Nease's Needleblog

Preparing for The Mountain

2012-02-09T17:28:00.007-05:00

So here it is, time to prepare for my annual visit with the Atlanta Knitting Guild to The Mountain Retreat center. It really, really is a gorgeous place, and if you look closely at the mountain on the right-hand side of the website's picture, you'll see the Lodge nestled among all the trees. That's where we sit and knit for a weekend. And the mountain from where this photo is taken is a nice hike from the retreat center. Up and down and through streams, but good exercise. Unless it's snowy and cold, and then we all sit and knit instead.

Let me explain something about The Mountain. When I first joined the Atlanta Knitting Guild way, way back in 1999, I was quite intimidated by the amount of knitting going on (remember, I had just bought a needlework shop and knew only the fundamentals of knitting!), and as I continued going to meetings and learning what yarns, techniques, and projects were out there, I also kept hearing the attendees saying, "I started this project at THE MOUNTAIN and . . . " and then they would stand up and show the most gorgeous sweaters, coats, shawls, and the like, that I had ever seen. Of course, I kept wondering, "What IS this Mountain thing, of which these members speak??" So I put on my adventurer's hat and went looking.

The Mountain is a beautiful, still, often snow-covered place in the Blue Ridge mountains of southern North Carolina. Near the part that touches Georgia, which means you drive for about 3 hours and then get to PLAY on twisty windy mountain roads (which is why I drive a Neon. It takes those curves at its top abilities, but it purrrs when it senses those turns!) before coming to a Place. This Place is now a preserved area (there's a particular name for this and I just can't remember it right now!), meaning it will remain wilderness and preserved until infinity.

The AKG began going to the Mountain during President's Day weekend oh, about 20 years or so ago, and it has become a tradition in my life to join in starting in 2001. In years past, it was a quiet place to get away from my shop for a brief time without my shopowner's hat, with the company of others, and Nature Herself in all of Her Winter Divinity. Now I just enjoy being one of the regulars who comes and brings projects and talks with others and watches The Mountain do its calm, quiet magic on their souls. As an old teacher of mine said, "Do everything by doing nothing at all."

Which means that I have 3 days (or so) of knitting - getting up on Friday, knitting all day Saturday and Sunday, then preparing to leave on Monday with a nice, slow, leisurely drive (after the twisty windy mountain roads!) through some small towns in North Georgia. I had the chance to visit some antique shops last year - Webmaster Bill received some antique hand planes, and I'm on the lookout for some replacement English Village soup bowls, but not too much! Also a visit to a music store, but alas, no supplies for my hammered dulcimer.

And in the past I've always had a project or 6 that were in transition or where I was stuck or that were just so big that I needed the inspiration from other knitters to continue. Webmaster Bill's white Irish Wool sweater from Blackwater Abbey Yarns was begun there (and NOT knit in the round - casting on 400 + stitches and having them twist was NOT what I needed to convince me to knit in the round at all costs!), his first cable-knit sweater was begun and finished there (including the mistake cover up on the yoke - a crocheted chain stitch looks a whole lot like a knit stitch from the front!), and my dear G's wedding shawl made with fine Wensleydale Longwool (this shade card, though outdated, shows Storm much better than any other site); in short, it was a place to begin or continue a thoroughly ambitious project with others who could attest to that project's ambition. Or my foolishness, I'm not sure which!

This year I don't feel too overwhelmed by any one project, so I've been gathering together some projects and some that need swatching, and making sure that I have needles, instructions, and gauge swatches all in the same place. My one ambitious project is the Russian lace shawl that I bought waaaay back in 2004 at the first Stitches South/TKGA knitting weekend, with my dear G by my side, and I began it in 2009. It is made of deep purple yarns in very, very tiny lace weight, and while I was taking pictures, Cerridwen decided she just haaad to help out:

Oh look, pretty, pretty, pretty yarn!

She says, hopefully! The technique is the other thing I love about this yarn (the first being the color). It involves an oft-repeated lace pattern (thank goodness I know now about lifelines!) to create the edges, with the jagged edges using a Russian bind-off to give a smooth edge. The straight edge becomes the inner row where a second color is added, and then the entire body is (I think) added from the edges to the center. The colors are below:

Starting with the bluish purple for the edges, then picking
up with the purple purple, and finally the body in the
reddish purple. Mmmmmmm.

I know I have enough yarn; I just hope I'm using the correct colors for the correct section! It will be a bear to rip out. Wool and silk is sooo soft to knit and wear, too. Will have to have a special outfit when this shawl is finally done. And really, I haven't knit much more than when I put it away a year ago after being at the Mountain. I'll need to take some time this weekend to pick it up and become familiar with the pattern again. Strangely enough, I like working on this shawl in the late afternoons and evenings. The concentration I have to go through keeps my mind sharp.

I also have a requisite sock started, and my Rayon yarn by Blue Heron that I discovered I had knit too big. So I had to rip it out and start over. Eeeew. And also the center-pull balls had collapsed in the middle (well, the one I had started from) and I had a great big knotty mess that the ladies at my Tuesday evening knitting group helped me untangle. With the help of some Blue Moon, of course! I've begun knitting this sweater again, at a much smaller size (my gauge was going to make it become a sack, not a svelte sweater), but here is the pattern that really brings out the yarn's color and texture:

Pretty, sparkly, but oooh so easily tangled!

I don't know if you can see it, but there are diagonal little lace openings all along it. Anyway, the only rows that have a lace pattern are R3 and R9, so it's a lot of knitting with only 2 rows in a 12 row repeat of having to stop and think. Until you get into the shaping, which I should have started immediately but because I was watching something interesting on TV . . . it will be at R16 instead of R5 when the waist decrease begins. I think that's what I want, too, because I much prefer long-waisted garments to crop tops. It's a boob thing.

And then there are two more projects that I will just be swatching and trying out patterns for. Three more things - I almost forgot. One is Webmaster Bill's next sweater:

Yes, yes, that IS Barbara Walker's book behind this yummy, thick, brown yarn. I have picked out a bunch of cable patterns, WB has winnowed them down a bit, and with a big swift and ball winder at The Mountain I'll be able to find the perfect pattern for this yarn. I'm looking for a big cable down the front, and once I find the best one, I'll begin to knit a Percentage Sweater, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman and Jacqueline McFee, for WB to thank him for all the times he's put up with my meltdowns over every computer thing that has gone wrong for me at home late at night when I KNOW I shouldn't be computing, but . . . ! You get the picture. And because this yarn is just too yummy, and I HAD to buy something at a shop during the Shop Hop, and and and . . .

Then there is a Cotton Fleece cardigan that I'll be swatching, also knitting as a Percentage Sweater, but flat because I'm not cutting my knitting yet! I've always envisioned Cotton Fleece by Brown Sheep as a cardigan project yarn - it's almost too heavy for Atlanta summers because of the wool mixed in with the cotton, but is perfect as the cardigan that you keep at the office when the AC is waaay too high in the summer. The colors I've chosen for this project are Deep Maroon and Candy Apple. The sweater itself will be Candy Apple, and the edges (I hope!) will be Deep Maroon. I bought this yarn when I bought the yarn for my Beach Sweater 2 years ago in Asheville at Earth Guild shop, and while my Beach Sweater was a priority, I totally fell in love with these two deep, rich, complementary colors. I think some sort of K5 P2 rib pattern will work well - this yarn will stretch and not stretch back into shape, and I don't want to wear a sack at work. A rib pattern will compensate for that stretch; I just have to find the right one, and find the right needles so that my ever-loose gauge doesn't compound the problem. My hope, too, is that I can knit the border in seed stitch for some texture, and just have a single large button at the neck. I mean, who really buttons their cardigans all the way up??

And then finally, a Fair Isle Vest pattern by Classic Elite yarns. I had bought some Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool yarn back in 2003? 2004? at the Gainesville shop on my way with The Other Susan to The Mountain. The colors were just gorgeous, and this was one of the times that I decided I HAD to buy the yarn or I would regret it forever. Fortunately, Carrie at Sheepish had a complementary color last year along with the pattern, so I bought her out of that color and I finally have a use for this gorgeous yarn! All nice fall colors (sorry, no pictures or links - they're all wound into balls and I don't want to go looking!) with a deep, rich greyish blue to tie them all together. Again, this is a swatching project that might, just might, result in beginning said project. But we'll see.

My list is written, I have the directions to The Mountain on my Desktop ready to print, and next week I have the time off. I really hope I haven't forgotten anything (must review needles!!) before I set off. I'm really looking forward to next weekend!

Some needlepoint since Christmas

2012-01-27T17:45:00.005-05:00

Now that my Christmas knitting is done, shipped, and received, I can attend to some other projects. My little bird is still in good shape - have elongated one branch and am about to start with another pink flower. Progress! But really, stitching on linen is such a summertime project, one to stitch when the spring starts to come and the days grow longer and a nice early evening can be spent on the front porch with fabric, scissors, and cotton thread. And a nice glass of wine. Here's my little bird's progress:

He may receive some work in a couple of weekends
when I go to visit a stitching friend.

In the meantime, I noticed a green project bag that I knew contained some pieces of my late mother's needlepoint. I took a look and found two iris pieces that I knew she bought at my shop because I remember buying them from the sales rep. She had always liked pansies and violets, but these were truly beautiful pieces that I know she couldn't resist when I got to convincing her that she had to have them. The first one she had started . . . and then the yarn got separated from its project (thus motivating my plaintive plea in my last post to please, stitchers and knitters, please label your projects or provide a list of your colors, or at the very least, make sure everything is together in one bag. It makes going through your beloved projects so much more in keeping with your own wishes for your beloved projects)! Apparently, Mom had started stitching this piece, notice the Q-Snap frame holding it in place, and so it was up to me to find matching colors. Did I mention that I still have some Persian Yarn in my storage unit?!

While keeping an eye on what I "bought" from myself both for my poor accountant's sake and to keep my website current, I checked, brought home, stitched with, and went back (I think I started doing this activity in the summer, if the truth be told) to find a better match for the greens and the pinks. I did put it down when I couldn't find the exact shades of green for the leaves, but picked it up again earlier this month because, well, really, who's going to know? Except everyone who reads this blog, and really, it doesn't matter all that much. The ol' galloping horse and all! When I picked it up again I started stitching like a crazy woman, just wanting to finish this petal and that color, and all the while doing some background so that there is less background drudgery when our iris is complete:

Mom stitched the far left-hand petal, that delicate pink part, and
the bottom part of the left-hand leaf. She had also
started the basketweave in the bottom left, and it took some
guesswork to find the correct color of yarn she used.

BTW, "Lee" is the name of the needlepoint designer/manufacturer. Lee's Needle Arts is a needlepoint company that had some beautiful needlepoint colors on their canvases that I always found luscious, and the canvases were also reasonably priced for hand-painted canvases. When I bought my shop, I wanted to bring in an alternative to the types of needlepoint my predecessor had always carried. So this was one of my new offerings to a whole new slew of customers, including my mother.

And on this picture is where my background color ran out. Really, I'm quite proud of the progress on my background - there were a lot of places to fill in and join in a continuous, smooth angle. The background is stitched in a basketweave pattern, so called because the back of it looks like a woven basket. Literally. While it takes more yarn to complete and will help keep a monoweave canvas straight (with mono canvas, the individual strands are woven over and under one another, rather than through one another like an interlock or Penelope canvas), it also takes some "reading" of the canvas to know whether you should stitch up the angle or down it. If you get your stitching direction wrong, then it will show uneven-ness on the front, and the back will have two straight up-and-up rows instead of an up row and a sideways, woven row. But I geek out.

While NNW does not have the background color in stock, and the single importer and dye-er of said color has been in product backorder for almost two years on all of their Persian yarn, I think maybe, just maybe, I have found two little skeins that I can use to complete this project, finally. Then those completion endorphins can kick in and I can begin another project!

But wait, I already have started another project!

This one was not on a frame; in fact, Mom had not even started stitching it. I started stitching it without a frame and realized my wisdom over the shop-owning years in "suggesting" that a customer buy a frame when starting a needlepoint project. Not being on a frame already allowed me to buy one from myself (always an interesting financial transaction) and mount it. I gotta say, this style of frame is amazingly versatile for different sizes of needlepoint projects (I used part of it for my Swan piece) but it is holy h#(&ck to mount a piece of needlepoint onto it. It often took me, one of my minions, and the customer to firmly attach the needlepoint to one of these frames, and all the while avoiding the tiny little nails that hold your needlepoint on top and bottom. But again, I digress. Here is the already-started piece, and some progress has been made since last week:

Aren't these colors just extraordinary? The deep, rich blue
set off by an equally strong purple, and while the greens
have a little more yellow than I usually like, their shades kind of
fade into a supporting role against these strong purples tones.

Like I said, Mom had simply put the colors and the canvas (folded! oh noooo!) into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and not even begun it. Which, if I die tomorrow, will be the case for me with some projects, I admit, but I hope to have many, many more good years of stitching. With this particular piece, I'm using longer "pulls" of yarn from the Persian than I normally do, in part because I am discovering as I stitch just how long a piece goes before I have to start another piece. The yarn is a good quality yarn, and it does not fray towards the end of the stitching. On the other hand, I can't use as much of the skeins of DMC yarn on my pull, as it is a single strand and is more loosely twisted than the individual strands of Persian. And again, I am stitching background (using tent stitch this time, as there are really no large stretches of background that would warrant using the basketweave) as I go, so that I don't stitch all the pretty parts and leave the dull, boring background to do. Someday. That's one of the advantages of working on a frame, too - you do a section, then you roll it to the next section, and just move on up the piece until you are done, pattern and background and all.

So that's it for this post. I will definitely show some progress on the second of the two iris pieces, and perhaps my background color will arrive in the next week or so. Which will leave the question, which do I stitch first??

Much has Happened Since Last We Met

2012-01-16T16:04:00.019-05:00

That sounds so very Victorian, doesn't it? I just finished typing up some passages from Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Nightingales by Gillian Gill (the latter a biography of the Nightingale family and how it all led to Florence Nightingale's extraordinary life) and these Victorian thoughts just tickle their way into my creative writing day today.

Obviously, I wrote my last entry over the Thanksgiving weekend, a weekend I spent enjoying my last few weeks with my large, round, grey cat. I had received word in mid-November that her enlarged heart had now morphed into heart failure proper (cardio myopathy), and all of the months of medicating her with Plavix (yes, you read that right), Atenatol (to slow down her rapidly beating heart) and Methemazol (to control her hyperthyroidism) were going to come to an end. And she was an incredibly good patient - she did not try to claw your pill-holding hand out of her mouth, she just did everything she could to walk away from whatever you had popped into her mouth as quickly as she could, and there were times when I found little bits of pill in different places in the house. I was relieved that, if she had to become so ill, it was during a time when I had the monetary funds to buy all this medication for her (Plavix!! Jeez!). Strangely enough, I felt myself hearken back to my Quaker college days and "bear witness" to the uses of modern medications for one's feline off-spring. The last time I went to the pharmacist, there was a woman buying meds for her dog, so I didn't feel so out of place.

Still, that's a lot of stress for a cat and her owner to go through with all those meds and schedules. While I had had a year to prepare myself that animal companions don't live as long as we do (it was in early December last year when I noticed that her heart was beating like a rapid snare drum; she was lying on my pillow with her heart close to my ear), I still broke down in two vets' offices while I dealt with the inevitability that her long life was coming to an end.

There are pictures of her on this blog, but I'll add some just so you can see them now rather than having to scroll around:

Curled up on her favorite crinkly toy. She never went for it as

a play toy thing, but she loooved to sleep on it.

Then there is the earlier post where I showed her lounging on the grass on a warm February day:

Yep, in ATL it's really warm enough, even in February,
to spend some late afternoon time sunning oneself

And fortunately, the weather over Thanksgiving was warm, too, relatively speaking. So we were able to trundle along outside to soak up some rays. I experienced a sort of peace during that weekend - there was the loneliness of being by myself partnered with the joy of buying food that I would cook only for myself (such as Rock Cornish Game Hen). There was the quiet solitude of spending most days listening to a book on tape (on this weekend, the above-mentioned Hard Times with an extraordinary narrator) and doing my Christmas knitting partnered with some time on Thanksgiving evening with my eldest niece and our next-door neighbors, sitting and talking. And there was the otherwise-cold bed with one cat against my belly and the other against my back, doing everything they could to help keep me (and themselves) warm.

So while Webmaster Bill went up to see a large houseful of relatives of 3 consecutive generations, I knitted children's sweaters and a scarf and more sweaters. Guess who wanted her picture taken while I was at it??

Big kitty who has gotten considerably
smaller with heart and kidney problems

She's at peace, now, on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, that wonderful place where we get to meet all of our dear, departed furry and fuzzy and feathered friends that have joined their lives with ours. Rest well, dear kitty, and someday you will sleep on my head again.

And of course, there was the afore-mentioned Christmas knitting - a great nephew in CA, a great niece in IL, and a kitty hat for friends whose tree-topper is Yoda. How could I not spend an evening knitting up this fantastic Yoda hat to be kitty sized (and it almost was!):

After its 3rd time through the washing machine,
it finally felted to the size
of a small head (not shown here!)

The cool thing was that once you make and decrease the ears, they stick out the side, and while it's drying you can make them kind of curve to resemble Yoda's ears themselves. Trying the hat on the cat was great fun, and made possible by the use of an abundance of kitty treats.

Then there were the sweaters for little ones. I'm beginning to "get" the fun of knitting kids' sweaters - they're quick, they can be really cute, and as long as you get the gauge to almost size, it doesn't matter if they're a little too big - the child will grow into them!

Bright colors for this little girl, who
has become infatuated with "bunnies"

There is a sweater that I can't upload here, as the recipient has not received it yet due to too busy schedules during the Christmas season. All I can say is . . . the buttons really set it off!

Little blue sweater for a little boy,
complete with teddy bear

And then, of course, there was Christmas, then all the many days off in between (fortunately I'm working for a company that recognizes the wisdom of closing the office when most everyone is going to be on vacation, anyway), including finally reading The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larrsson (yes, it really is that good) and watching a ton of movies.

For all of you who know me, I mean, really, really know me, I will confess here: I bought a ticket to the 3-D showing of Tin-Tin. Why? Well, for the same reason that I saw 13 Days in the movie theaters a decade ago: it's the movie where they show the preview of The Hobbit. All I can say about the preview is WOW. I can't wait. I thought that the love and excitement had cooled off into a warm, nice glow, but no, not really. PJ and his group are going to do things with this interpretation of a mythical masterpiece the likes of which the world has never seen. I am so very, very glad that I live in a time where these masterpieces can come to life on a big screen. Really I am.

By the way - Tin Tin is a really good movie. There were moments when I even forgot that I was watching an animated, motion-capture film. Definitely a boy's adventure: pirates, adventures, and intrigue.

Now that all the Christmas knitting has ended and before I spend time at The Mountain, the time has come to put down the knitting and pick up . . . the needlepoint! Yes, I went rooting around in a closet, wondering what was in these packagesssss, and I found some of my mother's needlepoint. She had started one piece (but just barely), and there was no yarn to go with it so I went with my best guess on it.

