This is actually a photo from a few weeks back, but it is worth sharing. To be honest, the knitting is from a few years back and I just got the photo taken this fall.

Three years ago next month, I went to East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya and Egypt… yes, Egypt is in Africa) at the invitation of my friend, Altu. She wanted to take me home (she was raised in Ethiopia though she is a US citizen now) and show me where she was from. Actually, since the government changed many years ago her parents are in a different part of the country from where she was raised, but she wanted me to see Africa.

I had a bit of a miracle, got a financial windfall just in time to say yes, and went to Africa for 38 days. That’s more than 5 weeks of no work, no obligations, nothing from my normal life. I was with people who normally do not speak English though most of them knew it quite well (to interact with me when I was the focus). However, much of the time they were chatting in their primary language about many things that did not directly concern welcoming me to their world.

I spent a lot of time watching my African friends chat and laugh, tell stories and laugh some more, and truly enjoy one another. I had a lot of time to sit, observe, and often knit.

I knit 10 pairs of socks in Africa. Most were fingering weight, many were a standard 7″ or so in leg height. Two pair were extremely fancy, at least three colors of yarn in stranded patterning, sometimes three colors in one row. One of those pairs was inspired by Ethiopian Baskets (follow link). One pair was inspired by Kenyan Gardens. (I can not seem to find a photo of these, though Terese and Altu both express love for the design with regularity.)

By the time I got to the last week of the trip, I was running out of balls of yarn which were large enough to do a solid-color pair. I determined to make a pair of footies for Altu out of most of a ball of red, and smaller balls of yellow and white. In order to maximize use of my remaining yarn, I made a striping pattern which pleased me and determined that I would use an afterthought heel.

This pair was my 107th pair that I finished knitting. To be honest, I didn’t finish working in the ends at the time, but I did finish the knitting part. The very last bit of the knitting was completed back in the USA, in January of 2005.

When I got home I decided I might like to write the pattern for these footies. I kept the socks until the time when the pattern was written. I even started writing the pattern, and then got distracted.

And the footies sat for nearly three years. Last month was Altu’s birthday and finally I worked in the twenty-plus yarn ends and presented them to her for her birthday gift.

Altu’s foot is larger than mine… I’m an extra-small and she’s closer to a large. The photo here is shown on a sock blocker that works on my foot, so it’s not properly stretched for your viewing enjoyment. I didn’t have time to fully block the socks before I met Altu for lunch that day, so this is the best view of the socks I will ever have, unless I knit another pair.

She loved them. And since she knew they were for her three years ago, I think she was relieved to know she actually got them after all this time! More finishing, you know? It feels good.

Photos: Altu’s sock; Dancers at a wedding in Mombasa, Kenya; bread delivery man on bicycle (bread balanced on head) in Cairo, Egypt; Market scene in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Africans are not afraid of color!).

This week of no appointments is turning out to be good for me. I made sure all of my patterns were up and described on Ravelry. I cleaned up a little housekeeping on my shopping cart (more needs to follow but it was a significant start). I did some dyeing (it’s cooling off slowly in the basement dye studio as I type this). And I finished a few projects.

Sometimes in this knitter’s life, there is a compulsion to start new projects. Thank goodness there is also the corresponding mood which is a compulsion to complete things. I’m in that mood right now. This is good, because I have many things up in the air and I distract easily.

I finished a larger BottleZig prototype before I left on the trip. I finished one set of cabled (!) wristwarmers in cocoa-colored washable camel/merino (from Rae’s) for a gift… then realized I needed another pair as another gift and fast.

They are essentially the same experiment twice, with slightly different cables. The ones you see here I like a little bit better, but they are both fun. I don’t knit cables often and I’m overdosed on them now for a while, but I think this yarn really is good in cables even though it’s really super fuzzy which hides a little detail. The yarn is wonderful, super soft but a bit pricey. Wristwarmers are a good use of the yarn, I got three wristwarmers out of two 50gm balls.

The first pair I finished just before I left for DC. The second pair I started while I was on the road and finished up this morning, they are still damp from blocking.

