kmkat and her kneedles

Library

It is a sad truth that knitters must have day jobs. Or, in the case of some, night jobs. As much as we would like to wallow in fiber all day, knitting and drinking coffee and tea and wine, watching movies, chatting, eating chocolate and thinking deep thoughts, there are bills to be paid and Sugar Daddies -- even if we wanted one -- are thin on the ground.

In my effort to keep you all well-informed about me-me-me (that IS what it's all about, right?) I thought you might like to see what I've been doing for money since September.

   

My tax accountant job occupies me only a piece of the year, [generally] from late January until April 15, so the rest of my time is available for other activities. Since we moved to rural WI in 1999 I've dabbled in being a librarian. At first I volunteered one afternoon a week, then the library board decided to pay me minimum wage to do interlibrary loan. It was on-line, and the other librarians -- neither of whom would ever see 70 again -- didn't know how to *run* the computer. One thing led to another, and I have actually applied for the directorship of three different libraries in the county. Luckily for everyone, all three library boards decided to hire someone more qualified for the jobs.

The director of the county library is a good friend. She has been dreadfully short-staffed for a couple years and asked if I would be a part-time temp, so I've been helping out there since September. My main task has been cataloging their kits. They have about a hundred kits, each one designed around a theme and containing some combination of books, videos, audiobooks, music, puppets, posters, and other items. They are intended for use by educators -- teachers, home-schoolers, day-care providers. My friend is a great grant-writer, and although her budget is embarassingly tight, she has managed to get funding from a couple corporate sponsors. The kits had been moldering in the basement of their building among the rats and spiders until she discovered them. With the grants her former youth librarian improved and added to the kits, but that youth librarian left before the kits could be cataloged or marketed to their intended audience.

Enter me. (Cue trumpets)

I have made an inventory sheet for each kit, complete with color photograph of the contents, and bar-coded it so that the kit could be listed in our on-line catalog like this. Each sheet is laminated and will be attached -- somehow, we're still figuring that out -- to the Rubbermaid tote that contains its kit.

        Monkeyshines.                                   Explorers.

            Summer I                                     Mammals

       Polar Regions.                                     Summer II

I report for duty at the accounting firm next week, and I'm nearly done with the cataloging. Then we'll print out a complete set of the inventory sheets, have them copied, and create a 3-ring binder for each library, day care, and school in the county that wants one to have for reference.

The kits will start flying off the shelves, and the $thou$and$ that is invested in them will start to pay off. My job will be done.

Cold

When the thermometer says this:

I am very glad I finished these

a few days ago. My hands are not often cold, but wearing these around the house has been like giving my hands a constant hug. Once again, thanks to Susan, my Knitting Coffee Swap buddy, for the beautiful and soft alpaca yarn. She gave me two 110 yard skeins; I used all but 10 yards of one. Now... what to make from the other skein? I'm not a hat person and the yarn is a tad too itchy for a scarf. Ideas?

Yarn: Araucania Atacama, 100% alpaca; ~ 90 yards.

Needles: Crystal Palace bamboo dpns, US#4. The yarn label said size 7s; personally, I think that would make anything of this yarn too loose.

Pattern: Fetching, from Knitty, with mods. Different yarn, different size needles, cast on 40 instead of 45 st, have 3 cables at the wrist and the same at the fingers instead of the three and one called for in the pattern, and cable every 4th row instead of every 5th. That last mod was a *design feature* because I forgot to count rows and had to guess.

I started wearing the right one as soon as I finished it -- better to look silly than have a cold hand, right? -- and was a little worried that the yarn might be too itchy for me. I have never been able to wear wool next to my skin. I wore it to bed that night; one of the times my hands get cold is in bed because I can't find a comfortable position if they are under the covers, and we keep our bedroom cool. My wrist itched a little at first, but by morning the wool didn't bother me at all. Yay -- there is hope!

The dogs wonder why I'm not feeding them/letting them out/filling their water dish.

"Blah blah blah outside blah blah treat blah blah blah."

Attention, Dulaaners!

It's time!

Remember the heart-breaking photo of the little Mongolian girl, barefoot in sub-freezing temperature? Winter boots are now on sale at Target! I scored many pairs at well under $5/pair.