I'll take an aside here: if you do any sort of knitting, needlework, paper crafting, etc., please, please put all of your materials together, or at least put a list with your package of materials, colors, etc., or even just show your nearest and dearest what you are working on and what your intentions are for it.

So anyway, on the one I've matched the yarns as near as possible, and with the recent supply problems with Persian yarn, I'm finished on it until I can find just one (or maybe two) more skeins of the background color. I've started a second, also one Mom bought at my shop, also Irises (she always waxed on about pansies, but seemed to have an affinity for irises in her NP) for which I will need a frame (of course, I have several, but it will involve going to get them and I'm a little lazy today), and the final . . . ah, now that is a story!

Several years back, maybe as many as 7, Mom received a gift of needlepoint from her sister-in-law, complete with sufficient thread to finish the design. The canvas was 18 count (18 sts to the inch, for all you knitters out there - canvas comes at 10 sts/in, 12/13/and 14 sts, and 18 sts to the inch, not to mention 40 sts to the inch - this latter is stitched on silk gauze and is very fine, very beautiful, and I'm not going to do it in this lifetime. Think dollhouse rug.) and Mom couldn't see it. Family dynamics being what they are/were, she asked me to do it for her. And asked, and argued, and demanded . . . and still it sat there, because, well, I had a shop to run and models to stitch and had no time for personal stitching anyway. When I began poking through the above-mentioned bag, I decided that it was time to begin stitching it (after I had finished the more traditional needlepoints) and to do so would require just the right kind of thread. And like many projects I'm looking forward to, I like to savor it. Contemplate it, think about it, work on an appetizer for a bit . . . until I can't stand the antici---pation any longer, and just pick it up and work on it feverishly with its beautiful colors. The hummingbirds are going to be silk, the leaves in combinations of cotton and wool, and the remaining background wool. It will be a delight.

For right now, then, I please myself with a really cool deep-purples-and-blues irises in a kind of 2-D design (pictures coming soon!) using traditional wools. After all, I helped Mom pull these yarns, listened to her agree and argue, and if I liked those wools all those years ago, what's not to like now? The fancy stuff will take care of itself - this wintertime is all about quiet contemplation, enjoyment, carefully finishing what had been unfinished.

Till next time, have a marvelous new year, and hug the ones you love. Include yourself in the hug!

Steve, Anne, and Ken - A Tribute to their Creativity

2011-11-28T17:39:00.004-05:00

So first came the news that Steve Jobs had died. I learned much about him during the next few days' worth of all-Steve coverage on the various news sources.

Then there was Anne McCaffery. I had seen her a couple of years at Dragon*Con and have enjoyed her world of dragons (and occasionally science fiction, especially "The Crystal Singer") since I was 16.

Now I just learned that the director Ken Russell has died. Wow.

There's three. These things always seem to come in threes.

Three creative geniuses who all influenced my life and creativity in many different ways.

Steve, of course, because of his Apple. I learned how to use an AppleII back in the 1980's, when its design and layout was seen for what it was, and companies were still using a variety of different computers according to their needs. By the early 1990's, of course, all that had changed. But you could design a folded hand-out on an early Apple, you got to see how much time was going to elapse before the computer would respond to your commands, and you could adjust the tabs and margins by looking at them and moving them to the places you wanted to. On a PC? Man, you were in trouble, and you had better learn how to do it while tap-dancing around your boss. On a Mac? Simple and easy peasy.

Now, of course, I have an iMac and a Nanopod and both have changed the way I do things. I used to record albums on cassette tapes and just listen over and over, in kind of a zone, to the album, letting my thoughts go where they may. Now, though, when I work out (and I will again soon!), I just stick my Nanopod with its little clippy-thingie on my shorts and who knows what song will come up? Will I listen to some mellow stadium music or will it be a Celtic piece? Will my running pace keep up with a drum machine or will I slow down to a ballad? I still listen to music on a stereo or in a car in the one-song-follows-another format, but now I have an alternative. And I was able to create a CD of sailing songs for my aunt and uncle who have a sailboat because of a Mac, and put some pictures together in a slide show with music playing in the background from a roadtrip I went on. Those are only the tip of the iceberg that my little iMac is capable of doing, and doing quite willingly, thank you very much.

Plus, with an iMac, I have such a greater range of creativity for design and layout. Not so much now that I don't have my shop, but on-line it is still easier to move things around, format, add backgrounds with an extra program . . . the list goes on. But when Steve said how he came to audit a class in calligraphy after he had dropped out of college, and how that was the spark that led him to design lots of fonts for his Apple, that revelation brought home again the knowledge that all designs start. Somewhere. With one person (or a collaboration, I suppose). There was a time when there were no fonts, when you could not choose how something would look: it was chosen for you. You had to answer to the technology; it did not answer to you. Apple has always been more intuitive and more responsive to its human counterpart. Without Apple, what would the PC have become instead?

Then I heard that Anne McCaffery had died a couple of weeks ago. Wow. Her books were intense. I read the Dragonriders series when I was 16, and then in a heartbreaking turn of events, my finally-sober father gave them to me for my 17th birthday. I knew he was trying to reconnect with me, and he had spent time in a bookstore looking for just the right book that would please me. He found them, too. When I unwrapped them, of course he guessed that I had already read them, and I could just feel both our hearts breaking for the missed opportunity of "This is just the book I've always wanted to read!" He was gracious, of course, and I have my copy of the "Dune" trilogy instead. But the hurt was deep, the look on his face was still there, and I had such a hard time re-reading them; it was only about 5 years ago that I picked them up again. After all, what could be a greater tribute to Dad's thoughtfulness and reaching out than to pick up what he had handed me, all those years ago? It's what he wanted me to have and to enjoy, after all.

And I fell in love with Pern all over again: its culture, its history, its First Fall legends, its harpers and riders and holders, and of course, its dragons. I re-read "Dragonflight" and "Dragonquest" and was touched by the story of Lissa and her struggles and about the moving through space and time. Then, at Dragon*Con, I picked up some of her books at a vendor, and happened to be reading one in one of the hotels when Todd McCaffery came over (recognizing the red cover, of course!) and said that he knew an author who would love to sign her work . . . ! *Gulp* How cool was that?! I saw the line for Anne McCaffery's autograph, though, and decided that no matter how much I loved her work, I could not bear yet another line. So perhaps I missed my chance to chat with an author, but her work has shown its strength of surviving for years.

The Dragonriders series were books where women were strong characters in their own right, another fact that we readers of science fiction and fantasy take for granted these days, but were sorely lacking in the 60's and 70's. In fact, one of my other favorite authors, Patricia A. McKillip, deliberately wrote the second book in her trilogy, the book entitled "Heir of Sea and Fire," to begin to play with the idea of a female lead character, and what would her quest look like? Here, then, was another creative pioneer, one who not only got her books published during the male-dominated days of sci-fi, but made her main characters adult women and the men who respected them. The manipulation, the whining, the child-woman were all out the window with her. Plus, she created dragons!

Then there's Ken Russell. I was into "Tommy" the movie in high school (as seen on HBO, of course!). Way, way into it. Its leading man was gorgeous with all of his thick, yellow curls and that magnificent strong voice of his, the way in which a newly freed Tommy reveled in his hearing and sight, and his attempt to show other people how to get from where he was to where he is, all showed a profound message. And again, the original rock opera was performed on stage: Ken Russell took that stage show, added the story of the husband and wife on their honeymoon, the shot of the plane zooming down in flames, the dasterdly-ness of Oliver Reed as Tommy's stepfather, all of those came from someone's imagination. There was a world and a time when these icons and shots did not exist, and now, thanks to Russell's creative genius, we live in a world where these things do exist.

I've only seen "Tommy" once in the theaters: when I was a student in Paris and one of the movie theaters was showing it. I went with several musically-inclined friends, and right outside of the theater was a group of Hare Krishna's, dancing around and asking for donations. I thought THIS was the most honest and profound message of this movie/rock opera concept: the messiah-figure has a message, he finds followers, and what do these followers do? They become ridicule for jokes, or they bring down the messiah when he cannot bring the enlightenment that he has promised. I don't know if Pete Townsend had all this imagery in his mind when he wrote the music, but Ken Russell brought visual imagery to a piece of music that has existed on film long past the days when The Who performed it on stage.

So while I haven't made as profound an impact on the world at large, I know that I have in many, many small ways done so by bringing, even for a short time, a place of beauty and creativity into being, and being a clearing house for threads and yarns and stories from all of my stitchers, all through the years, so that they had a place where they could create their tableaux, their hopes and dreams, and their surprises, too.

My Fairy do so TOO have a head!

2011-11-18T16:28:00.009-05:00

She does - I finished stitching it a couple of weeks ago, and I'm right now filling in her gorgeous mane of brownish-red hair. But I haven't taken pictures of her head, because my camera and its "ooh-wow" effect is right now trained on my fairy herself. So there!

She (Sidh?) is gorgeous. Simply amazing. On the cover of her pattern the picture shows her stitched on brown fabric. Not my taste - maybe it goes with her hair, but her gown on which I've worked for so many years just screams "Twilight Blue linen!"

Oh, perhaps I should introduce my little fairy. She is the Fairy Flora in the line by Mirabilia Designs. She is one of the earliest designs in this line that came out in the late 1990's. Yes, I've had her since about 1997 or so, when Mrs. Dennis herself gave me the piece of fabric and the pattern, and said, "Here. I think she looks like you, and here you go." No preamble, no special occasion, just "here." Which for Mrs. Dennis, who survived the Depression and was not someone to give something away on a lark, was not like her. I've treasured this design and the gift of the fabric, and began working on it in probably 2001 or 2002, when I was feeling overwhelmed by all the great knitting out there.

You see, as I've said in previous posts, I learned to stitch first. I can look at fabric, thread colors, and see how they can be changed, adapted, modified, and improved upon almost as easily as I can tie my shoes. I've helped customers over the years doing this, especially with these elaborate, years-long stitching designs, and I've found that changing a grounding fabric really brings out the design. Plus, I don't have the same vision in my head as the designer, so I can see how the design speaks to me (or a customer) and work within those parameters.

So I think I started this pattern more out of a sense of knowing that there was truly "something" out there that I could do well, perhaps better than most, and that "something" was this glorious design, full of swoops and swirls and all manner of prettiness. And since I had the shop, I had the advantage of working on a lap board with double-ended needles and a Q-Snap frame. These tools gave me the knowledge of how to use them, how to sell them, and what the end product would look like. For years I had stitched in-hand, meaning holding the fabric in one hand and bringing the needle up and down with the other. All very well and good, and how I stitched most of my shop samples (since I wanted to get them done quickly), but this piece, ah, now this piece called for something more . . .

How my fairy appeared for many years on her stand. Not completed
as she is here (she was a long work in progress), but above is
the stand set-up on which I worked on a quiet weekend morning.

So what I would do is balance the stand on my lap (a wood-finished Baby Z-Stand by K's Creations) with the Universal Clamp to hold my Q-Snap. There are a lot of different fabric holders out there - hoops, top-and-bottom fabric holders that you roll the fabric, stitch the fabric, or velcro the fabric onto, and Kay realized this fact when she designed her extensive line of frames. I think I only sold one or two floor stands of hers, but her lap stands and stitching stools were extremely sturdy, attractive, well-built, and made with stitchers in mind. When I began stitching this piece, I realized how much more evenly my stitches fall into place (they don't have a slant on the top "x" that shows in which direction I am stitching - L to R or R to L).

I also had the option, since I was using a lap stand, to use a laying tool. A laying tool is a handy little device, made of wood or even a metal fingertip cover (called a trolley needle) which you lay with your non-stitching hand on top of your fabric as you make each stitch to keep the tension on your threads even. I used one called the Practical Laying Tool (no longer in production, sadly) that has a square wooden handle (slightly chewed by Dave the Dog) with a large needlepoint needle embedded in the top. (For a superb explanation of the hows and whys of laying tools, I suggest this page from the Nordic Needle website.) For my part, I found that slowing down just a teensy bit to ensure that each stitch is even, not slanted, and the threads are not twisted (all thanks to the laying tool) has really made a difference in my finished project.

In addition to a lap stand and laying tool, I also used a twin-pointed needle by John James. They came out in 2001 or 2002 at the Charlotte Needlework trade show, and again are only useable when you are not holding the hoop in one hand. What you do is, you lay one hand on top of your fabric, one on the bottom, and just stitch. The eye of the needle is in the center, the points are on the end (hence the name of Twin-Pointed Needle) and it allows your stitching to progress relatively easily without having to take one hand above and below the needle to make the stitch. It's a bit ambidextrous, but I was using the laying tool so I was learning ambidextrous stitching as I went. It also takes the strain off of your wrist, having to move it up then down as you stitch.

And for a big project like this, a frame like this QSnap made all the difference in keeping the fabric out of the way and not all crumpled up and dirty as it would have if I had stitched it in-hand. Yes, there are wrinkles on it and even an indentation on the top photo that shows where the QSnap lay, but those will come out in the blocking. I've done it hundreds of times. Linen loves to wrinkle, and once it's wet and dried on a blocking board, it becomes just as straight and even as you would like.

But enough about technique - one reads a blog for the photos, right? So here are some photos of her skirt's hem:

Those little spaces that form little swirls on her skirt? Ah, now those will one day be filled in with beads. Lots and lots of beads. THAT stitching I will have to do in-hand, since the QSnap frame literally snaps over your stitching, and if there is a bead in the way . . . you get the picture. Glass beads are enough of a "challenge" that I don't need to worry about little bits of beads in cracks on my floor or on my bare feet!

I just had to take a picture of the contrast between the bright, vibrant flowers that lay over her gown (she's a fairy of flora, after all) and the light pinks and purples of her gown itself. As I began to stitch these clumps of non-gown symbols, I began to realize what an art it is to design counted cross stitch. Really. You could, of course, translate these forms and colors to paint, but where would be the joy in that endeavor? The texture, the colors that cross stitch has that are unique to it: any stitcher will be able to look at the purple and say "208, 209, 210, 211" and another stitcher will know exactly what they mean. There's just these shades, you know? It's more than "forest green," it's 3347 with a vine of 3371. The color 3371 is used for branches, dark highlights on trees, and backstitching. But you see it on these light peaches and purples, and it just draws your eye along the texture of the fabric. You see the detail because of these branches. And the gown just flows from one texture to another.

OK, one more showing the blackberries on the bush and my fairy's gown:

Fairy gown with beaded hem (minus beads) and amazing contrast
between reddish-pink flowers, blue greens of forest, and blackberries.

I've helped many customers pick out the threads, materials, and beads for their Mirabilia fairies, and I am so happy that I have one of my very, very, own to show off now. Head or no head! Again, here is another "in toto" shot. The extra fabric will be necessary for her raised wand and her wings. Which are stitched with blending filament, and are very, very large. *SIGH* She will be beautiful when it's all done, and you know, she's pretty darn amazing now.

Brambleberry Sweater is DONE!

2011-10-30T16:11:00.013-05:00

After 3 visits to The Mountain (2009, 2010, and 2011), endless hours at home, three swatches that I blocked (thank you, Brooke), the encouragement of a deadline of the October AKG meeting, and 2 viewings of the last episode of "Lost" before I, too, changed my subscription to Netflix, I can finally say that I have a finished sweater!! It is lovely, it is blocked, it fits, and I have worn it out to the North Georgia mountains where it kept me warm, warm, warm. And best of all (besides the fact that it fits!), it is the perfect orangey-red color that perfectly fits with this time of the year. The yarn is kind of red, but that red that is kind of orange, and there are flecks of yellow in the reddish yarn. So, without further ado, here is my beautiful new sweater in all of its orangey-red cabled glory:

It's almost a work of art, no?

Here's another view, same sweater, from the front, too:

I really can't believe it's done. And I made this!

And really, I must take this opportunity to apologize for the long length of time between posts, from Sept. 11 to now. One of the weekends I spent out of town at my college reunion (25 years!); another visiting an alpaca farm where yes, I did come away with more than just 'paca poo; one Saturday at the Decatur Beer Fest and the next day recovering (no more absinthe. Ever.); and one weekend spent with friends in North Georgia. All these are worthy causes and reasons, and then there's my new day job (part-time, but then my web orders have started to go through the roof which means after-work is spent filling them), so my blogging time has been compromised. Not my project, time, mind you - several pictures will make their ways to this blog very, very soon with accompanying posts. Not this time, though; this time is my long awaited "My Brambleberry Sweater is Done!" post.

So yes, this is the first sweater where I've actually followed all of the experts' advice and BLOCKED my swatch before I selected my needles. Which was an earlier post and has resulted in a class that I'll be teaching in November about gauge. It was a case of using not just the correct needle size (that didn't seem to matter), but using the correct type of needle: the plastic needle made the entire cable just totally collapse and loose its structure, but the wooden needle helped bolster up the cable and keep its "body." Really amazing, that.

And this was the first sweater pattern I've ever come across that has the even-numbered rows as the right rows (knit right to left) as opposed to odd rows being the right rows (wrong side vs. right side of a garment). That called for some interesting verbage from me when I started to knit the sleeves one late-ish night this year at The Mountain and I realized my mistake and had to rip out those eight rows and start again. I mean, it wasn't as though I didn't have notes and arrows to that end! The designer also added selvedge stitches to her pattern, so you cast on 2 extra stitches but the pattern and directions exclude those stitches when telling you what to do. And it's good to have those selvedge stitches because they're needed for the seaming. But more on seaming later.

This pattern was a fairly easy cable sweater to knit: the design remains the same (cable on the 2nd row) for the first 10 or so pattern repeats. A few rows before you begin to decrease for the armholes, you then "walk" the cable over, so that the K4 P2 rib becomes the new cable twist, and continues in this way for 3 or 4 rows until it "walks" back to the original cable pattern. This contributes greatly to the movement and attractiveness of this sweater; some would say rhythm.

Here is the detail from where the cables "walk" and then return to their original journey.
This is a slightly lighter shade than the actual yarn,
but there really are that many colors in this yarn. Amazing.

I did adjust the length of the sweater, as I am a short person and even though I knit the size M (44"), I still needed to shorten the length so that it would not resemble a small dress. This of course caused me some consternation when I began the armhole decreases, but I took copious notes about the adjustments I did to the back that proved handy when I did the front. I also finished knitting the front while listening to the audio version of Watership Down earlier this year in order to keep familiarity with this pattern and also so that I would not be making those crucial armhole-decreases-while-keeping-cable-pattern decisions with adult beverages clouding my judgment.

And as I've posted before, I'm really really really glad that I knit the sleeves at the same time. The slight aggravation of remembering which row I was on and which ball of yarn was minimal compared to the huge aggravation I would have had if I had had to remember which row increase I did when. Oh, and I did not do the cable pattern on the sleeve edges - I learned from my former teacher, Christina, that a cable sweater does not necessarily have to continue its cable pattern under the arm. So I just continued knitting the K4 P2 rib pattern as I increased the sleeves and it made a lot of difference with time, aggravation, and ease of wearing.