I actually also knit an unmatched pair of wristwarmers for myself in a green/magenta single-ply self-striping Diaketo I have had in stash (from Threadbear) for over a year. The colors please me but they knit up just enough different that I’m not quite sure I like how they turned out. This yarn would make a gorgeous Watercolor Bag or multidirectional scarf, but it’s a bit odd in wristwarmers.

I am quite sure I’ll do some embroidery on them to help the colors unify (they are huge unmatched stripes as they are). I have been missing embroidery for a long while, and after I got Kristin Nicholas’ Colorful Stitchery book last week I’m itching to get on with it. This will be a good project for it.

While I was in Gwen Bortner’s class at the knitting retreat a few weeks ago, we had to come up with a “stitch pattern” for an exercise she did. I was sure I would not enjoy that process (I am not really fond of purl/knit patterns, preferring stockinette in the round and colorwork of any sort over texture). I decided to go for it anyway, just because I was in class and classes are for learning and pushing past our normal boundaries.

Well, the textured stitch turned out wonderful and now finally I think I have the answer to a long-posed question. I have a bunch of Cascade Indulgence yarn… some I bought and several skeins were a gift from Rob of Threadbear a few years ago.

This yarn is so perfect, it’s alpaca and angora. We are talking soft and even softer, without the spring of wool but the drape and luxury you can’t beat. It needed the absolute perfect project so I waited for inspiration.

The textured stitch pattern I created in class looks very promising as far as my Indulgence stash. I really wanted to knit something that would replace a wonderful wrap I got in Egypt 3 years ago, which is perfect except that it’s acrylic and pilling. The texture and weight/size of it are incredible and I probably have enough of the Indulgence yarn to knit something almost as big. So now I will need to swatch to be sure. I’m very hopeful.

I think once I get that started, I will be able to lug it around as waiting-room knitting rather than socks. And now that I have a BiggieZigBag I can use as a portable project bag, I can carry it for a while before it gets too big to lug around.

What else have I finished? Hmmm… I think the biggest thing is the dyeing. I have two BurlyZigBagz being test knit right now. I will need to work on the text for the pattern this week, as well. The pattern is more of a collection than a single pattern. There will be a small bag, two bottle bags (I think), two project bags. These include three different handle types (stronger for larger bags). There are two color charts, one for smaller bags and one for larger. I find myself wishing for the symbols of music (D.S. al Coda, for example) to help me explain which sections need knitting and in what order. The structuring of the information in the pattern collection is a real challenge for me right now, maybe more than the instructions themselves.

But for now I just need to really focus on what I actually have finished. Here is a photo of my cocoa-colored camel cabled wristwarmers. Here is also a photo of my “Toe-Up Mittens” which start the same as my First-time Toe-Up Socks pattern. There is no pattern for the wristwarmers though you could adapt my current Wristwarmer pattern by adding cables to it, I think. The mitten will eventually become a pattern but for now it will be a class I am piloting at Rae’s next Thursday.

I should show you a bunch of the other things I mentioned, but I’m falling asleep at the keyboard after that long dyeing session. Trust me, I’m taking good advantage of a free week without appointments. I will have lunch with Altu on Thursday as usual, but that’s the only committment I have until next Wednesday afternoon.

Nighty-Night!

Dang. Brian reads Boing Boing and he told me there was a link to a Plastic Pocket Protector online museum listed there. I tried to Google it but the page calls it a webseum rather than museum. I found myself at a History of the pocket protector.

Apparently one Hurley Smith, born in Bellaire, Michigan, applied for a patent on a plastic pocket protector in 1943. It was granted in 1947. He was an Electrical Engineer and was living in Buffalo, New York at the time.

In 1949, he moved his family to Lansing, Michigan (my home) and started production of the Plastic Pocket Protector here. I wonder where his factory was?

Too funny. You know, I spent 6 years as a computer trainer and another approximately 4 years doing freelance computer consulting/Y2K work. When I was a trainer, my boss gave me a pocket protector for Christmas one year.

