Business: Yarns for Sale

Finally, some business to post. I have added a small handful of yarns to my shopping cart tonight.

I am trying a new yarn which holds much promise. It is a worsted-weight, soft 100% wool which felts well. I am excited about this yarn which I am currently calling Funky Felty Worsted.

I knit a 4×4 (10cmx10cm) square swatch, and I felted it until it was quite dense (I did this by hand because of time restrictions). I ended up with a soft, mildly fuzzy but not hairy, dense fabric which then measured 3×3 inches. That comes out to 75% of the original size, or a 25% reduction if you measure it that way. I could have stopped earlier if I chose, it would still have been felted but not as dense. Photo top right.

I would like to create patterns for this feltable yarn at some point, probably bags. However, we all know that I’m behind on the patterns I have already started writing so that needs to go on the “B” list for now.

Meanwhile, I can at least say that I have also felted this as a two-color stranded knitting piece (with Nashua Creative Focus Worsted alpaca/wool) and it worked out very well. It was quite nice as a multicolored yarn with a darker solid. Very nice. For some reason, that sample is hiding somewhere in my studio and I can’t photograph it for you today.

I also have two colors of Tip-Toe Sockyarn in my “Pond” series. I have Cool Pond and Spring Pond available right now (Dark Pond already sold out, quietly, before I announced it).

They were dyed in the same session so they would be lovely together in one project. In this case, each has three colors applied to it and two of the dye colors are shared between the skeins. (I am dreaming of shawls, also for spare time.) Spring Pond is at lower right.

And there are finally a few new half-pound skeins of Cushy Colorsport (washable merino DK, fabulous for baby things), in Seaside colorway. This is my most popular colorway, in my signature yarn. Rae is making a Baby Surprise Jacket in this very yarn, right now. Photo is at left.

Pleasure: Comment Contest/Inspiration?

OK, and so that there is something to say while the comment contest continues… please consider telling us where you go when you desire inspiration or an artful day. For example, I might walk alone to a restaurant and watch/listen to those around me, perhaps observing colors, clothing, or how folks interact. I may write a poem or knit swatches.

I might go to the farmer’s market and see what vegetables are currently in season, and dream of good home-cooked food. I might go to another city and spend time at an art museum. I might listen to a CD by a friend, or a radio station I do not know well.

So what do you do… or what do you wish to do for inspiration when you need a boost?

You guys are the best. Dozens of comments made my birthday wonderful. I was gone most of the day and I’ll be gone most of Thursday. I have tons of photos but no time to process them for web, will do that when I finally sit at my desk again.

Meanwhile, I want to do a freeform brainstorm (woohoo, that rhymes, it’s a good sign). Since I’m asking for comments, I want to make it easy for you to write a few words in a comment box and send it my way.

OK: Think of the concept of ColorJoy… not only the word, but the motto “Art as an everyday attitude.” Now, tell me what word, song, poem, quotation comes to mind most strongly as you think ColorJoy? You might, for example, respond with a song title such as “Born to be Wild” or “Born Free” or “Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” You might say “Freedom” or “belly laugh” or “serenity.” You might make up your own sentence, to be quoted by others. Or you might quote Carrie Fisher:

I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.

Ready, set, go! Remember, you can comment once a day for a week, and it’s not cheating to do just that. Actually, just saying hello is all it takes, you can ignore the subject of the day if it does nothing for you.

Photo? At right is my Grandma Ruthie, the one who wrote the local newspaper every week, pretty much alone. She was still single in this photo, I believe, but her kids were in High School at the time they bought the newspaper. (The photo was taken in the same era as the music Brian and I sing, the 1920’s.)

Can you see how even though she’s the shortest one, the other girls are focused in on Ruthie? You can not see that there are other women in the photo at the left (this has been cropped) and they are also focused on Ruth. She was quite a presence. I miss her. She loved to laugh!

I think these girls took costuming seriously as an artform. They were a bit wild, bobbed hair was a new thing then.

Some of you have asked… Today (Wednesday, November 28) is my birthday. I’m 49 today… I’m not quite sure how I got here but I’m delighted to be.

For the record, I do have a nice healthy stripe of gray/silver hair. And I love every strand… I earned them the hard way and am glad to have learned those lessons, glad to be where I am today.

Today is also the 5th anniversary of this ColorJoy blog. On my birthday in 2002 (it was Thanksgiving Day), I gave myself the gift of a blog. I was committed to posting often. Later I got specific (my goal is 28 posts a month, most months I do better than that). I know that I am grateful for the blogs that are reliably ready with a new post every time I visit. I wanted to be reliable myself.

My Grandma Ruthie wrote every word of the tiny local paper every week, Grandpa Oscar printed it. Also my Grandma Illa wrote a column for a four-state magazine aimed at farmers and their families, and became quite popular from that. My uncle OT owned a newspaper, and my father had a PhD in Journalism and was a professor of Communications.

Therefore, It is in my blood to be interested in this sort of thing. I do consider my blog to be “my column” and I write with that as a guiding principle. I try to write in at least some way like a journalist, though I have little training in that field (middle school newspaper was a long time ago). I have always wanted a column, and now I have one.

OK… so here’s the plan. I am celebrating my blogiversary with a contest. I will have prizes. The prizes will be yarn, for the most part, but you can choose a Fabulous Heftones “In the Garden” music CD instead. I know I have a few readers from my music/dance worlds, and a few family members pop by who do not knit. I will not leave you out!

In the next week, until 1:00 am Eastern Time (like New York City) next Wednesday, December 5, I will count comments. Each person can comment once per post. This means if I post twice in a day you can comment twice in a day, though I don’t know that I’ll do that.

At that point I will randomly choose winners from a hat, one piece of paper per comment you left. I’m not looking for cleverness… just a hello. If you have never posted before, this is your chance to break the ice.

I will give away at least three prizes. They may be yarn I dyed, or yarn I purchased (it will be nice in either case), probably with a pattern that will work with the yarn. Perhaps I will choose some other fibery gift I have not thought of yet.

I honestly do not know what it will be as I type this, though I am thinking about it carefully. The goal is to have you love it.

Do please say hello. There is no need to leave a long, carefully-written response, a short hello will do. Do not feel you need to apologize for not leaving one sooner if you have not. If you have any trouble leaving a comment, write to me in an email… to Lynn AT colorjoy DOT com (replacing AT and DOT with the proper symbols, and removing spaces). Tell me what the problems were like, I want to know.

Ready, set… go!

(Photos? My birthday last year, complete with Birthday Pie and interesting clown candle, thanks to creative Mom Liz. And photos of possible prizes or something on the order of the prizes.)

These photos are late chronologically. However, they fit in this blog based on my assertion that food can be art, either to look at or to the taste buds, even both on the right day.

On Thanksgiving morning, I had plans. I made my semi-famous “brown pancakes” which are wonderful (and gluten/wheat/corn/egg free, etc… recipe here).

I even had a very special treat lined up. I found frozen organic strawberries and organic egg-free, corn-syrup-free vanilla ice cream, the day before, at Foods for Living. I thawed the berries and added some brown sugar. I put strawberries and a small amount of ice cream on the pancakes, and we enjoyed them thoroughly.