Then there was the knitting it together. Before I did so, and starting the day before my birthday and visit to the alpaca farm, I began to weave in the yarn ends. I HATE weaving in yarn ends. It's a pain. It's kind of meticulous, kind of mindless, but you have to pay some attention to what you're doing and it just seems never-ending. *Blech* I wanted to weave in enough so that by the time I had finished sewing up the seams, I wouldn't have that many yarn ends to weave in before I blocked it. *Blech* again. The discipline of martial arts training kicked in here, and I meticulously wove in yarn ends that weren't on the seam line. Some of them, anyway.

Which brings me to seaming. Ah, seaming. There are people who hate to sew up seams. Me, not so much. I don't mind seams - remember, I use to frame needlework and THAT can be meticulous and all-encompassing. But I made the mistake I've made in the past, where I decide what a shame it is to waste all that yarn at the shoulder join, and wouldn't it be better to just knit a portion of the sleeve seam?? Well, no, no it wouldn't. And here's why: it bulks up. No matter how careful you are, no matter how much easing you're doing to the portion closest to where you began to join the sleeve with this method, you're going to wind up with one side flat and one side with 5-10 extra stitches that you need to answer for. So the solution is to take it out and re-try it. And the same thing happens. What is that definition of insanity? I knit one portion of one sleeve during the final episode of "Lost" using this method. The entire 2 hours of the final episode of "Lost." When will I learn??

You guessed it - I put it down, picked it back up, and with that strong martial arts discipline I learned oh-so-many years ago, I started from the edge, made the center of the sleeve ribbing (in between the cables) match with the shoulder seam, for both sleeves, all while re-watching the final episode of "Lost." Inset sleeves are tricky in the best of circumstances, but inset sleeves that include cable/ribbed patterns require meticulous attention to which stitches you are seaming to which. So here is the end result:

Since the seams here are obvious, even to the non-knitter,
I had to be very, very careful with making sure they matched.
Exactly.

And here is a close-up, showing sleeve detail of which I am especially proud:

Sleeve seaming detail

Of course, that meant that I had to weave in and cut off otherwise perfectly good, long yarn ends that all meet at the shoulder join, but I'll just have to get over it.

And another thing of which I am extremely proud are the side seams. They are almost invisible and I really, really have to say I am proud of the extra time I took to make them almost as perfect as any stockinette stitch sweater (I've never seamed on reverse stockinette, a.k.a. purl, stitches before:

Side seam detail. You almost can't see it. Go me!

Then there is the neck. Someday, I may re-knit the neck. The cover picture of this sweater shows a very, very small rolled neck. Not for me. Mine was much longer; almost too long. The neck is knit after the shoulder seams are joined (giving you a vest-like sweater), and this one called for picking up and knitting with smaller needles, starting with a K1P1 rib, then decreasing, then knitting until it reaches where you want it to reach. Which on me, after 6 rounds, was about to the top of my collarbone. Yup, I have a large-ish shoulder-to-neck measurement, and therefore need more neckline than the pattern anticipated. And it's not the pattern's fault, either - it's a by-product of not knitting enough sweaters for myself and knowing how things will finish up. So what this means is, someday I may decide to undo and re-knit the neckline, using the same size needles and continuing with the pattern for at least 2 pattern repeats (2"), then starting on the formal neckline. But not now - now is just for wearing and admiring and receiving (I hope!) complements from those who see me in it. So here's the neckline in question; knitters out there, let me know your thoughts on the necessity of re-knitting this neckline at some point in time:

Longer than I anticipated, this is the rolled-neck ending to this sweater

Oh, and the other amazing thing about this sweater, and another reason I chose to knit the size that was close to my bust size instead of L (48"): it relaxed after I blocked it. I was really beginning to worry that I had knit an M and the sizing gods would punish me by having it be too tight and with too-tight cables. Now that would be embarrassing. But no, it relaxed both out and down, so the sleeves reach a little bit below my wrists, enough for me to pull my hands in when it's cold outside (like in the N. GA mountains), and the horizontal is eased so that it fits comfortably around my 44" (pattern size M) bustline.

Hurrah! It is finished! And just because it's my blog post and I want to, here is the Brambleberry sweater in all of its finished glory (again):

*SIGH*

Tea at the Dragon

2011-09-11T14:12:00.003-05:00

Well, not actually at the Dragon, or even in the Dragon's belly . . . it was a stitching tea in our hotel room during Dragon*Con. And it was a blast!

There are no pictures - Webmaster Bill had the camera over the weekend, although if memory serves he was invited to the hotel's bar for some boozin' during our tea party, and that is a whole other blog post.

This was different: this was a true tea, featuring tea, baked goodies, and cheese and crackers. And there were all different kinds of tea: herbal, Lady Jane Grey, and even some Tazo tea that J. brought that included some chocolate tea and some energy tea. The milk had defrosted enough to provide some milk-ness to tea for guests (quite a relief!). Mini-refrigerators can sometimes cool things down a little too much, you see.

Of course, Sir Pepperidge Farm made his highly chocolatey appearance with Pirouettes and one of those great cookie sample packs. And the perfect excuse to indulge in those samples: a tea! J. also brought some delicious home-made apricot scones and some Star Wars cookies (courtesy of Fancy Baking Place whose name escapes me) that were one of the hits of the party. I mean, let's face it - Yoda cookies and Darth Vader cookies served at an event where StormTroopers and Klingons abound? They were perfect! To top it off, they were delicious.

Then there were some nice cheeses to go with just regular, ordinary, tea crackers: a local goat cheese and some especially yummy Camembert. You see, I'm a huge fan of a nice goat cheese, but having learned that Webmaster Bill is not, I only get goat cheese for myself due its strong, intense flavor that I like and he does not. I must say, though, this trio of goat cheeses that I bought recently at the Decatur Organic Farmer's Market is mild, delicious, and there were three flavors offered in the little box: regular, peach, and cranberry. Yum!! The Camembert was just the way I prefer it - a little soft, not too gooey, and definitely NOT smelly. A nice, mild taste to suit some slightly sweet sweets and hot teas.

So all guests arrived around 3:45 or so, from J. to V. to L&E (others were involved in panels or shopping, both of which abound at Dragon*Con), and we had a wonderful time talking and getting to know each others' projects be they large or small: cross stitch bookmarks, beaded shawls, or tiny birds. Or Tiny Houses. It really struck me how very crafty this group was and how creative these women were. And really, we all got involved in making teas, eating goodies, and guests getting to know one another that the stitching/crafting/knitting just did not take place. Nor did the broadcast of the Carrie Fisher panel, which just totally slipped my mind in the creative hubbub that abounded that afternoon.

The sad truth is, I'm not used to being a hostess, not really, so my primary focus had changed from the "planning this great afternoon" stage to the "organizing it once the guests arrive." The planning stage involved an idea of a bunch of D*C crafty women friends of mine taking a break on Sunday afternoon, coming by my hotel room, stitching and turning on D*C TV to watch the Carrie Fisher panel. The organizing phase started once I arrived in my room, changed clothes, pulled out all of the tea fixin's, made hot water in that tiny little one-cup-only coffee maker (we had brought the coffee press as an alternative and as a hot water holder), opened the overwrapped packages of cookies and crackers, pulled the cheeses out of the fridge to come to room temperature; in short, the planning phase just slipped my mind while the organizing phase took over! Fortunately for me, I have wonderful friends who are also wonderful guests, and they seemed to be enjoying just getting to know one another and sampling the delicious goodies.

I also have a group of hostess friends who are just the most capable women when it comes to hostessing things, from a weekend building a house to an Oscars party complete with movie-themed food to a full 9 course pasta dinner at Christmas (complete with different wines for each course), and I just kept their effortless hostessing-ness in the forefront of my mind. As a result, I had no meltdowns, few fears, and just really enjoyed myself along with my guests.

So all in all, my impromptu tea went well, and now that I've got the hang of hostessing in a hotel room, I'm thinking I just might try this again next year . . . I'm thinkin'!

Beach Sweater is Done!

2011-08-28T14:02:00.012-05:00

Yes, yes, at long last, this beautiful sweater full of bright turquoise-y green and deep blue, colors I saw and loved and bought on an impulse, is DONE! And now I can show a picture and blog about it:

Lovely front of lovely Beach Sweater

Two of the details on this simple sweater are right there on the photo - the slight V-neck with the foldover collar (I guess in fashion circles it's called a "Bistro collar") and the slight flaring of the sleeves so that it covers things like bra straps and is not a true tank top. Which is good from my older POV.

The sleeves are easy to expand - you simply Sl1, M1, K2, Sl1 to increase at the start of the sleeve shaping, and the slipping of a stitch (Sl1) from the left-hand needle to the right-hand needle gives it that little bit of raised look. Which is an effective design technique when you are using a combination of yarns or when using a yarn that has a nub or a slight pattern to it, because it is subtle enough to attract the eye but does not overwhelm the yarn you are using. And the M1 increase happens every 4 rows, just as you're getting bored with knitting stockinette stitch.

The collar option is also quite easy - it calls for picking up and knitting as you usually do when doing a collar (after the sleeve seams are sewn, you then create a collar on those two otherwise plain pieces of knitted fabric). But again, the designer has you do the Sl1, M1, K2, Sl1 to create flaps on the front of the sweater while you make a collar that folds over the back of the sweater like a traditional collar does.

Here is the back of the Beach sweater. The roll at the top
center of the back is the collar that rolls down like a
traditional collar.

Another design change I made on this sweater was to increase the length. Partly because of my bust size and partly because I'm not young enough to want to have my belly button showing when I raise my arms up, I increased the length to 16" rather than the recommended 14 1/2". And that extra inch and a half really, really made all the difference. It also meant that I had to spend a whole lotta time with the measuring tape, measuring the back on the floor, then the top on the floor, then the top on top of the back, then the back . . . you get the picture! But the extra effort was worth it and this sweater is quite wearable.

And really, sewing the side seams was not that difficult. Just a basic mattress stitch that you can do in front of an old movie (yes, it can be a Bette Davis murder mystery - there's no counting, just sewing). I'm not one of those knitting purists who has to knit every single sweater in the round, modifying any sweater pattern that says differently. The way I look at it, sewing side seams is the easy, fun portion of the knitting - it lets you see how the sweater looks from all the knitting you've done. On the other hand, I hate knitting in yarn ends. THAT's the part where I pour myself a glass of wine and grumble my way through that onerous task. I don't know why I hate the yarn ends and ease into the side seams of knitting, but there you have it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had knit this sweater when I saw some Rasta yarn by Berroco (now discontinued. Of course. They were notorious for that.) in another local yarn shop. I had gone shopping with friends K&A near their hometown knit shop, and we brought the boys into shop with us. The boys got a whole new eye-opening experience, and we girls got to shop. Rasta is considered a heavy cotton, knit on size 10, and what was especially lovely about it was it was not a twisted cotton yarn with nubblies on it: it looked like the kind of cotton strips you use for a woven rug, with the nubbly bits all twisted onto it.

This first sweater I knit fairly quickly, as it required less stitches to cast on and I was lazy and went with the pattern directions. It looks great, and it's the perfect cotton sweater to wear with, say, khaki pants or even light colored jeans. The color of the nubbly bits just jumps out at you, and the background is neutral enough for just staying in the background. It's just a little short for my long-torsoed figure, but the pattern is easy enough to increase prior to the sleeve increases.

Here is the almost-completed sweater (the ends need to be woven in, and the bow on the top RH side of the collar is holding the live stitches).

Bistro shirt made of Rasta cotton yarn

Just so you can get an idea of how the Rasta yarn looked when it was in production, and why I jumped on it when I found it at a yarn shop and bought up all they had of the dye lot, here is a close-up of the yarn and its texture:

Rasta yarn in all its glory, with old-fashioned
plastic needles that made this cotton yarn
really fly, with just enough give for my hands

I really, really enjoyed knitting this sweater the second time through, and have already worn it out to friends' house. I think it will be one that is classy enough I can wear it to work. Both sweaters, really. Not that I'm a fashion plate, but it definitely has classic lines that fit with a "business casual" environment.

Ongoing Projects

2011-08-10T09:37:00.011-05:00

First, my intricately cabled sweater made from Blackwater Abbey Yarns using the pattern Brambleberry to make a nice, pretty, long-sleeved, warm sweater. I've knitted it for the past 3 Mountain trips, and I'd like to bring a new sweater along in February. Which means I need to finish it and sew the seams together (not necessarily an easy task, as the cables will need to match up, but it will be worth the work), and I'll probably sew the seams while listening to a book on tape to keep my mind focused.

In the meantime, I just have to say . . . I am so tired of these darn sleeves! I mean really! I'm at the point in the pattern, the sleeves, which seem to be the longest part of any project. They just keep going . . . and going . . . and going. And I'm bored with the pattern, and I just have to keep knitting and remembering to decrease on every even row, and I'm so bored!

To give you an idea, here's my previous blog picture of the sleeves from earlier this year:

Brambleberry Sleeves, about half-way finished

And as I said before, I'm knitting the sleeves at the same time so that all the increases are the same, decreases are the same, possible mistakes are the same . . . and that basically the sleeves match. All well and good. And it's not exactly mindless knitting, even though I'm only cabling on R2 since I've decided not to do the cable pattern underneath my arms because really, what would be the point? I know that the pattern has this lovely cable that floats along around the arm, but there's also a lot of bulk that way and this sweater is going to be bulky enough with the yarn being what it is. Plus there's the lack of being able to see the cables when wearing the sweater, and the yarn will be rubbing as I move my arms which will make the cables less pristine.

So, with a spring of knitting and knitting, and seemingly endless more knitting, and working on two socks for a knit-along on Ravelry, I've procrastinated these sleeves till now. They're almost done - I'm on the last decrease row before I bind off. And then my wish will be fulfilled: my sleeves will be done!!

Here they are as of last night (picture taken this morning):

One more row . . . that's all they need . . .

Which I think I can accomplish tonight while I catch up on Season 6 of "Lost" (I watched most of it but not all, and I was driving back from New Orleans during the final episode) tonight. And then there will be much rejoicing!! Hurrah!

Another piece that I'm working on is a companion to my completed Wren in the Furze and the Blue Tit, both Eva Rosenstand kits. I think I started this little bird last year, and it proved to be a great piece to bring while I was relaxing in Asheville a month ago. In fact, I stitched most of the green that is the setting for the wild rose that will be the floral portion of this design.

I haven't quite figured out what kind of bird this is. There's a lot of pink on it, but then again, it may be that the designer wanted to highlight the pink of the wild rose and so invented a bird with pink in it. If anyone knows northern European birds . . .

You know what I find interesting about this design is the amount of yellowish green that the foliage calls for. I'm not a huge fan of yellowish green - I can't wear the color, it makes me look like I'm about to become violently ill.
Regardless, it adds the shading to the foliage that a lighter green just won't capture quite as well. And you can tell the amount of the yellowish green from the colors of thread that come with the design. You can also see the several shades of pink that will become the wild rose. For this piece, I chose to stitch the bird first (cuz he's so much fun and I like to complete one motif before going on to the next), then I'll do some greenery, then finally on to the rose. Kind of brings order to the chaos.

It really was nice this summer to sit in a comfy chair, talk with friends and husband, and just sit and stitch during daylight hours (I somehow didn't need my reading glasses!). We were in the shade, I won't lie about that, but there was no pressure to finish anything, and I was able to listen to the conversation and stitch something just because it was beautiful.

OK, well, have to upload some pictures of some patterns that I forgot to upload when I entered these patterns onto my website last week. *sigh* At least that gives me time to procrastinate my sleeves!

So, How's the Website Coming?

2011-07-19T08:40:00.003-05:00

I'm hearing this question a lot, especially as I've taken some time off this summer to work on my website. My website exclusively, maybe some part-time work for my bank account's sake, but my website that I initially saw as a representation as my retail shop. For the most part, that has been the case, until I've walked into my storage unit (a 10 x 30, climate controlled space) and seen a box of kits . . . and some cases of fabric . . . and two huge boxes filled with stuff . . . and all those things that we grabbed and packed and marked with names like "top shelf in the cross stitch room."

Well, 3 years have passed, and many of those items are still in their boxes, and I kind of remember what was on the top shelf of the cross stitch room, but not completely. So what occurred to me while I was there last week was, why not re-pack? There's no great rush now, those office packing boxes have worked just fine, and one of them fits nicely into my car and next to my chair in my office, and if I had all of them labeled "Stitcher's Aides" and "Pillows and Band Fabric" and "Baby Items," it would make all the difference between being able to find the item a customer has ordered on-line, pack it neatly, and go onto the next project, than having to go through 4 different boxes to find which box item X lived and where it might be found. Quite the difference between a quick and pleasant packing experience and one that is quite frustrating.

So I did that - I dressed in T-shirt and shorts last Friday and spent a good 3 hours just making up those boxes (you know the ones I mean, the boxes that are all-in-one with the sides you fold up and pull the bottom up, and put all of your office's papers into) and pulling and packing and organizing. And you know what? It's worked. I can now take the box of baby things home, upload all of the baby things in that box onto the web, at one time, and take pictures of what I need while the box is in my possession. It makes the knowledge of "On the Web" so much cleaner both mentally and visually, and gives me the impetus to continue with this good work. And on the flip side, in a few months, when a baby item sells on the web, I know exactly which box to go into, pull the item, and pack it for my on-line customer.

Another thing that has made my uploading so much easier is the realization that I can add an item to my website, then make a corresponding list of what needs a picture, and taking a series of pictures all at once. Strangely enough, writing down an item that needs a picture and then taking a picture is such a huge time-saver, compared to sitting for huge amounts of time in front of the World Wide Web and trying to find one picture among thousands. This new way of doing things means that I upload everything in a box or folder all at once, then take all the pictures all at once, then work on the pictures, all at once.

So, that's where I am with my website - hope it's not too geeky for everyone out there!

Beach Sweater in Asheville

2011-07-05T08:31:00.010-05:00

I call it my Beach sweater because its colors are, well, beach-like. Bright blue and green, and it's not often that I can find a shade of green that a) I like and b) does not make me look like I'm sickly and ready to fall over in a dead faint. I found two shades last year when I went to help with the tiny house on Mt. Matt (see "Life in 120 Square Feet" blog next door for additional information about my friends' adventures). Since I'm their friend I get to indulge in their hospitality over July 4th weekend and help with whatever odd jobs are on the docket for that weekend.

Two years ago we were only there for a night and one full day due to work schedules (or maybe it was two full nights, one full and two partial days - all I remember was the incredible amount of RAIN that weekend and how dry our new tent kept us). Last year we drove up after work on Friday and took a road we had taken in years past when going to Hickory for furniture shopping, a road called White Horse Road. We hadn't remembered it being as industrial in 1996 as it was in 2010, but then we got past all the "development" and WOW! There was a sunset between two mountain peaks and we realized we had taken the most beautiful scenic route we could have hoped for.