I loved it! I had been graduated into the truly geeky. I kept my whiteboard markers in it for a long time. I know I did not toss it, but I don’t know where it is right now…

Sometimes life takes a U-turn when we look the other way. It turns out that registrations worked out not as planned… I won’t be teaching at Rhinebeck next weekend as I had expected. We’ll do it another time, instead.

I found out about my schedule change while I was in DC. The truth is, I would not have gone to Stitches East/ Baltimore/ DC if I’d not expected to go to New York. I’m very glad I had the Stitches/Alison adventure and then a full lovely day with friends/family on Sunday.

The trip east was work-related but felt a lot like a vacation. (Food in any city makes me very, very happy… this time I had Chinese, Ethiopian and mideastern meals.) I slept like a baby Sunday night, found myself some great lunch on Jenny’s street Monday, and then turned my car toward home.

You know, I’m self employed. This means that I don’t get time off, I don’t get vacation time, it’s just go-go-go for the most part. Now I have 7 days where nobody expects me to do anything, no appointments at all. I’ll probably go to lunch with Altu on Thursday as we do whenever we can.

Other than that, I get to actually catch up on things I normally do not get time to do. I hope I can make myself mostly just stay locked in at home for a week and see what I can accomplish. I have felt so behind lately (especially in the pattern-writing realm) that a week is a real gift.

And I will definitely be dyeing yarn this week. Yeah! Look for details soon on that.

I will also be running a comment contest with my own handpainted yarn as the prize. More on that when I figure out exactly what the terms/prize will be. Please stay tuned!

I decided to not go back to Stitches on Sunday, but instead to spend the day with loved ones in DC. I had tea for hours, with an Ethiopian friend. Last I saw her, it was December 31, 2004, when a crowd of us went out for New Year’s Eve dinner in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We talked and talked and talked. It was so nice to see her again.

Then I adventured with Jennifer (Brian’s youngest sister, who astonishingly lives exactly 2 blocks from the friend I had tea with… I only know 2 people in DC and they are 2 blocks apart). We went to the National Museum for Women in the Arts. It’s a spiritual place for me, I get choked up every time I go there. There was an exhibit of photographs others had taken of Frida Kahlo, and some background information on her life, though no artwork by her. It was fascinating.

Afterward we met Jenny’s beau for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant on U Street at 12th. We walked from Jenny’s place and cut through the park nearby, where there was a drumming circle going on. There were dancers and all sorts of drums, and bystanders of all ages and cultures. I took a few photos which will need to be properly edited, but it was very cool just being in the middle of it all.

The meal was very good and chatted with energy the entire time we were in the restaurant. I really enjoyed my day. I fell asleep before midnight, an unusual occurrence for me. I had made a good choice of how to spend the day, it was full and satisfying.

Again, the computer does not want me to edit photos. I’m going to just post so that I can get on with my day. It’s sunny and beautiful in DC on a Monday afternoon and I’m going to take advantage of that!

Wow, that was fun! I went to Stitches East for one day, ran into my friend Sharon P/Knitknacks from Lansing, and a bunch of other fiber friends I’ve met at previous fiberart gatherings.

But the reason I came east was to see Alison Jeppson Hyde, my friend who lives in California. She wrote a book, Wrapped in Comfort, which has circular knit-from-the-neck shawl patterns… and the stories which go along with the creation of the shawl.

Alison is very relationship-focused (as am I) and her stories and shawls illustrate this facet of her very well. The shawls are very wearable, very lovely… and the stories are quite touching. Her blog is http://spindyeknit.com if you want to follow the stories of the week. She always seems to be knitting for someone else, she enjoys giving gifts very much, often as a thank you.

I was gifted with an Alison shawl Saturday. Mine is the softest baby alpaca in the purest white. It’s the original Peace Shawl (story about 9/11 in the back section of her book). I resonate with this idea. Alison knows I dye yarn and she invited me to dye the shawl. I would like to actually paint it with dye and a paintbrush. She will be sending me a little of her leftover yarn from the shawl so that I can test how the fiber takes the dye before I put any color on the finished shawl itself. This will be a joy. I am deeply honored to have an Alison original.