I had not eaten any strawberries since spring, after an allergic reaction to peaches and advice to consider giving up fruit if I was experiencing hives. Well, I probably will not be eating peaches again but after some tests at a new allergist a few weeks back I was given permission for cherries and strawberries. Woohoo! My favorites are peaches and raspberries, but any fruit is a real gift at this point…

Also, I had not had even soy/artificial ice cream in months. To discover that milk/cream are OK for me (when yogurt and cheese are not) was another gift. I was truly Thankful. Yum!

But that was only one brunch meal, and we would need more food sometime. We had eaten our takeout on Wednesday Night… I’d planned it for Thursday but we changed our plans. So I looked in the freezer.

The week previous, Brian had cooked Cornish game hens in the crockpot as a gift to me (any time he cooks instead of me, I really appreciate fully). We had eaten one but frozen the other.

So I thawed that tiny bird and we made spinach salads. I found a beautiful red bell pepper and some very nice olive oil as salad dressing, and some coarsely-ground black pepper. It made a refreshing Thanksgiving dinner.

Brian likes pie and I did not feel like making any… but I had purchased all the ingredients to make them. I showed him where I put my own personal no-egg, no-milk pumpkin pie recipe. I dug out the few odd ingredients he would have had trouble finding, and he made pumpkin pie. What a partner he is to me!

Then when I pulled the pies out after the buzzer sounded, I got a surprise. He put faces on the pies before baking them. I think they look a lot like “Tubby Toast” in the TV show Teletubbies. I may be the only person over 2 years old who loves this show, but Brian gets it that I do, so he gave me a smiley face. Also I always can use a reminder to smile, I can get SO intense sometimes.

I have so many things to be thankful for every day. Brian is at the top of the list, by far. I have not always been this happy and he is like the whipped cream on top of my otherwise good life, making it even better.

And the internet? I love all of you reading this, and the relationships we can build here even without meeting physically in the same building. How cool is that? My relationships, with Brian and my family, my loved ones not in my family… well, that is the best wealth of all. Thank you for being part of my life.

I will be quite occupied Monday so I am blogging photos today. Brian and I took a walk on Thanksgiving day, last Thursday. It snowed the night before, for the first time (at least the first where it stuck).

The neighborhood was almost like a ghost town, no cars driving around at all. With the snow on the ground, sounds were muffled. We could hear the swishing of cars on the main roads on the west and east of our neighborhood, but things were very silent in our corner of the world.

This tree is in our side yard. I think it is interesting how we can see the actual colors of a tree trunk when the snow makes the green grass unimportant, and the wet bark intensifies what colors are there. Lichen and moss are really beautiful colors of green.

The larger-view neighborhood photo is one block from our house. When all the maple trees turn color, they are blazing orange and the yellow trees seem less than interesting. However, at this time of year, the few remaining red and yellow leaves (and those on the ground, which finally fell when it finally froze hard overnight) become very interesting on their own merits. They are particularly nice if both in the same view.

Thanksgiving need not be a single day. Tell someone you love them today, OK?

I’m still knitting legwarmers. I knit on this one all day at Altu’s on Saturday, and folks were guessing what it was. Usually they guessed right, but since the ribbed design is so springy, they look more like a sleeve than something that would fit on a leg.

Here is one sad photo for you, but at least on my monitor the color looks right on. It’s a subtle (grayed/low-chroma) combination of darker colors with blue undertones. There are two purples, one more blue (grape) and one more red (plum) and then a tiny bit of blue between colors, and a nice scattering of a teal which really gives it some depth. (This might be the “pop” color, for those who heard my talk on color last Tuesday at the knitting guild.)

This yarn was a gift. Huge gift. I am showing the one legwarmer, as it was on Saturday morning before I went to Altu’s. On the left is another skein (half pound) waiting to become the second legwarmer. AND I own yet another skein of the same stuff, which will become something but I don’t know what yet. There will no doubt be a little leftover from each legwarmer, too.

They are really long enough, right now. If I measure them flat, they are 34 inches. I want them to be 24 inches high on my leg, but I want that to include a 3 inch folded-over cuff at the top and a bunch of scrunchy/slouchy extra fabric around my ankles. If I wear them right now, they are tall enough with the cuff but no scrunch. I am *very* close. Then I need to knit the second one. Sigh…

What I like about this colorway for these huge/warm legwarmers, is that they are subtle enough and not solid-colored (solid is so hard to wear with other colors), that I will probably be able to wear them with a lot of things. In the garment world, they get a lot of use out of “this will go with everything” but they say it about black and beige for the most part. Yawn, not my thing. But a grayed-out, mostly-purple with lots of bits of other related colors? Oh, yeah! Goes with everything in *my* closet.

Brian told a friend of ours that purple is “Lynn’s beige.” He’s right.

Sometimes at the ballet, at the beginning of the show they will announce that a different dancer will be playing this or that role instead of the one listed in the program. This is my version of that announcement.

Mike Ross regrets that he will not be able to join the Altu’s 10+1 Year Anniversary festivities today. We will miss him, he has been such an enthusiastic part of our musical family. In fact, usually when I need a last-minute sub, Mike is the first one to say yes.

However, we have exciting news… Drew Howard (AKA Captain Midnite) will fill in, from 1pm to 1:35. We are more than delighted that Drew is able to be with us. This will be his first show at Altu’s (unless he sat in with someone), though he’s been in the music biz for a really long time.

Drew & I are about the same age but I’m a definite newbie next to this veteran. He was probably born with an instrument in his hands. This substitute is no slouch. And let me tell you, he wasted no time getting back to me to say that yes, he could help out.

I love being in Lansing. This town is full of artful friends, and I am really feeling the love right now. I had a few other possible replacements in the wings, but Drew called me back first… We would not have been left stranded under any circumstances.

Get well, Mike. We’ll sing a few for you. (Mike is now scheduled for a 6:30-8:30 slot on Sat., December 29, don’t miss it.)

Photo: Drew at right, backing up none other than our evening performer, Jen Sygit. Photo was taken at the RicStar Music Camp Benefit in late September of this year.

My friend Altu’s restaurant is celebrating the 10+1 year Anniversary of the restaurant Saturday Nov. 24. I am very excited because we have a full day of events, including music from seven acts including The Fabulous Heftones (me and hubby Brian).

She also will be repeating an Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony from 11:30-4pm. In addition, there will be special snack foods available at no cost. If you are more hungry than that, the regular menu will be available all day long.

There will be a short lull from 4pm to dinnertime. Then at 6:30-8:30 we will have none other but the incredible Jen Sygit as our musical headliner.

Jen just got back from a tour out to Boston, she’s a big name even though she’s a Lansing resident. Do not take this talent for granted!

I am very excited to have Jen at Altu’s this weekend!

Here is the musical lineup:

• 11:30 Doug Berch
• 12:15 The Fabulous Heftones
• 1:00 Mike Ross
• 1:45 Phil Wintermute
• 2:30 Measured Dose
• 3:15 Hall and Morgan

And from 6:30-8:30,

Jen Sygit!

If you are out and about at all in the Lansing, Michigan area on Saturday, November 24, please take the time to stop by and say hello. I will be there the entire time we have musicians in the house.

If you have not been to Altu’s before, it is on Michigan Avenue (click for map), the last building in East Lansing. Facing it from the street, it is on the right side of The Dollar, tucked back behind a small parking lot.