What the above photos don't convey is the unbearable cuteness of boots in tiny sizes.

Note: I hesitated to post this because it is uncomfortably like tooting my own horn. Please ignore that aspect and focus on the good we can all do -- at sale prices! -- for those little people with cold feet.

Show me your wallpaper!

Here's the deal. Ever the kurious kat, I want to know what your screen looks like, specifically your wallpaper. I'll show you mine*

and you post your picture to your blog. Leave me a link in the comments so I can come admire it :-)

The knittin' kitten replaced this photo of Lucy:

* I think I found this pic from JenLa's blog, but I'm heading to bed now so I'm not gonna check. It was definitely linked from a knitting blog that I read, not that that narrows it down much.

Secure in his masculinity

These are my 17-yo son's boots. He is a walking -- or jumping (see below) fashion statement.

I F'ed an O!

The scarf, she is fini! How do you like the colors?

I crack myself up.

The way the  blocks of color line up was a delightful surprise to me when I wrapped it 'round my neck.

Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, 3/4+ of a 175m skein of each of #10 woad (faded denim when it's at home), #22 purple, and #28 turquoise, and ~1-1/4 skeins of #24 claret. 
Needles: KnitPicks Options US#6
Gauge: Whatever; this is a scarf, it doesn't matter
Pattern: my own. Cast on 60 st. Begin double knitting: K1, sl1wyif across, ending sl1wyif. Turn and do the same thing across. If you do it right, you end up with a tube closed at both ends. Each section is 28 rows. The first section has 13 rows of purple, 2 rows of red, 13 rows of purple. The second section has 12 rows faded denim, 4 rows red, 12 rows faded denim. Third has 11 rows turquoise, 6 rows red, 11 rows turquiose. And so on until the middle section has 5 rows turquoise 18 rows red, 5 rows turquoise; reverse the number sequence -- but continue the color sequence -- for the second half of the scarf until the last section is 13 rows faded denim, 2 rows red, 13 rows faded denim. I tried binding off as usual, but the bind-off row looked scrunched and didn't match the rest of the knitting. So I bound off by *K2tog twice, then slipping the first stitch over the second as in a normal bind-off* and repeating between the *s. That looked much better.

Coupla things:

• The blues are a little darker and more intense in real life. The darkest blue is actually deep purple. The red in the photos is accurate.
• Right up until I wrapped the scarf around my neck I was thinking I really should have used a Fibonacci stripe pattern. Now I'm satisfied with what I did.
• I'm in my pjs. That explains the boobage somewhere near my waist.
• Heather, the pjs are for you. I may not be knitting, but at least I'm wearing an objet d' knit.

Glory days, Pt. 1

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Glory Days
©Bruce Springsteen

I've been knitting for a long time, although you'd never guess it from the knitted things in my blog. So I thought I'd show some past achievements.

Knitted shawls, though lovely, haven't made their way onto my to-do list because I crocheted a couple 20+ years ago.

This one is made from J.P. Coats Knit-Cro-Sheen in ecru. It's a summer-weight thing, although it does provide a bit of warmth. I haven't worn it in public for years and years; it was only this past year that I rescued it from the back of the closet and draped it over my desk chair.

Once we get out of the dead of winter I may start wearing this as a scarf with my coat. It's a shame to let all those hours of *hooking* go to waste.

The second one is crocheted from some long-forgotten acrylic in a pale purpley-maroon heathery color that was called "Raisin." The color in the first photo is fairly true.

I started making it when I was pregnant with our older son; I wanted a nursing shawl to be used for camouflage when he got hungry or fussy in public. It wasn't finished by the time he was born, and with a newborn in the house I suddenly found myself with barely enough time to feed myself and take a shower, let alone sit quietly and crochet. It didn't get finished for several years. That baby is now 22 and this shawl also hung in the closet for many years. It joined the cotton one on the back of my desk chair this year -- the two of them have kept me warm many times when my office was a little chilly. These days I wear it as a scarf with my jean jacket -- proudly, I might add. As an actual shawl, I don't know. My style, if you could call it that, doesn't really allow for shawls; I'm too utilitarian and stripped down. Maybe I'll start small, wearing it at home, then out on the deck or maybe when we go for a pontoon boat ride on a coolish evening in spring. In public? who knows.

