on that later), ate dinner with Brian. And THEN I went to the PO Box not long before midnight Saturday. And got this incredibly exciting package.

The real book is still at the printer. It will be a while before it hits the bookstores and yarn shops. But I’ve got a “beta” copy. I feel honored, excited, humbled, delighted, thrilled. I’m positively alive with an adrenaline rush, I’m so happy to have this book… I know not that many receive such an honor!

I tried to read it Saturday night on the couch, and did not get very far before I woke up with the book dangling from my hands precariously. I slept like a brick for something like 10 hours (after two very short nights’ sleep) and woke up groggy. Now that I’ve had two cups of tea, I’m ready to find the Hammock and settle in. At least for a little while. I work on Sundays, at home, and I’m getting ready to dye some yarn (don’t faint). So I’m doing computer work and emails, blog writing and a little reading of my precious book… but as soon as dinner comes I’m switching gears and going downstairs to start work on the wool.

The sun is shining. It was chilly this morning but now it’s lovely. It is going to be a very good Sunday.

My Sister-in-Love, Diana, is a gift to me. She married my brother after he was widowed for a full 10 years, and they are in love. She’s my friend. And… (ta tum, tum) she’s my knitter. My test knitter, my problem-solver, my sample knitter. I don’t know how I got as much done as I did when she was not in my knitting realm. I’m very grateful.

Diana has test-knit a good number of patterns for me, including the Kristi Comfort Shawl. You see, I knit the first one for Kristi/RedDogKnits not intending to ever make another. I should know better! People liked it, and they asked for the pattern.

And then, as I too often do, I had to go back and remember what I had done and write down what I thought it was. And Diana made sure I wrote it well.

I love the pattern for many reasons. It is really easy to knit but it’s not boring because you change one of the two yarns you hold together, on every new row. It’s garter fabric, with literally casting on, knitting, and binding off, but with fun in the color choosing. It’s a great stash buster (I have almost no yarn left in partial skeins anymore, they all got used in Kristi Wraps. It’s a lovely predicament!

Diana just posted a thoughtful and loving column today about knitting these shawls. About how many of them she has knit (close to twenty), and why. She doesn’t mention specifically that she knit one for me, with yarns I hand-picked, just because she wanted to. A professional knitting professional almost never gets to keep knitting he/she designs… almost everything becomes a sample. However, because Diana made mine just for me, I get to keep it. I love it deeply.

Diana has knit one of these for all the shops I work for in the Lansing area: Rae’s Yarn Boutique (purple Nashua Creative Focus), Threadbear Fiberarts (indigo blue Malabrigo Worsted), Little Red Schoolhouse Yarns (heather gray Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted with blue/green/purple), and Yarn Garden in Charlotte (spring green, I think Cascade Pastaza).

Mine is hot pink, no surprise. With purple and turquoise accents… including some of the turquoise fingering weight that I used as my background color in my self-portrait last summer. Very meaningful for a million reasons.

Maybe you would like to read Diana’s post for yourself.

Photos: Me wearing the sample that now lives at Rae’s shop, (though the photo is a bit pale). Kristi Wrap Diana knit for one friend, modeled by another friend.

I love the building in both of these photos. It is on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, approximately across from the Milennium Park and Chicago Institute of Art.

It was built as the public library years ago, and Tiffany himself designed the interiors. From what I remember of a tour I took there years ago, there is one green stone (I think it’s marble) used prominently in the railings for the stairs (of which there are many), which got used up (the quarry went dry) because of this one project. There is stone and glass, and some mirrors, and some gilt in the building. There are quotations all over the ceilings because of the library intent of the building.

Now Chicago has a recently-built library (oh, my… the modern gargoyles are wonderful) on Congress, on the way out of downtown going west to the highway. The old building is being kept up and used well now, as Chicago Cultural Center. The top floor is used for receptions and concerts, and the downstairs has a gallery or two, a place to rest, a gift shop and people who can answer your questions about any transportation question (the Visitor Center), how to get from here to there, maps for walking or public transit, and all sorts of other wonderful things.

We stopped in there for a map last Monday. Altu had seen the building once before with me, but our guest had never been to the city at all. We decided to take her upstairs to the most impressive room in the building.

When we got there, they were preparing for a concert. There was a person rehearsing solo piano while we watched. It was like having a private concert. Even when we went downstairs, we could hear the piano. You know, I sometimes say that I’m not too fond of classical music… particularly when there is no singing. However, I absolutely loved whatever it was that this woman was playing.

In this second photo, you see the entryway on the south side of the building. There is a bronze cow sculpture to remember the fiberglass artists cows of a good number of years ago. Altu and I were in Chicago together that summer and we just loved chancing upon those cows. It’s really lovely to see that someone took it upon themselves to commission one lasting sculpture to remind us of that summer. For some reason, they really made a lot of us smile.

I was just in Chicago and while walking rather quickly down the street I stopped, aimed very quickly and shot this photo of a city corner, lots of folks walking and tall buildings… and what only can be an Alexander Calder sculpture.

Calder was the man who invented the mobile. We modern folks are so used to mobiles it doesn’t perhaps occur to us that someone had to start this incredible idea. Mr. Calder, called “Sandy” by friends, was the one. There’s a wonderful passage in Martha Graham (the modern dancer/choreographer)’s autobiography, about her visit to Calder when he had a large number of mobiles hanging outside where folks driving by could see them. I bet it would be hard to drive if you’d never seen any mobile and then you saw a number of them all in the wind at once!

Last spring, Brian and I were in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan and I snapped this photo of the Calder outdoor sculpture there, from a moving car. I love how he can make huge heavy metal pieces seem cheerful and not all that heavy.

Notes added after initial post: The sculptures were called “stabiles” by Calder, as opposed to the “mobiles” which hung and moved in the air.