At Altu’s, the food is great, the welcome warm, the music lively. Please join us in this celebration.

Disclaimer: Altu is my dear, dear friend. She took me to Africa three years ago this week. I took the photo of the coffee ceremony in December of 2004, in Gondar, northern Ethiopia. It’s the real thing, folks.

I line up the music at Altu’s restaurant and I do her website/publicity and her menus. Not on payroll, for hugs and food and occasional chances to perform there myself. The only real economic gain I might have from this announcement is possible tips if you came while I was singing.

So do humor me, come on by, and have a great time while I know I spent my time well… see you then!

Thanks to Howlin’ Hobbit of Ukulele and All That Jazz, I laughed a bit as I was trying to get my day started. Quite a bit, actually.

There is a website called Improv Everywhere which I’d never heard of before. I can’t speak about Improv Everywhere other than this one project I just checked out. I’m guessing I would not be all wrong to say they create performance art events. This is what their website says:

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 70 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.

Apparently in NYC, the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store has a shirtless store greeter, a model at the front door. They also use “well-sculpted” shirtless men in their promo images (I don’t watch TV or shop at malls, and mostly stay out of the “cool” media stuff so I did not know their shirtless image until I came across this event).

Well, Improv Everywhere assembled 111 guys in NYC (mid-October 2007) who were willing to take their shirts off in public. They went to the Abercrombie and Fitch store and at a particular time they all took their shirts off, and went around the store shopping for shirts.

In the end they were told they had to leave. Two shirtless guys attempting to buy $45 shirts were forced to leave before their purchases were completed.

Of course, management and security didn’t enjoy the event, but apparently at least a few of the employees enjoyed it quite a bit. The shirtless guys had quite an experience as well. This could perhaps have been predicted.

On this blog I talk about art being a much broader thing than paintings in frames on the wall at a museum. In this case, it was performance art/improv. I found it very funny.

If it sounds amusing or interesting to you, check out the link to No Shirts at Improv Everywhere and check it out yourself. There are several videos which make the concept more real (I do not enjoy videos as a rule, yet I am very happy I watched them all)… and there are a few flickr photo sets you can view as well.

Or not. This one is guaranteed to only intrigue a percentage of you. It made me laugh out loud enough times that it was worth blogging.

Yes, I’m still knitting… the first ribbed legwarmer. It’s long enough to be a normal one but I want it to be really really long… so I’m still knitting. I did not seam anything yesterday, though. Sigh…

Today (Thanksgiving Day) I awoke to a small dusting of snow here, just enough to cover the blah gray colors of the last several days. The sun has managed to get some light through the cloudcover, and with the snow on the ground there is much light reflecting through the air today. The lack of light this week has rendered me grumpy and I am grateful for light this Thanksgiving day.

I’m sitting in the living room with laptop on my lap. There are windows on my left and right, and straight ahead. In this small room there are five old-fashioned, tall windows and a door with eight small panes of glass in it. I am more aware than usual of how I live in a sort of climate bubble, protected from the elements by a few thin walls and a good furnace. I’m grateful.

I am still waking up. I have a different schedule than the rest of the world (I am awake approximately 10:30am to 2:30am) and I do not jump start quickly when I get vertical first thing. Brian can wake up and run a sprint the next minute, but I barely know my name for a couple of hours. A cup of tea and some internet reading is the right way to start slowly, when at all possible.

I am drinking in this reflected sunlight… no sunbeams but real light just the same. Brian is playing ukulele in the chair across from me and I’m alternately knitting on my legwarmer and typing (sometimes my computer stops responding to even mouse clicks until I wait 10 seconds, it is so frustrating that I knit before trying again).

But I thought I’d give you a recipe for Thanksgiving. These are very pleasing to me. They are not standard-issue pancakes at all, but they have a lovely texture.

Depending on which spices you choose, they can have a different character. If you use orange juice to make the baking soda rise, try nutmeg and allspice. if no juice, consider cinnamon and cloves. Or try a combination I have not suggested, if it sounds good to you.

I like whole grain foods and have not had white bread or standard all-purpose wheat flour for several years. These pancakes have a strong, pleasant, sort of caramel flavor if you ask me. Brian swears that buckwheat tastes a bit like chocolate, but I can not quite understand that assertion. It could be a good thing, if you agreed!

One note… Teff grain is eaten in Ethiopia and nearly nowhere else, from what I can determine. It is a tiny grain with little room for starch… it’s very high in protein and fiber. If your area has an African grocery you can try there, but Africa is a huge place with many cultures and you still may come up empty handed. In my city we have an amazing asian market which also has African foods, and I can get Teff flour there in larger bags. I also can get the Bob’s Red Mill brand in smaller bags at the two health food grocery stores. If you want to try the pancakes right away and have no teff flour, try some rice flour instead, which works but is a second choice for texture and flavor, as well as nutrition. Buckwheat does not work well alone.

Tasty Brown Pancakes by LynnH

Vegan
Celiac-Friendly
No gluten
No wheat
No dairy
No egg
No soy
No peanuts/tree nuts
No potato
No corn
No yeast
Yummy!

1 cup Whole-grain buckwheat flour (I use Arrowhead Mills, some other brands require less water)

1/2 c Teff flour (not teff grain, get from Bob’s Red Mill if not avail. locally) Sub brown rice flour in a pinch

3 Tbsp Brown sugar (or maple sugar, or white sugar in a pinch)

1/2 tsp cinnamon if tolerated

dash Nutmeg and/or
dash Allspice and/or
dash Cloves if tolerated

1 tsp Baking soda

1 package Emergen-C -OR-
1 tsp Cream of tartar -OR-
1/2 tsp Powdered vitamin c (corn free) -OR-
1 Tbsp Citrus juice

3 Tbsp Oil (I use olive oil, use your favorite)

1-3/4c Water (slightly less if you used citrus juice)

Preheat griddle on low before starting to mix ingredients.

Place all dry ingredients in mixing bowl and blend with wire whisk. Add wet ingredients and blend again with whisk, only until dry ingredients are wet. Let sit for at least 2 minutes while you turn up the heat on your griddle to medum-high. These pancakes require a slightly lower temperature than standard wheat pancakes.

Stir lightly one last time before cooking. Make relatively small pancakes, about 4″/10cm across, using a small measuring cup to pour onto the griddle. Turn when edges start to look a bit dry. Remove when browned on second side.

Serve hot off the griddle with real maple syrup or your favorite topping. I have enjoyed hot applesauce with cinnamon, or try spiced pumpkin butter for an autumn treat.

Makes approx. 2 dozen pancakes.

Enjoy, and be Thankful for whatever good you’ve got. Some years are easy, some harder, but being alive is a wonderful thing.

Three Holidays in One

A few weeks ago my family had what we call Thanks-Christmas. We gathered at my mom’s home for a simple rhubarb crisp dessert and the company of one another. Actually we also celebrated my birthday early.

This year we finally said that gifts are absolutely optional. Mom and Fred, Brian and I did not do gifts other than hugs.

Eric and Diana chose to give small food gifts. They gave Brian a small pie from a well-regarded bakery in Ann Arbor, I got some very nice tea, Fred got some nuts, and I don’t remember what Mom got. I think it’s particularly wonderful that some gave and some didn’t and it was just plain right, just the way it was.