With all the scrumptious yarns that are available now, a new shawl starts to seem like a possibility. Maybe crocheted, maybe knitted. Food for thought, anyway...

Remember when you learned to knit?

I attempted to teach two women how to knit tonight at the library. The time alloted to the class was too short -- 45 - 50 minutes is not enough time to teach casting on AND the knit stitch -- but they were both starting to get the hang of it by the end. If we had had another half hour they would have nailed it, they could have gone home and continued knitting their respective pieces. Maybe I'll ask to start the class earlier next time. As it was the librarians were putting on their coats and shutting down the computers as we laid down our needles.

How this came about was that a library patron wanted to start a knitting and crochet group that would meet at the library. She is a master crocheter and was willing to teach anyone that wanted to learn. I jumped at the chance to knit in a group and offered to be the knitting teacher. The group started in November, meeting twice a month from 6 - 7 pm at the library. This is a tiny village of 888 souls hence it is a tiny group. A couple times there were only the crocheter, her 12-yo daughter, and I. So I taught her daughter to knit.

Tonight the crochet woman wasn't there because her family is sick, so it was just me and two knitting newbies. I told them a scarf was a great first project -- aren't I the clever one? One really is doing a scarf as her first project. She had already bought the needles (Brittany birch!) and yarn (Ella Rae -- the link is for a worsted weight and hers is a bit heavier, but colorwise looked somewhere between #2 and #5 on the linked color card) and that's what she cast on for. The other didn't bring any supplies, which was what I had expected of both of them. I had brought some spare US#8s and 9s that I got in an eBay grab bag of needles, and let her choose from the worsted-weight yarns I had brought -- orange ack, heathery purple ack, deep pink wool, and harvest gold wool. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she chose the day-glo orange, but she said it was so wild that she had to have it. Go for it, I said.

The scarf lady had knit many, many years ago but claimed not to remember a thing. Maybe so, but she was making good cast-on stitches and good knit stitches by the end. The orange ack lady is a crocheter, so she was quite comfortable doing a cable cast-on with a knitting needle and a crocket hook; when she started actually knitting it took her a bit to get the hang of how to catch the yarn and pull it through the stitch on the needle, but she too was getting it by the end.

Do you remember how hard it is to hold the yarn and both needles and the knitting and still manage to maneuver the needles through the loops and not split the yarn and stick the needle through the right opening and remember which way to wrap the yarn and how to pull the loop through even though the needle doesn't have a hook on the end to make it easier and which is the old stitch that has to come off the left needle? I didn't until I watched these beginners struggle. We should all pat ourselves on the back for the manual dexterity we have managed to embed in our brains and our hands.  I was proud of them as they kept at it and began to be able to recognize when something wasn't right. It was hard not to grab it out of their hands when they got stuck but [mostly] I managed not to.

Unfortunately, the class won't meet again for two weeks. I hope they are able to retain what they learned tonight. And I wish I were a better teacher. We will all improve together.

Knitting and politics DO mix

If one lived in a small city with a population of 45,000, how big would the city council be? Five? Seven? Eleven? Probably somewhere in that range.

I live in a rural county with a population of 45,000, and our county board comprises 23 -- that's 23, folks! -- supervisors. At times the monthly county board meetings have been like a one-ring circus. Several years ago the county attorney had to investigate whether to press assault charges against one board member who had [allegedly] attacked another during the meeting. In front of the public. And the press. Duh. A few months ago five supervisors walked out during the public comment portion of the meeting because the member of the public who got up to speak, a former board member, had threatened them before the meeting.

If I lived in Tony Soprano's New Jersey or the Medellin's Colombia or even Iraq, this might be par for the course, but this is Scandinavian Wisconsin we're talking about. Scandinavians, the ones who stare at their shoes when talking to you and think a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper in the hot dish constitutes spicy food, are generally low-key in everything, including politics.

On the plus side, there is nary a whiff of corruption in the government. Perhaps a bit of old-boyism and nepotism, but that's hard to avoid when the population is so sparse and so few of them want to participate in public service. Every so often some public official is discovered to have used public employees to plow their driveway, but the dollar amounts are small and the underlying cause stupidity rather than cupidity.

