Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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1 Comments:Oh, that's no fun! Feel better!
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Ugh. Something was wrong with the split pea soup I served for dinner last night and both BD and I had the worst night. I'm still a little shaky but I have postponed my haircut 3 times already. I can't wait another day. And I have two more MustDo's on the morning list. But if I'm still feeling so off this afternoon – I am coming back home to sleep. Lawsee, I tossed all night. WW was a major disappointments last night – an infinitesimal gain instead of the measurable loss I expected. Rats. But I know I ate properly last week – healthy amounts and plenty of water, fiber, exercise. Either the body was saying “EEEK! Fats&Sugars down! Starvation on the way – batten down the storage units.” or my lunch was just way too salty. It was good, mind, but my tongue did say “Wow! Salty” with that first bite of soup. A WW soup, mind, not something from a can. Ah well. This is another week and I know from past experience that often the scales decide to move after Tuesday nights. My home scale was down both yesterday and this morning so I'm going to believe that They are wrong. :D Ta. posted by Bess | 7:12 AM 0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Here's a picture of the shelf labels I'm planning on using.  I'm also giving serious thought to Monthly Goals – or Monthly Resolutions. I'm not doing too badly with the Important Things of Life, but there are still lots of things I forget to do and then regret not having done them. What sort of things? Oh – like knitting that pair of mohair and silk harem pants. :D Well, I don't regret not knitting them yet – but how about those Della Robbia Christmas Stockings I want. Right. Don't have them for this Christmas either. Bummer. Also, I've been getting the urge, these past few weeks, to cross achievements off of lists. I'm inspired to stick with WW for the first time in forEVER. (read this article – it is so TheQueen!) I'm inspired by my tidy bookshelves. I'm excited about getting the guest side of LD's old bedroom set up for real guests instead of summer clothes that should be in the attic by now. Mostly, though, it's that list crossing I'm yearning for. I want to see evidence of progress. So. A TTD List will show up in the sidebar on Thursday. I have some goals. Let's see if I can achieve them. posted by Bess | 7:27 AM 0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Monday, October 29, 2007 I woke up this morning to the silver dawn that is a crisp October still imprisoned by daylight saving time and as I rolled over I imagined the day spread out like a carpet of pleasure. I was so glad it was a Sunday, so ready to indulge myself when I remembered .... it's Monday. Sigh. Ah well. At least it's a Monday with a Venus/Jupiter link – the planet of voracious desires meeting up with the planet of unceasing indulgence. Best keep a lid on the snacking – woops! I just indulged in a second cup of coffee with cream. Whew. Good thing I've been such a good WW gal this week. The Great book migration is just about finished and look at the results!  I still have to get more file boxes to hold my many magazines. They'll go along the bottom shelf – there is room for 4 more of those 6” files. I think (hope hope hope) that will hold all the magazines – and I really ought to cull out the ones I don't like and move them on down the line. As I brought the books down, I stopped by the computer and entered them into LibraryThing.com. At least, I entered most of them – they have a 200 book limit on their free account and I still had about 10 more books when I hit it. I haven't decided if I want to pay for an account, though it's very cheap - $10 a year. I could cull my collection. Probably ought to. But I know I will buy more books. I 'll just have to think about it. I have those uncatalogued books in a specific spot – fortunately they were all in the same category – painting. I am also going to get some shelf labels so I can move swiftly to the spot I'm looking for, since so many of my books are tall and thin and have difficult to read spines. I still found time to get a little fiber play in during this busy weekend. I knit a little on my Decadent Shawl. I may finish that up this week!! And I skeined and washed all the English Tweed yarn I'll be using for Flidas 2. It's a little scratchier than the original yarn. It's more tightly twisted, I am sure because it is made from shorter bits of wool, probably from a wool pool, though I can't swear the original didn't also come from a wool pool. (A wool pool is where fleece from different flocks are sold in a lump and carded together for manufacturing purposes – as opposed to Merino wool or Merino blend wool from particular flocks) It was a chilly blustery day yesterday and after I'd taken a walk with BD I checked out this smiling wool.  Doesn't it look like they're laughing at something? I rubbed it against my cheek and throat and my chilled skin didn't mind the scratchiness at all. Proof that the colder your climate, the scratchier the wool you can tolerate. I'll give the yarn a fabric softener bath and see if it feels more skin friendly but no matter the results of that, I'll still be making Flidas 2 out of this yarn. It's not that scratchy. Oh la! I have to go to work. Well. I'll be back tomorrow. 1 Comments:
Thank you, Queen B., for posting this -- it is truly appreciated! I love reading about people's processes for wheel selection. Even though I have not yet committed to purchasing one.... Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Sunday, October 28, 2007 Today's post is for M, who is at SAFF this weekend and is then off for a Whole Week of Spinning at the John C. Campbell Folkart School and then off to enjoy the Christmas Decorations at the Biltmore next weekend. Talk about a lust of a vacation. It is lifted from an old post I made on Knitters Review Forums, back in '02, when I bought my first spinning wheel. It was fun for me to remember how quiveringly on clouds I walked that summer. Sigh. Enjoy. posted by Bess | 8:16 AM 2 Comments:
A storytelling program for seniors - what a fantastic idea you have there!