I think that in our family we have been through so much loss, that we are really clear about what matters to us (and it isn’t stuff, though we all have plenty). We love the fact that we are still together and that we enjoy one another so much.

Mom was widowed at 38, Eric at 30. Fred has also been widowed. Diana and I have been through difficult marriages with subsequent divorces. Brian is the only one who has not had a significant loss yet.

So on a holiday when we all can be in the same house, all pretty darned happy and relatively on the healthy scale, we celebrate our togetherness. This is as it should be. Gratitude and relationship are what the winter holidays mean to me.

This Week’s Holiday

This week for Thanksgiving, I had planned to get food at Altu’s Restaurant on Wednesday Night. Then I’d take it home to the refrigerator and heat it up the next day, for just the two of us. I figured I would be thankful for not having to cook.

Well, when I ordered the food over the phone I was not very clear that I wanted all the different foods in separate containers for reheating later. When I got there, the dinners were ready to go, hot and ready to eat right then.

This initiated a change in plans. I went home and made a big pot of organic green tea, and Brian and I ate our Thanksgiving Dinner. On Wednesday night at about 8:30pm.

We had spicy chicken, mild split yellow peas and creamy mild lima beans. After all, it was ready to go and it would not have been quite as nice the next day (the Ethiopian sourdough flat bread doesn’t heat up that well after being refrigerated, though it does well on the counter).

A Big Treat

I don’t know right now what we’ll have for dinner on Thanksgiving day. I know we will have pancakes and strawberries for brunch. This will be enough for me to be thankful for a while.

I had a bunch more allergy tests Tuesday and they pronounced me not allergic to strawberries (strawberries are a difficult food for a lot of food-allergic folks). I have been avoiding all fruit after bad experiences with bananas and peaches. I bought some organic frozen berries today, and we will put those on pancakes.

A few weeks ago the allergist also declared that I was not allergic to milk itself. I am having trouble with yogurt and cheese (cultured foods are generally a problem). I have not tested this theory yet, but Thanksgiving seemed a good time for it.

I found some ice cream that didn’t have any ingredients I can’t eat, a small miracle. I will cook pancakes, and put strawberries and ice cream on them, and it will be a VERY. BIG. DEAL. Enough to be thankful for, for sure!

We’ll see if I do well in reality… tests can be off, but it is exciting to have the permission to try. If I slow down to a crawl after eating the ice cream, I will just take a nap and not worry about it for one day. I do not have to work for 24 hours.

Let Us Hear it for the Freezer!

We have some food in the freezer that is very tasty and we may thaw that, so we won’t have to cook much tomorrow. I do not like making dinner-type foods, though I don’t mind baking or breakfast.

Less is more. Maybe oven-roasted root veggies (we have rutabagas and sweet potatoes). Those are a big treat, because they take preparation time and “babysitting.” That sort of attention and time to cooking normally is too much bother when I get home after 8pm and still need to make dinner.

Oh, Yeah… this is an Art Blog

Knitting? I’m working on the super-tall ribbed legwarmers I started a few days ago. Though the colors are very muted, they are absolutetly gorgeous. It will take a LOT of yarn and a LOT of stitches to finish these, but with bulky yarn it’s going faster than if it were thinner yarn.

I am really enjoying the yarn I’m using. It is very wooly, very springy and traditional, a little scratchy but just plain perfect for ribbed legwarmers that should not fall down. They will be very warm. And the colors are so good… a purple-blue, a plum, grape, and dark teal green. Really subtle but sort of like light reflecting on  a rippled pond, lots of colors in small bits.

These will be very usable legwarmers. Not flashy or super-colored like the ones I talked about yesterday, but I bet I will wear these ten times for every one time I wear the extra-colorful ones.

I had the fortune today of running into the knit friend who gave me the yarn. I showed her my project and that felt great. The yarn has been waiting for over a year, for me to figure out what it wanted to be. This is truly a perfect project for it.

And I really hope I get out the sewing needle to finish a few wool knit items tomorrow. Wish me well.

Photos? Well, one is clearly my pseudo-famous “brown pancakes” made with buckwheat and teff flour (sans strawberries).

Two are some yarn choices made in my Kristi Wrap/Party Stole class at Rae’s last Saturday, and last is a baby-sized Fast Florida Footie (without purled stitches on the sole) from Sunday’s class also at Rae’s.

The yarn choices were made after we had a color discussion something like yesterday’s post. Then we piled so many yarns on the table it almost would not hold them, and switched yarns in and out to choose. Between two students we ended up with three projects planned out. (Can you see that I can help with colors even when they are not those I wear personally?) We had a wonderful time!

Just for the record, I’ve seen the sun for maybe 45 seconds in the last two days, total. It is gray and miserable as Lansing gets this time of year. Awful. Definitely, color is the antidote to the blues which are trying to creep in to my mood at every possible moment.

A Speaking Engagement

I was honored tonight to be the speaker for our Mid-Michigan Knitters’ Guild meeting. I was allowed to pretty much propose my own topic and I chose (no surprise) color. I have been teaching classes for several years, in many venues (yarn shops, festivals, libraries, and now the guild) about using color, combining yarns and the like. Tonight I got to teach a big group, a couple dozen folks or more.

I love teaching so much, and this group was full of friendly, familiar faces. It was wonderful. No matter when I teach this subject (or a pattern which benefits from this information) I find that others just have not spent their lives obsessed with color, as I have. Old news to me is new news to many.

Much to Say

Somehow I said most of what I had wanted to say, even though it seems that a fraction of an hour can’t possibly be enough. We talked about combining different yarns that don’t match in brand/fiber, and we talked about how solid colors are very hard to match (yarn to buttons is only one example). I showed several examples which I think may have helped folks picture what I was talking about. I showed a few books (Styles by Sally Melville, which is my favorite on this subject, and a Horst Schultz book that Lisa had brought with her).

We talked about using one single (usually darker) color as a unifying element to other items. The Melville book is a great place to see how well this can work. I also showed a sweater I own and the legwarmers I made for the Dallas/Ft-Worth Fiberfest fashion show.

One Project as an Example

Those legwarmers are made in stranded knitting (sometimes called “fairisle”) which uses two colors in the same row. In that pair I used four turquoises/teals, four hot pinks, two hot greens, a yellow and a purple.

In that project I used superwash wool, silk/wool blends, alpaca/silk blend, and an angora blend, and perhaps others. The yarns were many different textures and structures (some plied, some chained, some brushed) but they look great together. I made them thinking of Turkish Socks, where they use bits and pieces of leftover yarns.

Color Language

I talked about color as having *three* elements. We often say “light blue” or “dark green” but that just gives value (light to dark) and hue (blue, green, red). However, there is another part to color, and it’s called chroma (or saturation, or intensity). That is whether the color is really “hot” or intense, or whether it’s muted and subtle. Muted comes from adding gray (or sometimes black or white) to the base color.

For those who knit, you might imagine the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino yarns, they are all somewhat muted though some are more than others. They all go together well. These are a lower chroma set of colors, all containing some subtle level of gray to mute and soften. (Martha Stewart also tends to use grayed tones in her interior spaces).