Quotes from Wikipedia’s entry on Calder, regarding these two photographed pieces:

• Flamingo (1974), red painted steel, at the Federal Plaza, Chicago, Illinois
• In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental stabile “La Grande Vitesse” located in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This sculpture is notable for being the first public work of art in the United States to be funded with federal monies; acquired with funds granted from the then new National Endowment for the Arts under its “Art for Public Places” program.

Susan/Dog Lover’s Yarn has posted her adventures, of learning to purl the sole stitches on her socks. Now, some folks don’t find this an issue, all socks are comfy enough. For me, I stand a lot… some folks walk a lot (as I did in Chicago).

The purled/inside of standard handknit sock fabric is bumpier than the outside/knit side. Monday afternoon, my feet were feeling the purls in an uncomfortable way (after walking blocks and blocks) so I turned those standard socks inside out to make them more comfy for even more walking.

With my Fast Florida Footies pattern (free in one size), I was using a mostly-cotton (read: stiffer than wool) yarn in a DK weight (read: twice as thick as standard sockyarn, which makes thicker fabric than typical commercially-sold socks). I wanted them to be extra-comfortable so I purled the sole. Thankfully, this sole helped Susan with her quest for “how to” instructions for a purled sole. I’m delighted she found my sock useful in her search.

Check out Susan’s post on purling soles if you are interested. She has a bunch of photos comparing her different attempts. She also flatters me, and I’m honored. I just “met” her online very recently, we’ve never met in person.

Isn’t the Internet an incredible place? Who would think that I’d find even one more person wanting a purled sole, really? And here we are. And surely at least one or two of you out there reading this will also be interested. I’m so indebted to this medium, which connects us in real ways with people and procedures that are what we need.

I’m downloading photos of Chicago now. I’m still behind on other trips and may give up on those, starting fresh. It sure is easy to take a zillion photos just when there is no time to develop them!!!

Photos: My version of a FFF in Infant Size 0; Susan’s own pair I originally showed here in July (with her permission).

I’m going for an overnight to Chicago… I’m going with Altu and one other person (who has not been to Chicago before).

It is supposed to rain buckets in Chicago for the next several days. I’m taking one umbrella for each of us. We had hoped to go to Sears Tower but that may not be a great destination if there are lots of clouds. Maybe we’ll go to the Oceanarium/Aquarium. It is one of the most-completely designed buildings, archicturally/design-speaking, of any I have seen. Amazing. Or we’ll find another indoor destination. There are plenty.

We will surely get Indian food and shop for Indian clothing, and go to Patel Brothers grocery for spices and other goodies. Rain or no, we must get to that part of town. We will have fun even if our feet get wet.

I’ll see you when we return.

Well, I only had one day to take in the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan this year (it continues through Sunday, don’t miss it). After several years of multiple days to take it all in, the one day was a condensed and intense experience. As always, I loved it.

I headed first to Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm (of Vermont) where I’ve made friends with Ellen and crew. It’s just not Allegan without some yarn from Ellen. This year I got some sockyarn in a 50% wool/ 25% SoySilk/ 22.5% cotton/ 2.5% chitin (from the sea, ground shells of some sort which everyone has been raving about and I’m out of the loop as far as specifics). The colorway is a favorite: turquoise, blue, hot green. And glints of white. Nice.

It has different strands which took dye differently (I”m guessing there are cotton strands which didn’t take when she dyed it with acid dyes made for wool). I love it… even though it has cotton. My friends know I’m not at all big on cotton yarn but this hank of yarn is soft and squishy and has enough wool to make me happy. There are 475 yards in the skein, it’s marked 3.5oz.

I then made my way around to booths where I knew the proprietors. Right next door to Ellen was Deb, who has alpacas and who used to be a manager at Casual Corner when I worked at the Meridian Mall in 1987. Talk about going back a few years! I love seeing her, and hubby Bob, each year.)

I said hi at Heritage Spinning of Lake Orion, MI (where they had yarn in the perfect turquoise… but it was merino laceweight and I just couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to make out of it so I let it go in favor of more sockyarn). I stopped to hug and chat with Tracy Bunkers of Bonkers! Fiber (Lawrence, Kansas). She had not been at Allegan last year so it had been a long two years since we’d talked. I said hi to Toni of The Fold (Marengo, IL)… we used to both be vendors at the now-defunct Bloomiefest for a few years, and I hadn’t seen her since last August.

I chatted with a few more folks who were new to me in the main building, then I went back to the barn building (where on the weekend you can actually see fiber animals, but not on Friday). I lucked out and ran into Andrea Mielke of Mielke’s Fiber Arts (in Rudolph, WI), who had been teaching all day and just got out of class. We chatted intently about historical/ethnic knitting traditions. I really value her thoughtful input. I’m honored to have her as a teaching peer in this business of fiberarts.

I also met Rita who handpaints yarn under the label Yarn Hollow, in Grandville, MI which is really close to Grand Rapids and a good number of Brian’s siblings. At Rita’s booth I bought my second skein of sockyarn and made acquaintance with her and Geniene (who makes felted mermaids, way fun).

It turns out that Rita reads this blog. I can not tell you how much I love each and every one of you who is out there reading, even if I don’t know you. I was just delighted that she said hi and let me know she was a reader here. I felt so welcome! It’s an odd thing to write and not know who is out there. I mean, I get 900 or more intentional viewers a day, and I get somewhere between zero and three comments a day. I only know you are there when you tell me (and those who comment, I love you extra helpings).

The yarn I got from Rita is at right in the photo. It’s a 50% Superwash Merino and 50% Tencel. I’ve never knit with this type of yarn, either. I guess I’m branching out a little. The colorway is called Grateful Thread and it’s pretty ColorJoy to me! It’s a pretty intense sort of rainbow skein. Cherry red, plum, indigo, green, yellow-green, yellow, and a lovely intentional brown. It may take me a while to figure out what this yarn wants to be when it grows up but it will be snazzy when I do. It has 4oz, 412yd, fingering weight.