I couldn’t find time to actually knit for Alison so I gifted her with some tiger-dyed handpainted merino socks. They had a sort of peach and pink pattern on them, which went perfectly with the peachy-pink shawl she was wearing that day.

My new laptop has decided that it won’t let me use Photoshop today. I did get a pic of me with Alison, me wearing the shawl she knit for me (you can not believe how soft it is, and how much I feel loved wearing it). I would normally crop it for you but today you get the exact photo coming off the camera. I believe Afton took the photo… thanks!

We went to a good Chinese/asian restaurant together… Kathy, Kathleen, Alison and me. It was good, but the talk and company were better than any meal. I had a wonderful time finally meeting my friend Alison… and her childhood friends. Much fun.

I’m very creative. I’m not very organized. I love the idea of organization but I’m sadly lacking in the focus it takes to accomplish it. Today I have one full day to pack and then tomorrow I leave. For two festivals in 12 days.

I not only have to pack clothing, I have to plan food for 12 days since I can’t eat in restaurants much. I have to pack yarn and my computer/camera/palm device/cell phone. I have to have handouts for my students. I have to have polymer clay and other items for that class since knitters typically do not have polymer in their stash and do not know what to buy if they go to the store before class.

And I sit here not knowing what to do first. I have been doing laundry for a few days and I have a lot of food already in a bag. But that’s not enough food for 12 days! The B&B at Rhinebeck will feed me oatmeal each day so that is handled. I can cook a bit at my sis in law’s in DC when I’m at Stitches. I can eat sashimi at a Japanese place or a bit of Indian or African food, and I can eat salad. I get tired of paying for lettuce at a restaurant, though. Boring!

But I may not blog for a while this next 12 days. I do not know when I will get online or not. Meanwhile, please visit Lucy Neatby’s site. I adore Lucy. I saw her last this past spring(?) when she was in Old Town thanks to the Boyz at Threadbear. (Actually, I also saw her in Columbus briefly at TNNA in June.)

Lucy is a brilliant technician and a wonderful colorist/artist with yarn. She is also, thankfully, a wonderful teacher. She has a good number of excellent DVDs for all sorts of knitting techniques, which are so great! You can play them over and over until you get it, and if you forget you can go back and see it again. She is a good explainer with a great sense of humor (she always talks about a “happy and contented knit stitch).

On Lucy’s site, Tradewind Knitwear Designs, she has a “Techniques and Hints” section that is worth its weight in gold. If you find yourself visiting my blog on a day I have not posted, please consider visiting Lucy and learning a technique or two.

Photos today are of Lucy and me (and Lucy’s shoes) the day I studied double-knitting with her in Lansing early this year.

I will close with a quote from Lucy (found on one of her techniques pages):

Organization and I are not best acquainted. I fully expected a lightning strike as I wrote the word, but so far so good.

And now, if you will excuse me, the suitcases are beckoning.

The festival in New York State commonly called “Rhinebeck” (for the town where it is held) is coming right up in two weekends. (The official name is New York Sheep & Wool Festival.) I’m starting to get really excited about going!

I’ll teach and I’ll connect with folks I know from the internet, and peers in the knitting-business realm. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Kristin Nicholas will be there for sure with their books. I have not checked out what other authors will be there.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday I will be teaching Design Your Own Turkish-Style Sock, Polymer Clay for Fiber folk: Buttons, Beads, Handles and Tools, and Heels & Toes Exploration (in that order). I will be wandering the marketplace on Sunday. I’d love to meet you folks, whether in a class or outside.

The deadline for pre-registration for the classes is October 12. That’s just a few days away. If you are interested, you can check out the workshops and other goodies on the sheepandwool.com website.

I got my book Colorful Stitchery by Kristin Nicholas yesterday. I’m trying to work through my to-do list for this upcoming trip, and here is this incredibly inspiring eye candy in my hands! Her book is about embellishing with embroidery (using yarn, ribbon, embroidery floss, and probably other things I didn’t catch yet).

Here’s her books page… even if you are not going to buy, I suggest visiting the page for pure color inspiration! I did not really have time to read the book right away. I read the introduction and looked at all the photographs.