On the morrow last year we spent some time in downtown Asheville. I had heard about this wonderful shop from customers who had been there (*grumble*) while I had to stay in Atlanta and mind my shop while they went galivanting around the country. The shop is called Earth Guild, and it was supposed to be fantastic and full of great yarn and creativity, so I asked directions while in Asheville to it. We walked uphill and down, saw the marvelous fountain park in the downtown area, and finally went into Earth Guild. Oh my.

Really. Seriously. Oh my.

They had everything there - basketweaving, leatherworking, clay, and knitting. Their colors were inspirational and of course I just had to buy. I had been working for almost a year, after all, and wasn't part of vacationing visiting the yarn and needlework shops??

So I found this blue Ironstone yarn. It was a thick-thin cotton construction that called for a size 6 needle. Size 6? Were they kidding? I would have had to wear a shirt under my knitted sweater, and what's the point in that? So I discovered some green, and twisted the two yarns together. WOW. Just wow.

The texture, on size 6's, getting 5 sts to the inch.
Which is why you always knit a gauge swatch.
Yarn is doubled; mfg. gauge for single ply is 5 sts/inch. Who knew??

Just the perfect combination, and surely I could create something out of them. I selected an amount of yarn that I thought would be suitable for a sweater, and then the owner said the magic words and I knew I was succumbing: "Those yarns have been discontinued." *Sigh*

What that means is "the manufacturer decided/sales weren't enough to/they had a disagreement with the mill" and there is no more of that yarn. It means "you better buy more yarn than you think because I can't get any more in for you." It means "get out your checkbook, and you might as well stay for a spell cuz you're gonna be spending money, girl."

I saw two sides of this when I was a shopowner. The first was the reaction I had, above, the "get out your checkbook, honey" where you know, you just know, you're going to sell that very last skein of discontinued yarn and not have to worry about telling the next person that you can't get any more of THAT yarn for them. Ever.

The second reaction, which almost always ended in bad feelings all around, was the "Well, I really don't need that much yarn, I'll leave with what I want to/intended to leave with" that came back to haunt them a few months later when, guess what? they didn't have enough yarn to finish their project and were just out of luck. I learned early on that it was my responsibility to advise them of a yarn's discontinued status; it was not my job to feel responsible for their inadequate purchase when they came back and were upset at me, my shop, my suppliers, etc., etc. A very good learning experience for this shopowner, that was.

So anyway. I went back to the Ironstone cubicles, grabbed more yarn, and decided that since they had some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece yarn in colors I had not yet seen at Sheepish, by golly I'd have to buy sufficient quantity to make that 3/4 sleeve summer cardigan that I had always envisioned as a use for Cotton Fleece, the one you wear in an office in the summer in Atlanta because the air conditioning is just too darn high. And again, there was one color they didn't have quite enough of . . . so another, darker color became the trim. But that's another posting for another day.

So with Cotton Fleece and Ironstone Solo in hand (both arms, really), I went to the cash register. Where I was told that I was close to point A on their discount level, and didn't I need some needles with that? Of course I did! I needed to knit a gauge swatch, now didn't I? And being a North Carolina yarn shop, lo and behold they had Twin Birch needles in stock! I had always loved Twin Birch needles - they were a local company, they put other people to work in the community making needles and other knitting accessories, they used mill ends of wood, etc., etc. Their points were very, very sharp, and while they didn't make circular needles, their straights were just smooth, wooden, warm, and one of my all-time favorite products. So I bought needles in the appropriate sizes for both products (I worked with the owner to determine what size to use for this doubled yarn; size 6 was the answer) and again, went proudly back to my growing pile on the counter.

Where I was gladly told that I was almost at the point on their customer discount level that if I bought $X more, I could get a nice Earth Guild bag. Into said pile went two different skeins of sock yarn (including this, shown on the post about sock knitting at The Mountain, and shown here) and I received a nice blue bag in which to place my larger-than-expected purchase. Oh, and Webmaster Bill decided some woodworking tools would be just the thing, so we got an even larger discount for our even larger purchase. *Sigh*

I decided to use a pattern I had used before called the Bistro Shirt by Oat Couture, a fantastic summer sweater with a nice open collar. I had knit a bulky cotton yarn called Rasta into said summer sweater pattern a few years ago, and realized that this yarn with its thick-thin texture and twisted together would be perfect. The pattern is strictly stockinette, so fancier yarns help bring more jazz to it.

(Sorry - forgot to rotate it!)

But, here it is, the day after our annual weekend at Mt. Matt, and said sweater is almost finished. The back I finished before The Mountain venture, and for some reason (maybe after two very complicated socks for the Ravelry Cookies KAL??) I just wanted some easy, mindless, in-front-of-the-TV-to-watch-movies knitting. So the front is done, and all it needs is the 3-needle bind-off to sew together the shoulder seams, and then knit up the side seams. Here are pictures of the finished back and almost finished front:

Back, with yarn instead of metal stitch holders,
to allow the live stitches to "relax" better

Front, with Twin Birch needles quite visible,
and the front RH and LH sides yet to be knit

Oh, and I have tons more yarn left over. Guess I was the other end of the purchasing spectrum, eh? Will post extra yarn on Ravelry - someone is probably looking for it so they can finish their sweater!!

Happy after 4th week!

Starting with Socks

2011-06-12T12:34:00.008-05:00

So when I arrive at the Mountain, check in, unpack my one meager bag full of all my winter sweaters, and prepare my many, many project bags for the weekend, I always start knitting on a sock.

Why a sock?

Well, for one thing, they're small. They knit up quickly. After the cast on and joining rounds, there's a lot of "mindless knitting" followed by "thinking knitting" followed by more "mindless knitting" followed by "thinking knitting." Then you finish with scrambling to find directions for the Kitchener stitch, and before you know it, you're done with your sock.

I started knitting a sock as my first project at the Mountain several years ago, when I was learning Intarsia in the round for a sock (from the "Socks for Sandals and Clogs" book) and I wanted the peace and serenity of the Mountain to be present while I started on this seemingly impossible adventure.

It wasn't impossible - it was fun, very very fun. Basically what you do is you knit with the background yarn to the pattern, slip the pattern stitches, knit the ground stitches, and then turn the whole thing around, purling across the pattern stitches while slipping the ground stitches. It can be done with small patterns (about 5 stitches, ground stitch or two, and 5 more stitches) but not with 12 stitch beer hat patterns. Those have to be knit flat, then sew up the seam in the back.

But I digress.

So with the wonderful lightbulbs going off above my head as I sat on the porch outside with other knitters around me to ooooh and aaaah at this cool new technique, I found that I was all jazzed from my new learning experience AND sufficiently calmed down from the exciting drive up to the Mountain to begin to knit on something a little more complicated that night after dinner.

And I do mean exciting - I drive a Neon, and there's a reason for it: it is the best handling car, most fleet and easily manuever-able car I've ever driven since I inherited my Dad's Camero in the 80's. There are twisty windy mountain roads all the way up to the Mountain, and yes, I do drive them as fast as my car can handle them. There is nothing like the feel of a great car hugging the road while it is put through its paces and it, too, revels in the feel of doing what it was designed to do.

But I digress. Again.

Anyway, the next year, I brought some socks to knit on, just regular sock knitting ("mindless knitting") in the round to slow down from the drive and mesh with the energy of the Mountain that year. I used yarn I had bought in Dahlonega while touring that yarn shop with some friends, just some simple yarn, and found that this sort of settling in to be just the thing. I could concentrate better, have more mental energy later that evening, and have something to just knit on in between thinking projects.

This year, I continued the tradition with some yarn I bought in Asheville. Asheville is truly a wonderful city for the arts and many people had told me while I was a shopowner (can you say "jealous about weekend getaways??") about Earth Guild as a wonderful shop to visit. While I was on one of my many weekend getaways post-shopowner life, I helped friends with building their Tiny House and stopped for a few hours in Asheville on the way to their Mountain. All of the customers who raved about Earth Guild - they weren't kidding - no matter what sort of handcraft you like, whether it be spinning or basketweaving or knitting, they have the tools and the expertise to help you with your project and get you started on your next. So much creative inspiration, and I'm so glad I was able to spend some time there at long last, visiting a legend.

To help bring my purchase up to the correct dollar amount to qualify for a 20% discount for my entire purchase, I bought some Trekking yarn for a sock. Liked the color, wasn't sure how the patterning would happen, but I needed a sock for, well, for take along knitting. I started it in time for DragonCon last year (now that the costumers are coming full circle with kimonos and steam punk, there is a room set aside for doing one's fiber arts every morning as costume add-ins or just to sit and knit or tat with friends), then brought its companion to the Mountain to revel in the energy there:

It's got very pretty shades of blues with lots of dark purples for contrast. I've worn it once to work - I buy sandles these days especially so that I can wear my socks with them. I'm discovering, though, that I need to knit socks with gussets in the front to compensate for the difference in size between my ankles and my calves. I do like the length and the marbling of the color.

Here's the companion (not quite completed) with the yarn info. I think you can get a better look at the quality of the coloring with this shot.

The needles are, yes, aluminum, but they are my grandmother's. While I've given away her other aluminum knitting needles to a good cause, I've knit most of my socks with these.

And that, dear readers, is why I knit socks at the Mountain. I'm concentrating pretty hard on very complicated projects and on wonderful conversations, and sock knitting brings just enough *brain sigh* energy to the weekend that I can relax while I'm there.

Mountain Projects - Brambleberry Sweater

2011-04-22T16:11:00.011-05:00

I've promised and promised to put these projects on my blog, and now here it is - a Friday afternoon in late April (Good Friday, in fact), and the Mountain is now a happy memory.

But not to worry! That's why blogs exist!

This is the first of several posts about projects I work on at the annual Atlanta Knitting Guild retreat at The Mountain in North Carolina. It is a wonderful, calming, peaceful place, way up at the ankle of the Appalachian Mountains (Atlanta being the foothills, North Carolina would be the ankles, no?). Everyone brings projects that they often cannot work on anywhere else, due to the association with The Mountain, the amount of concentration needed to work on a project, or the help they will receive from other knitters over the long weekend. And that's basically what it is: show up after noon-ish on Friday, snack, knit, eat dinner, knit, begin to taste Knitting Water, and continue knitting into the weee hours of the next day.

Sleep.

Repeat.

For an entire long weekend.

Some other projects I've worked on have been a wedding shawl for my friend and former colleague, for whom I cast on 400 stitches! a project that could only have been accomplished with many stitch markers, the complete silence of other understanding knitters, and a few swigs of Knitting Water.

I also knit Webmaster Bill his two cable-knit sweaters, the first out of Chester Farms yarn out of Virginia, a thick, durable, "wears like iron" wool yarn that is 100% machine washable. I found out while knitting that sweater that you can fudge the fact that you didn't count your rows properly, and can crochet an edging to make the arm decreases look like knit decreases instead of purl-on-the-right-side decreases. You can, you really can . . .

The second was a beautiful off-white sweater featuring yarn from Blackwater Abbey Yarns, available only through the distributor in Colorado (or from Abbey Farm in Ireland). I had had a trunk show with Blackwater Abbey Yarns while my friend was still in my employ - she is a huge fan of the designer Beth Brown-Reinsel who has designed a number of Aran and Guernsey-style sweaters out of this yarn. The yarn is also a traditional Irish Aran yarn, and not at all appealing to the soft scarf crowd, but it still proved to be a fruitful trunk show and one which I wish I could have had again. And many of the sales were to staff and owner, but that's just one of the perks of working in the yarn shop!

So, my project for the Mountain (stay on topic!) was my sweater out of this beautiful, handwash only yarn, using a pattern designed for this yarn (not by BB-R) called "Brambleberry." I used a fall-ish orangey rust yarn, and I did my swatches. Oh, boy, did I do my swatches! But more on that later.

The pattern is a little different, in that the chart is read from left to right on the right side of the pattern, and the reverse on the wrong side. Which is opposite all the other charted patterns I've ever used. Another difference is the reversal of odd-is-right, even-is-wrong row counting. Needless to say, Knitting Water has helped make these pattern differences even more clear, and has taken the sting out of ripping back and re-knitting those rows until I began to focus on the pattern's quirks.

I started this pattern 2 Mountain trips ago, in 2009, with a cast-on and knitting of the back. And you know what? After I figured out the pattern changes, it really was an easy pattern to knit. Seriously. It's only on R2 that you have to cable, and you knit the majority of the body repeating the same 8 rows. Very, very simple for late night conversation.

Then you get to do the traveling cables as you decrease for the arms, a factor which adds its very own magic to the design of the sweater. Some concentration, and no Knitting Water was involved (in fact, I think I did these decreases at home, but I wouldn't swear to it), and it makes the sweater design really cool.

Last year's Mountain stay featured knitting the front of this sweater, and one of the things I wanted to make certain of was that I was a) familiar with the pattern by this year's Mountain stay, and b) ready to start on the sleeves by doing a): finishing the front before I got to The Mountain. Which I did with the help of some very brave bunnies, as featured in that marvelous masterpiece, Watership Down, as a book on tape. Meaning I knitting into the evening and heard one of my favorite books read aloud as only a gifted storyteller can.

As promised, here are the pictures:

This is the back of the Brambleberry sweater. I only wish the color was more true - it's an orangy reddish leaf color.

This is much more true to the actual color of the yarn itself. This is a detail of the sweater. What makes the cables stand out so amazingly is the Z-twist of the yarn - it's spun in reverse. Most yarns and threads produced commercially or privately by spinners create an S-twist. But not this yarn.

This is the front of the sweater. Notice the deep neckline, an indication of it being the front, and also the double-decreasing at both sides while knitting the traveling cables.

I now have greater respect for the professional photographers who make the pictures on patterns look just perfect! It's hard to see the detail, but the traveling cables start right at the arm decreases.

Why this picture of a scrap of knitting, you ask? Why, this is no ordinary scrap of knitting: this is my swatch. I knit it with three different needles, then washed the swatch to see how my individual needle choices would come out. After all, I was going to spend at least 3 years of my life on this project, and I wanted it to be perfect.

You know what I found? Not just the needle size but the needle type makes all the difference with this project. My gauge was the same whatever needle size I used, BTW.

My first needle option was a size 6, since I tend to knit loose. Not so much fun knitting with these needles on a 2-ply Worsted Weight yarn. That's the scrunched up bit at the bottom.

My second needle option was a Bryspun plastic size 7 needle. Soft on the hand and easy to manuver the yarn over and around. Great, I thought, but I'll try one more. Plus, the pattern called for a 7 though my gauge didn't change at all.

My third option was size 8 bamboo. And that made all the difference.

Remember when I said that I had washed and blocked my swatch after I knit it? Well, the portion I knit with the size 6 was all hard to pull - no give whatsoever. But the portion I knit with the nice, soft, easy-to-manuver Bryspun? It turned flat. There was no definition in my cables, they relaxed almost to the point of being just an embellishment on the pattern and not the pattern itself. I could not believe my hands, and the more knitters I've shown it to, the more my reality about using these needles has been correct.

So my final option, of the bamboo size 8's, was right on the money. The cables were crisp and at attention, and maybe because the wood offers resistance to the wool it makes the cables stand up the way they do.

That's my lesson for the day - always, always wash your swatch, and keep knitting on the same swatch so that you can see one variation from the other. Very, very, important.

Oh, and before I sign off, here are the promised sleeves, started this year at the Mountain (I had forgotten that the rows are read reversed, so after 7 rows I poured some more Knitting Water to take the sting out of ripping them out and starting again). And one more thing - I'm knitting both sleeves together/at the same time. This way I can keep up with the pattern and its myriad of increases. Like the ones I forgot right at the very beginning, which is fine because I have small wrists, and heavily increased sleeves would just hang on my wrists like flappy bits of knitted fabric. My arms increase after the elbow, and by golly, that's just where these extra increases are going to go!

Here are the pictures:

There is more knit on them now, of course. My goal here is to finish the sleeves by this autumn, to either knit the pieces together and wear this sweater at The Mountain (it gets pretty darn cold up there, let me tell ya!) or sew it together next year while there.

OK, well, that's my first of these posts of Mountain projects. Will put some more up (I've taken tons of pictures), and hopefully all the posts will be current by the time I go on next year's retreat!

Theolonius is Begun!

2011-03-01T22:10:00.003-05:00

Here are the sock pics just taken with my cast-on row for the Ravelry Sock Knit-along for Theolonius.

P.S. It looks intimidating!

P.P.S. It was! So many extra stitch markers!! I even noted which ones I used where!

A Peaceful New Year

2011-01-04T19:23:00.005-05:00

Yes, there is something about this time of the year. All the hectic Christmas knitting is done (thank you, Atlanta-area Shop Hop!), the packages are mailed, the kinfolk have visited and been visited by, and the overindulgence is finally over. Having had no traffic to drive through to and from work has kept me re-juvenated, too. It's just that time of the year when there's a little extra energy to spend on projects.

Like blogging.

I really, really enjoy blogging. I enjoy planning what stitched/knitted pieces I'm going to write about, taking picture of them, composing a draft blog in my brain whilst I assemble the pieces for picture-taking, and all of the writing I seem to do once I log onto my NNW blog. And I really, really appreciate how y'all are reading these postings and seem to be enjoying them in your leisure time.

So why haven't I posted in a while? Well, September was a busy month, then came October, and all the while I've been seeing my two-week temp assignment become extended and more involved. Which is fantastic - I'm working in areas that I had considered as possible job options while I was in the process of closing the shop, and am working with a terrific bunch of folks. It's interesting, too, to be in the position again of being an employee after so many years of being the employer; I really think I've gained insight into what an employer really expects and how best to do a task that is asked of me.

To bring everyone up to date, after my blog posting in September, Webmaster Bill decided that I needed to have a happy birthday celebration on Tybee Island, so we spent a long weekend down there in a hotel on the beach. I was really impressed with a small wildlife museum that was close by, and all the work they're doing to keep the sea turtle populations healthy and thriving. When we were there, in late September, 10 of the 11 nests had hatched and they were just waiting for the last one to hatch in the next week or so. Yay! Baby sea turtles! They had a couple in salt water tanks in the museum, and they are really so cute and so tiny! It's hard to believe they grow up to be so huge.

Then October I spent learning about wildlife rehabilitation. You see, there was this explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last April . . . oh wait, you already knew about that, right? Of course you do! So I wanted to help save everything, like I usually do, and I went on the website that spring for the Audobon Society to see when they needed me to come down and save brown pelicans and dolphins and everything else that was covered in oil. So I filled out their on-line volunteer form and it asked questions like, "Can you type?" (of course I can type - 120 wpm was my top speed, thank you very much) and "Can you answer phones?" (well, yes) and "Can you file?" (oh, if you could only see me file!). But then at the bottom was a question "Do you have wildlife rehabilitation experience?" and I thought, 'Well, no, but I could get some.' On-line again I found an organization that teaches folks to be wildlife rehabilitators or updates the skills and knowledge of current rehabbers. They have classes all over the US and Canada and some even in Brazil and they were scheduling one for Knoxville over Halloween weekend. Did I let a few invites to a few Halloween parties stop me in my quest to save all wild animals? Oh my, no.