Last I headed over to Linda of Little Red Schoolhouse Yarn (Lansing, I teach there) because we had plans for dinner. While i was waiting for her to wrap up her booth for the night, I wandered across the aisle to a new double-booth I had not seen before. It was Knitting Notions (Nashville, TN). I asked a few questions (wanted to find superwash worsted weight but she had none so I wandered to the fingering-weight merino washable yarn). As I checked out the selections she checked out a few people.

I chose a gorgeous yarn she calls red-violet which is a semi-solid as many hand-dyed solids are. I love it. It’s a deep shade between magenta and plum, very purple but not blue at all. I find that I wear my solid-colored socks more often than others, and this may just make me a regular-cuff pair plus some footies if I play my cards right. The skein is 100g (3.5oz) and 420yd. Suggested needle is 0-1US (2-2.25mm). I’m going to enjoy the knitting *and* the wearing of these.

So I brought my selection to the cash box. And Catherine said she knew who I was, that she’d read my blog before. We’ve had a short email conversation since then. You know, she wasn’t sure if she should say hi.

You guys… I just have to spell it out here. I am SO appreciative of you. I want to know you if you see me. This life I live is very public, and many people know who I am. That does not mean I’m inaccessible.

I heard second-hand of a young man who sat at the same table as Brian and I at Bliss Fest and he really loves our music but didn’t introduce himself. I’m sad about that. We might have jammed a bit together, perhaps. Then to think that perhaps Rita and Catherine might have chosen to not introduce themselves as ColorJoy friends, well, that makes me sad, too. I realize that they *did* say hi, but who did not?

For the record, I want to meet you. I know I’m easy to spot in a crowd. If you see me at a gathering, please say hello. I’m a woman who works alone much of the time. I type into the ether and I don’t know who listens.

I believe that life is all about relationship, whether it be just a friendly hello and five minutes, or a lifetime friendship. It’s all important and satisfying. I’m public but I’m just plain human, just like anyone else. Please do say hello, OK?

Oh… I guess that was a bit of a digression, please forgive. I bought yarn from Catherine. After that, Linda and I had the best Indian food I know about… at Saffron on Main Street in Kalamazoo. Oh, heaven! I love Indian food, have sampled it in several states and at least one other country.0.. and this one is my favorite over the rest, bar none. Linda liked her meal, too, and hers was very different from mine.

We chatted about life and work and knitting and travel. We just have had trouble connecting this year, so it was really great to have hours to spend with my friend. I got home well past dark, nearly midnight. I had a most satisfying day.

Photos: Yarn from Ellen, Catherine and Rita; Geniene with mermaid and Rita with my skein of yarn.

This was the second year that Habibi Dancers performed for Sparrow Hospital, The hospital is located in the same neighborhood as Foster Center where we rehearse.

They have cultural diversity week (or something like that) which is a wise thing considering how many of their employees were not born/raised in the USA. It’s like a min-UN there, I know a few Ethiopian immigrants who work there and that’s definitely not the only country represented, by a long shot.

Because the show is from noon until 1, not all of the dancers in the troupe can perform. Lucky for me, it’s one of the few shows a year where I can fit it into my schedule. (A lot of performances are nights and weekends, a time when I typically teach at yarn shops or sing with Brian… it’s my work time.) I enjoyed it this year as much as last.

Here I have a photo of me/Eudora taken by Sally/Sara, and photos of three dancers, but not a photo of Sara. Go figure.

Thanks to Sparrow for inviting us. Thanks to Sara for the photo. I hope we get to go again next year!

The Good News:

I taught a 9-yr-old girl to knit today. She finished a 5-stitch, garter-fabric wristband in just over an hour. Wild Purple (thanks to whoever donated that incredibly popular yarn). She was delighted. So was her mom. So was I.

The Bad News:

One of my bosses at Foster Center had a heart attack yesterday and died, just like that. He was 53 years old. Please, tell someone that you love them today. You never know what tomorrow may bring. If we learn from these things, at least something good can come of sadness.

Tomorrow’s News:

I plan to go to Allegan/Michigan Fiber Festival tomorrow/Friday, just to hang out and look at/touch fibery things. I hope I see some of you.

If you see me and I might not recognize you (I tend to get over-stimulated in big crowds and miss things I might not miss in a calmer environment) please say hello. I thought I’d have company and it turns out I’ll be traveling alone (though I’ll know a lot of folks once I get there). I’d love to chat a little, so do wave me down if you would.

I met my friend Kristi/Red Dog Knits through the internet… even though she lives close by. When we both get a Friday off, we go for long walks with her two adorable boys (born in November). These days we’re all too busy for walks. What is up with that? “Summertime and the livin’ is easy?” Not these days, though I must admit I’ve been on the porch a bit more this year than I did last year.

But I digress. Kristi’s boys are much fun. They are starting to realize they know me when we chance upon one another at places other than our favorite walking spot. I saw them at Threadbear the day I went there to visit/chat with Annie Modesitt on her lunch hour, a few weekends ago. And then this weekend I saw them (and both their parents, too) at the Great Lakes Folk Festival.

Now, who needs words in a post when one has photos like this?

Mom made another trip around the sun! She was born prematurely on the Iron Range of Minnesota (about an hour north of Duluth) 73 years ago. (Yes, she tells her age, and anyone looking as good as she always has, really has a duty to the rest of us to demonstrate how good one can look at any age.)

Her mother took extra-special care of her while she was tiny and out of range of a large hospital. Grandma Illa had a degree in Public Health and that may have been the perfect thing to have studied, when keeping a tiny one healthy and thriving in those early years. I’m grateful.

Mom is the best reading teacher I know. I’ve heard more than one person say “Liz can teach a rock to read.” She really is dedicated to helping “her little guys” learn, even and especially when they struggle.