Love the hat, but then, you know I love hats of any kind. That one looks great on you. The first picture reminds me of Andi McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral (her "great hat" at the first wedding). Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Saturday, October 27, 2007 We have had beautiful rain now for 3 days. It's raining right now. It's all supposed to stop sometime today, but more than 3 inches have fallen this week and I, and the land, and the trees, and the farmers and the dogs ... we are all just so grateful. I will be telling ghost stories tonight at a Halloween festival across the river. BD & BH are off to a wedding party without me. Both of us can expect clear skies and a bit of chill. Tomorrow is supposed to be autumnally bright and brisk and I am so ready for it. I had easy driving all the way to Dad's place yesterday, in spite of the rain, and we finished up our business with sister and $Man in time to go out to lunch to celebrate his birthday eve. He was ready for a nap after lunch, though so I had time to slip into a department store and get some fancy expensive and worth every durn penny makeup, before heading over to Mom's. As I walked through the store, though, look what jumped on my head and asked to come home with me!   Very dramatic! They didn't even have a box big enough to hold it. It had to come home in a bag.I did a dress rehearsal of the ghost story program at Mama's which was so helpful for me on many fronts. I could get a feel for how long the program takes, where I am weak in delivery, and a sense of what the flow of it is – that important element of timing that engages an audience or looses it. I also got a valuable insight into how to develop storytelling programs for seniors – for once I'd started telling stories, others remembered stories they would like to share. I made room for them “on stage”. I don't really have much of an ego issue with performer vs audience. The whole point is to get people engaged, thinking, expanding. What was powerful for me was the understanding that seniors sometimes begin to shut down, especially in a group home, where they are a little wary of really putting down roots, making new connections. They know they're moving to the finish line and I think, at least, from observing both my parents, they're not sure if caring about other people is worth the effort. And yet – when they don't care, don't share, don't really communicate who they are and what matters to them – they get depressed and withdrawn. Okay – anyway – the upshot was I could see how to develop storytelling programs for seniors that would do more than entertain – they could actually engage. Something valuable to think about. Today, though, before I head off to MBWM&L, I may clean the house or I may take a nap or I may enter books into LibraryThing.com or I may enter stash into Ravelry, or I may knit or I may do nothing at all. I probably ought to clean house since we may go to the Celtic Festival in Richmond tomorrow. Or we may not. What an iffy weekend! Here's a progress shot, though, of my Decadent Shawl.  posted by Bess | 6:10 AM 1 Comments:Have fun in Rivah-city. I'm about to hop on a plane for points south. Here's hoping there are no weather (or other) delays. :-) Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, October 26, 2007 Oh la, Margaret, I am soooo envious of your snow. Can't you pack some up in a box and ship it to me? Oh – and before I forget – I went to look at Yarn Harlot's blog and yes, I see. We are both talking about the same yarn...English Tweed. Went to the Webs page too just to see what was left. They didn't have that pretty dark orangey bronze at Stitches, though I would have settled for it if that had been all they offered. I'm glad they had the Byzantine gold instead. It's nice to be able to get such a close match to the original sweater. Of course, I made Flidas out of discontinued yarn in 2003, so I am still first. :D And yes, also, I knew about the machine oil – well, you can't miss the smell! I hadn't thought to use my niddy noddy to make skeins and then wash the yarn, though. I had planned to wash the knitted swatch and do my measuring – but it'll be much nicer to knit with the oil free yarn. I think Flidas 2 will be my next cast on – but I have to finish my Decadent Shawl and the Holiday Charmer socks (and finish writing the pattern) first. But before I cast on my retro project, I believe I'll pull everything out, every yarn, that is, and have a serious ponder about my stash. I may even enter it all in Ravelry. I have several projects that are calling me, making me wish I were Shiva and had 8 arms. Making me wish I were retired and had 8 hours a day to play with toys. Honestly, just thinking about the possibilities makes me get all quivery. But before I can do anything like that – I have three big deals on my callendar. I'm off today to be of use to my parents and while I'm in the city I'm going to deliver my ghostly stories at Mama's residence for their October birthday party – this is at 3 o'clock. Tomorrow night I will be doing the same for the kiddies (with suitable scary story added) over in Lancaster County at the MBWM&L. (I'm on the events page, but lawsee, why do some people insist on changing my name to Bessie?!!?) And on Sunday I will begin to put these  in their new home. (toys get different new home and not quite all the books are mine) posted by Bess | 7:19 AM 1 Comments:
Rain, eh? Here in the Great White North we've gone one better: snow! Yep, last night the wind howled and prowled around, and about 9 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time, the snowstorm hit! I watched from my cozy bed where Fred Cat and I were sharing a wonderful mystery, Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler.
