The End of an Era November 21, 2009

It’s the end of an era! I’ve lost count of how many times I have taught workshops for Ruth Sybers (owner of Knitter’s Treat in Monticello, WI) in the last ten years; I didn’t realize that I was actually the first in what was to become an illustrious series of visiting knitting gurus over the following years.

Ruth took advantage of having a handy location in which to host workshops: a family-owned fine dining restaurant on Main Street, Monticello, which happened to be closed Monday to Wed noon each week. This enabled Ruth to book teachers (for whom there are simply not enough weekends in a year) on their quieter days and catch them on their way from A to B. She is handily located near to Madison airport, or, if necessary, Chicago was not an impossible drive.

Ruth has also made great use of this space as both a workshop venue and a textile gallery: over the years she has displayed works from Elizabeth Zimmermann, Joyce Williams, Valentia Devine and currently all her past workshop mentors. To see many of the exhibits past and present, visit the Dining Room at 209 Main. There are also scrumptious recipes from the restaurant on the site.

Over the years Ruth has hosted Susanna Hansen, Beth Brown-Reinsel, Sally Melville, Jean Moss, Maureen Mason-Jamieson, Annie Modesit, to name but a few, and built up a dedicated following of attendees who appreciated her informal and relaxed venue.

Apparently this latest workshop is going to be the last in Ruth’s series. She now feels that, with the number of wonderful local yarn shops and the enormous Madison Knitting Guild (500+ members), that workshop opportunities abound. Ruth and Knitter’s Treat will still be offering patterns and kits at local fiber events.
Thank you Ruth, for being such a wonderful host and friend and introducing me to the delights of The Dining Room and the eccentricities of New Glarus which is quite remarkably Swiss right down to lederhosen for sale in the stores!

Today I have moved further east, to Lambikins Hideaway in Hamilton, OH, slowly working my way homewards, one time zone at a time.

The workshops are beginning tomorrow, so I spent a little time exploring the store this afternoon and I once again weakened in the face of a splendid array of quilt fabrics. I really will have to start stitching when I get home. I am happy now though: I have actually got a project in mind (rather than just merrily buying fabrics). There are two hideously ugly footstools out on the island. These can be the recipients of my first attempts. There is suddenly a super-abundance of lovely fabric in this world and I seem to have lost my immunity!

The final stages of the DVD saga November 2, 2009

Rabbits! It’s the first of the month.
It’s a strange British habit: the first words that you speak on the first day of the month should be “Rabbits!” This is responded to with: “A pinch and punch for the first of the month.” This statement may then be followed by: “A pinch and kick for being so quick.” The last two phases are frequently accompanied by the appropriate actions.

Having got that piece of arcanery out of the way, now we are back to what we hope to be the final stages of the current DVD saga.
At last we have all three of our new titles in stock!

We were expecting the replacement Venus 1 discs to be here early last week, immediately after our return from White Point, but no, they eventually arrived in Halifax late last Thursday afternoon. Being rather excited about the whole thing, we made arrangements to save a day and collect them ourselves, rather that waiting for a courier to deliver them. Believe me, we are really anxious to get them shipped out of here and into your hands. It’s going to be a complex process, but Sue and I will begin shipping them out today.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding: we hope you find them well worth the interminable wait. I had better get back to packing discs right now!

White Point – It’s a Wrap October 29, 2009

It’s all over, everyone has returned home, and now we are sorting out the chaos of returning stock, orders and unpacked DVDs back at base camp. The campers achieved quite a number of completed baby size Venus Rising cardigans and Susan (my right-hand at Tradewinds) has now succumbed to the Venus disease: she’s thinking of running a Venus Knitalong in the new year (let us know if you would be interested). This is much more fun than swine flu! We’ll keep you posted.

Our second day out from camp took us to Chester where we managed to squeeze in a visit to Chez Glass Lass and were treated to an inspiring demonstration from the owner and artist Sharon McNamara. The glass art in this store always makes me wish to enter the lottery: this would be one of the select galleries in which I would have no difficulty spending a few surplus $$$.

All this was achieved before the ferry to Tancook sailed at 1020. We then all piled aboard the ferry for the hour-long trip to Big Tancook. I doubt that there have ever been more people on board simultaneously knitting before!

At the dock we divided into the hikers and those that were destined to the cottage directly by vehicle (using the term loosely). The hiking party crossed the center of the island by way of a landowners road out to Gravel Pond and a beach on the opposite side of South East Cove to the cottage. We walked along the beach for a while and then turned back towards lunch. On the way we had the chance to visit Hillary Donne’s newly opened Wishing Stones Gallery. Here she has created, largely with found artifacts, the perfect space to showcase her wonderful photos of all aspects of Tancook life. She also creates sea glass jewelry and note cards. Her talent is boundless!