Learning about wildlife rehabilitation was an amazing experience. I read the book, remembered all my basic anatomy courses and cell stuff, re-learned how to do fractions and use a calculator (after all, how much calcium do you feed a growing owl that weighs x lbs. and calcium comes in mg tablets?) after all these years, and it all came back with a loud *wumph.* I took a long weekend and drove up to Knoxville in the late fall (yes, it was a beautiful trip), found my hotel thanks to Mapquest, found a local brewpub for the weekend evenings, and just really learned a new skill. Will I use it immediately? Well, no, but I did find a place near me that has opportunities when I want to take them to assist with the myriad of tasks that must crop up when rehabilitating wildlife, and will take some time this winter to stay in touch with them.

Oh, and before I forget it, here's the link to the organization I took the course from: it's called International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and their website is here: theiwrc.org. Talk about a dedicated, amazing group of people; I'm glad I could be a part of their lives and carry what I know back into the world with me.

November and December were Christmas knitting months for all the great-nieces and -nephews. No, I didn't take pictures; I didn't want to post and then ruin the surprise. And I was too overjoyed to finish all of them (well, almost all!) in time for shipping before Christmas. I have asked some of the recipients to allow me to post their baby sweater pictures, though, so we'll see if there are baby sweater pictures in the next few months! Several that I did make were by Roo Designs; their designs are adorable, very versatile, and put fun animals on the front (which means intarsia which also means yarn ends. I really, really dislike weaving in yarn ends.). Their website it here: Roo Designs.com, and while Sheepish doesn't carry them at the moment, you can probably ask them to order you a few, just to try. I'll warn you, though - they're addictive!

OK, well, here we are . . . at the end of a pretty long blog post (again!). Thank you all for reading down this far, and I hope you all have a happy and prosperous New Year!

A Project for Meeee!

2010-09-11T13:30:00.010-05:00

At last, at last, at last, here it is: an opportunity to do some stitching, from my very own stash, for my very own self!! And stitching - not knitting, not sweaters or socks or gorgeous shawls, but good, ol' fashioned counted cross stitch. Want to know when was the last time I stitched something for me and not for Nease's Needlework? 2003.

That was the year that the knitting craze really took over, when my dear Gwen came to work for me, when I put aside all fancy scissors and small needles and gorgeous threads and I picked up knitting for real.

In early 2003, I stitched a beautiful Eva Rosenstand piece of a wren in the furze. You know the old English rhyme: The wren, the wren/The king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day/Got caught in the furze. It hearkens back to the custom of young boys on St. Stephen's Day chasing a wren across the land until the poor thing just died of exhaustion. Then these boys would bring the wren's body back to the village and received food and praise for their terrible deed. (I really wonder how many wrens really got away? Probably a lot more than got caught. I know that MY stitched wren got away!!).

So I don't have a picture of THAT wren, which I initialed and dated 2003, but I do have a picture of the companion piece I bought, back in about 2001, when the great and wonderful Eva Rosenstand company (from Copenhagen) was about to close its doors and end its absolutely lovely and colorful and nature-inspired designs. They never sold well in my shop; people either disliked the idea of kits ("I want to pick out my own threads or fabrics") or the kits themselves were just a little too old-fashioned for my hip, new, mod patrons. Remember how popular angels were for a while there? These angel stitchers were very talented, and perhaps these simple but beautiful kits of blues and yellows and oranges were just a little too simple for their tastes. Regardless, I still bought a bunch of small kits before they went out of production.

*side note* The Eva Rosenstand company did not in the end go away - they were bought by Permin of Copenhagen, a Danish subsidiary of Wichelt Imports, so their designs still exist. The threads now are DMC threads, and the linens are regular linen, not the soft and supple linen that was milled by the E.R. company nor the threads dyed by E.R. It's a color-snob thing, I know, but the more colors there are in this world, the more lovely a place it is for all of us *sigh*

Anyway, on to the pictures of my little blue-tit (I think that's the name of the bird!):

It's such a simple design, really. The yellows match the furze of the wren - I've always seen these as companion pieces. And look how big the graph is!! It's easy to read!! It's larger than the stitched piece on the linen. It has symbols that are logical in their set-up (meaning, black is a large big square, then the yellows are lighter symbols, etc.).

Aren't these colors just lovely? Don't they just make you want to pick them up and play with them and see this pretty design come to life on your fabric? There's just something about them that makes me lose all ability to put thoughts into words. But look how many threads of each color there are!! At least twice and a half as you'll ever need for such a small piece of a bird. And you separate the threads into bundles and you get to play with them even before you begin to stitch. Antici *say it!* pation!

Here's the oh-so-recognizable packaging for this little kit:

Remember that packaging from way back when?? I know, it's hard to keep the glare off of the plastic, but I just had to show the packaging anyway.

The other cool thing about having a kit like this in plastic is that you can take it to an outdoor festival. Which I did back in May over Memorial Day, and four of us sat in a corner of the outdoor shed and all of us stitched our projects. Webmaster Bill came by and said that we looked like the 4 Fates (I forget what he said the 4th one was - maybe a new Fate who foresees the future?). It was so much fun to be stitching with others, especially after so many years of knitting with others. It's a different feel - you hold the fabric in your hands, you bring the needle up and down, the design appears as if by magic on your linen, and there's always a brief pause in the conversation when the rhythm of your stitching reminds you that you need to pay attention.

Oh, and another note: I've begun wearing reading glasses when I stitch on linen. Guess I'm over 40 now and my eyes are catching up with me! I stole, uh, borrowed a pair of reading glasses from the storage unit. They're tacky, but they haven't sold so I figure I'll just break them in so that I can brag about what a great product they are. It's nice to be able to see the individual threads on the linen bigger than they really are, so that my eyes don't get as tired as easily and I make no mistakes when I wear them (I finally started making mistakes stitching over 2 threads while stitching on linen - yech!). Now I wear them, they're tacky, they remind me that I better start stitching quickly, and I can see well enough with them to stitch waaaay past my bedtime.

These are the glasses in their little Chinese puzzle box. Aren't they tacky? But they work, and it's just me and Webmaster Bill, and the cats, none of whom care that *sniff* I look like an old woman now!!

I had really, really forgotten how easily I lose myself when stitching a piece of counted cross stitch. Honestly. It's like having a whole afternoon to, say, update your blog, then you realize your butt hurts and your fingers ache, and lo and behold, you've been sitting in the same chair for an hour and a half. Stitching is like that for me. I spent one Saturday afternoon earlier this summer (July, was it?) just watching a couple of movies and stitching. Then I looked up and it was 5 hours later and I hadn't stitched as much as I thought I would, but time had ceased to exist for me. And if there was a weekend marathon on cable of the TV show "House"? Oh, then just forget about me going to sleep for a while!

Dave the Dog

2010-05-16T15:30:00.013-05:00

I know, I know, it's over a year since our sweet friend Dave the Dog died, but I was not in a good place when he passed last spring, and I just didn't have it in me to write out what should be a masterpiece of puppy passing. Then full-time Temp gigs starting picking up, creating a positive cashflow at home, but also taking over my daytime blogging hours.

And then on evenings I was often at my storage unit filling orders (yay orders! They just keep comin'), and weekends I've spent gardening and reading and working on my stash (both stitching and knitting), especially the 5 baby sweaters I knit over the winter, and there was just not the time to write out all the wonderful things that Dave was. Plus, this time delay helped me consolidate what my thoughts were and where my pictures were (always helpful in a blog posting!).

Here's the picture that we showed at his memorial service, thanks to the great folks at Paws, Whiskers, and Wags:

Yes, for all you Atlantans, this IS the snowfall from March 1, 2009. We knew that it would be Dave's last opportunity to play in the snow, and we wanted him to be able to enjoy it. Even here he looks unhappy, with his hindquarters not even able to hold him up and his normally happy face all kind of downward-turning. (For those who don't know, PW&W is a local pet crematory that is a wonderfully compassionate place, staffed by people who love pets and know the grief of losing one. They have an annual ceremony where people who've used their services over the past year come together in a Celebration of Life to grieve and see all the other sweet pets who have also passed. It's a wonderful healing time. The website for Paws, Whiskers, & Wags is here.)

Here are some more photos of Dave, taken when we brought him with us to Webmaster Bill's brother's house up in Springfield over Thanksgiving, 2008. We had to opportunity to see our new great-nephew, and our newly-wedded niece who lives in Chicago who brought her dog, too.

He still looks kind of sad, even though he had visited the Springfield folks before. He certainly enjoyed the visit this time, having a little boy and another dog to sniff, too.

And here's a picture we took on the way up to Springfield, when we stopped by a place called Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky at a wildlife preserve where we saw red wolves, a bald eagle (and two in the wild!), and other wonderful animals under the care of some very loving Park Rangers. We were taking Dave out to sniff and to go for a walk:

Dave loved to sniff. In fact, he sniffed sometimes to the exclusion of all else, even walking. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him that he could smell things as he walked along, he still had to at least try to sniff out what was under a bunch of leaves.

Dave came to us via a phone call from a mutual friend who had a friend working at the Lithonia Animal Hospital. A box of puppies had been dropped off at the vet (fortunately, it was at the vet and not on the side of the road), and they were looking for good homes. All of the puppies who were left (there had been a total of 12) were either black or yellow labs with their big puppy feet and square heads. Dave, though, had this small body, these legs longer than his body was tall, and this pair of ears that stuck out straight to the side as he literally perked up his ears to hear what was going on around him.

With the streamlined shape of his head, his loooong legs, and his large barrel (chest), he had all the makings of a whippet with the constitution of a lab. He loved to run, he would somehow curl up his legs on his bed to make a "Dave ball" (I still don't know how he did it), and he was a little high-strung when it came time for training. All whippet traits, but with the coat of a lab and the desire from his earliest puppyhood to be right where his people were (very much lab traits). I still remember him as a brand new puppy jumping up and down on those long legs of his to try to get onto the bed, because that's where his people were. When we moved to Decatur, during the winter months, he would jump with his Lassie jump (oh, so graceful) over the back rail of the bed, then stop instantly and curl himself up into a Dave ball where he hoped he would be unnoticed by us. And he'd never get up on the bed in the summer, except to sleep on it when we weren't there (I guess it was cooler?).

He also had learned about shoes and humans during the time we still lived on 11th Street in Midtown and I had injured my knee in martial arts. I was job-hunting at the time, having been laid off from a computer company, and one afternoon Dave needed to go out. I was having a hard time walking around because of my knee, so Dave took himself into the bedroom and got my shoes AND my socks, to alleviate any extra walking on my part. Just like that - no prompting, just knowing that his Susan was injured and needed help. From then on, he would bring us our outdoor shoes from wherever they were in the house, pretty much until 3 years or so before he died, just when we adopted Max. Maybe he saw that other dogs didn't have to bring their persons' shoes to them in order to go out?? Still, it was a great trick and we really loved to be able to encourage him in that "endeavor" of his.

Dave was the first dog I had for whom I realized the necessity of crate training and formal dog training. He had a penchant for chewing when we first got him - rugs, my left shoes (never my right ones), skirts, and a little bit of a table leg. Never mind that we had chew toys all over the apartment for him to chew - he had to chew what was forbidden. It all was too much, and we went down to our locally owned pet supply store where we bought our first dog crate. He had some anxiety about going into his crate as some dogs do, but then we saw the movie "All of Me" with Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. We were both working for an Indian-owned company at the time and laughed during the parts when the Indian guru is trying to make sense out of what the silly Anglos wanted him to do with Lily Tomlin's spirit. We chose the phrase "Back in Bowl" to be Dave's training signal for stopping all activity and going in the crate. And you know what? The crate training worked. After a few months Dave learned what we wanted him to do and not do, and we never had a problem after that.

He was never a rambunctious dog for all of his high-strunged-ness, but he was always there to greet us when we came home, to let us know that he would like one more ear scratching before bed by thumping his tail against a hard surface, and that it was time for me to stop staring at my computer for so many hours when I worked at home on Tuesdays by poking me with his nose round about 4:00 every Tuesday afternoon to go on a walk around the neighborhood.

He was so loyal in the ways that dogs are, and despite the fact that he was in obvious pain - the walks were becoming shorter, he couldn't stand for more than a few minutes without his hindquarters giving out, he couldn't jump on the bed that last winter - his heart was still good and loyal and he just didn't want to leave his people. But as so many people have said to themselves and to their vets, we just couldn't stand to see him suffer any more. Our vet was kind and loving, too, the staff as well as the veterinarian herself, and when I had to make that phone call to say "it's time," they set up the appointment for the next day, let us in by a back door to give us some privacy, have some last time with Dave, though they still had to sedate him in order to put the tubes in by which they would administer that last dose. But he had looked so sad for so long, he had suffered with pain for so long, and it just wasn't going to get any better. Even our veterinarian was crying when she administered the shot - she was a professional who had worked with us every step of the way to make these last few months possible.

Dave was born during that horribly hot summer of 1993 (when the temps were in the 100's for several weeks), found his way to a caring vet to get the care he needed to come be our canine companion, helped bark away the homeless guys when we lived in Midtown, barked fiercely when we first moved to the 'burbs until he realized he didn't need to, did a Lassie jump onto our bed during cold winter nights, and brought us our shoes for nearly 16 years. He left us on April 21, 2009, and we will always remember him.

It's Never Too Late To Start . . .

2009-12-27T16:28:00.013-05:00

a project, be it a blog, a book, or a needlepoint. These pictures you see below? They are taken of a needlepoint I bought from the famous Needlewoman's Shop in London in 1979. When I was 14 and had saved up all my house-cleaning and baby-sitting and oddment-earning monies one year and went with my school's drill team and band to Newcastle, England, in the first-ever Friendship Force exchange program. Yup, that's when it all started. The Friendship Force, that is, and I'm proud to say I was a part of it.

So at the tender young age of 14, being a sophisticated needlepointer, I ventured into this big shop. Full of screen-printed needlepoints from floor to ceiling. I wanted to buy something for me and my mother, who had taught me all the needle arts, so I looked. And looked. And perhaps caught some of the salesladies' eyes who thought perhaps I was up to no good, I was looking so long. And you know, choosing a piece to stitch was hard! It really was. The European/British pieces were different in style from the American pieces I had seen, and I was a bit intimidated by the enormous selection.

I finally settled on 2 pieces, canvases complete with yarn and instructions, that came folded in a box. I was so proud of my grown-up decisions and ability to withstand the teasing from my fellow students about the amount of shopping I had done with my saved up monies, and I managed to bring these boxes all the way back to the States, ready to show my mother what I had bought for the two of us. That moment was a typical moment for us, really, and has been one of the examples I use to show my friends how unthinking and quite unkind my mother could be. Her response when I brought these two boxes to show her? "Well, I don't really like either one of them. I guess you bought the swans for yourself, so I'll just take the other one."

But this is not a post about my difficult relationship with my mother; it's about stitching projects like the swan piece, entitled "Sunrise," no matter how much time has elapsed since buying them. I found the companion piece to "Sunrise," entitled "Sunset" when cleaning out Mom's home after her death, and both pieces are in my "to be stitched stash" even 30 years later. In one way, I'm glad I waited as long as I did, when I have a bit more skill and a few more resources and a lot more experience with kits. Like, they never have enough yarn.

Heck, for that matter, even the canvases that call for "x" number of skeins of DMC wool (which you can't find in Atlanta any more - I've tried) or Persian or Appleton are often wrong. 'Member that piece I posted about buying in Quimper, France, in 1997 and stitching during the evenings of spring and summer 2008 before I closed the shop?? I ran out of one of the colors of DMC wool earlier this year, short 75 stitches from completing it. 75 stitches! That's all! (Webmaster Bill counted the empty holes one evening, that's how I know.) And then began the mad dash calling all of the needlepoint stores in town, none of whom carry DMC wool. I finally had to buy a skein on-line, but at least I finished it, and here are the pictures of the tiny little bit of stitching I had to do before it was all over. Note to former customers: yes, yes, I really did feel your pain when you were in this position.

The part I hadn't finished was underneath the handle of the copper pot.

Here's another picture that will show the un-stitched area better:

The picture is a little dark, I know, but the holes are more pronounced.

So, on to the Sunrise swans. I used the Rolaframe frame from the above piece of needlepoint so that it would stay square and be more manageable to work on. It's a BIG piece of needlepoint, and working on a frame keeps the edges of the canvas tucked away so you don't have to mess with them or wo-man handle them. And learning the lessons from the still-life above, I'm stitching the entire thing in tent stitch (where the back goes up and down) rather than continental stitch (where the back is slanted like the front) to conserve wool. The shades of Anchor wool are 30 years old, and I really don't want to have to stitch large sections of this piece with borrowed colors or go hunting on e-Bay for one color out of a huge stash.

I did find one flaw in the colors that came with this piece, though: one of the color numbers had two numerals switched, so the wrong color of wool got put into the box. Had I not had the experience of customers running to my shop with a panic-stricken look on their face I would probably not have known what to do. But I did! I ran (well, drove) to my storage unit armed with some Anchor-to-Paternayan conversion sheets from the internet, and still made my own decision about which color I was going to use, based on the color-scheme in the piece itself.

So here are some pictures of the WIP, a work I stitch on in the mornings on weekends before I get going with my days:

The part that is rolled beneath the swan shows more early-morning water with the swan's cygnets around her. You can see the highest one to her left (your right).

Here's the box it came in. Can you say "70's packaging??" (Sorry about the flash - it was too dark a shot without it.)

This is some detail of the swan herself. She's not entirely white, as my 14-year-old mind couldn't understand, because of the light source coming from her other side. Something my artist friends have taught me. The blues and greens that are her darker shades give her an outline and some definition.

Sooo many shades of yellow in the sunrise-on-the-water section. It was a bit hard to distinguish one shade from the others on rainy or cloudy days, when the sunlight was less.

She's still coming along quite nicely and I'm enjoying stitching her. Immensely. I feel so glad that she is out and showing the world her stitched self, instead of sitting in a box, languishing away, for another 3 decades.

Next on my stitching agenda for my weekend mornings stitching sessions is a Hardanger ring box I bought at market years ago. The kit came with the fabric, thread, and instructions, and a pretty cut-glass ring box to go on top of the stitched piece. The store-bought lace on my dressing table is ready for the yard sale bin, and I'm excited to have both a current stitching project AND a piece ready for stitching, too.

Have a great new year, and will post more early in the new year!

Website Updates

2009-08-28T10:29:00.002-05:00

That's right, my website has more stuff on it. That's one thing I'll say about this long, dry summer waiting for temp assignments to come in - I've gotten a lot of work done on Nease's Needlework.com! Let's see, what have I done recently?