Even though she has been retired for more than a decade, she still volunteers at schools both in Michigan and Florida (depending on the time of year) to help kids get a solid start early in their reading journey. I know she has changed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. (As a matter of fact, both Eric/brother and I were reading by the age of 4, thanks to Mom.)

She also is a very creative soul and loves color a lot. I know now that I got that color-love from my Mom. She favors similar colors to mine, though hers tend to be slightly lighter… aqua instead of turquoise if given a choice, perhaps, though we both adore hot pink. And she loves intense deep blues with a tinge of green in them, where I tend toward turquoise or purple. (I took this photo a year ago in her home, for her 72nd birthday. See what I mean about her color sense?)

Mom is a great dancer, always has loved ballroom dancing. My Dad was not a really good dancer, in fact he would try to trip her up on the dance floor just for fun, and she rarely stumbled.

Now that she and Fred have been partners for a long time (maybe two decades by now?) they have really been dancing up a storm. They sometimes square dance as well as ballroom styles. In Florida they often win big piles of dance medals in the Polk County Senior Games (it’s like a senior olympics, and is the largest one in the state of Florida).

I was raised by a strong woman, a tough cookie when needed. She did things alone without comment (she was widowed at age 38, when I was 14 and Eric was one week before his 13th birthday). She traveled alone frequently enough that I never thought that was unusual.

She was the first woman I remember on our block to have her own car (a Chevy Corvair, gold, which we called “The Putt Putt”) and the first mom I noticed who had a full-time job. She had been a teacher before she married my father, it was the one thing she always knew she wanted to do… so when we were in late elementary school she went back to her life’s calling. Go, Mom!

Mom taught me to embroider, and sew the 4-H way (which means very very well). My first sewing project was a culotte bodysuit, with zipper and patch pockets (she never told me this might seem hard to someone else). She taught me how to make a crochet chain, how to darn socks, and how to repair a run in a commercially-knit sweater, all before I reached middle school.

When I learned to knit in 5th grade from Mr. Johnson, she made sure I got yarn. She took me to the next town where there was a five and dime and I was allowed to choose two colors (only two… it was excruciatingly hard but I ended up with kelly green and turquoise). Mind you, this was in a life that generally did not travel out of our own village.

Mom always supported and encouraged creative pursuits and reading of any sort. I think that was a great way to grow up.

Happy, Happy, Birthday, Mom! I wouldn’t have learned to be this strong (or colorful) without you.

“I want to show women - and men - that if you’re over 35, or 40, or 45, whatever age, you can still be a pistol.

–Ann-Margret, Chicago Tribune 4/22/2001

If you are in the Lansing, Michigan area and interested in fiber or wool or knitting or feltmaking, or just curious about what I do with my focus and my time… I’m presenting a program to the Haslett Public Library Needle Nuts on Tuesday August 14 at 7pm. You can get location information on the Capital Area District Library website.

I will be talking about felt, how wool can be made into a relatively solid, dense fabric/textile. This can be done in several ways. I’ll bring several examples and do a little demo. We’ll talk shrunken-knitting, loose-fiber wet felting, and needle felting. I think we will have a wonderful, marvelous time! We sure did last time I was there, in December, when I talked about combining yarns and colors.

I hope to see some of you there. Let me know if you read my blog, you will make my day!!!

We have had fun singing this summer. I have a few unrelated photos… well, they are related because of music. Friday we sang in Kalamazoo and it was wonderful fun. The crowd was right with us the whole way, the auditorium was beautiful and had great acoustics, the trip there and back was pleasant. Loved it. I would be in heaven if we could have days like that more often, but honestly it was heaven enough that one time.

We performed at my dear friend Altu’s restaurant a few weekends back, and that was great fun, also. My mom took time after the concert to take a few photos of us outside. I had lucked out and found a really cool set of authentic 1960s Hawaiian dresses and so when the weather was really warm Brian and I decided to forego our usual formalwear for the night and don Hawaiian clothing. Here’s a close up of us as the sun was fading. Thanks for taking a good number of good photos that night, Mom!

Last Tuesday we also had a wonderful time at Dagwoods’ open mic. A lot of good folks were there. Brian knew even more of the musicians than I did. Here’s a photo of just one group playing, Brian knows at least one of the guys from his work. They chatted with Brian a good while after their turn was up but I didn’t get over there to say hi much myself. Nice guys, really good musicians.

We also spent this last weekend at the Great Lakes Folk Festival and it was great fun. I spent a lot of time helping Altu in her food booth on Friday and Saturday, but we could hear the dance tent from where we were and that was good. Sunday I had the morning to be with Brian a bit, and then I went to work the Mid-Michigan Knitters’ Guild demo booth. Rae and I signed up for the same shift, and Jane was there a lot of the time with us, as were Cyndy and Nancy. It was good fun.

There were some booths where one could buy clothing and other items from different parts of the world. I found an embroidered white cotton gauzy top from Equador. I’ll have to take some photos for you, there were some things I had never seen before in any embroidered items I’d encountered.

I am really starting to get the itch to embroider again. I think that embroidery was my first handwork/textile art, I think I learned it in 2nd or 3rd grade, before I learned to sew, but it might have been actually earlier than that. Mom might remember, as she was the one who taught me. I just love the feeling of pulling a thread with a sewing needle. It resonates with me on a gut cellular level, it’s all the way embedded in my inner self. I’m getting ready to do something with that urge very soon.

I’ve mentioned Tracy here a few times. We met through this blog. She has tested patterns for me before, and she shared photos of mostly-yellow socks she knit (in my TipToe Sockyarn) here recently.

In response to my discussion of colorways in the recent post, and with the photo of one dyelot of that colorway as my photo/illustration of the concept, she wrote a comment to share. She knit a pair of socks from my Seaside yarn and the photo is up on her Flickr site.

I would bet that the socks came from the same dye lot I showed two days ago. They look lovely, Tracy! If anyone is interested, please go take a look at Tracy’s 6th Sense Sox at her Flickr page.