When I got to the tea cozies she had a recipe for oat scones. It was past midnight but one of the things on my to-do list is to bake things and freeze them for the trip. So I figured I was on task if I stopped everything and baked scones right then.

OK, it called for all-purpose (wheat) flour, eggs, milk and blueberries. I had to substitute for the first three ingredients, then left out the fruit and put cinnamon in there to flavor them a little. What I got was something light and crumbly and lovely… but it’s very fragile and will not freeze and pack well at all. I ate one piece last night hot out of the oven, and Brian and I had them for breakfast this morning. True luxury in the middle of a sort of over-packed week.

I love travel but I still do not do it enough to prepare and pack with grace. Once I’m on the road I do just fine, but getting ready puts me into a sort of whirlwind. Brian says I’m a “white tornado” if anyone remembers those old commercials from the late 60’s. I wish I cleaned as well and as quickly as the advertisement implied, but instead I sort of go in circles of my own. But I digress.

I love Kristin’s projects in the book. She is really about color, and she thinks of ways to stitch and things to stitch on (gift boxes, for example) that most of us would never imagine without a little help.

I love to embellish things, be it with embroidery, beads, fabric paint, fingernail polish, markers, you name it. Kristin’s book is about embellishing with “stitchery” (embroidery). It is about making textiles jump to a new level of fun, color and artfulness. Very ColorJoy indeed. You can find Kristin’s blog at http://getting-stitched-on-the-farm.blogspot.com/ and if you can not find her book in your local yarn shop (very possible since it’s not much about knitting specifically) you can order it on her new shopping cart.

Today, Kristin’s blog entry is some wonderful mohair crocheted flowers that she then embroidered to make them more colorful and interesting. They are WONDERFUL! There are also photos of the zinnias she has picked in her yard. I love her sense of color and it often shows in the photos on her blog.

You can also take a peek at some of her knitwear designs if you go to this page: http://www.kristinnicholas.com/knitwear.htm which shows that even though she does much colorwork, she does a bit with other textured/cabled knitting as well.

For two free patterns by Kristin Nicholas, visit the Knitting Daily free pattern page. Knitting Daily is an online presence from Interweave Knits (a wonderful magazine). Knitting Daily will send you emails several times a week and talk more in detail about patterns than can be put into print.

It’s worth giving the Knitting Daily folks your email address to get these great messages… my favorite of which is the ones where they take a sweater that was featured in the print magazine, and then they get real folks in the Interweave office to try it on. They tell you the measurements of a sweater and the measurements of the people trying it on, put it on folks bigger and smaller than the sweater, and let you decide if you like it snug or loose or with shorter/longer sleeves, or not at all. Very very cool.

Kristin and I have been corresponding a bit this week because I ordered my book directly from her. It turns out that she will be at Stitches East on Friday and I’ll be there Saturday and maybe Sunday. However, we will both be at Rhinebeck/New York Sheep and Wool on Sunday so I’ll get to meet her then. Good things come to those who wait.

Photos? These are some of my own embellished items. Stanley Aladdin thermos, palm device, needlefelted hat (teal/green/purple), embroidered and beaded hat (pink/turquoise), my first cellphone with fabric paint dots.

We stayed at a very nice, relatively new resort/hotel/conference center on Drummond Island for Rae’s knitting retreat last weekend. I took photos of the grounds and the buildings. Here is a shot of the grounds between the building where we had our classes (this was an older building than where we slept) and a fine restaurant. It didn’t look that fine from the outside but those who had dinner there were really pleased.

Then I have a shot of the shoreline (I’m not sure which body of water this is, I had heard we were in the center of the island so this bay confused things for me). I think it’s some sort of bay, just because the restaurant had the word Bay in its name.

The last photo today is the staircase railing in the quarters where we stayed. Rae and I each had our own double bed downstairs, and Gwen had her own single bed up in the loft at the top of this stairway. I loved the paint job and the energy of the zigzag cuts in the railing. There was mostly red paint, some warm yellow, and a small amount of sage green… all on tone set of railings. It pleased my sense of ColorJoy in all ways!