Added some Featured Products to coincide with the school year (including samplers and a constellation in honor of my friend Sirona who teaches science for gifted kids and knows sooo much about planets and stuff!)
ALL the shades of Persian yarn that I currently have in stock. There are over 300 shades on my website, and about another 50 that are out of stock (i.e., I didn't re-order after I closed up shop so as not to overstock the storage unit and its budget), so if anyone is looking to match a color of yarn or add to what they already have they can do so via my website. Or call me and I'll see about getting it in for you.
A good quantity of DMC thread, that necessity for cross-stitching, is also on-line. I've inventoried the second third of DMC threads in the storage unit and the list is quietly sitting there, waiting for me to run out of things to do that are more exciting than coming up with creative ways to say, "bright green with some yellow shades." Some call it procrastinating, I call it creativity.
All of the Teenie Tweenie designs by The Sweetheart Tree are now on-line! There's a bunch of them, and as I added the scissor fob Teenie Tweenies I could just feel my head hitting the desk *headdesk* when I thought "What a great stitch-along these little scissor fobs could have been!" They are great little projects, and for you non-stitchers out there, these are tiny stitched pieces that have a front and a back. You stitch both the front and the back, sew them together, add some cording, and voila - instant thingie to hold onto your scissors! You'll never lose your scissors again (unless the cat gets frisky and decides that your beautiful, hand-stitched scissor fob is just the right shmoo to attack and it must be done at all costs). The best part about stitching these is that they are designed to use scraps of fabric (mostly the small counts, like linen). Think "de-stashing exercise."
All of the reproduction samplers currently in stock designed by Handwork Samplers. I had carried her designs as an auto customer for several years, until the cost became too prohibitive and the sales were not what my "market research" indicated. I came to realize after a while that they seem to be more a culturally Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic form of needlework. On the other hand, the stitchers who did enjoy stitching this type of needlework are totally enraptured by this form. And it was always nice to take out the folder full of samplers and show customers how so many of these large pieces were stitched by young girls at the age of 8 and 9 and 10. By firelight and candlelight. About 250 years ago. It still amazes me.
FABRIC! FINALLY some fabric (besides Aida 11 count) is on-line. I had stressed and pondered how to show the colors and changes of the hand-dyed fabrics which I knew I would have to photograph, and I finally realized that I could include a skein of DMC white in the picture, to give a stitcher a frame of reference. Every stitcher knows what DMC white looks like, so no matter how different your monitor shows from the picture I've taken, you can use the skein of white as your touchstone. Pretty clever, eh? I also came to realize that one of the hand-dyed fabric companies, Picture this Plus, already had a website that showed their lovely fabrics on-line, so they had already done the hard part of the photography. Yay! So while I still have a list of R&R Reproduction fabrics to download from my camera, I've been able to enter all of the fabrics by Picture this Plus and some of the Jobelan fabrics currently in stock. Which also involved measuring each piece on the front porch table when the weather wasn't rainy (like today) or too incredibly hot (it was anyway) or the sun wasn't shining too directly on the fabric, thus washing out any picture taking I attempted to do. So if you go to the "Fabric" section of the Cross Stitch pages, you'll see the different sizes of pieces I have, such as 8 x 13 or 17 x 38 and their price.

So yay! My website is becoming more well-rounded (and I'm still heading to the gym at least twice a week so I won't be!), with more products, more offerings, and using some extra features to make it more dynamic for visitors. My next step is to change around the pictures on some of the individual pages (like Accessories and Tools), and maybe even help redesign the banner ad on Hoffman's website. You can visit their website where they have a ton of banners rotating on their home page, and mine does show up during the on-line rotation. It takes the stitcher right to my website, and Hoffman was where I referred sooo many customers if they needed a particular pattern and I didn't have it, or if they wanted to look at all the baby birth samplers or wedding samplers or graduation announcements out there (not many for the latter, I'm sad to say). While I certainly have Google AdWords as an advertising medium, I'm also planning to get myself onto Kudzu.com and etsy.com, though those will have to wait until I've gotten some more steady temp work.

And the temp orders are coming in hot and heavy (thank goodness!). I had the opportunity to spend time on a mock jury for a case, where the lawyers were trying out their arguments with some strangers to see how their case would stand up in court. It was really, really fun and I had a chance to use my brain, something I really love doing.

Speaking of brain, I really need to get working now on my third of three talks for DragonCon. I was asked a couple of years ago to present a talk on the Tolkien Track about Frodo, the Reluctant Hero, and this year I'm serving on a panel of 3 talking about Music in Middle Earth, and I'm also presenting a talk on Sam as the Companion. My tendency is to read everything I can that I think pertains to the subject (since I'm doing this in tandem with my volunteer work with Mythic Journeys), and when a phrase or an idea just suddenly hits me, I write the talk at a frantic pace. This rainy day is definitely lending itself to a reading and writing day, so I'll end this blog entry now and wish you all a great weekend!

My Summer Vacation

2009-08-20T08:42:00.004-05:00

It's been a wonderful summer and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. We started with a road trip heading up to Vermont for our youngest niece's wedding (looove that Neon!) and Triple AAA's TripTik became, as always, my new best friend for road trips. We took no road trip pictures, alas, because we were really pressed for time on our journey. It was cool and rainy but oh, so very, very green.

But wait - there was more! Since we knew we would be camping once we arrived, and we had a little extra cash, we bought ourselves a real, live camping TENT in which to live. And what's more, Webmaster Bill had stayed in KOA Kampgrounds before and I never had even though I had wanted to during our looong roadtrips to Princeton in the summers when I was a kid.

So that's what we did - one Sunday morning that became Sunday afternoon, Webmaster Bill took the planned route from AAA's TripTiks, our desired Points of Interest on the way up, and lo and behold, we were booked at KOA Kampgrounds with our new tent! I will admit, I had poo-poohed the idea after my Wilderness Trip in college, but life changes you and KOA is such a community of its members, with playgrounds, ponds, stars at night, your own private spot with a picnic table and grill that I came to realize camping at 44 is different than hiking at 17. Not to say that I hiking is out of the question, it's just not where I am right now.

We traveled the highways and some lesser-known by-ways up to cool, wet Vermont, and I stopped at one point when we saw a Knit Shop to buy yarn for a hat because the weather was cool and wet and I sooo needed a hat to stay warm (in June, no less). Which I knitted in the car while traveling up US 7 and seeing some beautiful Connecticut countryside.

The wedding was beautiful - outdoors with a huge tent, a beautiful bride and her handsome man, a day without rain, and lots of folks from both families who came to celebrate. The ties to family and the land in Vermont were very strong, and I was so glad to see some untouched areas of trees and old family farms. The winters are very hard, though, and it must be rough to rise long before the sun to tend to the elements of farming life.

On our return journey, we headed through the Catskills and their twisty, windy roads (looove that Neon!) listening to the book on CD of Last of the Mohicans. We were both fans of the 1992 movie and its lush countryside, and it was very amazing to hear how the original story was written. Being in the same area with the famous cave, waterways, and remnants of the French and Indian War made the story all the more relevant. And once through the Catskills, the haul ourselves home quickly driving took over.

July started with some great friends, one set who had built their lake home by themselves after the rough-in work was completed by the experts (a 4-year long odyssey), and others who were building a Tumbleweed home near Asheville. The first set we enjoyed adult beverages, a lovely lake, the comfort of friends and their home, and the other we enjoyed camping, campfires, the community of others, and a real, live barn raising. It was so exciting, and I'm really thinking that in the next few years a modest mountain or lake home is a good goal to shoot for.

Now it's August, I've signed up with a couple of different temp agencies, and have gotten a couple of calls for some quick assignments. Which is what I've been asking for all along, but I'm narrowing my search for permanent jobs to some very real possibilities. The whole idea of SmartGrowth is very appealing to me, where you can live, work, and play all in the same area (think downtown Decatur, Paris, London, Boston, New York, and virtually any older area of a major city when most travel was by foot or on horseback) without the huge pricetag that these areas currently have for housing. Or in this new Green Jobs economy, where my desire to Save the Earth will be able to earn an income.

It's also almost time for Dragon*Con, where I'm giving three (3!) separate talks on the TolkienTrack. I'm almost glad I don't have any temp postings right now, as I'm reading in so many different areas to have a more thorough grounding on Myth and how it relates to Tolkien that the books are piling up on the living room couch for my afternoon and evening reading times. That will shortly take the place of afternoon web-site updates!

More pictures of ongoing projects soon - I promise!

Eat First, then Block

2009-05-15T14:19:00.013-05:00

I really, really mentally drafted this piece back in January, after I became inspired to block my Seven Swans shoulder wrap made from Anne yarn following the January AKG meeting and the excellent blocking instructions from Heartstrings' Jackie Ericksson-Sweitzer. Her website is Heartstrings Fiber Arts and you can certainly see the gossamer-y, lightweight, oh-so-tempting pieces she creates out of her very own creative brain. Yummm. She writes all these lovely lacey shawl and sock and wristlet patterns that I carried with great joy and that fascinated many an adventurous knitter into seeing what could be done with all that gorgeous lace yarn.

But then many things happened after that blocking experience, such as a visit from an old friend whom I had not seen since 1982 in London who was on this side of the pond from her home in small-town France; the annual AKG knitting retreat at The Mountain where I started both a cabled sweater for ME from Blackwater Abbey yarns (it's the Brambleberry Pullover made from the color Chestnut that you can see here at the BWA site: Blackwater Abbey Yarns) as well as the long-anticipated Orrenburg Lace Shawl that I bought at TKGA in April 2004 with dear G at my side. I figured that I was a good enough knitter by now to tackle that project, and I am, though just barely. More on those projects as they progress.

Oh, and after the retreat came the temporary position with one of my temp services that lasted for about 10 days. It was great to be in the working world again, feeling like I was earning money from my own labors but someone else's pocket. Plus I had forgotten how much fun it is to listen to sales weasels make their deals!

And then more work on my website, then a 6 week assignment that started at the end of March and went all the way through April. It was so very, very odd to be waking up and knowing that I would be working in someone else's space for the time being, doing the job that they assigned me to do in the way they wanted me to do it. I've been out of the real workday loop for a decade now, literally, and it was strange to leave the rhythm that my life has had for so long in order to enter another rhythm. That said, I have forgotten how much I enjoyed temp work - you work at a different location for a period of time, long enough to feel comfortable but not so long that you're caught up in office politics. And I have learned sooooo many different softwares and seen them in all of their applications, all thanks to temp work over the years.

And then there was the Mythic Journeys movie on Saturday, May 2 at the historic Plaza Theater in downtown Atlanta that turned out to be a smashing success (you can view the trailer here at the Mythic Journeys website) but that also ate into evenings and weekends until the weekend of the showing itself.

That said, it's been a busy spring for this little knitter, and I wouldn't trade very much of it for a refund!

But down to blocking. The Saturday in January following Jackie's talk (I'm so enjoying saying "I did 'this' on Saturday!"), I decided that I would follow her instructions for blocking lace. Which entailed getting down on the clean floor with a good, big towel and some blocking pins. I wanted to make sure that the piece had all the rest of Saturday day, Saturday evening, and all of Sunday to dry properly. And it was later in the afternoon and I had spent some quality time stitching and listening to a book on tape, and I had had a late breakfast so why not block at 1:30 on a Saturday? I could always have lunch after I was done. Why give up all that drying time just for a little lunch, I ask you? After all, how long could this blocking project take??

OK, well, it took about 2 1/2 hours. Never mind that it was a rectangle, never mind that my gauge was the same throughout, never mind that there was no shaping. Nope, it all had to do with the stretching of the piece as wide and as long as it needed to go without realizing that it had a mind of its own.

This is the center of the piece. The name of the pattern is "Seven Swans" and it is from the book Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman and published by Interweave Press. It is a piece that I started at The Mountain 2 years ago with help from a Master Knitter (and a couple of glasses of wine!). You start in the center of the piece with a provisional cast-on, so that as you wear the shawl over your shoulders, the swans' wings are all descending. And part of the blocking challenge was to get the center line straight and the swans' wings lined up both side-to-side and with one another. And while you may not be able to see it, I added an extra garter stitch row when I picked up the stitches from the provisional cast-on so that I would not be picking up AND knitting in the lace pattern. What a nightmare that could turn into!

And here we have those pesky corners and that dratted edge that just won't stay straight. At least the swans' wings have finally decided to line up alongside one another! I think this was about 3:00 or so, and I was just so determined to get this piece done that I was going to ignore that rumbling noise in my tummy. Grrrr! Of course, with this piece as with all the myriad others I have blocked over the years, the corners just decide to have a mind of their own. The wings may stay straight up and down, but somehow, somewhere, is some extra give that the fabric finds and holds onto until you get onto the corners. It never fails. You have to pull the corners down as far as they will go without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then pull the width between the corners again without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then when you have pulled as much as you can from the edges, you then pull the corners UP so that the edges will give. Up. It's weird to type this technique out loud since it's one I discovered while blocking needlepoint and have never vocalized, but you have to account for the give in the corners by pulling the edges back up so that they are perpendicular to the lines of the design. You can especially see the need for pulling the corner up on the left-hand side of this picture - see how the colorway of the fabric on the edge looks like it bends to the left? It does, and you have to ease that portion back up so that it is at a 90 degree angle. The pattern has pulled all of the give out of its range, but you won't know that until you've spent a good half hour trying to urge the pattern down to the range of the corner. When the pattern stops giving, it's time to pull the corners and the edges back up.

And here we have the other side with the wonky bottom edge (remembering that there are two bottom edges to this piece):

But at least the center line is straight! I think by this time I had given up on the lack of sustenance and decided to eat. About 4:00 in the afternoon. The swans' wings were as opened as they could be, leaving edges that looked more like Crests of the Wave instead of edges. And of course, easing the edges back into alignment means that you run the risk of skewing the symmetry of the design elements. I thought perhaps that there was a rule that the portions of the lace pattern with more knitting on the edge would have the greatest give, but looking closely at this photo it seems that some portions pooch out more with knitting next to them, and others with an open lace stitch. There just seems to be no telling.

Finally, reinforced with sandwich and glass o' milk, I climbed up on the couch to get the overview shot of the almost-completely blocked to perfection shawl:

The centerline at the top of the shot is still off, and I adjusted the edges to a greater or lesser extent, but this was the first time I had taken a look to see what the overall effect was. Truly a stunning piece. It's nice and light and, while you can't see it from these photos, the yarn has a deep plum tone that stands out from the darker purple-black shades. It is light but warm, and I wore it with my friend Jane when we saw "Benjamin Button" in early February. A good weight for a movie sweater.

Here are some pre-blocked pictures (I think I used them before in this blog) that show the lovely color of the yarn:

So I'll say here again, blocking is a process. A very long, involved, down-on-your-knees process, especially with the fine-ness of lace process. And so (wearing my wisdom dispensing hat as I have for lo these many years), it is best to eat first, then block.

Oh, such cute kitties

2009-02-02T17:15:00.006-05:00

It seems in Blogosphere we all share pictures of our feline and canine friends, and these were just too cute to keep on my loyal iMac. I took these pictures the other day during a sunny day this winter (it's been raining - note that I'm not complaining about the rain!) and I had a box of baby booties and baby bibs &c. that I wanted to add to my website. The cats just had to come out and enjoy the sunlight and most of you have heard me talk about them so I decided to take these great pictures of them and post them here. The feline kids of Webmaster Bill and me:

This is our foundling kitty, Cerridwen. Those of you who know and share my interest in Celtic mythology will know that Cerridwen (many spellings, some with extra "y's" in them due to her Welsh origins) was a keeper of her Cauldron that could bring the dead back to life. So we helped a rescued little black cat find a good and loving home, and what else would be a logical name for her, I ask you?? Yes, she was about 3-4 weeks old when the construction boss brought her in a box with her siblings to a work site in the hot May sunshine and said (put your best redneck accent on here): "I got me a box of kittens, and if any of you [folks] want 'em, you kin take 'em home at the end of the day. They done been underfoot and I need to git rid of 'em." So the kind-hearted English construction worker moved the box out of the direct sunlight all day and took the box home where he and his girlfriend nursed the kittens for a week or so. She was more or less weaned when I called the girlfriend and we decided that ours would be a great home for her, but she drank Similac for a few weeks afterwards, "just in case." She's a sweet little girl who loves to make a warm spot on the bed and will meow at me in case I wake up in the middle of the night and need to pet a cat to go back to sleep. She also sings in the hallway when she is looking for us - we call her "The Singing Kitty" and meow back at her. Somehow that reassures her that we're right there (even though she can smell us 2 rooms away) and she comes trotting right over to be petted.

This is the other cat, that our friend Sue-who-knows-everybody told us about that same week we were adopting Cerridwen, and she is now our large round grey cat:

What can I say? She's large, she's round, and she's grey. She's also taken to crossing her white feet, one on top of the other, just because she can and because she's a cat. She is also the one who sleeps under the blanket on our bed during the day, and often on my head on cold (Atlanta) winter nights while she purrs me to sleep. Granted, she takes up half the pillow, but she rests her chin on whatever portion of my face she can find and purrs me and herself to sleep. One night my ear was against her body and I could hear her heart beating after she stopped purring - it was very special. We named her "Boudicca" (also many different Welsh spellings) who was a Welsh queen who was the only commander in Britannia able to win some battles with the Roman invaders/conquerors/troops. She really did - she united many of the famous Celtic fighters in the western part of the island (modern-day Wales and western England) and beat the Romans. Until the final battle when she was captured and killed. This kitty's mother was named Athena, so I figured this was a good and strong name for our large cat. I think she's not as large as she used to be, though watching her run (proceed at a fast trot, really) is rather amusing as her gait more resembles a waddle than a run. But she has a good, strong, steady walk and I can always tell when she enters a room where I am. She also sits politely below my chair and waits to be encouraged to jump onto my lap where she just stares at me until she falls asleep. She does have one discouraging habit of biting my eyelids (dangerous) or the tip of my nose (ouch!) while she's falling asleep. She doesn't realize how sharp her teeth are, and after 12 years of discouraging this habit she's more or less figured it out. She was about 12 weeks or so when we adopted her, and her human mother said that after I came out to the house to meet the feline family, mother Athena began nursing her again, so it may be a vestige of that nursing behavior.

So those are our kitties - both 12, both furry, both purr, both eat the same food, and while they don't always get along, they are wonderful warm feline friends, for as long as we have them.

Needlepoint UFO

2009-01-23T15:06:00.012-05:00

Of course, if I have pictures of a project, I just HAVE to have a story with it, no? Well, this one will make all of you stitching (and knitting) procrastinators feel oh so much better.

In October of 1997 (yes, that's the last century), Webmaster Bill and I decided to chuck it all and go to France on vacation. His mother had died earlier that year and he was feeling kind of glum, and I had received a call from my old alma mater that my French professor was leading a group through Paris, same as she had done during my studies there in 1985. We had some extra cash and made arrangements to travel. Meeting up with Annie and Lynn and her students in Paris was just a blast (was I really that young, too?!), and we were treated to a tour of Montmartre and its streets and its vinyards. At last, I paid a lot of attention to what Annie was saying, Bill really enjoyed the knowledge, too, and we had a nice dinner in a nice restaurant, courtesy of the France Program.