I’m still catching up… Two Wednesdays ago, I danced with Habibi Dancers at the Allen Street Farm Market. I love this market. It’s truly serving its city neighborhood which has many cultures, ages, incomes (mostly lower income). This neighborhood has a higher than average percent of immigrants, a good number of whom are refugees. Lots of folks do not have a car and there is no grocery store within almost 2 miles.

You can find fresh organic produce there at some booths. I found pure maple syrup at two vendors, and one had maple sugar which I really love and which I’d been mail-ordering at times. I’d much rather buy in my own city. I also found some fresh herbs which pleased me.

We had maybe a half dozen dancers that day. I danced in three numbers, but we all took turns. When it was not my turn to dance, I took a few photos. You can see that we were literally dancing in a parking lot which is transformed once a week into this market. Around the perimeter are booths for groceries, prepared foods, baked goods, and jewelry among other things.

After the show, a woman from Somalia came over to say hi. Her English was imperfect, but she kissed me on the cheeks three times as I was often greeted in Ethiopia. She hugged me and was clearly happy to have us dancing there. She tried to ask me a question about Egypt (most of our dances are in an Egyptian style). I found out that she spoke Arabic and one of our dancers speaks fluent Arabic so I called her over and they talked for a moment.

If that lone Somali woman had been the only person there, it would have made the whole performance worthwhile. She must feel so isolated, yet going “home” is likely not safe, so here she is. I’m glad we made her feel more comfortable and hopefully feel welcome in my city.

Sometimes I am proud to live in Lansing. These moments are what makes life here really special.

For those who are not in my business… a colorway is a collection of colors used together in something. In my case, it’s placing several colors on one skein of yarn.

You could take that word to mean other things, like the variations a rug at the store might come in, or clothing, or any other number of consumer objects. The stoles pictured in my previous post can all be considered to display a colorway, as well.

You might even stretch it to say that this weblog has a colorway of white with purple, teal and a touch of hot magenta. My most popular yarn colorway is called Seaside, and it is a combination of blue, turquoise, purple, and highlights of creamy white (see photo).

I was talking about color combinations in my last post. I’m very excited to hear feedback from some of you. Lynne of Memphis had started choosing a group of yarns for a stole and was not sure why they just did not work out quite right. Now she writes that she thought she was looking for all yarns with a blue tint when what she wanted was clear (not muted/grayed) colors. Yippee! She got it.

Actually, the lack of awareness of Chroma/ Intensity/ Saturation is most often the reason a combination doesn’t work when we think it “should” work. Or so it seems to me, having worked with many people in this sort of project.

Remember that color choosing is a very personal business. Someone might love periwinkle blue with hot yellow-green, and the next person will not understand how that might work. That said, I think if we would let ourselves trust our gut more we would have fewer mis-steps in this area. How many times have you heard someone say that they need to break out of their color rut and try something new? And then they never wear the new colored item… because it’s not a great color on them.

I say if you love a color, often that is because it makes you look wonderful. And if a color makes you look wonderful, then why would you NOT stay stuck there, or at least repeat it often? Why would you not want to look great every day?

Why would you think wearing orange for a change of pace would be good, when you look great in clear turquoise but not so hot in orange… or in my case, great in turquoise and terrible in periwinkle. I love periwinkle on my Goddaughter, Sara (who has soft red hair) but trust me, if I wore it you would inquire as to whether my health was failing.

I don’t propose following anything to the extreme, but I propose surrounding yourself with things/clothing/colors that give you a boost. I don’t look great with hot green next to my face but I love the color… so I get skirts in that color, or towels, or dishes.

So… I found a fascinating group of photos on Flickr, photos of the Babette Blanket from the Interweave Crochet magazine. A whole lot of folks decided to crochet this design, and they all had very different ideas about which colors they might choose for it.

The Babette Blanket calls for a good large handful of colors in the pattern. One person chose to do it in all white, some limited themselves to just a few colors, and some added more colors than were originally specified. I found it very interesting to play the photo slideshow (there are over 100 slides, so I recommend choosing the fast speed in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen).

I just let the colorways glance past my eyes and I tried to notice if there might be one color in there which I might prefer to be changed. If I felt that way (knowing that my choices are different than anyone else’s) I asked myself what it was about that color I wanted to swap out, that I thought made me like it less in the grouping. Often it was a too-much-gray or not-enough-gray situation. Sometimes it was a very-dark or very-light, sometimes it was a not-enough-warm/yellow or not-enough cool/blue situation.

The flickr photo slideshow (Babette Blanket Pool) can be found here.

A few weeks ago (wow, I’m more behind than I thought), I taught a class at Yarn Garden in Charlotte, on the ColorJoy Stole. Now, this class is really two short classes put together. The first part is how to combine yarn, texture, fiber and color, all not matching. It’s a class on how to make dissimilar items “go” together rather than trying to match (which as we all know is very hard to accomplish… never mind often not as visually interesting as unmatching elements if we choose them well).

The second part of the class is on how to knit this particular stole (a stole is a rectangular shawl). We learn how to use the yarns in an evenly random pattern (yes I mean that) so that the piece looks cohesive and intentional.

But it is the first part of the class which is really exciting. Somehow we are afraid (in my area’s culture) that not matching means not pleasing to the eye. Yet clearly when we look at certain woven items in particular, we notice how the artist/weaver has combined many dissimilar threads/yarns into an amazing and rich fabric. Knitters can do this, too, if we learn how.

There are color issues, yarn structure concerns, and a few other things we learn in class. We often start with one variegated/multicolored yarn, and then build the other choices around that first one. (Hi, Chelle!)

Yet we still need to know about color… at least to figure out why the one color we thought would work perfectly is not working. We don’t have to choose all of our colors by color theory, in fact I think that instinct can work well if we listen to ourselves. However, when one color just won’t play nice, it’s great to have some understanding of why.