County board meetings, however, can be dull. Tonight's was no exception, although the part where the finance director, the treasurer, the chairman of the finance committee, and the corporate [county] counsel were debating the wording and meaning of the proposed resolution on county investment policy -- are the repurchase agreements collateralized? is putting up to 75% of excess county funds into bank CDs sufficiently diversified? exactly how much of the deposits in local banks stay in the county vs. being invested elsewhere? -- had me riveted in my seat even as the rest of the eyelids in the rooms seemed to have become v-e-r-y heavy. (Remember that I am a CPA and have a lot of experience in the world of finance. Riveting to me = dull to others.)

Anyway. I was sitting between two other knitters and we were all busily knitting/tinking/whatever. I cast on for a pair of fingerless gloves (Fetching, of course) and got to the end of the cable section when I discovered that, despite the fact that I had carefully measured my hand, swatched, measured my gauge, washed the swatch, remeasured, did the math, and cast on the precise number of stitches required, it was too small. Bleah.

So here it is again, being reknit. There's the lying little swatch, too.

It is not all bad, though. I''ve been fantasing lately about knitting with wooly yarn. It's the result of knitting the double-knit scarf of EL Silky Wool. The SW is a nice yarn, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have any loft or elasticity to speak of so it doesn't offer the tactile pleasure of worsted. My habit for the last year or so when I go to bed is to let my thoughts drift to yarn and knitting and patterns and colors while I wait for sleep, and I noticed that the last few nights all I could think about was having the feel of nice wool yarn between my fingers. So even frogging this was a pleasure. The yarn is the Auracania Alpaca I got from my Knitters' Coffee Swap buddy Susan. I waited for it to speak to me and when the weather got cold on Saturday, it did.

You need fingerless gloves. Your hands are cold on the keyboard. Alpaca would feel so good. Fingerless glo-o-o-o-o-ves...

See the purple skein behind the alpaca? I'm still waiting for that to speak. I know it will. It's just a matter of time. And listening.

Dereliction of duty

Main Entry: der·e·lic·tion

Pronunciation: "der-&-'lik-sh&n, "de-r&-
Function: noun
1 a : an intentional abandonment b : the state of being abandoned
2 : a recession of water leaving permanently dry land
3 a :  intentional or conscious neglect  : DELINQUENCY   <derelictionb : FAULT, SHORTCOMING of duty>

I have been derelict in duty. Tammy had a contest back in November and December in which my favorite kat was the grand prize winner. When the yarny gorgeousness that was the prize arrived in my mailbox, did I post a picture of it? No. Did I praise its glory or the glory of its giver? No. Did I at least spread the skein on the floor and roll around in it nekkid? I'm not telling. I did shoot off an e-mail to its generous giver; I'm not totally evil and neglectful; just mostly.

It's not easy to take a good photo of purple yarn. It's not as hard as red yarn, but it's still not easy. That's why I didn't post this yesterday. My conscience didn't up and smack me until long after dark, and I knew any photo taken then would suck mightily so I waited until today. Luckily for my karma and your eyes, the sun is in fact shining. Weakly, in a January in Wisconsin sort of way, but shining nevertheless. Surprisingly (to me at least) I ended up having no trouble capturing the colors accurately. I took the photos in my southeast-facing laundry room in front of a big-ass window -- but out of the direct (ha!) sun -- at about 11 am. In case you are wondering exactly how to get good photos in the winter, you take the day off work to stay home and take the photo. Simple, really. (Actually, I am working until the end of the month as a part-time temp for a good friend who is a library director. I took the day off because I had a bunch of stuff to do that could only be done on a week day; she is very understanding like that.)

Thank you, Tammy, for the yarn, and even more, for being so generous as to sponsor a contest that promoted the Dulaan project. You are officially a sweetie.

Everybody, go give Tammy some love and do your part to make up for my appalling d. of d. Thank you for your support.

5:07 pm Sunday. January 14, 2007

That is all.