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Thursday, October 25, 2007  We have rain! Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. The last time it rained around here was in early August. There has been no water in Jacob's Gut for a week now. When I walked into my yard, sand sifted into my shoes as if I were at the beach. We lost 2/3rds the corn crop. Barley hasn't even poked its wee tips above the ground yet. This has been baaaad and we aren't even in the worst hit part of the state. But yesterday it rained. Hard. And last night it rained. More. And there are 2 more grey days in the weather dot com guys' callendar. And there is a certain tension that has eased out of my shoulders – a bracing I'd been doing as my subconcious prepared for worse yet to come – downed trees, dried up wells, the sort of things that cause permanent damage – not just a year of belt tightening. Let us all give up a prayer of thanks, because this is really something to be thankful for. Something else I'm thankful for is this:  Paint is still tacky but I'll begin stocking those beautiful empty shelves on Saturday. In other news of a heavenly nature, Ms.Horoscope says: TODAY IS THE DAY OF ANGELIC MOON MAGIC When flowing emotions are running at full power, magnetic attraction is at its peak.Strong flowing feelings magnetically attract changes in matter. Flowing emotions attract a sympathetic reality out ofinfinite potentialities and this manifests in the physical world. During the full moon, flowing emotions are at their most powerful,so manifesting changes on the physical plane is much easier at this time. Somehow, this seems to deserve something more than a visit to the dentist – which is what I have on the agenda today. That, and doing something to fix errors I made in the library's Quickbook. That was last week and it was truly a Mercury in retrograde crash-up. Oh dear. She continues in Virgo-specific language to say: This cycle is also about cash, property and possessions. On the one hand, you do need to be extra careful in all financial transactions as there is extra chance for confusion. On the other, most positively, it's a very good time to rethink your finances and some will even see money they've been waiting for finally making its way into their bank account. So, heads up, my virgo sisters ... The key with Mercury retrograde is always to let the cycle unfold without making any major decisions, if you can. Mercury retrograde usually leads to more information being sent your way so it's best to way and see what transpires before you act. Use this time to contemplate what might be. Hmmmm. A studio might be. Early retirement? Permanent weight loss? hmmm. many things might be. Hope all of them are good - for me. For you. 1 Comments:
That was fun, driving to the post office and back for you. I never knew that about bayberry candles. Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Wednesday, October 24, 2007 This is a short week for me – I am off this afternoon to a Richmond trip that will involve a yarn store and again on Friday to do family stuff. While there on Friday I'll perform my Halloween story program where Mama lives. This will be a freebee dress rehearsal for the paid performance I'll be doing on Saturday. There's a little less pressure on you when you're performing for free, but there's still that slight tension of having an audience before you. The most important thing, though, is for me to hear my own voice saying the words I want to say. I'll be leaving out the one shriek-value story that I'll be telling the children on Saturday and the craft project. I think that the craft project at the end might become my identifying tag, although, I certainly want my story telling to be the memorable part. The ManWithTools comes back today to finish up those book shelves, so last night BD and I emptied the ones upstairs. MWT is using the boards that made up those shelves to make these shelves. The bed is supposed to go where those shelves stood. Sigh. It's all so wonderful – to start getting things squared away. And yes, Mary, I actually planned to load my library onto one of those programs. I don't think it's anal at all, just time consuming. Actual knitting progress is taking place.  