The Tancook Museum is another small yet delightful spot, usually left open during tourist season, full of the items of past everyday island life from a place where nothing is ever thrown away lest it should come in handy one day.

Lunch was laid on for us by my good friend Karen, who had gone over to the island the night before to warm up the cottage and prepare the repast. By this time it was lightly drizzling and everyone ended up cozily at the cottage with their knitting. Harley (an island friend) took this opportunity to dispense some of his famous home-brewed wine and exotic stories! All in all it was great fun and much knitting was done before we all had to head back for the 1630 ferry. This is the last boat ashore for the day, so we made very certain to round everyone up if they wanted to get back to camp. We completed the day with an excellent meal at Nicki’s restaurant in Chester before sleepily heading back to White Point Beach and the bunnies.

Night Two at White Point Beach October 21, 2009

Night two at White Point Beach

Have we ever had a wonderful couple of days! Yesterday was a pretty intense day of knitting on the Venus Rising Cardigan, including sophisticated circular needle skills, sleeve tricks, Navaho knitting and a tubular cast-on onto two needles. We were all pretty toasted last night; especially after after our evening wine-tasting with a local sommelier! Today, it was a most fabulous late autumn day: we went on a jaunt to Mahone Bay, including a visit to Spruce Top Rug Hooking Studio and the Have a Yarn Yarn Shop.
After this we indulged in a little tour along some secret nooks and crannies of the coastline and a delicious visit to the LaHave Bakery, as well visiting a couple of celebrated local folk artists: Ransford and Bradford Naugler. All in all, an action packed day!

Time for bed. Wish you were here …

Lucy

Thanksgiving with a cold October 18, 2009

I’ve been home for Thanksgiving: the first time in many years! I unfortunately celebrated it with a steaming good cold, but it was a luxury to have the time to have a cold and not have to teach through it. It was an almost turkey-free event for me, however, we did enjoy the series of turkey calls from the girls. They are in different universities in ON, about six hours drive apart, and they decided to get together for the long weekend. It is heartwarming to know that they decide to get together for fun.

Their turkey saga began with a phone call from a grocery store on Saturday evening: “Is it too late to buy a frozen turkey and hope to have it thawed for tomorrow evening?” This lead to a debate on turkey size and the various thawing options. The turkey spent the night in the bath with regular water changes. The following day followed various other calls on the subjects of: “To stuff or not too stuff? What do you do with a turkey neck?” Apparently they took the precaution of inviting several friends to join them and good meal, including a pumpkin pie, was had by all . I enquired as to whether it was a store-bought pie and was told no, but they did use tinned pumpkin. I was pretty impressed at their achievement, doubly so considering their very limited cooking equipment.

This week is White Point Beach prep week. Towards the end of the week the happy (manic?) knitters will be descending on Nova Scotia from all points of the compass, armed with needles and hiking boots to join me at White Point Beach on the South Shore. This week is devoted to making the last minute adjustments to the logistical arrangements and gathering everything we will need to host the workshop remote from our office. As it all comes together, I am becoming more and more excited about conducting the three workshop days on the Venus Rising Cardigan: It’s not until you have knit one that you can appreciate the fascination of the process. We will be working a small (3 month old) size in class. I’m currently on the ferry out to Tancook to make sure the cottage is as ready as possible to receive visitors and to check out the route for the optional hike. It’s all in the lap of the Gods, as the weather will make a huge difference to the course and outcome of the day. The sun always shines on Tancook!

DVD news: by the time we get back from White Point we should be in a position to start shipping out the re-manufactured discs. We’ll keep you posted on developments! The Dolly Mama’s disc will follow shortly after. Then nearly a year after this all began we will have completed this project. Whew!

Hope that you are all in a position to enjoy the longer evenings for knitting.
Lucy

PS
There is a new Simon’s Cat cartoon out now on You Tube, and, speaking of which, Cat Bordhi has created a new clip on the subject of active knitting: starring in a minor role: my former left shoe!

Bookless in Lansing October 9, 2009

From Lansing airport in MI.