Scarfing up the goodness

For the Red Scarf Project.
Yarn: most of 1 skein (108yd/98m)Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in cranberry and 1 entire skein (84yds/76m) Lion Brand Jiffy Thick & Quick, in a variegated red (#210 according to the label) in each scarf. The color in picture on the right is fairly accurate, although the picture is kinda dark.
Needles: US#13, scarf on left, and US#15 scarf on right. The one on 13s is a tad bit stiff; the one on 15s is just right.
Pattern: Knit lengthwise in garter stitch, alternating one row of each color, starting and ending with a red row. I cast on either 120 or 135 st for the one on 13s (can't remember), which is 64" long, and 100 st for the one on 15s, which is about 55".

* * * * *

In other so-called news, here is our Saturday sky:

The entire sky was solid overcast gray, dull as ditchwater (or dishwater, if you prefer), except for two parallel strips of rumpled clouds looking for all the world as if a giant tractor had driven there and left tracks.

* * * * *

When I came home from work on Friday I found that my husband and sons and installed the practically-brand-new Maytag front-loader washer we inherited from my MIL several years ago and which had been lurking in our garage ever since. To their additional credit -- gold stars all around! -- they had removed the 30-year-old Whirlpool it replaced; it was already loaded into the van for its final trip to Goodwill. My first thought, unfortunately, was not, "Oh, how wonderful! I have an almost-new washer!" No, I thought, "Damn, where am I going to felt stuff now?!"

Note to my husband if he is reading this: The above paragraph is a in-joke for knitters. I love the new washer. I adore that you guys installed it for me. Thank you all many times over. On those very, very, extremely rare occasions that I want to felt something I'll happily go to the laundromat.

Bookends

I'm Bookends!
Which Simon and Garfunkel album are you?

I loved this album. Of course, I loved every Simon & Garfunkel album, so the whole thing is purely academic. Thanks to Cindy G of Baxterknits for the link to the quiz.

Every day in every way...

You know what makes one a better knitter? Knitting. Yup, all that nagging your mom did to get you to practice your piano back in the day applies to knitting, too. Who knew?

I have been knitting long enough -- 40 years, you'd think I'd be better by now -- that I feel like I can read my stitches pretty well. Heck, my second sweater, back in 1968-9, was an cabled fisherman knit, and I was able to lay the pattern aside after a few inches. Pats self on back. My one venture into lace didn't go so well, but I blame it on the Kid Silk Haze. Yeah, that's the ticket -- it was the yarn's fault.

But this double knitting stuff, it's a whole new ballgame for me. I had to knit blindly, as in "count and trust providence that it works" for the first 6" or so; then I began to see what it *should* look like, although that was no reason to stop counting. Don't ask, trust me on this one. Eventually, after a couple feet of scarf had come to pass, I found I could tell by the feel of the stitches on the needle as I came to knit them whenever I had screwed up a stitch on the previous row and needed to fix it. Usually the problem was that I hadn't managed to draw the yarn through the old stitch, and so had a slipped stitch and a yarnover instead of a new stitch. Easy enough to fix on the needles without tinking back. Um, yeah. See below.

One of my accomplishments over the past year is that I seldom need to use a crochet hook to fix a dropped or screwed up stitch, no matter how many rows ago it happened. Self-administer another pat on back. Of course, it helps that I never knit anything tougher than stockinette or garter stitch, but still. I feel quite proud of myself when I fix an error that happened several inches ago by dropping the column of stitches back and picking them up correctly with the needle tips.

Which brings me back to my double knitting. I just found a dropped stitch that happened several rows ago. Or, more likely, it happened on the last row but dropped back several more rows as I finished that row and began the next. Anyway. I had to go find a crochet hook to fix this one, all of which gave me an excuse to pat myself on the back Gee, Kath, isn't your shoulder getting sore from all this self-congratulation? because it was the first time I'd needed a crochet hook in several weeks.

Now, none of this is to say that the scarf is perfect. Let's play find the wonky stitch, shall we?

There are also a several spots where the fabric, which should be a flattened tube attached to itself only at the sides and the bottom, is mysteriously attached to the other side somewhere in the middle of a row. Did I drop back and fix those? Obviously not. It doesn't affect the look or the utility of the scarf so I just noted the mistake, reminded myself how important it is to pay attention, and moved on. I have since figured out that these attachments occur when I'm supposedly fixing one of those slipped-stitch-yarn-over problems; apparently I have sometimes drawn the yarnover through the front stitch when it should have been the back stitch or vice versa. Live and learn. And if I live long enough, I should learn.