Only 8 more inches to go. And here is an old before picture  and an after shot  More to follow. But isn't it neat the way MWT's do such clever things. Notice how he cut away the wood by the door, where the lightswitch is? Oh! and Here is the drive home slideshow, just in case you were curious. posted by Bess | 7:30 AM 3 Comments:Thanks, Bess. The ibuprofen hugs really helped. Loved the scenic tour. It's just what I always imagined it would look like. And I'm looking forward to my copy of That Book. Here's a suggestion for your library-at-home, that is, if you want to be this anal with your home library (perhaps that's just a busman's holiday for a librarian) -- as you re-shelve the books, enter them into LibraryThing.com or GoodReads.com. I saw another blogger do this as they moved into their new home -- after they pulled a book out of a box, but before they put it on a shelf, they entered it into the little online database. A handy way to remember what you have (sorta like Ravelry and one's yarn stash). Of course, it would be a slow, time-intensive process, and you may just want to move the darn books and be done with it! P.S. I enjoyed the trip to the post office! :-) Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Tuesday, October 23, 2007 Glad y'all liked that little photo tour. And yes, Cathy-in-VA, that's the library's knitting collection – half of it, at least. There are 4 shelves – 16 feet, of top quality knitting books. I wonder why this library has such a great knitting collection. Could it be that the knitting teacher for the county parks&rec department works here? Maybe. It was such fun to make that slide show that I've made some more, inspired by the autumn colors on my way to and from work. Saturday was a drop dead gorgeously beautiful day and I was already playing around with ThatBook and a camera. I couldn't resist doing a little Chamber of Commerce photography. Here's the link to the slide show version of a Trip to the Post Office – but you have to click back to the set in order to read the explanatory captions. The other big activity in TheCastle is of a construction type – for a ManWithTools showed up yesterday and started building bookshelves for the den. Woops. Camera batteries are dead. I'll post B&A tomorrow. Our house is a discombobulated mess right now, in a knee bone connected to the thigh bone sort of way. For all that I'm complaining about the weather, it's a good thing it hasn't gotten really cold. My plastic tubs are stacked by the wood stove and we can't build a fire till we move them. But... We can't move them till we have a space upstairs We cant have a space upstairs till we move the bed out of the alcove We can't move the bed out of the alcove till we move the books downstairs We can't move the books downstairs till we have the bookshelves You see? But – those shelves will be done before the weekend is here. Saturday I will get to be a librarian at home! On the knitting front – I'm almost halfway through the Decadent Shawl – 9 inches of wide knitting. 9 more to go and then the ruffles on each end. Okay - off to start the crock pot beef stew. Ta. posted by Bess | 7:09 AM 6 Comments:Hilarious! too much fun -- like I said though my book is now bugging me to get her nice shiny clothes like your book has - I will never hear the end of it :D What a hoot! :-)
Cute! I wonder if my book will be...er...nekked when she arrives! Oy!
By My, what expressive eyes she has! :) It also looks like the library has quite a nice knitting collection... or do librarians index their own books like that at home? Thanks for another good chuckle.
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I know that's not a raincoat on that book!! Not here. Not in Virginia.!
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Sunday, October 21, 2007 See Clara's Book take an outing here. (My friend Suzanne would say "You have too much time on your hands.") posted by Bess | 8:39 AM 3 Comments:Dear Bess, you've written a wonderful review! I'm here at Rhinebeck (what a wonder wireless is!) and in a few hours I will be able to give Ms. C. a big hug from you. I couldn't wait to get it at Barnes & Noble on Tuesday -- I just ordered it on Amazon! Thanks for the review! I already wanted this book, but your glowing review has made me want all the more. Thanks for the details.
