Favorite knits, 2010

Damson by Isolda Teague in Malabrigo sock

Squirrel Sampler mittens by Hello Yarn in Harrisville Shetland

Swirl shawl, Jojoland Melody

Edith the Hat in Louet Gems Merino

In the Land of Oz Shawl by Adrienne Fong knit in grey/blue Ball and Skein Supersock.

                                                                           

Naughty or Nice

    No knitting content here.  If that's what you are looking for, try tomorrow.  If you did not read yesterday's blog this will make very little sense, but read away.  Nonsense makes good reading.

     We celebrated Christmas yesterday.  As a non-Christian I am perfectly comfortable celebrating Christmas any old day.  July 4th would be fine with me.  But it was December 29.  Close enough.  My daughter and her boyfriend met my son and I half-way for each of us, in a smallish city in central New Hampshire.  We had a lovely lunch then decided to go somewhere to exchange gifts and chat.  Starbucks sounded nice.  We drove up there.  It wasn't particularly crowded, but....there were no free tables.  If you have ever been to a Starbucks you know what I mean.  Every double table was occupied by a single person with a computer, maybe a cup of coffee.  There were 2 tables for 4.  Each was occupied by a single person.  Well, one of those single people, quite honestly was large.  The nice me says he was large, the old Susan would say he was freakin' huge; as big as the 4 of us put together.  No s**t.  This guy was super-sized.  He needed a table for 4.  He also had a super-sized triple, caramel, mocha, grande macciato with about 3" of whipped cream.  The thing must have been 1200 calories.  The second table for 4 was occupied by a kid.  A college age boy who undoubtedly had been sitting there the entire winter break.  He was there because: a) he didn't want to be home with his family.  b) he thinks he might run into some friends from high school or c) he got stood up by someone he met on match.com.  He didn't even have a cup of coffee.  In fact he had a deck of cards, but he wasn't playing solitaire.  His only saving grace.
   The new Susan glowered at both of them with fiercely Mother/Librarian eyes.  I can think of a number of un-nice things I might have said, but my daughter, who is NOT a shrinking Violet said, quite loudly, " lets go somewhere else".  We went to the food court at the Mall.  Kinda like having Christmas dinner in the Junior High Cafeteria.  It smelled like food, and not in a good way.  There was no lovely coffee.  But we had a wonderful time, great gifts, and lots of free tables.
     My conundrum is this.  Nice people leave Starbucks, say nothing, and feel like crap because they had their family celebration in the Food Court at Steeplegate Mall.  Naughty people tell fat guys they should ditch the 1200 calorie Mocha, get a water bottle and go for a walk, maybe with the lonely kid.  And the naughty person feels like crap as well. Rightly so because she has caused the poor chubby guy to drop dead of a heart attack.   Who wins?  Just askin'

10 Intentions for the New Year

     Many bloggers do a "10 on Tuesday"... following a script of 10 things; beach reads, favorite movies, best knits, etc.  I have never bothered with this because I couldn't imagine having 10 of anything; favorite books, about 90, favorite movies, 1 or two and they change pretty often.  I am just not too good at lists.  New Year's resolutions... I don't bother.  Last year I believe I said I would read more books from the library, and I did, too.  Had way more overdue fines as a consequence, but I really need to support my local library, so it all worked out.  This week's 10 on Tuesday is "10 intentions for the New Year"  Well, offhand I can't think of 10, but I may just come up with a few.

1.  Hang my laundry on the line.  I hang clothes outside all summer, but not usually in the winter.  I have a great clothesline in the cellar, left from my mother's days in this house, and I'm gonna use it, by golly.
2. Read from my shelves.  I could read from my shelves 'til the day I die and never read all the books in this house, so I better get started.
3. Knit my handspun.  I have started collecting patterns that I think are suitable for handspun, and it is time to get hoppin' on this project.  I have a handspun sweater half knit.  I'm going to frog it and make a different sweater.  I found a pattern that I think will be more flattering to the yarn and to me.
4. Be nicer.  I have developed a tendency to just not be bothered with being nice to people who really annoy me.  I find it hard to be phony.  In fact I think it is particularly unbecoming to humans to  fake niceness, but I am going to give it a try.  Might be really hard.
5. Make a bucket list.  I am over 60, on the downhill slide of life.  My sister died last year; many of my friends are sick or have passed away in recent years.  There are a few things that I would really like to do before I die.  Better get crackin'.  Last year I reconnected with my 3 freshman college roommates.  3 of us, but not the 4th, have had some really good times in the past year.  We arrived at college 43 years ago as fairly unlike 17 year olds, but as we have aged we are not so very different after all, though our lives have certainly followed diverse paths.  That sounds snarky.  Number 4 got married last year.  She was just not interested in the rest of us, but that's okay.  We wish her the best!
6. Eat locally.  In 2010 we made a concerted effort to eat as much as possible from the local area.  We are lucky to live where it is possible to shop at co-ops and farmer's markets.  Agriculture is important in Vermont.  We have great dairy products, produce much of the year, local meat and poultry and grains are now being grown in Vermont, and of course we have great beer.  As a consequence of local,  especially local organic food, being more expensive, we eat less, but we eat better.
7. Enough.  This is giving me a headache.