For those who read here often or who know me in “real life,” you know I choose colors for the most part which have no gray. Subtle is not in my palette. I look good in saturated/high chroma colors with blue undertones. (Those who assign color groupings to skin/hair/eye color call me a winter, though I’m not a typical dark hair/pale skin Sleeping Beauty winter.) For me, ColorJoy is electric, no gray at all.

Ways to Begin

I discussed color groupings. How one way to start is to find a multicolored yarn in colors you love, and work with those colors.

Another way is to pick a corner of the color wheel… for example, turquoise/ blue/ purple, such as my yarn colorway called Seaside (see photo). Our eyes enjoy seeing colors which belong in the same “neighborhood.” This type of grouping (remember the 70’s and green/ blue/ purple or yellow/ orange/ red) is called an “analogous” color scheme.

However, once we get better at choosing color, using one contrast not from that corner can make the whole item “pop” with interest. If you choose magenta/purple/blue and then you accent the piece with hot green, it is likely to give it depth and life you can not access with analogous colors alone.

This grouping (with the contrast) is called “analogous variety.” The photo here with turquoise/blue/purple ribbons and mohair has a “pop” of yellow-green, for example. I wish the photo were better at proving this point, but the background behind the knitted fabric is also hot yellow-green so it is hard to see how much “punch” that extra color provides.

I will be teaching more about combining color at the guild retreat in February. I will, in particular, have us swatch a number of stitch patterns that blend colors well for items not necessarily dressy. I’m hoping that folks will see that they can use these color-combining concepts for hats, sweaters, scarves… and use normal yarns, not just fancy ones…

There will always be more to say about color. For now I’m off to dreamland.

Well, in my very-long post the other day, where I posted photos of me wearing colorful garb… you sure noticed dress #1. It’s worth a chat because it was SUCH a find!

This dress I found on an adventure to Grand Rapids, Michigan, I think in June this year… I started a long post on that day which included three different areas of Grand Rapids, and never finished it.

Brian & I were in GR for a family gathering. We decided to go early and hit both a funky part of town (East Town) and a beautiful park (for the Water Festival which deserved its own post). In the funky part of town is City Knitting, a really fine shop I had not visited before… and a very nice Indian restaurant which unfortunately was closed that time of day.

But we were there during a street festival, so not only did we visit the knit shop and look for food, we shopped. And I found a booth that was not only resale (clothing), but very fine funky multicultural resale.

And I ended up with a lightweight cotton embroidered dress from India, and three dresses from Hawaii, approximately 1970-73 if I can tell from the fabrics. (I remember that era well… I was young but I was IN LOVE with the styles).

The dress here was pretty incredible… the tag inside indicates it was from a tailor rather than a clothing line, and it says Hawaii. The inside of the dress has details that really look as though it was handmade to order. And the dress perhaps had been worn once and then dry cleaned, or maybe never worn at all.

As far as I can tell, someone went to Hawaii on vacation and had something made for them as a souvenir, then never wore it. I got another dress that is very different in style (probably a few years later) but the same size, which I’m guessing was also from the same person’s wardrobe.

I could not believe I could actually wear this thing… and it fits me as though it was tailored for me! The woman selling these items was not only delighted that I bought so many dresses but that they fit so perfectly and that I clearly loved them for their history as well as their style.

I can’t believe my luck. We had been to a wonderful, much larger clothing sale in NYC in April and I found wonderful things but none of them fit. Here I went home with four items. One does need a good deal of alteration but the others were perfect as they were.

And for those of us who love clothing, who find costuming ourselves an everyday artform… well, a find like this is something we remember always. That dress waited for me. I’m pleased as punch!

By the way, I’m clear the pose is artificial, I was trying to imitate Twiggy. In the era when this dress was made, Twiggy was *the* model especially for anything geared to girls of my age. Someone bought me a subscription to Seventeen Magazine during that time frame and I drank in all the styles that were clearly too big-city for me to find them in my town.

Twiggy was always photographed as though she was on her way somewhere, legs always looking in motion. I’m not Twiggy (and this photo was taken with a timer, no photographer behind the camera) but it sure was entertaining to pose like her in the garden (on a very, very hot day).

Restless

I have recently been juggling a good number of knitting projects. None are for me. Mind you, I knit because I love to wear knitted wool items. I knit because I enjoy knitting wool items for myself. Right now, I have a few gifts, a pair of socks in my purse for Brian (for waiting in line knitting) and a few work-related projects. Nothing for me, not even bulky footie-slippers which would take no time and make me smile.

Of course you know where I’m going with this. Today I realized that I really am hungry to just make something for myself. The kind of thing which brought me to knitting in the first place!

I realize that if I balance that project for me with other things, it’s OK for me to do some selfish knitting. I am really in favor of selfish knitting as a concept, for those of us who love knitting in the same way I do. Some people always knit for charity and that satisfies them. I’m talking of satisfaction here. Sometimes I need to knit for me, sometimes others. I need both to feel satisfied.

Brrrr

On top of that, today was a really cold and gray Lansing day. A really typical winter day, with cloud cover and chill, and a small breeze. Ugh. I wore a good sweater and turtleneck, even legwarmers, a beret (indoors), wristwarmers and thin wool socks. I needed longjohns and taller legwarmers.

So I got home tonight, wrapped up in good Ethiopian cotton blankets (they are amazing, four layers of handspun, handwoven cotton) and took a nap. I got all toasty, and started scheming for some legwarmers.

Plans for Warmth

I took a look in the stash. I needed a big chunk of yarn that would work to make some very tall and warm legwarmers without sweating bullets that I’d run out. I found a pound and a half of Cherry Tree Hill 14-ply New Zeeland handpainted wool yarn (bulky) which was a gift a year or two ago. The colorway name is Blueberry Hill, I think, it’s sort of purply-blueberry and grape with plums and a bit of dark teal. It’s subtle but deep and will work well with much of my clothing.

This is good, traditional, sproingy wool. Waaaarm wool. Just the thing! I cast on.

I have sooo much of this yarn that I can knit and knit and knit and knit, and make legwarmers all the way to the upper thigh. It does help that I’m short and have slender legs. However, even in 2×2 ribbing and the tallest possible height, I will not need to worry about running out of wool this time. And it was already in stash, not a single hit to the budget.

I do have a legwarmer pattern in the works, but it is not this one. Making legwarmers that fit from thigh to ankle are necessarily a very personal thing, and I doubt I could specify sizes that would work in something as generic as a pattern.

Legwarmers for All

The pattern will be more standard-length and call for worsted-weight yarns. This also means that they won’t be as bulky (people who don’t wear legwarmers all the time often complain about how they appear to add body weight… I vote for warm over chic but then I’m over 40 so I get to ignore that stuff now… and I admit I’m thin so that makes it easy for me to be flip about the issue).

So we hope I’ll be able to dig out the notes (from last year) for the legwarmers and see what I can do. Meanwhile I’m making non-pattern-related super-warm, super-thick, super-tall legwarmers for myself. Someday I’ll knit myself some sockweight leggings/knit pants, but for now this is going to help me stay warm this winter.

My Current Favorite Pair

Here is a photo of legwarmers I knit several years ago. They are essentially Sally Melville’s “Maximum Legwarmers” from her Knit Stitch book, except that I put ribbing on the top and bottom of them. Hers call for rolled edges which is cute (and means that they have no purls, which allowed her to put them in that book). I wear legwarmers so often, and so hard, that I felt they needed ribbing for me.