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Saturday, October 20, 2007 The Knitters Book of Yarn by Clara ParkesWell, my dears. I have had a day to peruse That Book and I am still in love. Not, mind you, that I've read it all, for I am taking my sweet time to savor every lovely page. But I have swiftly turned all those pages to gather in a sense of the whole and I know I am going to enjoy each one of them, when its turn for my full attention comes around. This is a book – one of the few, especially in the fiber category – that I will read thoroughly and repeatedly. This is a true addition to the literature and we are fortunate indeed, that Clara Parkes made the effort to give it to us. That she had the talent, discipline and artistry to do so is no surprise. I've been a major fan of her Knitters Review column for nigh on to 6 years now. I won't claim to be one of the first fans, but I was an early subscriber – desperate as I was to find out about yarn - since I could only rarely get to a shop to see for myself. Searching the Internet for someone who would give me an unbiased opinion of - probably something as basic as Brown Sheep worsted weight yarn – I found her weekly review a tremendous boon. She introduced me to a yarn, told me it's properties, showed me a photograph, warned me of its tendencies to pill, stretch, flatten out. In short, while she was doing her field research, she shared with us all, the results of her experiments and we are all the better for it. It's therefor, no surprise that she would want to gather all this deep understanding of what yarn is, and why, and put it into a single volume. After all, no point in leaving all that good knowledge just cluttering up the place. Put it in a book and you can put it on the shelf, when you have to take care of the non-fiber parts of your life! So what will you find in The Knitters Book of Yarn? Ahhh. First of all, be prepared for beautiful writing. I never read introductions in books. I'm not sure why I read the introduction to this book, actually, since I have talked to Clara often enough about TheBook. I know a little of who she is and why she wrote it. Perhaps it was because I wanted the pleasure of reading this book, for the first time, to last as long as possible. How glad I am that I did, though, for the lyrical prose instantly transported me to that soft lilting place I go to when I am stroking a beautiful skein of yarn, petting a springy merino fleece, fingering the drape of a silk lace shawl. Beautiful writing is a precious thing in and of itself. When it is about something I already love, oh my, it is a treasure. The first section gives you an overview of the fibers you'll find in modern yarn, with a bit of history, a discussion of the fibers' characteristics and tendencies, and a wee bit about how they are brought into the manufacturing process. Each fiber is illustrated with a photo from one of the many patterns to be found later in the book. The natural fibers are given the most space, but even synthetics get due attention. Next she discusses the processing stages: Shearing, plucking, carding, combing, spinning. Here you will find the micro-processors who give us small run lots, and the big guys who import those Italian luxury yarns. There is a wonderful discussion about woolen/worsted spun, a valuable essay on color,how it gets into the yarn and what it does when it's knit up, and a great piece about pills – why they form, how to avoid the worst of them and how to get rid of them once you've put your heart and time into that stranded color work in fingering weight yarn and now you look like a walking lint ball. The biggest section in the book contains patterns knit up in different, and more especially, different ply yarns, to demonstrate an optimal use of each particular yarn: Single ply yarns, with their tendency to torque, knit into a ribbed fabric to pull it back into place; mohair knit into ruffles to take advantage of its drape; two-ply yarn pushing open the spaces in a lace stole. Most of the projects are small, many requiring only a single ball of yarn, giving the knitter the opportunity to get to know all types of yarn. There is a rich trove of information in the back, guaranteed to advance any knitter down the road to fiber artist status. There is a “care and feeding” guide, a glossary, a thorough explanation of ball band icons, a suggested reading list, designers' biographies and a suppliers list. I'm tempted to say the book is worth the price for the back section alone, only, who would pass up that beautiful introductory essay, that fascinating description of fibers, those clever patterns? When I look at knitting books, if I find half a dozen things I know I will return to, be they clothing designs, stitch patterns or beautiful photographs, I'll plunk down my hard earned cash. When I find a book so chock full of such treasures, I am profoundly glad I live in an era when books are fairly inexpensive and the UPS truck drives down my road daily. Priced at $30, TheBook is smack in the middle of the price range between glossy coffee table books and paper-backs. Its valuable contents will make it one you return to again and again while its beautiful presentation will make it a pleasure to do so, every time. Knitters, crocheters, even spinners, you are really in for a treat. Thank you Missy Clara, thank you. Labels: books posted by Bess | 6:19 AM0 Comments:Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, October 19, 2007
OH MY GOODNESS!
You are in for such a treat. I'll write more tomorrow. posted by Bess | 7:04 AM 7 Comments:OH what a heavenly color! What an awesome story!
By As I've read your posts this week, I've been thinking, "Wow, Bess really had her eyes wide open to take everything in." And now look what your wondering eyes found!
Bess, dear, perchance is that loverly yarn 'English Tweed'? If so, you and the Yarn Harlot are in love with the same yarn -- albeit, doing very different things with it. She got hers at SOAR last week, I believe...Of course, you are both spinners, and yarn afficionadas, so-o-o-o...I'm not surprised!