In the schools/culture I came from, we talked about color in only two ways. Value (dark/light) and hue (color name). In other words, dark blue or light green. Maybe even light yellow-green if we were being specific.

There was no mention until I took an art class as an adult, at Lansing Community College, of something the art teacher called “chroma” but which is also sometimes called saturation or intensity. This is whether it has gray in it or not, whether it’s blindingly clear or muted. (Clear/pure is my style and muted is what I think of when I think “Martha Stewart.”)

In addition to that, if you talk to the “Color Me Beautiful” people they will talk about color saying whether it is cool or warm, which can help understand why some colors don’t fit. Think of a grouping of greens and see if you can picture what I mean about that.

And when I worked with Liquitex acrylic paints, they not only labeled each color with hue, value and chroma, but also transparency/opaqueness. Very cool. It’s not quite as much of an issue with yarn, but then again think of a non-mercerized cotton or hemp as totally opaque yarn and luminous brushed mohairs or even jelly yarns, as transparent.

And one other thing I noticed with paints, was that some colors were naturally matte and some were very shiny. That and the transparency issue had to do with the pigments used to color the acrylic base medium (although the medium itself can influence the texture). Neither texture or opacity are really labels for “color” but they do make up some of the attributes of individual yarns, and noticing this can help us choose combinations well.

OK, I’ve gone on enough. The people in my class, though, get to actually make big piles of yarn on the table. They work with all the information above plus they learn about different yarn structures and how to use those in making choices when mixing unmatching yarns on purpose.

They grab a pile of yarns they really like, and we pile them together and figure out why a few don’t work well with the others. And then they knit. And it’s magical.

I’m even starting to now offer a shorter class on just combining yarns. That is, the first part of the stole class: piling up yarns and getting great combinations going. Not for a particular pattern, but just as a way of understanding how to stand tall when you can’t get five yarns of the same brand to make that baby sweater you can’t live without, or when you want to make a cool couch pillow or funky hat for a favorite teen, out of leftover yarns in your stash.

So above we have the very beginnings of two ColorJoy Stoles. One is basically in earthtones for a knitter who glows in those shades, and one is in soft feminine colors for a woman who looks wonderful in pink. You won’t be surprised to know that mine is in greenish-turquoise with purple and hot green accents. And I’ve seen so many other combinations! It’s really personal and always a wonderful adventure.

Photos: Begun stoles from recent class; the sultry and beautiful Sharon P wearing her version; my mother, Liz, wearing her stole that Diana made her essentially from my stole pattern, at her birthday party in 2004; cherry red/rainbow stole I made as a pattern sample; me wearing my own stole, the one that lives in my closet (imagine that); Mom’s friend and my knitting student, Esther, wearing her perfectly-personal colorway that she also knit for herself.

Mom’s family had a farm when she was growing up. We had a garden a few years, and we always had fruit trees (apple, pear and cherry… most notably more pie cherries than we could pick). Sometimes we had strawberries. Most of the time we seemed far too busy doing other life tasks to garden, and honestly it was easy to buy it at the store rather than grow it.

But when we had food from our yard, dad would repeat the words of my Mom’s father, who would say “It was grown on our own farm!” And last week I said the same thing.

My garden is teeny-tiny, and relatively wild as gardens go. Food shares space with myrtle and grass from the yard trying to take over, and a rosebush that is winning the battle for land, both at left in this photo and just above the top edge of the photo. You can see the myrtle at least at top right, and grass at bottom. The thin tiny bits in the dirt are mostly supposed to be there, my tiny and struggling herbs.

It is not all of a yard squared (which is smaller than a meter squared). I have one clump of Swiss Chard (very tasty greens, in this case with beautiful red stems), and herbs: parsley, dill, cilantro and chives. I tried to plant a little bit of spinach but I planted it too late (spinach likes cool weather).

I also have one large potted tomato bush, which is mostly for decoration. It lives in a beautiful blue-glazed pot on the top landing of our back steps, right where we pass it in and out of the house each day. This helps remind me to water it even when I get home after dark. Tomatoes really thrive on attention so this is a good strategy.

Last week I decided to dive in and make some food from the tiny bit of produce growing in my yard. There were two small tomatoes ready to pluck, and I had to do something with them. I don’t really like fresh tomatoes much (though I remember how much I liked them on a whole-grain cheddar grilled cheese with some vidalia onion back in the day when I could eat such things). So cooking the greens with the tomatoes was a perfect solution.

I cut up both the greens and the tomatoes in half-inch bits (just smaller than a centimeter). I had a leek (related to onion but milder) so I sliced some of that really tiny. I sauteed the leek in olive oil, and when it started to soften I added the greens until they wilted. Then I added the tomato. No, I didn’t measure. I used the amount of greens and tomatoes that I had been able to harvest. The tomatoes looked smaller before cutting but bigger after cooking, given the tendency of greens to wilt and compress in the heat.

I let that mixture cook on low until the tomato smelled sweet rather than acid. Tomatoes will actually caramelize a bit if you give them the chance, and at that point I like them much better. I did not add any salt or pepper or other seasoning during cooking, though sometimes I enjoy some black pepper in the mix. After it was all cooked, I chopped up some of our cilantro from the garden into tiny bits, and garnished the serving plate full of greens with that.

I am starting to “get it,” I think. These were positively the best greens I’ve had in a very long time. I’ll need to do this at least one more time before growing season ends.

Oh, and the bowl the cooked greens are in? It was made by my friend Maureen O. Ryan, of Working Women Artists and the Potters Guild of Lansing.

I realized today that I’ve perhaps always had a group of kids in my life, other people’s children, who I called “My Kids.” This started when I became a babysitter, maybe I was as young as 11 but more likely I was 13-14.