I can not tell you how often I wear these. They call for 2 colorways of Noro Kureyon, striped randomly. I striped the first randomly then matched it on the second. I chose one colorway that was all warm tones, and one colorway that was all cool tones. The best!

Rae decided to go to the Contra Dance Saturday night. I decided to join her. Brian was playing in the band, he does this about once a month and usually I stay home. After all, I work weekends and I just want to go home and stay home after a social/teaching day.

I had not been to a dance in over a year. I forgot so much! The good part is that a lot of the folks know me socially so they were familiar and friendly. Also, contra dancing is forgiving. Folks point you to the right place if you get lost. Very friendly!

I’m again falling asleep at the keyboard, but a full hour sooner than I did yesterday. I have yet another class tomorrow so I better crash while I can.

Thank all of you, for coming here, reading, and especially (if you do it) commenting. It is so good to know I’m not writing in a vacuum. Love ya, each and every one.

ZZZZzzzzzzz…

(Photo is from New Year’s eve, Dec. 2005.)

Aaah, life makes us think from time to time, my friends. Now is one of those times.

1. I spoke with a tax preparer the other day, not because I hired him but because he spoke to a group I’m in. We chatted a bit about the hard decisions a self-employed person must make, which really happen nearly every day. Constantly we decide which items on our plate are most worthy of attention. Constantly we re-evaluate if what we are doing is working well for us. We re-adjust as we go, if we want to progress toward whatever goals we might have.

When I talked about the many things I can choose to do, to make an income within the realm of “fiber artist/instructor,” he asked “where is your passion?” “What does your heart tell you is most important?”

2. I also recently talked to a friend of a friend who is a Chi Gong (sp) instructor, hypnotist and practitioner of other methods used for self-improvement and self-actualization. She’s in a field as etherial as the tax guy’s field is nuts & bolts. She talked about aligning the subconscious and the “higher self” in order to do what is best for us, not only for work but for health and happiness. She used very different words, but I think they were talking about the same thing.

3. Then I talked to Matt of Threadbear tonight. We were looking at the end result of a very quick knitting project I did when I was in Washington DC. I made wristwarmers but I made them differently than the pattern I have been selling for years. I was not sure about a certain feature of the design. He liked that part quite a lot.

He talked about how for him, it seems that designs most pleasant to the eye are often those which fit the body most accurately. The thumbhole experiment I did, fits the thumb relatively well in this pair, and he thought that made the design more lovely (my word, not necessarily his). Sort of “if something is what it’s supposed to be, it will no doubt be beautiful.”

4. Buckminster Fuller (the scientist who devloped the geodesic dome) also was quoted talking a bit like our Matt. He said “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

5. Robert Genn is a painter who writes a twice-weekly email newsletter. I subscribe though often I do not have time to read in depth. He’s quite thoughtful and thought-provoking when I do have time. His subjects often relate to any art, painter or not.

This week Mr. Genn spoke on authenticity. How we value it but each person perceives it differently. I read an article today on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (the Yarn Harlot). I love Stephanie as do thousands of other knitters, and I’m clear that the main reason is her authenticity. I think the world needs more Stephanies, more heroes of this kind, more people we love for who they are… in spite of their warts; in fact, maybe because of them.

6. Friend Kris Elliott of Texas/All in a Day wrote this week about baggage we sometimes carry around past the time when we need to let go. I remembered a previous struggle I went through. I wonder how far I am in the journey at this point? Am I dragging something(s) around that I’d do better without?

7. My friend Susan Luks often says she wishes for a solution which affords ease. It is interesting to me that she sews and works with woven fabrics, and sewers/knitters talk about ease as the measurable space between the body and a garment.

However, Susan talked about it in reference to my efforts to try to get over to her home and spend some time with her. We did find a day where there was ease, finally, and I spent a lot of time with her that day, which was pleasant and worthy of the wait. We had a day at ease, when it finally came time.

Of course all of these things make me turn inward. Who am I? Am I authentic with myself, with others? Am I following my passion, aligning my subconscious with my outward best self? Can I find a level of authenticity that I can maintain with happiness? Can I make that a career path which will have staying power? Usually I would answer yes to these questions… but it is reasonable to keep asking, as things change by the hour.

I’m typing this at 2am (I will date it midnight the day before) as I fight to stay awake long enough to save it. Even though that sounds like maybe I’m not fully here, I have been soaking up these ideas for days. I think I’ll let them mull around in my subconscious (!) as I ease myself into bed to rest and dream.

Any thoughts from you? Anyone else contemplating these things heading into the busy holiday season right now?

Photos… collected ColorJoy everyday and special occasion costuming adventures. The one thing I know? The color thing… that’s really me, it is authentic Lynn. Other stuff can be debated perhaps… but my first memory is about color, and I still see life that way.

I have been beating around the bush here lately… preparing a pattern “for submission” and not saying even much about that. I got word this morning, it’s official: I will have a pattern published in the February/spring issue of the online magazine, MagKnits.

This is really exciting for me. I’ve been writing patterns/designing since 2001 and when Dawn Brocco was publishing her Heels and Toes Gazette, I had 5 patterns and one article published by her. However, since she stopped creating new issues (back issues are still available) I have self-published everything. Publishing deadlines can be rough, and I just did not want to add extra stress on my already-busy schedule.

However, Rae Blackledge and Diana Troldahl (both knitting partners of mine) have both published with Magknits and both encouraged me to submit. The good part is that the deadline is when you submit, so it’s clear when you contact them that you can make it work. I had to submit the pattern and photos and schematic at the same time. (Some other publications require a sketch, a swatch and a description upon submission.) So I knew the deadline ahead of time, and I was able to make it happen.

And I got an email this morning from Kerrie with an offer to publish. And I accepted. And I’m reeeeeally excited!

I can’t show you the whole thing or give full details here, but I can put teasers out. Here’s your first peek. There will not be many, it’s pretty hard to make this thing look like something it is not, but in February you get a free LynnH pattern online. Worth the wait, I think.

A week or two ago, I taught in Charlotte, Michigan, which is a small town with heart and soul. So many small towns are suffering these days, but Charlotte is quite alive, thank you very much!

I love taking photos of this town in the fall, I’ve done it before. This time I headed toward the library and the park where Brian and I performed last June.

Charlotte has two important streets which intersect near the old courthouse. This is the one which seems a bit shorter, and which heads out of town toward the fairgrounds (where the bluegrass festival happens each June). I caught it just as the sun was setting and the light really was nice.

Also, I enjoy taking photos of older homes in this town. They tend to be well-kept or well-restored. I drove past this house, pulled over to the parking lane and was taking photos backward out of my window. I’ve taken photos of the house right behind it in previous posts.

Well, I noticed a guy walking down the street who looked like a musician I know, who lives in Charlotte. I called out his name and sure enough, I had the right guy. So guess what? This is his house, since right around when Brian and I sang at the park.

Isn’t life interesting? The longer I stay in Michigan the more people I know are connected to other people I know. And to be in a town 30 minutes from where I live, and to know the one person walking down the street? Whose house was exactly the one I was trying to quietly photograph?

Actually, I got photos of two houses next door to one another. Both are beautiful and I think I’ve got the one, but I may be one lot off. Forgive my 2-week memory which has lost a tiny bit of information.