Here I am, bookless in Lansing. I hate being without a reserve supply of reading material. I finished my book for the trip yesterday morning: that is the downside of bringing an excellent and totally engrossing book with you (Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen: a wonderful novel about the traveling circus-train era told by a very elderly man reliving his youth; action-packed with a delightful twist in the tail.). It certainly does divert one from a hotel existence, but sadly the end comes far too fast. Last night I listened to Peter Duck by Arthur Ransome whilst I knit. Despite having read it many times, I was still too engrossed to go to bed at a reasonable time. It’s not bad as an audio book, although it’s  an awful shame that no one took the time to instruct the narrator (who otherwise does a good job of reading this book) on her nautical pronunciation. It’s really only about ten words (that are repeated throughout) that she massacres, but it does demonstrate that she doesn’t really understand what she is reading. This book is all about sailing and the sea and someone should surely have noticed this?

There was no opportunity to find another book yesterday and I had bargained on having time today in Chicago’s O’Hare airport to be able to browse for a replacement between flights. Unfortunately, I now find that my flight from Lansing is delayed by an hour and this will make even catching my next flight doubtful: however,  if I miss the flight I will have plenty of time to find a new book!

I have just finished three days of teaching at Threadbear in Lansing. If you haven’t visited here yet, this a large yarn shop with a vast range of yarns waiting to tempt you. I was very impressed by the students who attended: they were all very well prepared, considerate with their cell phones and knew without having to be reminded when it was OK to chat and when to listen so that everyone could get the maximum value from the time. I suspect that they have been schooled in workshop etiquette over the years as many of them are regular attendees to the impressive slate of workshops that TB offers throughout the year. Thank you all!

PS I had just enough time to pick up Julia Child’s My Life in France – I’ll keep you posted.

Fleeing the Empty Nest October 2, 2009

Fleeing the Empty Nest
This week finds me madly preparing to get back on the road again. I’m packing lightly, as the last leg of my trip will be on a tiny Beachcraft plane with limited luggage capabilities: this is a challenge for the woman who routinely travels with a kettle and breakfast cereal, along with the usual class and clothing supplies!
I was just getting used to, and maybe even beginning to enjoy, being at home in my empty nest (it has only been two weeks since the last offspring flapped back to Ontario). I know this is technically my second year of empty-nesting, but I was away so much last year that I never really successfully made the adjustment. And what an adjustment!

I honestly never gave this transition a thought beforehand, but this has been one of the toughest years I’ve had since having the little dears.
I was so busy with life, work and travel, that I never realized that having no children around would make such a significant difference. I’m still trying to work out what exactly is missing (other than the obvious) and it occurs to me that I now need a new hobby! I’m not the same person that went into motherhood, so now I have to find out what I need to make me tick.

I was never a super hands-on mother. They always had to fend for themselves: cleaning their rooms (or not), making their sandwiches for school (once out of elementary school), but their lives certainly were intimately linked with mine and it was a constant juggling act to ensure that everyone had what they needed when they needed it. They were a great diversion and provided necessary balance.

Now I’m finding that I am so unused to having free time, that I feel I should be working all the time (one of the challenges of working from home)! I may take a longish while to find the new normal, but I’m working on it.

I am very glad that I have had the cottage to divert both my nesting energies and DVD frustrations, and I managed to paint the mango coloured walls last week. It really looks great: some might feel that they need sunglasses, but I love it. Bright pink and mango in the living room. WOW.

Living room with bright pink and mango walls.

A view of the stairs from the living room to the upstairs.

Knittingwise, I’m in a finishing-up mode at the moment. I really need a year or so dedicated to this effort, but, one project at a time, I’m getting there. I have at last allowed myself to knit for pleasure on my unfinished Cape Spear Blanket (my third one). This one has been kept for years as a ‘knit only when on the road’ project and used as an example in Double-Knitting classes (which are hugely popular currently), but it has reached a size where it requires its own suitcase in which to travel, and I tend to carry fewer samples these days as I can illustrate techniques more effectively from a DVD. So now I’m well on my way to finishing the last third of it and it is the perfect time of year to be doing this: it is cool at night, yet I’m reluctant to put on any heating yet (that would mean admitting for all to see that summer might be over), so this blanket is very cozy on the lap!

Let it all hang out! September 27, 2009

Let it All Hang Out!

Knitters seem to feel a desperate need to keep their knitting tidy as they work…but I say: “let it all hang out!”

When you join in new yarns, do so at the sides of the work, if possible, or at the edges of colour blocks in intarsia designs, or even behind a cable if you don’t make it all the way across. Most important of all is to leave decently long tails of yarn dangling for later neatening. (I suggest 4 – 6″ ideally, long enough to tie comfortably, easy to thread and hard to miss). If you wish to tie the new yarn to the old to prevent loose stitches, by all means feel free (I now use bows rather than reef knots, as they are so much quicker to untie later). Please understand that I am not ruling out the deft use of splicing the yarns (spit or otherwise) – but this is not always possible or practical.