By Oh, Happy Day! (I can hear the gospel choir singing now...)! :-) P.S. Your drawings are just a hoot! Love them! So glad you found old pictures of Flidas to post here, so we could see what it looked like. What a wonderful story. I begin to see why you would have been a popular storyteller at FFF. Have you ever thought of publishing a book of your stories and drawings -- for children or knitters? I'm glad you found your long-lost yarn and wish you joy of recreating your burnished gold sweater!
By Like Margaret (in Calgary) said, the Yarn Harlot has a very similar yarn (from Webbs, I believe), and the big leasson she learned is that the yarn changes significantly once it's washed...the color changes slightly, and the yarn itself has a different texture. Just so you know. Her gauge changed, too...
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Final Stitches PostingThe Story of FlidasIn February of 2002 I cast on some golden tweedy yarn with flecks of turquoise, green, red, and blue  that I thought would knit up to look like byzantine gold if I used a heavy textured cable stitch. My favorite cable of all is the Hollow Oak Cable found, among other places, in Barbara Walker's first treasury of stitches. The Blue Book, I call it. It was my first creation, a simple sweater with that beautiful cable wrapping wrist and hem and neck and making a single line up the center. The idea was to knit the set in sleeves a la Elizabeth Zimmermann's very pithy instructions found in her Knitting Workshop. Everything went well till I got to the very last bit where the cable, the neckline, the sleeve cap and the shoulders all had to get together and play nicely.  And there I crashed into the wall of technical ignorance. All that beautiful yarn and careful knitting got stuffed into a basket where it spent the next 12 months sulking and resentful. 'Ware the Wrath of an Unfinished Sweater, though, for after a year of neglect, that sweater decided to do battle for completion and it started by imprisoning my creativity.  No matter how I tried, I couldn't start anything till I figured out how to finish that sweater. I ducked it. I avoided it.  I thought about it. I wrote about it,  but finally I surrendered  and got down to some serious engineering. There were many struggles with those difficult shoulder shapings,  but eventually, I conquered that knitting math and ended up with exactly the sweater I'd dreamed of.  I named it Flidas (Flee Daws), the Irish woodland goddess, in honor of that Hollow Oak Cable. There are scant photos of it and they're all dreadfully dark  or squinchily tiny.  I wore it with joy and pride for about 6 months when, one day, somewhere, in a state of mindlessness, I left it on some chair, or behind some counter, in some restaurant or bookstore or at some meeting. I looked, I backtracked, but I never found Flidas and can only hope that somewhere someone is wearing a really fine hand knit sweater with a golden cuff that looks like Byzantine jewelry.  I promised myself that one day, when I found just the right yarn, I would knit Flidas again and at Webbs, last weekend, at Stitches in Baltimore, I found it. I'd been through the booth a number of times already and was actually trying to match my lovely JoJoland yarn to whatever woolen browns they had left when I glanced up and saw this  sitting on a shelf. I couldn't believe my eyes! Here it is sitting next to a ball of the original yarn!  The grist (amount of fiber) looks the same, though the new yarn is more tightly spun so it's a wee bit thinner. The gold is a little darker in the original yarn, which, btw, was already a discontinued yarn when I bought it! Indoors I can't really tell the difference, but outside you can see it. Maybe. So here is a happy ending story about a triumph, a tragedy and hope for a new Flidas, sometime after Christmas. Good knitting to you all. Labels: Flidas, StitchesEast posted by Bess | 4:52 AM4 Comments:
Bess, as usual, your descriptions of the essence of the event are wonderful and help me to "be there". Can't wait to read tomorrow's installment to see what else you purchased.
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Oh! Speechless! Drooling over luscious yarn colours and textures that come right through the screen from your photos...
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My spies are everywhere! ;-) Budget? You had a budget for Stitches. For shame. At least your husband wasn't holding the cash.
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Tuesday, October 16, 2007 Stitches Day 2Click on photos to make them bigger
2 Comments:
Dear Bess,
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Ohhhh, Bess! 'Stitches' is now on my Wish List...but I'd have to make it 'Stitches West' to even remotely afford it. I'd know no one, being a solo Canuck...but oh! If the atmosphere's the same... Perhaps in a few years!!!