I'm BBAACCKKKK!!

Okay, a bit cheesy, but here I am, at Harrisville Designs for 3 days in November with you-know-who.  It was a great 3 days and since then I am a total Brooklyn Tweed convert.  Everyone got Koolhaas hats for the holidays and I have a Girasole almost, tediously,nearly  completed.  Honestly, it is made with Green Mountain Spinnery yarn, but it is still gorgeous.  And doesn't my Kauni Cardigan look just fab against the Harrisville wall of color?

My KnitCamp: the good, the bad and the ugly

     About now I think enough has been said about Knit Camp UK.   But I will write a summary of what I actually did and the highlights of other camp events.  First the good...it was very,very good.  Then the bad...it was mostly inconvenience and disorganization.  But it went down the tubes quickly and  many people had serious problems.  I was lucky.  The Ugly... what happened after the whole thing was over.  Ugly, criminal and unconscionable.  Really naughty.

Our home at Stirling University

     We arrived at Knit Camp on a Monday afternoon, and found the Stirling Management Center which is a hotel-ish building on the campus of Stirling University.  After checking into our room, which was a lovely double room, I headed over to the pub in the Student Union for the Clap-o-Tea.   To enter the Clap-o-Tea one had to have knit the Clapotis shawl, and one also needed to wear it to the Tea.  I dutifully knit a new Clap, my second in three years, and wore it to the Tea, despite the fact that it was the warmest weather we encountered in Scotland.  By the time I got there most folks had met up with friends and had a couple of drinks, so I wandered a bit and sat with a lovely woman and her husband from Texas.  It was at this Tea that we heard of the first really bad thing happening; the lack of work visas for the 6 American Tutors as well as the fact that two of the tutors had been deported, one back to the US and another to Holland (I think).  This pretty dramatically affected many students as Tuesday class schedule had all 8 tutors classes fully booked . (say about students18 per class).  A meeting was called for 7:45 the following morning to see what was going to happen.  Since I had a Scottish teacher the following day I was not impacted, but Cindy, the woman I sat with was certainly affected as her tutor was not even in attendance at all. A number of tutors had pulled out due to contract issues, but the Knit Camp Director neglected to contact anyone about this!!!!  Since it was out of our hands  we went out to dinner in Stirling and had a lovely time.

Signboard outside restaurant in Stirling, we ate elsewhere!

     The following morning there was a big meeting to tell everyone what was happening.  I didn't go to the meeting, but I doubt that it was a happy event.  Students were told that the Non EU tutors had to leave the country ( fly to Dublin) and re-enter with new visas or some such folderol and that people had the choice of taking the class of their choice of getting a full refund.  Well, that created a more than mild pandemonium.  Again, I was not effected as I had a Fair Isle Knitting class with Liz Lovick .    Many folks took the option to take an existing class, despite the fact that most of the classes were already fully booked.  Classrooms were too small to fit extra students.  Tutors did not have enough materials or handouts, tempers flared. As a matter of fact NONE of the handouts had been prepared by the administration of camp for any classes, despite the fact that tutors had sent the prepared handouts and patterns weeks earlier and expected them to be copied and ready in their classrooms. So various "classroom assistants" had to run around like mad women trying to xerox class notes, come up with materials and sort out computer glitches.  These classroom assistants should all receive medals and lots of praise for all the work they did.  And there was not an assistant  in every class.  Lots of tutors had to just drop back 10 yards and punt. My class was totally wonderful.  Liz is extraordinarily knowledgeable and prepared tons of class notes and a CD of the PowerPoint directions she gave in class. Somehow she had enough for everyone even with extra students.  However the room was VERY crowded and became unbearably hot in the afternoon. We learned a lot about the history of Fair Isle and Shetland Knitting and started a small hat with yarn supplied by Jameson and Smith.  After I got home I decided to rip out the little hat and make a pair of Fair Isle Gloves, someday.  Story of my life!
     More to come later.