Webmaster Bill and I toured the Louvre, just ourselves, which was a blast since my only knowledge of its facade was just after its fire and during the construction of the pyramid, so I only knew a long, high wooden wall while I walked past the courtyard on my way to Art classes inside. The pyramid for all its controversy about its newness and its construction was quite magnificent. We took a tour of the Roman and Greek statuary so that we wouldn't get too exhausted and cranky with each other, and we also toured the Musee de Cluny and another mideval museum mentioned in a Paris tour guide that featured the mideval store signs. No words, just the picture. I was a bit lost trying to figure everything out, since all of the pictures were like nothing I could envision as 14th century commerce.

But I digress. Once we reached the city of Quimper with the lovely Gothic cathedral (even I couldn't get lost in this town!) and its Celtic heritage, Webmaster Bill came down with a bad headache. We won't say the "m" word here, but it was probably something close. So off to an Apothecary to explain headache symptoms in French (why don't they teach this stuff in school??), back to the hotel room, then off to do some shopping on my own. While traversing the city center just before dejeuner, I came upon a needlepoint shoppe and there were more canvases than I could certainly pick from. And I had forgotten that it was time for lunch when everyone shuts their doors for a couple of hours, so I found a nice still-life canvas and went on my way. The open air market was just then closing, too, so I didn't have my pick of chickens for my lunch that day, either. And we're not talking a greasy sandwich or chicken tenders, or even a nice, plump carcass - we're talking the brown-feathered cooking hen standing and clucking, waiting for the cook to come and test its quality. This is one of the things I love about France - all the food is so fresh and the farmers are (were?) very much a part of the process. Not sure how things are going since the E.U. regulations came on the scene - I hear there are protests from the farmers wanting to hold on to their farms and livelihoods.

So, time passed. My canvas sat on top of my record albums, I selected the colors from the DMC wool options that came with the canvas, and we all just waited for time to pass . . .

. . . till last summer when I was working late on Thursday nights, a stitching piece for a customer was coming to a close, and I needed something to work on while the evening progressed. And look what I found! My old, still life canvas, just waiting to be stitched. Popped it onto a Rolaframe, made sure I had all the colors I needed, and hey presto, I was ready. I wish I had stuck with a truer shade of white, as that particular dye lot was a little too cream except in direct light, but there you have it. Here are the pictures:

As is so often the case with these screen-printed canvases, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the circles and the lines for shading or coloring. Once it's stitched, though, the roundness of the apples and grapes looks much truer to form - the eye kind of supplies the missing shapes. And these rust shades are just so much my very favorites, and the purples of the grapes, rather than clashing with the rust, just really stand out as the foreground. I had forgotten, too, how very quick needlepoint is - my first stitching "session" included finishing all the purple grapes and stitching the entire purple portion of the jar.

Ah yes, the copper pot. It's still unstitched by this time (late September) so you can see how the painting of the pot has some overflow from one shading color to another. And the red will present another stitching challenge - is it one vertical row all the way up, or does it become 2 vertical rows at the very bottom, narrowing to 1 vertical row at the very top? These are the predicaments that made me an advocate for hand-painted needlepoint in my shop. I always felt that it takes much more skill and artristry as a stitcher to stitch screen-printed needlepoint, and it was not until now that I could sense the inner chutzpah to say, "Oh, to heck with the light copper - that red needs to show off its red-dishness now, so I will venture into the realm of the light copper." Or the dark lines of the stones - they're cock-eyed if you look at them stitch by stitch, but taken as a whole they look like rustic mortar in between the stones.

Here is the top portion, with the fallen leaves (notice the lovely rust shading on them!), with the grey outlining yarn still in my needle. Just before I began stitching this piece, I pulled some yarn that had been missing from the DMC listings. I used Anchor to supplement the DMC wool, and you know what? I really prefer the twist of the DMC. The Appleton was a little rougher to the hand and as I stitched with it it began to untwist. It's simple enough to fix, really, but I was quite disappointed. With all of the needlepoint book publishers who laud its colors and use it for their oh-so-gorgeous patterns, I found myself quite disappointed with its simple quality when I began to use it. I was happy that you can't tell the difference in the finished piece between Anchor and DMC. But the difference in quality did give me pause.

Finally, here's the stone background. It is possible to tell the difference both in this picture and in the direct sunlight between the white part of the stones and the cream, but the difference is much more pronounced on the canvas and I wish I had gone with my instinct and used a brighter white. Still, the white on the fruits would have been too stark, and the cream is fairly white so the stones won't mind too much.

I really, really like how you can't tell, once it's stitched, where a color or a line was on the printed canvas. I guess it takes some growing up, where the need to emphasize a color does not mean the taking away of another color's "territory." Funny how our minds work when we are younger!

All in all, I'm quite happy with this piece. I was able to find a deep copper of a shade that I had used up while stitching through another shop, and that makes me oh, so happy. I have the top left hand corner to finish before this piece is ALL FINISHED (pictures will follow!), and then I have 2 needlepoint canvases that I bought, literally, 30 years ago. Have I taken them out of their boxes? Yes. Have I put them onto frames to begin stitching? No. But the threads are all ready, the canvases are anxiously waiting, and once I finish some commission stitching, then this piece, I'll be able to start some needlepoint canvases I bought when I was 14 and visiting London with my high school's band trip.

Happy stitching to all!

Susan

Blogosphere Movie Review

2008-12-30T15:01:00.003-05:00

OK, it's now time for me to officially blog about something non-needlework related: movies. I'm a huge movie fan and occasionally become obsessed about movies, needing to see a movie more than a gazillion times: The Bad News Bears (1976 version), Jaws (just so I could get over the fear - I saw it when I was 10 years old, for cryin' out loud!), The Empire Strikes Back (the last good Star Wars movie), Man in the Iron Mask (hey, it wasn't Titanic - and it was a very, very good movie with a good message), and of course the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In our efforts to cut back expenses and for time commitment, and because I have not been able to watch a lot of movies over the years, I signed up for NetFlix a year and a half ago. On the whole, it's been good and I love updating my list during the Oscars and Golden Globes.

I won't go into here the problems with too-often-viewed DVD's. The skipping, the scratches, the having to pause during the airship scene of Stardust and effectively missing the entire Robert DeNiro cameo. No, we won't discuss those problems here. And I will say - we bought a DVD cleaner kit and a machine cleaner DVD and that seems to have cleared up most of the rental DVD problems. That, and letting NetFlix know that a disk is damaged. It's still not the same as sinking into a movie and letting it take you somewhere, but I'm learning to keep a half-seen movie in my brain somewhere and switch it back on when the replacement DVD arrives.

No, what I'm wanting to review here in more than 2000 words (the number allowed on my Netflix review) is the last movie I saw through Netflix: Copying Beethoven. I love Beethoven and was brought up on the famous story of how he conducted the 9th Symphony (with help from the Concertmaster), how he hung his head in sadness because he could not hear the applause, and how the Concertmaster turned him around to see the great response from the audience. I play Beethoven, not like I once did before The Shop, but I still have the 1st Piano Sonata open and I work on it every few weeks. I played the Pathetique in college and tinkered a bit with the Moonlight Sonata. So I love his music and once had a complete tape collection of all 9 symphonies.

And as far as movie adaptations of famous composers' lives go, I know that there will be a bit of artistic license. Of course we know that W.A. Mozart was probably not as out of control as he was shown in Amadeus, he had many students, he had several children, and his wife saw to their musical education after his death. But how do you portray a late 18th Century court with all of its intrigues and intricacies to an audience who is not part of that world any more? When the Chamberlain saw to the ruler's chamber(pot) as well as to the ruler's schedule? When putting the left shoe on the monarch signified a lowering of your standing at court from the courtier who put the right shoe on the monarch? (Real stuff here - I'm not making this up!) Well, you give Tim Hulce free rein with his laugh, you dramatize the antagonism between Mozart and Salieri, and you show a court where an outsider does not fit in. Fine and good. The costumes were beyond reproach, the acting was impeccable, and you get the sense of the genius of Mozart when you see Salieri fall to his knees while he is reading "the first and only copies of this music; it was like he was taking dictation from God."

And a knitting note here: you do not ever, ever knit on the cable-knit sweater at the point of the sleeve decreases when you finally watch the Director's Cut of Amadeus. In fact, you do not knit on the cable sweater when you watch this movie. Ever. No matter that it was a movie obsession (see above) and you've seen the original more times than any sane, normal person would. You will have to work twice as hard to repair the damage you made when you realize that you should have started the sleeve decreases 12 rows ago. On a cable pattern. Cable sweaters and lace shawls should never be knit during Amadeus or a Bette Davis murder mystery. 'Nuff said.

As far as Beethoven's life on film, I saw Immortal Beloved when it was on the big screen and I was still taking piano lessons. My teacher informed me that Beethoven's brother was not the only person he had a falling out with (he had fallings out with everybody in his life), and his nephew could never have been his son. Still, it is a brilliant movie despite its historical shortcomings, and the big-screen performance of the 9th moved me to tears. And the tragic love story was heart-rending. It really really was, and I was willing to grant the writers and directors with a great deal of artistic license that made the story more emotional.

But on to Copying Beethoven - there really is a movie review here! While I thought the costumes and sets were quite accurate, I was appalled by the movie. The plot is basically that a young woman is sent to Beethoven's home to be his copyist for the music before the premier of the 9th Symphony, and they form a close relationship. I watched it to the performance of the 9th, but stopped the movie at that point and sent it back unwatched, and here's why:

We know historically that Beethoven used an earphone to hear better, especially earlier in his deafness. But during the last years of his life, he communicated with others using a slate and a book. Those still exist, somewhere. Nowhere in the movie does Beethoven write on his slate or in his book when he is communicating.
He is shown with a (probably historically accurate) metal contraption strapped around his head that he used to hear the piano-forte better. The only time we see him using the ear phone is once while he's in his local tavern. Not talking with others in his home or on the street, just once in the tavern.
Beethoven did not read lips. As far as I know, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, lip-reading did not become a normal and wide-spread way for the deaf to communicate with the hearing community until after Alexander Graham Bell began to work with the deaf, and it is doubtful that the older, impatient, agitated, ill-tempered Beethoven would have worked out an early 19th century form of lip-reading.
And we, the movie audience, are to believe that 4 days before the premier of the magnificent 9th Symphony, Beethoven had 1 copyist to prepare all of the music for all of the instruments, voices, and soloists?
And that the orchestra, chorus, and soloists got the premier performance perfect with only 3 days of rehearsals? One of the most demanding pieces of music then written and one that no one could imagine could even happen, with a full chorus singing with the orchestra? And the soloists get their parts spot on? And the timpani, and the horns, and the strings? They know when to come in exactly for the effect Beethoven wanted? With 3 days of rehearsals?
The young copyist leads Beethoven in his conducting from the well of the orchestra because she is so familiar with the music. Huh? Any professional conductors want to take this one on? As an appreciator of live classical music, it takes much, much more than familiarity with the music to be able to conduct: it takes years of training and practice, not just a familiarity with a piece of music. Were that the case, I'd be the perfect person to conduct "Pictures at an Exhibition."
It is doubtful that Beethoven would have been familiar with the phrase comparing a woman giving a speech with a dancing bear. While Samuel Johnson said it, it was much more a Victorian era saying and was more popular later in the 19th century.
It is also doubtful that Beethoven would have bathed in front of his female copyist or that he would have mooned her. Just sayin'.

So, that said, if you want to watch Copying Beethoven because you love Ed Harris' movies (and he does an excellent job of portraying B's ill temper and anger), or you want to see the struggle of women wanting to devote their lives to music (still as important then as it is now), then by all means rent it. And you may not be as persnickity as I am about these things. But if you are a music fan or request some level of historical accuracy, then please know that the little things causing you to cringe from time to time during this movie are probably covered above. Have a back-up movie just in case, and make sure that if you want to throw something at the TV screen that it's just popcorn.

Thanks again for reading the rant, and I think things will slow down enough in the new year for a few more blog posts than you've seen lately!

Some Knitting at last

2008-10-14T16:01:00.012-05:00

So these past few weeks (OK, months) have been so empty on my blog, for which I apologize. Shortly after I wrote about my pillowcases, I announced to the local knitting guild that I would be closing down my shop, and to say that I was emotionally drained for a month is about accurate. It was wonderful to hear from everyone how much my shop (and my life's work) had meant to them, and I really felt like I had contributed something to the world at large. Which is what I wanted to do at least once in this life. We closed up shop on Saturday, Aug. 23, and employees stayed till I bought them dinner packing and organizing (all those plastic baggies full of Persian yarn!) so that Sunday's move would go smoothly.

And it did. It was wet due to the hurricane, but we moved everything big out of the shop, especially the custom-built shelves, and into the storage unit, where so much merchandise lives happily waiting for its inclusion onto the website. And as of this writing, I have had 2 real, live, bona fide, not-from-the shop orders for stuff that was just waiting for the right person to come along. Yay! My evil plot is working.

So onto the knitting. This shawl/scarf was my first exposure to Anne yarn (see Annetrelac entries at the beginning of the blog!), and I adapted a pattern for a lace shawl called "The Children of Lir" from the Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman published by Interweave Press. They do such an extraordinary job of bringing the history of all the needle arts to the world at large, and while I don't intend at this point in time to create my very own pattern for a shawl, I was intrigued by the relative simplicity of this pattern and its story. You can order this book from your local yarn shop; if you want to see what other great lace knitting titles Interweave has, visit their site here: www.interweave.com/knit /books.

For those not familiar with Irish myths, the children of Lir/Lyr were 4 sons (if you link the sons with the 4 provinces of Ireland) or 7 sons (if you go for the mystical numbers) who had a younger sister. When their father re-married it was to an evil stepmother who grew jealous of the attention her husband gave to her stepsons and laid a curse on them: she turned them into swans. There is a brilliant re-telling of this story called Daughter of the Forest by Juliette Marillier that tells the tale from the sister's point of view. And names and gives personalities to all 7 brothers. Oh, and the sister? She must break the curse by harvesting nettles, spinning them into thread, then weaving each of her brothers a shirt from the nettles all without speaking until her task is done. And there are some tellings that say that she could not finish one arm of one shirt so that one brother always had a swan's wing. Ms. Marillier gives an excellent rendition of this twist in the story.

ANYWAY.

When I went to the PHG weekend in Athens in 2006, Plying the Arts, I took the course in the Elizabeth Zimmerman (I am not worthy) percentage sweater taught by an amazing teacher who pulled together all of the bits of knowledge I had learned from my dear G and consolidated it into an all-day class, complete with a notebook where I could put my notes for each percentage sweater I made. Which came in handy, but that's another story. Of course, there was shopping to be done, and I bought a skein of Anne yarn. Now Anne is a sock yarn (or lace yarn), and each skein is unique. You can specify that you have 2 skeins dyed for you, but I'm not that picky. Instead, I chose a darkish color with shots of plum, and when the lace books came into the shop the following winter I perused them with B's help. I settled on the Children of Lir shawl, knitted 3 different swatches as my percentage sweater teacher had suggested, keeping each swatch on the needle so that I could compare one to the other, and chose size 3's so that the knitted portion of the pattern would show against the lacey portion of the pattern. It's not blocked, but here are the pictures of it pre-blocking:

The lacey parts represent the wings of the swans in flight. And those plum shades! They hit at just the right point in the pattern. They're almost part of the pattern.

Oh, and another thing about this shawl? It was my first provisional cast on, learned at The Mountain, including the tip that it's best to use cotton thread, not wool yarn, for casting your stitches onto so that the wool yarn you're using won't grab onto the fibers of the scrap yarn when you pull it out. So I started in the center, in pattern (I recommend knitting a row first to make the picking up for the second half much easier), and just knitted repeat after repeat after repeat. I think I knitted 10 repeats in all and kept the stitches live on the first half to make sure I had enough yarn to do the second half. Like I said, each skein of Anne is unique in all the world. And in addition to the pattern, the ends of each half are bordered in a seed stitch like the sides are. So I knitted 10 repeats, put the live stitches on scrap yarn, picked up veeerrryyy carefully from the provisional cast-on, and went down the other side.

Here is a detail of the knitted pattern:

I'm not too concerned about the bumpy parts that you can see REALLY WELL on this close-up. They'll go away with the blocking. And for a knitted lace pattern, it was easy knitting. There was a k2tog and a ssk in each row, sometimes twice, and a good explanation for a double decrease (occurring 2x in the 14 row repeat). But really, it was possible for me to knit and watch TV after I had gotten through about 7 pattern repeats. The first few repeats, of course, I did in complete concentration and with furrowed brow at The Mountain, but I never got cocky with thinking I had memorized the pattern. Oh, no preciousss. That just wouldn't do.

Here's a picture of the edge of the shawl, and you can see where the center of the shawl is at the far right-hand side of this picture:You can see on the far right that the swan's wings begin to flow to the right rather than to the left. There seems to be a small hole there, nothing major like a dropped stitch (I checked!), but it's where the provisional cast-on was necessary to the flow of the pattern. You have swans' wings going down each arm as you wear the shawl so that it is matched on each side.

And I'm really glad I selected a yarn that didn't have a lot of color variation to it. Lace can be tricky, since you want to show off your skill as a lace knitter (also known as OCD or obsessed attention to detail, and for good reason) but you are also tempted to use a pretty variegated yarn because it's there. For this pattern, I like how the yarn's variegation accents the lace's pattern.

And one of these days, I'll start on my Anne sock, the one that got this whole thing started!

Stamped Pillowcases and Their Story

2008-08-05T16:14:00.009-05:00

Or, how I learned the value of not letting something sit unstitched for too long . . .

Yes, that was a valuable lesson. About 20 years ago, I attended a feminist bookfair that was a wonderful, mind-blowing experience. Imagine, in a great ship-building hall in Barcelona where the 3 ships were built in which Columbus arrived at the New World, complete with a life-size replica of the Santa Maria, becoming for one week a hall dedicated to books. And these were not just any books, oh no, preciousss. These were books written by women. About women. Published by women-owned publishing houses. Bought for women-owned bookstores. It was probably the most eye-opening instance in which I learned that I, too, could be the center of a story: mine. It was also the only overseas trip during which I have not purchased a copy of Lord of the Rings, one of my travel musts. This time, the purchase just didn't seem, well, appropriate. Never mind that Eowyn was one of my role models . . . this one experience was a time in which I learned that women, too, had lives that were meaningful. But that's another story.

So one of the books I bought was called Night Train to Mother and involves an American woman returning to her mother's and grandmother's homeland in Romania to learn about their lives as Jewish women before and during the Nazi and Communist occupation. While she tells the tale of her grandmother's life, the fact that an engagement took a year came up as well as the reasoning behind it: it took a year to embroider all of the towels and sheets that the young woman would need for her new home. After all, in her class, the sheets were changed once a week and washed twice a year. So think about it - a woman would need to embroider at least 26 sets of sheets and all accoutrements: sheets, bottom sheets, pillow cases, extra pillow cases, sheets for the guest rooms (presumably), and this was a huge undertaking in a young woman's family. You couldn't do that much hand work any faster than a year. You just couldn't. After all, you still had to help take care of your mother's house, your younger brothers and sisters, be measured for the clothes you'd wear for your first year, make your wedding gown . . . the list goes on.