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Monday, October 15, 2007 First Stitches, First DayLooooooooong post - another one tomorrowI first heard about Stitches in about 2001 and oh how I wanted to go. Back then there were only 2 yarn shops within 100 miles of me and I knew only one other knitter plus the 7 people I was teaching to knit. In the past 7 years I've seen the LYS situation grow to 8 LYS in that radius and maybe more – who knows? I've discovered on-line shopping, learned to spin, won prizes at FFF, been to MS&W 6 times, KRRetreat since it began and a smattering of other fiber related classes and events. Life is vastly different, but I still hadn't been to Stitches. But not any more. I've been. I've seen. I've conquered – any doubts that it is one ton of fun or that there wasn't really room for additions to the stash. When I knew November at home was going to stake a claim on me, that I wouldn't be able to attend the KRRetreat, I decided I'd go to Stitches and asked my friend B to go along with me. B is a magnificent quilter. Artist quality. She doesn't just do the big Hampton show, she goes to Houston for the Real Big quilt shows, so she's big time show savvy and reined me in from registering for EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. I already knew that my brain would hold only so much new skill/knowledge and had already decided to register for only 6 hours of classes and nothing else. Lawsee there were a lot of classes I wanted to take, but my first pick was Dive into Design, taught by Fiona Ellis. Registration had been open quite a while, but we weren't so late I didn't get into my first choice. So, Friday, B picked me up at my house. Here she is cleaning FFF red clay dust off her windshield on the inside!  And we tooled on up the highway  to Baltimore. “Don't you have a map?” “No. I figured I'd just follow the signs.” Well, there you have it. Every family travels differently. I always take a map. Mrs.SurveyorCartographerWifeQueen. We stayed at the Days Inn a block from the convention center. I always have to watch it when I visit big cities, even Richmond, my home town, can bring out the rube in me. It's really hard for me to not walk around staring up in the air, with my mouth open, gawping at all those big tall buildings. This was the view outside my window. Ordinary cityscape for many, BigTallSkyScrapersWowEE to me.   That's the Bromo Seltzer clock. It's lit up blue at night and was reflected in this building  into my window – which I kept unshaded all night. Once in this crystal clear weekend, I saw 2 stars. Poor city folk. We arrived in plenty of time for lunch at our hotel, where the most delicious green beans ever cooked were served in the lunch buffet. I wish we'd gotten in 15 minutes earlier because I could have made my whole meal out of them. But there – this was not a gastronomic weekend, it was a knitting weekend and I had a class at 1:30. B's classes were all on Saturday, but mine was 6 hours of creativity, spread over two days. We had enough time for me to poke around the market a bit – sans camera, since I was told we weren't allowed to take photographs. At the entrance to the market, B just stood, slightly quivering with overwhelm. The convention center is mighty big. There were booths and booths and booths of spending opportunity and as I stood there, picking up on B's sense of being kiboshed I realized that I wasn't going to even try to hook up with anybody. I'd hoped maybe to call A and have dinner with her one night, or to meet up with M or really anyone else I already know in the Baltimore/DC/NoVA area, but I suddenly realized that taking in the whole stitches experience; classes, shopping, big city, new surroundings – was going to be all I could handle. I apologize to my dear ones I might have had fun with. We will just have to gather again another time. The market didn't begin to take up all the space in the show room and the lobbies around the classes on the second floor were vast and never really crowded. Even inside the market, at the height of the shopping activity, it was not too bad. I've survived MS&W. I know crowds. Somebody bumping into you with her large round bag full of yarn is not a crowd. Waiting in line for 6 people to make their purchases is just a snap. I have stood in line at Little Barn! This was just a gentle crowd with a lot of stimulation. Not sardine packaging. The first thing we did was drop our names in the door prize barrel. B is unusually lucky with door prizes. I've seen her at a weekly meeting where there was a weekly drawing and she would win 1 week out of 3. Sure enough, she put in 3 little slips and won 2 prizes – one of them, Socks that Rock sock yarn from Blue Moon!!!!! lucky lucky woman. We agreed to meet at 5 at the door to the market and I strode off to my class. Interestingly, back in mid September I wrote a short essay on Knitters Review Forums about why I don't finish projects that concluded with the postulation that I suffered from a certain lack of technical and design skill which I ought to conquer with swatch knitting. Interesting how things work out, for our class was all about stimulating our creativity with something and swatching out ideas. Not making sweaters, not designing garments, but swatches – in and of