I sort of like it when things happen this way! The leaves don’t look particularly colorful in these two photos, but the relationship part of life was fully functional. Cool!

On Saturday, Brian and I went to the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse concert. It was Seth Bernard and Daisy May as the main act, which was opened by Brandon Foote and Laura Bates. They were backed up by Drew Howard (also known as Captain Midnite). Wow. All of these people I’ve written about here before. All of them are fine musicians solo. What a musical delight it was to be there in the glow of them all on stage.

You know, Lansing is just the right size for the creative communities. One woman in the audience I met originally when we both were going to poetry readings (before I met Brian, maybe a dozen years ago). She is now in my computer class in Haslett, and she sat there knitting during the intermission. We know a bunch of musicians who are mutual friends, so we belong in each others’ lives at least four ways.

It’s like that everywhere I go, at least when it’s an artful event of any sort. There were all sorts of musicians, artists (Regina and Marlene from Working Women Artists, both of whom I met in other realms before joining up in the guild), other friends in the audience. It was like a regular reunion or something!

The photo here was taken at the finale/encore. Seated at left is Drew, then May, Seth, Laura and Brandon. The light was not very good for photos but this one works. It shows the intensity of the music but still shows faces enough to recognize them (at least, if you know them to begin with).

Do visit their Myspace pages and listen a bit:

Seth Bernard

Daisy May Erlewine

Laura Bates and Brandon Foote

Captain Midnite

And the organization under which they all record has a web page where you can listen not only to these folks but some others:

Earthwork Music

Spend a little time and breathe a breath of fresh air. Relax and enjoy!

I spent all of Sunday at home. I made myself put pajama pants on after my very long and luxurious bath, so that I would stay put. I needed a bit of slowing down after a pretty intense few weeks.

I caught up on some things, did work on preparing a pattern for submission, and attacked the yarn collection with vigor. I got more yarn put away. Sometimes I think I’m saving time by tossing my unneeded yarns on a flat surface, but I swear if you leave too many of them together for too long they start a bit of a mating dance and you can not separate them without a lot of time and patience.

Diana points out that when I take the time to straighten out the working-yarn inventory, I sound obviously more relaxed when we chat on the phone. Interesting observation.

And it’s amazing… I thought I’d used up all of my Malabrigo worsted merino yarn… but I found two more skeins of a hot fuschia just when I needed it.

So my desk is still messy but I can find my yarns a bit better. I have shelves but I really need bins on the shelves. At least for now everything is crammed tightly into the shelves so it won’t hop onto the floor.

When you are a painter, you can keep all your paints in a toolbox with extras in a few drawers. When you are a polymer clay artist, the work table can be bigger than the storage area. With yarn, I all of a sudden have to decorate the living room walls with shelves all the way to the ceiling, full of yarn. it’s like a small section of a yarn store but more random. Colorful but messy looking.

A New Week of Classes

Anyway, I’m starting a new week today and it feels like a fresh start after a day off at home. I teach computers to retirees tonight, which will be much fun. I’ve got a Wristwarmer class at Little Red Schoolhouse on Tuesday at 5:30pm-8pm (anybody want to join up?) and Wednesday I have CityKidz Knit at Foster Center.

Thursday I teach at Rae’s, both knitting Study Hall and First-Time Toe-Up Socks (2nd session of 3). Friday I teach Darn That Sock! at Threadbear at 6pm. Saturday I have a joint Party Stole/Kristi Comfort Wrap class at Rae’s 11-3pm, Sunday at Rae’s I’m doing a baby sock (small version of Fast Florida Footies not needing a gauge swatch), also 11-3. Perhaps some of you local folks would like to join one class or another. I’d love to see you.

I am all for more Jammies Days! I feel ready to start a busy week of teaching.

It’s definitely the very end of fall here. We had a few flakes of snow a few days back and the kids were thrilled. The chard left growing in my garden has turned totally red, very pretty, and I need to cut it and put it in some soup with the lovely sweet potatoes showing up in markets everywhere right now.

I find it amazing how at the very end of any sort of warm season, the plants push like crazy to keep blooming, keep making seeds, trying desperately to procreate before they give up the ghost in a hard frost. Right now I still have parsley doing fine, and since I moved the one tomato bush in to the unheated mudroom it is still making tomatoes. I have two bunches growing (had to pinch off many blooms in the last 3 weeks, it kept trying and that would not have been good for the plant).

I think I have nine or ten fruits growing and one is almost as big as a tennis ball. They are all green but if it gets much colder the pot goes down in the dyeing studio next to the dryer, under the full-spectrum lights. I did this one other year and we had red tomatoes off the vine in November. I think this may happen again this year, as long as I keep remembering to water the plant.

My geranium pots are also making buds like crazy, and blooming in spite of a few frosty nights. I have petunias in these pots, too, and you can at least see they are purple but they are closed tight, there is no warm sun to reach for. Sigh.

I took some fall photos this week. One is a male cardinal in a bush at my Mom’s house. I took the photo through a plate glass window but it worked reasonably well anyway. The multicolored trees are at Michigan State University, back where they have two golf courses and a bunch of farmland. I think this is near the horse area but it might be the golf course.

Wednesday I told you I was going to go dance my troubles away… and honestly, it was wonderful. I didn’t dance a lot because the troupe was rehearsing with another troupe from the Detroit area… but I took a bunch of great photos.

I also got some time with the non-rehearsing dancers I don’t get to chat with much. (We went across the hall so as not to disturb the rehearsal, of course.)

The photo shows our women dancing in thobes (this is a shortcut name, I don’t know the longer version well enough to spell it), a large extra-decorative dress used for a special type of Saudi dance which I believe is called/spelled Khaleeji. (It’s hard to get it right since Arabic doesn’t translate well to the English alphabet.)

The dance was traditionally done in groups of only women (as I remember it was sort of how they entertained themselves at private gatherings), and they would wear beautiful dresses and jewelry and dance to show off the beautiful things they wore. The dresses flow so nicely when you spin around, that I just had to catch them in motion here.

The music for this dance is just wonderful. I go home singing it and smiling.

I will be performing this piece in the April show which our troupe will be putting on in the Lansing area. I’ll post more about it when I have more information.

It is so wonderful to be back into cool weather busy-mode time. I have had some days with three classes in a day. I have had classes with a few more students. I have fewer classes canceling and more filling. It’s more fun and more like I want my life to be. Yippee!

Last week I taught Kristi Comfort Wrap at Yarn Garden in Charlotte. I had a Mom-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law pair and they are both relatively new knitters.

They did not have any stash leftover sockyarns to knit along with the warm main yarn, so Lindsay worked with them before I even got there, going through her back room fun yarns which are marked down right now. We did not have to do much in the yarn-choosing part of the class so we dove right in and started knitting, though I did talk color while they were stitching away.

I got a photo of one of the started pieces in this class. I have made a lot of these wraps but all of my knit-alongs have been soft, softer, softest. None of my Kristi wraps have had shiny yarns in them (other than silk), so I got to see a new way of making it happen. Much fun, they love what they have going so far.

On Sunday I taught a new Polymer Clay buttons/beads class at Threadbear, which was about sparkle and shine and translucents. We used metal leaf and tinted translucent clays, and had a grand time.