Knit Camp UK

  When I decided to attend Knit Camp UK in Scotland I really scrutinized the class list.  There were originally something like 49 instructors (called tutors in the UK) and each had about 4 classes.  For some odd reason I printed out that original class list and poured over it for days choosing the perfect classes.  There were several American teachers from whom I had taken classes in the past, so I eliminated those folks; there are techniques that I have tried and don't enjoy ( intarsia, modular knitting) , so I eliminated those classes. Although I am a die hard spinner I knew that my wheel, even my lovely Majacraft Little Gem, would not be making the trip. Out with the spinning. And there are a couple of things that I am really good at, like gloves, that I do not need to take a class in.  That narrowed it down a bit, but I still found 8 or 10 classes that I knew I would thoroughly enjoy.  I HAD to take a class with Liz Lovick.  I was  lucky enough to do a swap with her a couple of years ago on the Traditional Knitters Yahoo group and we have casually corresponded over the years.  I really wanted to take a class from Gudrun Johnston as I admire her work, and though she lives not too far from me, I have not been able to take a class from her.  Plus she is a an authentic Shetland Knitter. I really wanted to take a photography class, to improve my blog, because I am, in all honesty, a crap photographer.  And a couple of other classes intrigued me.  I kind of cast fate to the wind, signed up for  four classes, received a receipt and went about my life.
   A couple of months later, maybe March, I checked the Knit CampUK website and noticed that one of my instructors was no longer listed.  I got out my original list and found that several other tutors names were missing.  My naive  thought was that those classes were full, no longer available,  these were pretty famous knitters after all.  Then, several weeks later, I decided that I just HAD to take a class with Jared Flood. I bought a book by the instructor for my Wednesday class and decided that perhaps we would not be a great match. So I requested a change to Jared's Baby Surprise Jacket class.  I received no reply.  Tried again, no response, used a different email address, nada.  That is when I joined the Knit Camp UK Ravelry group and became aware of rumblings about the administration of the event.  I admit, I then sent a pretty surly email, demanding that I at least be notified whether it would be possible to change the class.  Canned email that the person was on vacation... Well, I got a bit hot under the collar and eventually, after several exchanges, received an email from a new person, hired to " put out  fires".  Class changed, all was well.
   {As an aside, I really had no interest in the baby surprise jacket.  I have made several.  It is not a pattern that I enjoy, and I think it looks kinda dopey on babies.  It was Jared Flood I was interested in.  Not him, personally, just taking a class from him, and it fit in my schedule.  Never did take the class, but I got to sit next to him at breakfast one day}.
     Time went by, I faithfully watched the Rav boards and became curiouser and curiouser about what was to come.  Things were hoppin'.  People were up in arms, classes were canceled willy-nilly.  And communication from the powers-to-be at Knit camp UK ground to a halt.  But there was this other person who did put out fires.  She seemed lovely.  In fact she was lovely. I met her.  Weeks passed.  Then one day in July I received an email  that my photography class instructor would not be attending.  Double booked...so sorry, but we have this other person, Mary Jane Mucklestone, well qualified, who can teach you class.  I googled her, I already read her blog.  I was happy.  And well I should be... she was absolutely brilliant.  In fact I had considered one of the classes that she was supposed to teach, but now she was switched to do the photography.  Photography class settled.
   Just before I went to Scotland I checked the website for Knit Camp UK and noticed far fewer tutors.  The numbers changed almost daily from 49 originally down to 29, a low of 24 and up to 29 again.  I had to stop looking as I had made a not small investment in this trip, and I was planning on getting the most out of it.  At this point I was signed up for 4 classes, three of them neither the original class or the original teacher that I signed up for.  But I was still pretty happy, and optimistic that the whole thing would be world class.
  Part two to follow... the actual Knit UK Camp.  Dum-de-dum-dum-dummmmm