themselves, swatches to fiddle with ideas, swatches to come to knowledge and expertise. Swatches as the avenue through which creativity and beauty, pleasure and knowledge could be born and grown, could lead and mislead, always teaching us things regardless if we had set out to learn them or not. The classroom was large and bare. Our teacher wore plain black. She had none of her samples and swatches and designs laid out – no color in the room beyond what each of us wore, and the stack of photographs on the table. We each chose one, were given some strips of white paper to limit the canvas, give emphasis to different sections of the overall design and told to knit what we saw. The absolute neutrality with which Ms. Ellis approached each student's creation was wonderful to witness. I often found myself wandering over to listen to what she was saying to another student. She'd ask you what you were trying to convey. She'd wait for you to ask for instruction in how to actually do something, once in a while she demonstrated a technique. But she offered no comments beyond such encouragement as “Yes. I see where you are going with this.” There were 10 of us and 3 folk chose one picture and 2 chose another. When we got back together on Saturday we had a little more time to wrap needles with thread, then Ms. Ellis asked each of us to explain what we chose and what we did with it ... and what we learned. Here's my picture.  Here are the yarns I had to swatch with.  Here is what I came up with.  Here's what I learned!!  I didn't learn this all at once, of course. I thought about it and ripped and tried again and thought I really ought to be crocheting my swatch, not knitting it. But when I came away with what I think would be a beautiful front of waist shaping I felt triumphant.  And I also came away with the understanding that if I want to be able to make my knitting go where I want it to go – I really need to practice. I need to treat swatching like I treated scales and etudes when I studied music. I need to pick up a book or a photograph or go someplace new each week and knit myself a swatch of it. Ms. Ellis told us that what we did in class last weekend was what she did every week for a year, her first year in design school. Practice. And that's just what I plan to do. I am hereby registering for a weekly session with Creativity. I think Friday mornings would be a good time for getting my assignment and the task will be to spend 3 hours each week, swatching something based on a given inspiration. It might be a photograph, it might be an actual stitch pattern I want to learn, it might be something I'm remembering. It will be interesting to see where I am one year from now! But on Friday, at 5:00 (after a lovely complimentary coffee break from Starbucks) I met up with B again outside the market. She had only a small bag with what looked like a broom handle sticking out of it. “You've got to see these lint rollers!” “Mmmm hmmm. Nice.” “No. Really.” I did buy one, btw. She was right, they really do pick up lint. Sticky plastic. You wash them off and they get sticky all over again) “I've won a door prize!” “I always said you're one of the lucky ones.” There was an hour to look around the market. I wasn't buying anything yet. Still trying to stick to the budget but also just wanting to have a look see. I knew that I'd miss so much the first time through, and of course, I did. I picked out the booths I had to come back to. Not Just Plain Jane Knits, Gita Maria, Hunt Valley Cashmere, Decadent Fibers. There were others, but in an hour you can't absorb everything and it never occurred to me to mark down come-back places on the program. Well. Not much beyond the buzz of excitement really registered, except those shawl kits from decadent Fibers really were a bargain and NJPJK patterns – well. Well. Well they just sucked my knitter's soul out of my body. But I knew I had all afternoon on Saturday to wander the aisles by myself, muttering, thinking, fondling, deciding. Except for a single pattern picked up at Just Our Yarn, I left the market empty handed. We'd enjoyed our lunch at the hotel and the crowd at the micro brewery pub restaurant places across from the convention center looked daunting, so we opted for dinner in-house. It was fine. It was also cheap. There was no wait. Afterwards, we wandered out into the night on a chocolate quest – for I know myself that I need that chocolate period at the end of the day to make me feel like I”m done with eating. There was a Baskin Robbins up a block and over one. The night was pleasant. It wasn't really too late. The postprandial stroll was the perfect ending to our happy happy First Day at Stitches. We were back in our room by 9 and asleep by 10, with a wake-up call ordered for 6:30.
posted by Bess |
6:51 AM
2 Comments:What a lovely pair of ladies!
I took a class with Fiona Ellis on color and Fair Isle and I loved it. What a talented woman! I can't wait to put into action some of the things I learned. It might be worthwhile to order one of those sampler things of yarn from KnitPicks so I can swatch away with out breaking the bank. Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Sunday, October 14, 2007  I made it! posted by Bess | 1:52 PM |
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