I had three students, and I knew all of them at least socially before we started. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do for several hours on a weekend.

Here is one tray of buttons that came out of that workshop. It came out a little fuzzy and the colors look a smidge darker than I remember them being. This photo is also before a shiny acrylic finish was applied. Can you see how nice those motifs might be as buttons? I am in love with the red-orange/gold combination which I’d never tried myself. Very nice.

On Thursday I had a couple of classes at Rae’s shop in Lansing. First I had a third-week beginning knit student who made a small pouch including knit, purl, increase, decrease, garter fabric and stockinette fabric. She blocked her work last week after class, and this week she learned to do a mattress stitch seam, backstitch seam, crochet chain seam and even grafted five stockinette stitches for the handle. A very nice job, indeed. I’m sorry I did not get a photo of that. Next week she may choose to make a cabled scarf or hat, or perhaps some knitted flowers.

At night at Rae’s on Thursday, I had my First-Time Toe-Up Socks class. This is my all-time best-attended class (though polymer clay takes a very close second). I just love teaching this one, I will never tire of it. The sock is relatively easy to get started, and some folks get a whole pair done in the 3 weeks and start another… while others will almost finish their first sock, and everyone is still relatively equal. Love it (it is too soon for photos, for that class).

Thanks, as always, to my students and the shops where I teach. I know how lucky I am to have you all. My gratitude. Let’s do it again soon!

I answered an individual email question from a friend (in Latin America, how cool is that) on the Socknitters Yahoo email list. I realize now that I wrote it that maybe some other knitters out there might be interested in this.

I know that it will be redundant for some of you, and useless for the non-knitters. However, for the knitters who have not learned how to figure out a good fit for socks without following instructions from a pattern, this might be quite useful. It was to my email friend, at any rate.

She wrote (after saying that her first pair of socks were a bit roomy though in the ballpark):

…let me ask you something: it seems that from cuff down, 60 stitches (2.5 metric size needle, 1.5 US) were the good size to me but… no… do you think 54 would be ok?

I think this is powerful stuff. A little measuring and you can adjust someone else’s pattern to your size, assuming that the leg portion works for the number of stitches you need to fit properly.

For the record, the measurements of the ankle and the ball of the foot for most people are within 6.35mm (1/4″). This is why we measure the ball of the foot to size the top of the cuff/leg, particularly when the leg is done in a stretchy motif such as ribbing. Knitting is so flexible that it works out just fine for most of us.

For those who have unusual proportions, they can knit the foot with one number of stitches and the leg with another. That in itself is reason enough to learn how to knit (just ask Diana, for whom I knit my 29th pair of socks shown at top of post… and who now knits her own socks and those of her hubby/my brother… and who is now my test knitter/tech editor/advisor when I write new patterns).

After all, if your feet guarantee that commercial socks will just not fit, it is really great to make custom-fitting ones that are “just right.” That contented Goldilocks is in my vocabulary again!

Oh, and that Diana who now knits her own designs following roughly this same method… well, look at this second photo today. Diana made them for Eric (my bro/her hubby, who also has an unusual-shaped foot)… no pattern, just made them up! Gorgeous.

I’m catching up on photos I have already developed, because photos are what slow me down when I post. I still am running behind because of a week being my friend’s wheels. So worth it, and I got time with her toddler which is a real treat.

But here is a photo I really did not want to miss posting, so you win in this case. I got this sock (it’s one of a pair) at the Llamafest in East Lansing a few months ago. I also got some more modern-looking flip-top alpaca mittens from Bolivia and some alpaca knit dolls, which I did not yet photograph.

I only have one sock on my desk right now, but that tag says “Kids sock $6.00.” I’m so sad about that. The yarn is synthetic but the knitting took somebody some serious time and I like the result. The other sock had a tag about the country it came from but I don’t have that right now. The vendor was loaded with alpaca goods so it was clearly Andean though the country is not obvious.

It is done in the round, and each color block just pulls the yarn back to its new starting place. This means that each block puckers a lot (the boxes just under the turned top cuff) and the black stitches between blocks are pulled thin a little.

The animal motifs did not need this treatment, they were stranded all around the circumference and just tacked when knitting by knitting over and under the unused yarn (something like the Philosophers Wool technique where there are no floats of yarn on the back).

This sock was knit top down with a band heel (like a Dutch heel) that has a garter edge on the flap. The flap is really short and they actually picked up fewer stitches for the foot than they had on the leg. The toe is a wedge toe, very like the ones US knitters often use.

They decreased the toe down to what appears to be 4 stitches and tied a knot in the end of the yarn through those 4 stitches. Some cultures leave a tail there so that they can hang the sock for drying, so maybe that is what this was for.

I like the turned cuff at the top. It has some garter ridges in stripes, for texture/color interest. This idea has merit for a non-binding top, whether top down or toe up.

Off to teach kids to knit, and then to dance my troubles away. Well, not my own troubles as I have few. Maybe the troubles of the world and bits of my past need to be shaken away, and this sort of dance in a room full of women is a great way to do it. Thirty women dancing is some sort of wonderful Girl Power, if you ask me.

I’m off!

When there are many color changes in a knit item, or there is a break in the yarn at a place which is inconvenient, many knitters feel stuck for a good answer to the problem. One excellent choice is something called the Russian Join. It creates a clean change between colors and no ends to work in later.

There is a walk-through of the Russian Join, with photos, on the Knitting Any Way website. I think this is the most clear explanation I’ve seen.

(Knitting Any Way is a site which covers machine knitting *and* handknitting. The reference to “carriage” is a machine-knitting word but the join is the same no matter how you are using the yarn.)

I’m still tied up with my friend who needs me. I’ll be her wheels until Tuesday noon or so, it has been a week of errands between errands yet totally worthwhile. I’m wiped out but she is, too… and more.

Words are easy for me to write… photos take a lot of time. Therefore, I’m not quite where I’d like to be here on the blog (I need current photos). That’s how it goes sometimes, when life needs to adjust to reality.

To keep you interested in the thread i started yesterday, here are links to previous garment/knitting projects I’ve remade (as mentioned in yesterday’s post):

1. A Ralph Lauren sweater knit of Manos Del Uruguay handspun/handpainted yarn, purchased at a Lakeland, Florida resale shop for $6. I undid it from the neck to the armholes, made the body of the sweater into a miniskirt and the arms into legwarmers. Adorable, and much fun. You’ll get the full story and big photos (including me wearing the skirt) if you click the links above, but you can peek at the legwarmers at a distance in photo top right.

2. A handspun/handknit sweater from Latin America, purchased for $5 at Scavenger Hunt in East Lansing (funky resale shop aimed at students). It was so skinny and long it would have fit a beanpole teen boy but none would have worn it.

The bottom rib was tight. The sleeves were at least 6″/15cm too long. The yarn on cuffs, bottom rib and neckline was really scratchy, never mind being a red-brown that was not my style. The sweater overall was as colorful as a Turkish sock but unwearable (notice the legwarmers in the “before” photo at left are those I made in the previous makeover).

I cut off the excess arm length at the cuffs. I cut off the bottom ribbing and unraveled the neck.

Then I bought some really soft Manos del Uruguay yarn in teal. I reknit the neck, cuffs and bottom rib in the teal. I actually used a little bit of the leftover burgundy/berry Manos fro