Oh, here's another little gem I found last night.

Who put this l-o-n-g loop of yarn in the middle of a perfectly innocent row? It certainly wasn't me, I'm too good a knitter. Yeah, right.

All this is to say that I'm feeling pretty good about both my knitting abilities and my attitude toward my knitting. Like many folks, I have a streak of perfectionism that, unrestrained, would prevent me from ever finishing anything. A workplace personality exercise a number of years revealed to me that I have a hard time letting go of a project. I just want to keep fixing it and improving it far past the point of good sense. Used correctly, this trait means that I can bring a project to a better final product than someone without it; used incorrectly, like I said, it means I never finish anything.

In relation to knitting, I'm happy that my perfectionism doesn't get in the way. If a mistake is relatively unobtrusive and relatively easy to fix, I'll fix it. If it is obtrusive, I'll ponder long and hard about just how obtrusive it really is. We all know exactly what that is like. I truly admire the work of people like [you know who they are] whose knitting objects are so beautiful because, among other factors, they must fix a mistake, any mistake. But I am happy for myself that I'm not one of them. I'll never be a knitter-for-hire, but that's okay.

In the meantime, I have my slightly-more-than-half-done scarf. Which my husband looked at today and said, "Who is that for? It's pretty."

Yay, me.

Un-marketing 101

A few days ago I got this in my e-mail. The sender's e-mail addy appeared to be a yarn shop.

Hi!  Apologies that my newsletter is so late again - I can't keep up!!! Please share the following with our "not on line" friends - a snail mail letter will be coming soon!

I'm having my first ever sale!  January 12 & 13

Select yarns, including Ella Rae, Katia, Lavold Angora, Lavold Chunky Al, Lavold Cotton, & Maggie Yarns will be at least $1 off per skein....the angora and some of the katia's will be $2 off per skein.  I'm making way for new stuff!

Speaking of new stuff.....Frog Tree Suri is the softest, nicest yarn to work with! Hats, mittens, scarves, shawls - just yummy!  I just got in some more cream & black - and it now comes in lavender, red, and a yummy rich blue.  I also have some sport wt alpaca in a variety of colors.  Both the Suri and alpaca are $6.25.  (and both are sooooo soft!)

I'm expecting Farmhouse sock yarn any day now!

Classic Elite Superwash wool is scheduled to arrive by Tuesday next week - just in time for my "knitting a sweater from the neck down" class which also begins next Tuesday!

Also on the way is Dark Horse Fantasy - this is nylon/acrylic worsted wt baby yarn in 8 beautiful, soft colors.  I can't believe how soft this  yarn is! 200 yds for only $5/skein.  I'm not sure when it will be in - it's coming from Denver! (Dark Horse Merino Wool will be coming soon too!)

Classes so far: Saturday Jan 6 & 20 - 1:00pm  AND Thurday Jan 11 & 25 - 6:30pm Sox on the loop! (Ladies nite will go on as usual, too!)

Monday Jan 8 & 22- 6:00pm  knitting an UNFELTED PURSE....knit an unfelted
purse using recycled silk, ribbon, Maggie Rag, or Cotton....and then line it with something funky!  The first session we'll get started on the purse - the next we'll line them! (for crocheters and knitters!)

Tuesday Jan 9, 16, 23, 30 6:00 - Sweaters!! Knitting a sweater from the neck down  - using chunky or worsted wt. yarn.  This is a great first sweater - easy and fun to do.  You'll need a circular needle (at least) size 10 for chunky wt - size 8 for worsted wt. (Beginning knitting will also meet Tuesday beginning at 6:30 - Beginners- if you want to tackle a sweater - this would be the one to try!)

Wed. Jan 10 & 17 - 4:00  Crochet sox!  (knitters can't have all the fun!)

PMS - (project of the month society) will meet on the LAST Saturday of the month at 1:00 to show off our work - and to get patterns, etc for the next month.  The purpose of PMS is to reduce the gift giving stress for Christmas 2007 by doing the project of the month....a simple quick (but special) project that can be stashed until needed. (this will also come in handy for birthday/baby gifts that sneak up on us over the course of the year!)