OK, I'm back, maybe

    I have not really been away for 6 months; well, mentally perhaps, but physically, not really.  I have not blogged.  I have thought about it, stared blankly at the screen, and just not had much to say.  I took a couple of trips, I was sick for a while, I decided that no one read my blog, except perhaps my husband, who thinks it is the only way he can find out what I am up to (I know, you'd think he could figure that one out).  'Nuff said.  No one seemed to miss me.
    But I did knit, and I did spin, and did a couple of sheepy/wooly things.  In February I attended the NETA Spa in Freeport Maine.  This is a rather loosely structured fiber event held in a couple of hotels in Freeport, the East Coast hub of outlet shopping as well as home of LL Bean.  I attended SPA a few years ago in Portland Maine and had a really horrible time.  Really bad.  But I needed an escape and some fiber revival and a weekend outing with my daughter.  So, we went.  It was awful, worse than I remembered.  The organizers of this event have an agenda...to have no agenda.  Quite honestly it has grown in scale and attendance enough that it now has the feel of disorganized pandemonium.  A few folks have tried to organize classes, etc, but their efforts are thwarted by others who just want to sit around and, well, drink.  There was a nice, but very small marketplace and a fashion show and worst knit item show.  I put my spiral shawl in the fashion show and got third place in the worst knitted item show for a perfectly ghastly orange sweaterish thing that I got at Goodwill in Concord.  Well, I won't go to that again.
   In May I went to New Hampshire Sheep and Wool in Contoocook.  This has always been a favorite event of mine, and it was great this year as well, except the weather really and truly sucked.  It was cold and rainy and horrible.  A few of my favorite vendors were not even there, and I don't blame them.  And I had a raincoat failure. In addition,  I went with a friend who was having, perhaps, a worse time than me, partly due to the fact that though she is a knitter, she is not a spinner and New Hampshire Sheep and Wool is rather weighted toward the sheep breeder and the spinner.  We left early to get hot soup and for me to buy a much needed new, truly waterproof raincoat.

Mass sheep and wool purchases

   Later that month I went to Massachusetts Sheep and Wool in Cummington.  What a great event!  It is smaller than New Hampshire, with many of the same vendors, but it has a different vibe.  It is more down home/4-H oriented with perhaps a higher proportion of small indie dyers and fiber producers.  Though I did not buy a lot I had a really nice day, and the weather cooperated, at least while I was there.  It was raining when I left, though.  I came home through Shelburne Falls, Mass which is certainly one of my favorite towns in New England.

Class in the courtyard

Photographed fiber/mittens

    Last Fall I read about Knit Camp UK  to be held in August in Stirling, Scotland. And after much discussion with my husband, who is not what I would call world traveler material, I decided to sign up for the entire week-long event as a part of a longer trip to Scotland.  Over the winter I joined a Ravelry group, planned the remaining 10 days of our trip, and really started looking forward to the whole thing.  About March rumblings began on Ravelry about the whole planning-or perhaps non-planning of the event.  I remained optimistic, signed up for 4 classes and hoped for the best.  A few weeks before we left, the bottom seemed to fall out of Knit UK.  Three of my four classes were changed when teachers pulled out due to contract problems.  There was a lot of pissing and moaning.  But I had the rest of the Scotland trip to look forward to so I remained optimistic.  In the last week before I left things went pear shaped.  But I was already in Scotland, having the time of my life, and all I could do was continue to hope for the best.  Well, to make a long, convoluted story very short, it was great!!  Really wonderful.  My classes were perfect, though not what I originally planned to take, Stirling University was a perfect setting for this event, and I met many, many inspiring and fun people, all making the best of what could have really been a nightmare of unknown proportions.  Unfortunately  most of the blame fell fully on one poor person who got in over her head planning an event that really needed a staff of 4 or 5 full time people.  Instructors pulled out at the last minute, Ravelry pulled out of their sponsorship if the Weekend part of the thing, Rav Forums went nuts, and yet, when we all got there, it was just hunky-dory.  Not without problems, but it ran surprisingly smoothly.  I doubt that this particular event will ever happen again, but I think anyone who was actually there would probably go again.
  Pictures, well, I actually took a "photographing your fiber" class with Mary Jane Mucklestone at Knit UK.  I found out that my cheap crappy camera from Best Buy actually has some great features and that it takes far better pictured than I ever imagined.  But I don't have many pictures of actual fiber events.  I have over 1000 pictures of Scotland, but only a few from Stirling. 
      Will I try to do better posting?  Well, no, I don't think so.  When I started this whole blog thing I thought it would be fun; a good way to keep in touch with friends and family who might be interested in my knitting and spinning.  Not so much.  I am not an enthusiastic writer, I was about a far from an English major as one can get,  though I like the computer I don't like being chained to it.  I may to try to blog about knitting and spinning now and again, but expect this blog to go away by the end of the year.