I babysat a lot in high school, I always had more spending money than my friends because of it. Then in college I came home for two summers and babysat two neighbor kids (ages 4 and 10 the first year). That was hard work, including making them lunch every day (I’m not so fond of cooking, and it’s pretty hard to make a pair with that age gap be happy with the same meal).

These days, of course, “My Kids” are the participants in my CityKidz Knit! program at Foster Community Center. I can not help it, I learn to love these kids. It is SO gratifying to see them shine in the program and begin to think of themselves as knitters even when I am not with them.

In the last week I had several donations of yarn from local knitters and the bags were in my trunk Tuesday when I arrived for the last summer session of the year. I brought in the bags and the kids’ eyes got big. It is clear in my room that the yarn is for them, it’s their yarn and there is total abundance for them at least in this one area of their lives. I love it that they can just dream and take home yarn to match their dreams.

(For the record, I always need donations of knitting needles, especially straight needles in sizes 5-13 or so. I also can use lighter weight double-pointed needles… plastic, wood or bamboo are almost unheard of in my program but their lighter weight does help the kids when learning to knit in the round. DPNs are needed in sizes 2-11 or so. Yes, you read that right. Elementary-aged kids on double-pointed needles. Relatively frequently, too! I told you these kids are worthy of my fond pride!!!)

So the kids’ eyes lit up when I came in with those bags. One bag was a clear garbage bag and i could not open it by hand. I went off to find scissors but they handled the issue swiftly. One kid sat on one side pulling on the top edge of the bag, another on the other, and they leaned away from one another until the bag burst open. The yarn burst out something like an explosion of sorts. They really loved that!

One of the younger girls dove right in to the pile, with her little tush up in the air, and it was such an amusing sight that I got out my camera. First photo here is the kids after things calmed down a little bit.

One of the kids in this first picture, I had not seen in 2 years. She moved away but came back for a visit, and happened to be in the building when I was there. I was delighted to see her! She has been knitting without me, which makes me happy. I had her fill up a few tote bags ful of yarn (I call this “Trick or Treat” and it always delights). I’m hoping I will see her again… she now lives maybe 20 minutes north of Lansing. She says she enjoys her new town. Wonderful news.

The other two photos here are finished items by “my kids.” These kids actually do a good deal of knitting when I am not with them, and they crank out works quickly. First is a shawl/wrap by a young lady who I believe will be in 6th grade next year. Last March she made up a mitten, in one day, on double-pointed-needles in the round. She needed almost no help from me, just how to close the top and a little assistance in starting her thumb. Wowie.

The yarn in her pictured project is Rowan Biggy Print, a thick/thin two-ply, donated by a blog reader in the DC area, who has sent many boxes of incredibly high-quality yarns for them t o knit and learn from/about. (Thank you, thank you, thank you… they really are learning about quality and really enjoying the yarns.)

The wrap contains 12 balls of super-chunky yarn. I am here to tell you that this is a LOT of stitches for a child this age. However, she is very good at picturing final products and sticks with things more than other kids her age. In this case, she envisioned a rug which she planned to felt/shrink after knitting. Well, then she liked it as a lap blanket better. Then she liked it as a wrap/shawl even more. Warmth!

I do encourage kids to change their minds if it makes sense, partway through projects. If they do not enjoy the yarn or the project, I give them permission to either stop or make it into something else they enjoy making more. In this case, she was just done sooner than initially planned, she did not have to take time to felt it (and take the risk she would not like the result.

She still knit all 12 balls that she had (I think there were a few other balls that made it to other kids). She changed yarn balls by tying knots, knowing she was planning to felt. Now she has ends that will be hard to hide. First is my challenge to get her a “darning” needle with a huuuuge eye so we have the right tool (I am pretty sure I have that handled). Then I’ll show her better ways to work them in.

The last photo is a young lady who received the “knitting pattern a day” calendar from someone well over a year ago. She follows patterns because of her interest in the projects in that calendar. Last year she knit a lace bookmark for someone for a Christmas gift. This year she came across this doll which she knew would really please a certain friend. All she has left is to embroider the face. Cool, huh??? Grownup knitters, please take these kids as inspiration!

“My Kids.” They are really super people… normal kids but also extra-ordinary in many ways. I’m just delighted to know them.

Oh, for those who have needles they might like to donate, the address is: CityKidz Knit!, c/o Foster Center, 200 N. Foster Ave., Lansing, MI 48912 USA.

Right now I have enough canvas bags and acrylic yarn for the most part. I always take donations of dyeable wool yarn and/or feltable yarn, and right now we’re out of Kool Aid with which to dye those yarns (bright colors are what kids love, so red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise are good but not black cherry). Thanks for your consideration.

I enjoy the online magazine called MagKnits. Diana sent me a link to their current issue (she sent a sock pattern link) and I went looking at the rest of the patterns. I always look at the photos first, then go back and read other things that take more time.

They have a pattern this time called Summer Sky. It’s a very short extra-cropped sweater that is almost a capelet except it has sleeves. It is knit in summer-weight/fiber yarn (linen/acrylic fingering-weight yarn, really pretty and drapey) which is sort of out of my realm, but the overall shape is very nice and they do suggest that it might be nice in wool (with longer sleeves) for cooler weather.

What delights me most, though, is that it has a really similar collar shape and front opening to my Perfect Hug capelet (photo posted yesterday). I’m not the only one liking the idea of an inverted-V shaped front opening for a little cover-up. It’s nice to know I’m not working totally in a vacuum.

I made a Perfect Hug mini-capelet with one skein of Noro Kochoran yarn, and it turned out really well. You can not tell it is much shorter than the pattern originally intended. Since it is knit top-down (in a semicircle) you can sort of just watch to see when you start running out of yarn and adjust at the end depending on how much yarn you have.