As the work progresses, the number of tails dangling will grow. Cut off any superfluous length beyond the optimal six inch length but don’t be tempted to bury these tails into the garment pieces before assembly! To do this makes seaming much more difficult. The tails are best hidden later in the selvage stitches after the seam is complete. Frankly, there are many downright ugly stages between casting on and final wearing: don’t be disheartened. All this increases the satisfaction of the finishing process as from this shaggy monstrosity emerges a newly minted sweater.

The same principle of LIAHO applies whilst seaming: leave your tails of the seaming yarn loose and on the public side of the garment until you are happy with your seam. This way, if the seam is not up to par or the armhole doesn’t quite match up, it is not a big deal to zip out the last length of yarn used and finesse the seam. For this reason I don’t bind off my sleeves until I have tried the body on and offered up the sleeves for their final length adjustment: if extra rows are needed, no problem, or if a few need to be deleted, similar. But if I had to un-bind-off, that would be a different matter altogether.

The book I’d really like to write would be titled “Knitting, Warts and All!”, picturing the progress of projects through their pimply, adolescent, pre-blocking and finishing stages and then revealing them in their newly evolved glory! I guess it’s also a lot like the raggedy-brown-caterpillar-turns-into-a-holy-cow-it’s-a-gorgeous-butterfly experience

The Gentle Art of Domesticity September 21, 2009

I’ve just finished a book. That may not sound very earth shattering but my life does seem to consist of a lot of half finished books. I’m always three chapters from the end of something when I embark on a trip. If it’s a one time read I’m happy to take it with me and abandon it to another reader as I travel but if it is a keeper, I’m loathe to take along a book that won’t see me through my first flight.

This book I found in a wonderful yarn store Shall We Knit? In New Hamburg, ON whilst visiting my daughter in Waterloo. If you have the opportunity, do visit this delightful store, it’s a pleasure on every level, a lovely old stone building in a corner location in a typically attractive small Ontario country town. They stock a wide selection of excellent yarns and accoutrements and have very enthusiastic and charming staff.

Whilst I was there I found a bewitching book The Gentle Yarn of Domesticity by Jane Brocket. I nearly avoided it on the grounds of what I considered to be the vomit-worthy title alone, but the pictures and heavenly colours had me spellbound. So I decided to take a chance on it.

I’ve loved reading it and it’s changed the way I look at things! It had to be savored and read in small chunks, over a couple of weeks. I read it mostly on the deck overlooking the garden and I jealously guarded it against book philistines that might accidently sully its’ beauty.

Beautiful flowers on the back deck.

Food as art.

I now find myself taking a new pleasure in things that I regard as everyday and I have even found myself photographing my tomato and fruit salads. They coordinated so beautifully that I accidently put the angelica in the tomato salad in error!

I have also found myself buying small lengths of fabric and I’m now having to dig my toes in against the lure of making fabric quilts. You have been warned!
To get a flavor of Jane’s book take a look at her blog.

Blogversary contest! September 19, 2009

Did you know that September 18th marked the six month anniversary of this blog? I think this is more a testament to Dawne’s persuasive powers than any other factor! Thank you for joining us on this journey and for your cheerful support! As token of our appreciation we have entered you in our contest….

Lucy draws a winner from the bag (knitted of course).

Fellow Ravelry members for having me in your friends list and sending traffic to Happy Stitches:

cuteknitter
mandycharlie
yarndoodler
MarianneWong
MerryKarma
RischKnitter
Northof50
Ducklady
DebbieO
Evov
Tampopo
Magifox
ljcoz
LabCat
lavenderknits
KatrinaVanTassel
lobug
FridayHarborKnits
maddycat

Additionally, a category for those of you who have linked to Happy Stitches from your own blogs:

A girl her books, dogs and crafts

The Big Finish

Merely A Suggestion

Heather Knits

The Boy Who Knits

KnitWriteCookGo

GJabouri’s Blog

The Sassy Sheep Blog

I Love to Knit

Cornwall Yarn Shoptalk

Otter Wise

MoreYarnThanTime

she’s just saying

Blue ADT Knits

The Flitter Knitter

Nova Knitter

and the winner is....

And the winners are:
Ducklady

and
KnitWriteCookGo

Congratulations! You’ve each won a .pdf of Venus Rising. I’ll be in touch with each of you shortly.

Happy Stitches,
L