On Ravelry, one of my Friends has posted that she finished a BottleZig, no photos yet. She did write me a nice note saying how pleased she was with my instructions. As someone who loves teaching in person, it pleases me that I can put the words together on paper to teach from afar. That note made me very happy!

Then Mary took my Maxi ZigBagZ class on Thursday this week at Rae’s. She started a bag in colors that are really her style, more muted than my typical colors. She has a heathery brown and a heathery teal as her solid colors, with a sort of beige/light brown/cream and a light greens set of multicolors. Incredible choices, and I will be very interested to see the fabric as it is created. The photo here is the knitting she was able to finish in the first class session. I got a note from her the next day and it sounds like she is zipping right along on it. Watching colors develop in the fabric, especially when one color is constantly changing, surely keeps me interested in a project!

I also see that MyMerinoMantra has started a bag, too. She had some Noro Kureyon color-changing yarn, and came in to Lansing to buy the Maxi ZigBagZ collection pattern plus two colors of Cascade 220 as her main/solid colors to go with them. This will be a lovely combination. I am eager to see how that develops as well!

As for me, I’m tired of knitting ZigBagZ but not colors next to one another. Right now I’m knitting a hat in one solid (purple) yarn and a self-striping green/turquoise/blue. Gorgeous. It’s a new technique for me, but anything that allows me to play with color contrast makes me very happy. I’ve taken a few photos and will post those as I get a chance in the next few days.

Brian and I think we may drive to Chicago for an overnight tomorrow. I am really eager to eat Indian food on Devon Street (Avenue?). I love the clothes there, too, but usually it takes me so long to find something I really want that I won’t make Brian go through the agony. I may buy some bangle bracelets as a prop for the upcoming Habibi Dancers show. I’m doing a dance that basically requires bangle bracelets for the costume. These are easy to find (they come in tubes) in that section of town.

And Patel Brothers grocery? That is a heavenly place, as well!!!

Here is another photo of my real house, real life, real colors that I choose to live with. (Yes, I live with different colors in my home than I wear on myself; houses look better in coral than fuschia, in my opinion.)

The duckie is tiny, the very far bottom left corner of the photo. I got him in Montreal the first time I went there (alone, and I don’t speak any French at all). He doesn’t float well, he goes around on his side with one eye in the water and one facing up, but it makes me really happy to have a rubber duckie to go with my claw-footed tub.

I finished taxes. I’m very happy about that. Now I have only 2 computer-work deadlines (one for Mom, one for Altu) and a dance concert (tons of rehearsals in the next 2 weeks or so). And the normal teaching schedule, of course. That feels like a light load at this point.

But it means I have to dance at 9:30am. I usually wake up at 11 (because I get on a roll and I typically finally go to bed at 3am, not because I laze in bed forever). I need to stop typing and go to bed.

In the meantime, enjoy these colors. This photo sort of reminds me of my colorful dishes (a few days ago on this blog), you know?

I found these towels just the way they are hanging, did not touch them or rearrange for the photo. I looked in the door of the bathroom and it was so pretty I stopped and smiled. Then I figured you might smile, too. After all, you all seemed to respond well to the colored dishes. At least two of you bought Fiesta dishes after that post. Dang!

Oh, and I’m clear that usually a still life has something that is alive or once was… a rubber duckie is as close as I get in this shot, but I gave in to the amusing title even though it was inaccurate.

I have been cooking. I have been doing my own accounting for tax season. Food is more interesting.

Carrot-protein bars before baking:

Carrot bars after baking (very good out of the oven, reasonable out of the freezer… need some work before I have a recipe):

Pseudo-Irish soda bread sliced with butter and organic sour cherry jam:

Same bread before cutting (This bread was so dry it was good only for dipping into coffee, which I don’t do, or breadcrumbs. I did not take time to make crumbs so it went into the trash. Do not ask how much time I took to make tossed-out bread. At least it was photogenic.):

And the world’s best no-yeast, no-wheat, no-meat, no-mozzerella pizza, on a spring-into-existence plate:

Ravelry is an online community for knitters and crocheters. It is something like MySpace, but in my experience a much more personal environment.

It has databases full of yarns, patterns, designers, books. You can have a yarn you want to use, look it up and see what others have made from it. You can have a pattern you like and look up what yarns people have used when knitting that design. You can look up a designer and see all the patterns associated with that person.

Or you can find groups (something like Yahoo Discussion Groups) where you can chat about things you have in common. I moderate a group on Ravelry called ColorJoy! which is full of creative folks from all over the world. We talk about any creative projects, not just yarn-related ones. The “spring into existence” projects I’ve been showing you this week have come from people on my Ravelry group.

So today I checked in on Ravelry to see if I needed to do anything there as a moderator. And I saw that everyone’s photo (avatar) was embellished with a hat of some sort. Diana/Otterwise got a hot green hard hat with a yellow star on it. I got a “Cat in the Hat” striped red happy lid. There are newspaper-folded hats, bishop hats, witch hats, wool toques with pom-pom, wizard hats with stars and moons, chef’s white hats, I even saw one parrothead! I love my hat. Such fun!

Things like this are not uncommon on Ravelry. There is a group there called Completely pointless and arbitrary and some time during the winter they all drew blue nosewarmers on their photos/avatars. Just for fun.

If you are interested in participating in this community, go to http://ravelry.com and sign up to be added to the list. They will send you an invitation in a few days, I’m told (at one time it was a several-month wait while they were getting the system up and running).