That knowledge inspired me to go to Mrs. Dennis' soon afterwards, where I purchased some pre-printed embroidered pillow cases. I had not done embroidery for quite some time - I was mostly doing counted cross stitch and needlepoint - but I loved the lavender color threads that the pattern called for and so I threw all caution to the wind and purchased the set. For any DMC geeks out there, I used #550 as the darkest shade of purple, with #3041 and #3042 for the blue and lighter purple. But I digress.

During this time I was working at a local pub, so for the first time since college I had days off since I worked nights. Did I stitch or what?! I re-crocheted my first afghan, including taking all the tassels off, so that it looked more like a rectangle and less like a trapezoid. I also began this, my first pillowcase, thinking about how this was part of my trousseau, my own Hope Chest, and it was the first thing I did for a potential new home with a husband. A husband was a vague concept, a person with whom I would share my life with a few years later, after I had had a few more adventures of my own. After all, Eowyn was my role model, 'member?

I finished this pillow case about a year later. When I got married. Happily, I might add, but more quickly than I had anticipated the summer before. Nope, no baby on the way - just realized that it was time to get married and have the adventures all the same. We used the finished pillow case for a while, but the case got messy as pillow cases do and I just didn't want all my hard work to get torn up by the washing machine. So I put it away and moved onto other things. Like buying my shop . . .

Fast forward to the summer of 2008. I'm in the process of closing my brick-and-mortar shop, I no longer need to stitch shop models, all my knitting is finished for the time being, and it's time for me to finish some things for me. Like a long-neglected Cherry Blossom Fairy from the Cicely May Barker series (kit from early 1980's), the Lopi purse, and hey, here's that old pillow case from 1991. I think I'll finish it, since we have an extra set of pillows on the bed from the time that Webmaster Bill broke his leg and needed extra pillows to prop it up. And oh look, I still have the plastic embroidery hoop, the needle hasn't rusted too bad, and wow! Here are all the threads, all ready to go for the 2nd pillowcase! OK, let's see where that pattern is, the one printed on the pillow case . . .

And now we run into the question you may have asked yourself. I know that I have been asked from time to time at the shop: "How long does this blue dye stay on the fabric?" Well, friends, it does come off. Oh yes, preciousss, it does fade. I'd say about 17 years after buying something pre-printed, the dye fades. Yes, yes it does.

Fortunately, I had a) finished the first pillowcase so that I could use it as a reference, and b) had enough light to see what was left of those little blue lines, but wow, it was not the most fun stitching I've ever done. I mean, seriously. I had counted on a couple of hours every few evenings, working on a couple of flowers or leaves, but wow. One leaf stitched was a good evening. I don't think I've ever taken out work as consistently as I have with this pillowcase. There's still a wonky blue petal on one of the flowers, but I decided it was flourishing to its own inner flower voice and I just wasn't going to tweak it any more.

So last weekend, I finished the second pillowcase and now both are covering the extra Target pillows that we still have. I saw no sense in throwing them out, and really, having that extra set of pillows makes my bed look like something out of the JC Penney or other [insert catalog/ magazine name here] pretty photo of bedrooms. The photos are below. Perhaps you have a set of pillowcases, languishing in a basket or a drawer. If so, I'd advise taking them out fairly soon and finishing them. Feel free to share your experiences here . . .

This is the original one. The colors faded a little from going through the washing machine. And there are tiny little sets of grey threads that serve as a border between the bouquet and the rest of the violets.
Here's a close-up of the stitched bouquet. The purple is a bit more prominent here and the pink bow has faded a bit, but you get the general idea.

They're nice, big pillowcases, too. Here's a photo of the second one - it's a little wrinkled, but I'm not that worried about a few wrinkles. I managed to stitch the darn thing, after all!

And close-up of the second one. Just so it didn't feel neglected.

And here they are, snuggled up together. The pillowcases for my trousseau. I feel so accomplished. I cannot imagine the amount of work it would have taken a hundred years ago or more, to have spent all one's free time stitching these, perhaps even knitting lace to attach along the edge of each pillow case. How very talented these women were.

Stitching Post - counted needlepoint

2008-07-17T09:06:00.009-05:00

I've promised a stitching post on this blog, and wanted to give a little bit of background as I launch into showing the pictures.

In June of 2004, I went to the TNNA trade show in Columbus, OH, the largest trade show for yarn and needlework shop owners, teachers, and designers. Yes, folks, we really, really have our very own trade show and it is as wonderful as your imagination lets on. You get to see all the really beautiful things out there and make selections as you stare at yummy colors and different textures. The show offers classes in everything from knitting to finishing needlework to needlepoint to more of everything. I selected counted needlepoint for a couple of my classes, since I wanted to become more familiar with this art and thought that more needlepointers would be interested in this form, too.

I took a class where you stitch an authentic English teahouse shaped like a teapot. I'm not kidding. It's a real, truly live place where the artist who designed the pattern had tea with her family when she was vacationing in England. The artist's name is Libby Sturdy, and she publishes under the name Just Libby Designs (website is www.justlibbydesigns.com, which I am having a little trouble getting onto this morning). She was a terrific teacher, one who understood that students are going to ask a lot of questions and she will need to repeat herself and explain the steps in her designs clearly. Libby made sure that we went through the entire design booklet step by step so that we could make notes about what the directions said, and that we also stitched the most complicated portion of her design in the class. I was suitably impressed and went home, full of delicious English teahouse energy.

So here we are, 4 years later, and I'm on the second floor of a three-floor teahouse design. I will say that I like to work on projects a little at a time, rotating as I become tired of one design and starting on another. I've always been this way: I find great enjoyment from starting one design, picking up another, and moving onto a third when I become bored with an earlier one. I understand now that there are official Project Rotations on people's blogs - glad to know that I was on the cutting edge all along! The other thing is, I like to finish my needlepoint and move onto the next section, then the next, then the next, and there are many, many embellishments on this teahouse. For example, the windows are stitched with the basketweave stitch, then
overstitched to make the mullions, then the outer parts are stitched with padded satin stitch (a really cool technique - it requires you to stitch a long stitch in a perpendicular direction to your planned satin stitch, allowing the satin stitch to stand out more [think stonework] and for the long stitch to peek out through the gaps in the satin stitch), and so forth. All very well and good, and all instructions are laid out page by page, section by section instead of taking the easy way out by saying "refer to paragraph x on page 7." But I finished the entire 2nd floor this spring (go me!), and took pictures of it when I took pictures of the Lopi purse. Here they are:

The canvas is a gold-flecked mesh, which you can't see very well in the picture. The section on the lower right is what we stitched in class - there is a blue wrought-iron fence which you stitch in its entirety, then stitch the urn and flowers on top of it. The left-hand side is how the right-hand side looked prior to embellishment - all you can see is the urn (and on the canvas, the fence).

OK, so I didn't turn the .jpg when I brought it in, but you get the general idea. The blue is the fence, stitched in its entirety, then the urn (that you can see in the picture above), then the flowers and trellis in the urn which are overdyed ribbon done in French knots. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but makes a great effect.

This shows the first floor which I stitched in 2004, then put down for a long time until a camping trip with friends in 2006. Most of the stitching is self-explanatory - midnight blue Gold Rush, Anchor floss, DMC perle cotton. You can see the front stoop at the very bottom of the stitching that uses the padded satin stitch - the blue ribbon is peeking out from beneath the individual strands of metallic satin stitching. It makes the whole section look like, well, a step. The part that had me give up in frustration was the stone work. It's very much a free-form decision between padding with purple under grey, grey under purple, or tent stitch. It was fun for a while, but then it had to sit for a while until I wanted to do more free-form (and finish the stonework before moving onto the side windows and the walls. Which for me was a lot more fun. But looking at it on this post, I really, really like the effect of the stonework.

This is the second floor, which I worked on this spring. I had noticed a boo-boo with one of the side windows (like, I overstitched the area where the midnight blue was supposed to go, which is probably why I put it down and didn't pick it up again!). Each of the windows is overstitched, either with tent stitch on top of basketweave or with single straight stitched to show the individual panes. Then the outside of each window is stitched with more padded satin stitch, and I gotta say, I love the way that the corners are mitered. I have another counted needlepoint piece that I may use this same technique on since it's so very effective here. The second floor stonework is sectioned by padded satin stitch and tent stitch to give the effect of wattle-and-daub for the second story.

So again, it's a case of finishing the window, stitching over the same window, stitching around the same window, etc. I like the effect, I just have to put the stitching down for a while after I've finished with that particular bit of time.

Here are the last of the pictures of the work thus far:

We'll see when I next pick this up - I'm working on a Mirabilia fairy, and finishing a pillow case that's a pre-stamped companion to the one I stitched for my "trousseau" in 1991. Oh, and by the way, the blue pre-stamped ink does come off the fabric. Just thought you'd like to know!

More later.

Bag with Handles

2008-07-07T09:31:00.006-05:00

Aside from the fact that I mis-sewed (is that a word?) the handles back-to-front and I had to re-sew them front to front and back to back, the bag is ready for felting. You'll see on these pictures that these are the mis-sewn handles, but you get the general idea.

Here's the completed bag in all its glory! Off to the washing machine . . .

Flower Power Bag in progress

2008-06-12T10:17:00.010-05:00

No Annetrelac sock here, and I'm getting more into stitching since I finished up several knitting sweaters before the hot weather really started, so it's on to "What are the ongoing shop projects at Nease's Needlework?" Well, of course, I'll be happy to share! Now, the first project I mention here is a Lopi felted bag (not something you think about in Georgia summers), but we'll just say that air conditioning is a wonderful invention and the various stitching projects will have their own blogs soon, not to worry!

So I was looking at all the lovely colors of Lopi, thinking how great they would be if they could turn themselves into a felted bag, and lo and behold, Designs by Shelley had a great bag pattern. It's called "Flower Power Bag" and featured a multi colored bag with flowers attached to the pocket. You knit the bottom of the bag in one color, the two sides in contrasting colors, then knit and attach the front pocket and straps and voila! It's ready to felt! It knitted very quickly and I worked on it at the shop, since I work on Thursday evenings for the time being and Friday afternoons can be a bit slow during the summer.

Here's a picture of the bag pattern from Designs by Shelley:

You can see the other Designs by Shelley bags at her website http://saboardman.tripod.com
and order them from Nease's Needlework. Call or come by the shop to pick out your favorite (shameless plug!).

I modified the colors a little bit, since I didn't have Lopi in yellow and I wasn't sure how Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride Bulky would felt on a Lopi bag, so I decided to use 2 shades of rose for the sides (which are picked up and worked in stockinette stitch from each long edge of the purse bottom), and the navy that I used on the bottom is the pocket color. I used green for the top, which is knit after the edges are sewn together, and for the handles. If you feel you need practice doing your mattress stitch to sew sides together, Lopi is big and bulky and easy to see! I know that Lopi is not everyone's favorite yarn to work with, especially in GA's 90+ degree temperatures, but in the shop in the air conditioning, it wasn't so bad. The front table held the bag while I worked on it which helped with the weight of it since it wasn't sitting on my lap as I knitted.

And a word about the handles - I fully expected they'd be knit as I-cords but they weren't. They were a 5 stitch stockinette stitch that you knit for 20 inches and thank goodness I remembered how to knit backwards. I had learned that technique years ago when I learned entrelac, as it makes the work go more quickly since you're not turning the work from back to front on a limited number of stitches (10 or less). So I guess the designer (Shelley) wanted flat handles for the bag rather than small round ones. And you know, it makes sense: felted bags can be heavy and I'd much prefer having a flat handle that will fit easily on my shoulder, rather than a small round one that will dig in when I load the bag with items.

Anyway, since I've taken these pictures, I've finished the handles and sewn on the pocket. I'll take pictures of the completed bag in its unfelted state next week, after I've had a chance to catch my breath from the trip I'm taking this weekend with Webmaster Bill. I can measure it and show how large Lopi is before felting when knit on size 13 needles. Once it's felted, I'll probably use some scrap yarn and do some needle felting of flowers onto the front of the bag to fit in with the instructions (they do say "Flower Power," after all!).

So here are the pics:
This is the front of the bag, and the side where the pocket goes. It took very little time to get this far - I started on a Saturday late afternoon, and knit on Thursday evenings if the shop is slow.

Here are the yarns I used:

What you may or may not be able to tell from your monitor is the shade of green I used. Those of you who know me well will know that this shade of green, AKA 70's green, is one of my least favorite shades in all of color-dom. My employees (most of whom who love this shade) took great joy in pointing out to me that everything old is new again; my thoughts are "but must this 70's green be new again, too???" It does go with the bright shades of rose, though, in a way that shows them off without their rosy-ness being too bright.

And yes, there is my side seam with my mattress stitch. A kind and knowledgeable knitting teacher taught me how to do this seam while we were enjoying a glass of wine and some chocolates at The Mountain retreat center, and I've never disliked seaming since. There just might be a lesson in there!

So hope you enjoy this posting, and I'll have more pics to put up in a week or so!

Working on it!

2008-03-18T13:55:00.002-05:00

What great pictures those are! I'm getting inspired to start knitting - after I wind my Anne yarn into a ball. I know, I know, I've been negligent in starting knitting, only because I've been working so incredibly hard to create a sign for the shop inviting people to join this blog. I managed to finish it last Thursday just in time to scoot down to Kinko's (my inkjet just doesn't get the colors the way that Kinko's does), log onto my e-mail, turn the color printer to "on," and print off 3 copies. It's up with these photos posted to it, and I must say it is quite colorful and cheerful. The file is a little too big to load onto the blog, but if you're in the store you're sure to see it.

And most of all, hopefully it will bring new bloggers to this site and we can all trade stories of how much fun we've had knitting these socks!

Halfway there!

2008-03-04T09:27:00.002-05:00

annetrelac03thumb
Originally uploaded by stacybeads

Here it is--Annetrelac sock #1. I love it, and it fits great. After the entrelac leg section, the pattern calls for increasing back to 72 stitches, but I knew that would be way too big for my tiny feet. I increased to 56 stitches (a guess, really, since I didn't do a gauge swatch for this project) and that was perfect.

Another view

2008-02-29T09:40:00.003-05:00

Here's a close-up of Allie's sock. Wow, Anne sure is some gorgeous yarn.

Anybody out there who was thinking of participating in the knitalong but hasn't done so yet, please join us! Just email Susan and let her know you want to sign up.

A tale of two gauges

2008-02-29T09:28:00.004-05:00

Here are Peyton's and Allie's socks, both being modeled by Peyton. Peyton's sock (shown with just ribbing done) is done at the gauge the pattern called for, but she increased the stitch count to make the sock fit her better. Allie's sock (with the entrelac section) follows the pattern's original stitch count, but she is getting fewer stitches per inch than the gauge the pattern called for. As you can see, both socks fit pretty much the same. Which is good, since Allie's sock is actually a belated Christmas present for Peyton! Hopefully these ladies will join us and can tell you more about their Annetrelac experiences than I can.

It's happening!

2008-02-29T09:22:00.003-05:00

Wow, I can't believe how much I'm enjoying the entrelac. I expected to love the result, but not the process, so this is a pleasant surprise. I did have to rip out my first two tiers of blocks because I realized I had misunderstood the instructions. When it says to do that series of steps "7 more times," I neglected to count the actual times I'd done it. I just assumed when I got to the end of the round, I was done, and I started going back the other way. WRONG. The rounds are actually meaningless for the entrelac section, so I removed my marker. It was only confusing me! Now I'm on the right track and loving the way this sock looks. Fun fun fun.

Pretty pretty pretty yarn

2008-02-27T09:43:00.003-05:00

Unlike everyone else, I chose a yarn that has minimal color variation cuz, well, I wanted to see the subtleties of the shading when I start my entrelac pattern. So I took some pictures at the shop and have posted a couple. It's kind of hard to see the subtlety in just one shot, so here are a couple in a couple of different lights. The color is just a shade darker than the second photo, kind of a dark rust. Which is a color I wear often, so I'm really looking forward to getting started on knitting this cool pattern soon.

Mmmm...yarn...

2008-02-07T12:07:00.000-05:00

Hey, everyone! I had a hard time choosing a colorway for my Annetrelac socks. There were several gorgeous almost-solid skeins at the shop, which tempted me, but I wanted more color variation for my entrelac blocks. The colors in the skein I ultimately picked remind me of a box of chocolates--cocoa and caramel and nougat and luscious fruity centers. Delicious.

On the Wild Sock Ride

2008-02-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

Well, I've sent out the invitations for the Annetrelac Knitalong, including the links to this blog and to the Interweave Press pattern download, and I'm really, really getting excited about this whole thing! I mean, the Yahoo Group has been a great vehicle to promote the shop, but this is the time that a group of us from the shop, customers and staff, are going to be able to do something together - suffer, I mean, create a pair of socks from a challenging pattern, and each of us will share our experiences: our choice of yarn, our reading the pattern, our figuring out how the pattern works, our cursing, our successes, etc. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all come together.

So today, I'll take my camera into work and take a photo of the yarn I'm going to use. When the latest shipment of Anne yarn came in last month, there were several subtle shades in addition to the colors that were brown with a splash of teal, or multi-blue -red and -green. I chose a red that has very subtle shading, to see how the effect of entrelac knitting will show up on the entrelac portion of the sock.

To all the others on this blog, why did you choose the color you chose?

And one more thing to think about - Betsy, late of Cast-On Cottage, came by the shop on Thursday to drop off some brochures for her knitting week at Sweet Briar, called "Lace at Sweet Briar," in June. There are several different styles of lace being taught that week, and she is teaching the knitted lace seminar. I remember back in 2000 or 2001 (is the project really THAT old??) she taught entrelac at Cast-On, and one of the neat things about entrelac is that the rows are so short, you can actually knit backwards. I may have gotten myself into a hole here, but I'm going to try to remember how to knit backwards to share with the others in this group. If I can't, I might be able to convince Betsy to stop by the shop for a one-evening seminar on this technique. I'm sure she'd be thrilled, and she's always been a fantastic teacher.

OK, well, I'll head into the shop with yarn and camera now. This is going to be one wild ride!

New Directions

2008-01-09T10:13:00.000-05:00

So here it is my very first blog posting. This format seems a little more chatty, a little less formal and news-y than Yahoo. And for the upcoming knit-along, I'm leaning more towards blogspot because of its slightly different format. People's blogs are always interesting to read with their views into a person's inner life, what they want to show of it, anyway, and since there will be many, many ruminations on this complicated sock pattern, this might be a better format for the knitalong, more so than Yahoo or another format.

Up, up, and away!

2007-03-16T12:47:00.001-05:00

First Post