I finished teaching a three-session FTTU Sock class at Yarn Garden in Charlotte last week. Janet and Audrey did so well, they both ended up with two pairs of socks at least started.

Here is a photo of one sock per pair, unblocked, some fresh off the needles. Didn’t they do a great job?

You guys were right… the error message (yesterday) was written by someone in the Czech Republic. Clearly it’s a case of several words/phrases being mis-translated. Good catch.

No surprise, but the first day back was spent catching up. Some laundry got done, a little cooking got done (chard and taro root, it was pretty good for a first try), I printed out handouts for my computer students, taught two computer classes, stopped by my mom’s house, went to the post office (I am anxiously awaiting my copy of Kristin Nicholas’ Colorful Stitchery any day now), and cooked dinner. More laundry, catching up on email and Etsy and Ravelry correspondence.

So now it’s 1am and I need to post something. I edited three relatively easy photos (trees and sky on the trip, and pot of plants at retreat center) that are quite ColorJoy the way nature handed them to me. The sky/tree photos were taken in the car on the way back from the retreat, somewhere between Claire, Michigan and the bridge to the Upper Peninsula. The trees were breathtakingly orange from one corner of the sky to the other, or so it seemed at times. The sunset was even more pink than it seems in this photo.

I was in the back of a moving car, windows up. I think that these photos turned out a bit like an impressionist might have painted them.

More photos of the actual retreat later, again, of course. Meanwhile, I’m very tired and staying on an earlier schedule than usual will be good for me. When I teach, I can not afford to go to bed at 3am or I am too tired to do a good job. See you tomorrow, and thanks as always for your great support!

I’m home. The retreat was great. The location was beautiful, the leaves were turning bright orange, the company was good, the instruction (Gwen Bortner of Knitability) was superb. The sleep was minimal, but you can’t have everything! Of course I have photos, and of course I’m too wiped out to sit here and get them edited for you right now. Soon!

OK, so I didn’t have cell phone service or internet access from Friday morning until Sunday Night. Then I got home, plugged in the computer, and before I could even check my email, I got this error message:

I give up. I’m so tired this is extremely funny. Who could even write this statement?

To be fair, immediately after closing this message, I got a notice from the same (antivirus) program that it had checked my computer and did not find any threats. That does not make the message any less confusing, though.

It is definitely time to sleep. Maybe it will make more sense after a long rest? Maybe not.

I’m going very early (for me) in the morning on retreat with Rae’s Yarn Boutique. I’m working for Rae this weekend, helping register and otherwise settle in the event. When I’m not needed, I am allowed to attend the workshops.

Gwen Bortner of Knitability is our instructor for the weekend. We have three workshops in all, things I would not normally study. This means I will stretch a bit and this is good. I am very focused in the areas I love and I tend to have a bit of tunnel vision (color, color, color, fiber, color).

This weekend we are talking texture and “stitch patterns” for part of the time. This is not an area I work with very much. We will at some point be doing the numbers of knitting… and then Sunday is color, some methods of which I’m very experienced in and some I expect will be new. All good.

I’m also happy to be meeting and spending a weekend with Gwen. We know one another from the internet but this will be our first meeting in person. I think we are both working at Rhinebeck in a few weeks, as well. Maybe I’m at Rhinebeck and she’s at Stitches East, but I’ll see her again on my eastern trip in October, again, twice in a month.

It is supposed to be glorious summery weather in Lansing for three days… partly sunny and upper 80’s, my favorite weather in the world. Up at Drummond Island (the eastern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, nearly throwing distance from Canada) it is supposed to be lower 70s and rainy. Drat. I guess a bit of gloom outside will make us more content to stay indoors and learn, anyway!

In Lansing the colors are turning in earnest the last few days. The photo today is from September 2005. You see, I’m typing this with my old laptop while the new one backs up so I can take it north with me. I can get to this photo easily right now!

My goal has always been to make 28 posts per month. It may be that October will see me a little short on that goal. I will be back Sunday night, in any case. Have a pleasant weekend, no matter what your weather and location.