For those who have the pattern, I did 5 repeats of the dropped-stitch sequence, then I just went to garter stitch (rows 1 & 2 of the six-row repeat) and kept going without any increases or drops. I ended up with five garter ridges before my bind-off row. It made a very nice “hem” at the bottom that drapes well and looks quite nice. It’s hard to see here but the very bottom edge of the photo is the very bottom edge of the capelet. The bottom gray “stripe” is all in garter fabric.

I bet if you wanted it to meet in the front (the capelet version does not meet and that is a design feature… the other two versions in the pattern go around the body further), you could cast on for the “Bear Hug” version (the middle “size” in the pattern) and it would go around further in front but just be a little shorter in length. Since there are so many really short shoulder-warmer capelets going around these days (mostly aimed at the younger crowd) this seems a reasonable possibility.

I liked working with this yarn. It’s soft but spun a bit thick, with tons of bunny fur (angora fiber) fluffing out everywhere. I know that not everyone can tolerate angora but if you can it’s such a fuzzy luxury! It’s also very warm.

Probably this one will live in a yarn shop for a while as a sample garment, but come winter I’m sure I’ll wear it on stage when we sing. Lucky me!

OK, the title says “objects.” I finished another pair of socks, too, but the ends aren’t worked in yet and no photo has been taken. I’m really happy to have finished a few things in any case. I have been feeling really un-grounded with all the travel, and I’m doing my best to catch up and finish some things now that I’m back home for a while.
(Photo could be better but it’s what I could do with a camera balanced on a dresser, using the built-in 10-second timer…)

Saturday I taught my Perfect Hug Shawl design at Yarn Garden in Charlotte, MI. I had three students and two I had taught before in other classes. We had a lovely time knitting and learning and catching up.

Although I have never knit a Perfect Hug in any Noro (handspun Japanese, slowly-color-changing) yarn before, all four of us ended up choosing either Iro or Kochoran for our shawls. I have multiple Perfect Hug Shawls of my own and swore I would not knit along with the class. For one thing, my rule is always “do not spend more than you make” on a work day. With three students I was not going to be literally in trouble with that rule, but I *am* in the business to pay my bills so I need to be smart about what yarns/samples I buy/knit.

However, it seems to me that at least a few yarn shops have these lovely yarns and sometimes folks have a hard time deciding what to knit out of them. After all, it’s relatively thick yarn at about $20 a skein… my Kochoran is 50* wool, 30% angora and 20% silk, 160m which equals about 175yd. The original price on the label was $19.95 but Lindsay had it on sale for 50% off so it turned out to be a regular “steal” for this incredibly luxurious yarn.

The smallest version of the shawl (in the printed pattern anyway… shown here on mannequin) is called the capelet and it is designed to cover the shoulders and upper arms but to show off your lovely gown underneath in front. It reaches down to about my elbows. That version requires 210 yards according to my pattern.

I made an executive decision today to see how far I could get with one skein of the Kochoran yarn. The Noro Iro has even more yardage than the Kochoran if I remember right (I seem to remember 180m/198yd) but I think it would be really really cool to have a one-skein project out of this absolutely luxurious stuff! I figure that some capelets out there these days barely cover the shoulders, and are more of an accessory (almost a scarf) rather than a shawl. My curiosity won’t rest now until I take this idea to the limit.

My yarn is cobalt, turquoise, light charcoal and a hint of pink in one place. It is VERY fuzzy from the angora (bunny fur) which gives it real luxury. The standard capelet size in the pattern suggests that most folks will execute the six-row repeat seven times to finish. I’m already into my fourth repeat (though each repeat is on a larger number of stitches). It sure looks like I’m halfway in the ball of yarn. I am thinking this may really work out just fine.

I had other things to do this afternoon but I chose to knit. What a wonderful distraction it is. I’m very ready to be able to do something and FINISH it, in short order. It seems that everything else (including this “new” six-week old computer system) is taking forever to get settled properly. I have patterns I started weeks/months ago still waiting to be written out and sized properly. I have yarn undyed in my studio waiting for me to have a full day to devote to coloring it (and another day or two to rewind, label, photograph and post it).

A shawl that can be knit in a day or two? Yeah. My kind of project!

We have had a stretch of very very hot days. This morning it finally lifted. Now I understand we are expecting a stretch of rainy days, and surely nobody is upset by this idea right now. (The grass was positively crunchy underfoot when I watered the garden plants this week.)

I sometimes get headaches… they are not migraines but they follow me everywhere. I call them allergy headaches but they seem to be brought on by stress to my body, whether allergy or heat or worry. They tend to last 2-3 days and they slow me down a lot. Usually I can handle my public appointments and then I go home and get horizontal on the couch or hammock (or this time, the bed in the one air conditioned room in our home). Friday was day 3 and I realized I had to sleep off the headache, it finally beat me.

So I did start out my Friday off by doing a little maintenance in the kitchen, then I had a nice tea-and-knitting adventure with Sharon P/Knitknacks and went home to rest on the hammock. I wasn’t home too long before Rae asked me to accompany her on a one-hour adventure and I just had to say yes. Then instead of going out to dinner as I’d thought I might do, I went home and upstairs to the cool bedroom and took a nearly-two-hour nap. That was better than any aspirin at that point, though the aspirin surely helped a bit. Now I feel like myself again.

I woke up on Saturday to 72F degrees, the temp. we usually set the thermostat to in the winter. The temp where Brian is comfy and I put on a sweater. I won’t put on a sweater today but I’ll be back in my usual long sleeves or shawl. Terese told me yesterday she had never seen me with so much skin showing (just my arms and a scoop neck), she knows I tend to get cold when everyone else is warm. This week I was over-hot (especially Thursday when I had a lot of appointments, all on the East Side of Lansing, so I did a lot of walking in over-90F sunny weather). Today I’m back to comfy.

Here is a photo of roses I found on Tuesday night when I walked from Rae’s to Kroger, to get some groceries. The roses were outside Panera Bread at Frandor (more on the East Side), by their outdoor tables. Really beautiful, don’t you think?