For January, we're doing hats - both crochet and knitted patterns and samples are hanging up at the [shop]. The crochet hat is especially cute! Each month a new set of patterns will be available.

February - we'll be doing baby sweaters & hats (I have such a cute striped sweater pattern - for both crocheters and knitters!)

In December - we'll be planning an outing for participants to go to a concert or play....something we'll have time to do because we'll have all our Christmas presents done!

More news to come, soon!  Happy knitting!

/s/[the owner's first name]

I had to scratch my head and think long and hard before I figured out what yarn shop this was from. No shop name*, no location/address, no store hours, no website URL, nothing. The e-mail address was similar to the shop name but not exactly the same, plus the shop name -- two words, one of which is "yarn" -- is pretty generic.

When I visited this yarn shop I was skeptical of the owner's common sense. She has a nice selection of yarns and is a pleasant and helpful person, but my impression was that she may have done too many drugs in the 70s ;-) Now my impression is reinforced -- this *newsletter* is a pretty good example of how NOT to market yourself.

And let's not even talk about exceeding her quota of exclamation points. For all of 2007.

I wish her the all the success in the world; our area is sadly lacking in yarn shops. But if she's still in business in a year I'll be surprised. Darn.

*Oops. I just found the name of her shop buried in the text. I disguised it because I don't want to give her bad publicity, but still. I had to read this at least 3 or 4 times before I saw it.

The Blogosphere

Found here, Matthew Hurst's blog on data mining, natural language search, and many related concepts that are way, way outside my area of knowledge. Fascinating stuff, though.

One of those blue areas in the cloud has to be the knitting blogosphere. Apparently it is not the biggest one, right in front, nor the smaller one near the top. He says. We might disagree. ;-)

Welcome, 2007

I live in a beautiful place.

The little island you can see in the distance we call Loon Island. There are nesting loons on our lake every summer -- we are right at the southern limit of their range -- and several years they nested on this island. My boys tell me that it is covered in loon excrement and very stinky in summer.

Here is the view from my laundry/craft room window on the back of the house. Matthew hasn't blown the snow yet.

The building half-hidden by the hill is the garage. The other is a 28'x40' pole barn for my husband's car collection and assorted oddments.

As you can see, we got fresh snow for New Year's -- after it rained for 18 hours straight. Lucy was glad to come in after her outdoor break on her chain, which is the straight line downward from the birch tree in the middle of the picture above. She refuses to use the doghouse, no matter what the weather. Duh.

+

Here's where we grill our steaks and burgers, on the little deck outside the laundry room. Poor grill looks pretty sad after all the rain and snow and melting.

 

More of the lake side of the house:

The bird feeder on the deck railing hangs right outside my office window. But the goldfinches don't seem to like the last bag of thistle seed I filled it with. They steadfastly ignore it, whereas in the past there was a steady stream of little yellow and black birds feasting there. Come spring I may have to bite the bullet and throw away $10 worth of unwanted thistle seed. Finches! There are birds starving in China -- get over here and eat your seeds!

I've been listening to Brenda Dayne's Cast On podcasts, starting from #1, and she mentions there how beautiful is her spot in Wales. Like her, I thank providence every day to be lucky enough to live where I do.

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Other bloggers seem to be toting up their 2006 production so I thought I'd look back, too. It seems that my speciality this past year were the small objects d'knit.

37 hats
12 (or so) warshrags
9 baby bibs
3-1/2 pairs socks
3 Korknisse
2 3 scarves
1-2/2* sweaters
1 pair fingerless gloves
1 pair felted clogs

...and a partridge in a pear tree.

* Re the 2/2: I knit about half a sweater for Dulaan, then decided that worsted on size 7s wasn't warm enough, so I frogged it, bought some Knit Picks worsted to double-strand with the original Lion Brand variegated, and knit it again -- I'm about half done, again.

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This weekend I cranked out a couple newborn hats for Caps for the Capital. Apparently the head of a newborn child in the third world is slightly smaller than an ostrich egg. Who knew?