NOTES FROM THE ROAD

Spring Before Winter???

2012-01-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

Snow melts the minute it hits the ground. Surely this is some kind of bizarre joke -- when does winter start? It's already February first. Or maybe I'm just being a Minnesotan who KNOWS (has always known) that Michigan typically has really pathetic excuses for winters. This one is just particularly wimpish!

The plans for the spring season are already forming. I really look forward to the fiber festival season this year; I am yearning for a series of road trips -- anything to get me away from the computer and these messy, unfinished footnotes, maybe with chunks of text stowed on a laptop so that I can work them over in the peace and quiet of motel rooms, where phones don't ring and e-mail doesn't seem so urgent.

There is an intriguing tiny festival (maybe a dozen vendors) in Indiana in early March -- the Jay County Fiber Festival in Portland, Indiana, from March 8-10, to which I've never been. Might be the first year of the event -- can't tell from the website. I may just rent a car and have a look on that Friday -- it's only 4 hours, maybe less, the way I drive..........I note with more than the usual interest that Portland, IN, seems to be some kind of mecca for antique shops. Larry might want to come with me (buttons!!!!). Then Greencastle, also in Indiana, and of course after that, the pace quickens.

Also, Larry and I will go to Minnesota at some point in my spring break -- between March 12 and 17th -- for at least 4 days. What a good thing. I can see my dearest old friend, Julie, and her partner, plus my two (or three or four) nieces and favorite nephew -- and maybe hit all the antique shops and wool shops while showing Larry why I think St Paul and Minneapolis would be good places to live. I really do think that. I have some fears about such a return, which I won't spell out here -- it's family stuff. But in the end, I have yet to find an affordable city with such wonderful amenities. Chicago is better in physical terms, but it's WAY too expensive for people like us. The only down side, of course, is the horrible winter. But the cool thing about Minnesotans is that they adapt -- really well -- with tunnels and lots of other clever apparatus. So we will go look. If he hates it, we'll hunker down here, once I retire in a couple of years.

svb

OOPS!

2012-01-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

Sounds like Rick Perry, doesn't it?

Except it's me. I am SO sorry to have neglected the blog. It's the start of semester and I"m really done in with three classes this time -- my payment for having only one last term.

But I'm excited about some things at the studio.

First: Candace Eisner Strick will be coming April 26-28 with two fabulous FABULOUS workshops -- the first a day-long treat called 25 Slick Tricks for Knitters (life-saving and ingenious), the second a long half-day's workshop about socks -- employing her amazing book, Strick-ly Socks. So call the shop and ask quickly. We are already getting some reservations based on word of mouth and Larry's newsletters. It's 586-871-2884.

Second: I can't reveal much now, but.....four shops are working on a Big Deal for September, 2012. Mum's the word. But look for a huge, huge announcement.

Third: I am half-done with my wonderful little vest (for Larry, but really as an addition to my pattern series -- the world NEEDS men's patterns) that I'm going to call Eastern Shore Vest, because the yarn in which I'm working is Solitude, a truly stunning real American wool, handdyed in Maryland, by two women who are part of the small farm movement. They sell it at Maryland Sheep and Wool and also at a farmer's market in D.C. My god it's wonderful stuff -- toothy, spongy, as good wool always is, with a little bit of the lanolin remaining after the hand-dying (no chemicals!!!!), and so it's like putting on a thin film of hand lotion every time I pick it up and knit for awhile. This Aran-weight yarn will wash like a dream and plump up into a spongy, springy pile of fat stitches -- something that I wish knitters would consider when they pick up these gorgeous American or old-breed wools and say OOOOOH it's PICKY. Not picky. Just wool. That's the way wool is supposed to be until it's washed in gentle soap -- or, better yet, a rinseless agent like Soak, which was created by two Canadian women trained in chemistry. You can have softer wool, you can even have single-ply wool. But often (not always), it's overprocessed. It will pill. It won't wear as well as plied wool. And odds are that neither single-ply nor overprocessed yarn, when made into knitwear, will be heirlooms. Solitude (and maybe the Eastern Shore Vest, unless Larry drops food all over it!) will be found in a tomb or some kind of basement in an urban ruin, long after we're all gone, ready to wear, albeit with some dust and maybe some worm holes. Knitting has been found in Egyptian tombs, for heaven's sake, still in good enough shape to be recognizable. You just have to pick the right materials. I will be glad when knitters come to their senses about wool, which really DOES come with texture sometimes!!!!! The range is much broader than people think. Outwear (thick cardigans, peasants' vests, some jackets, coats) really benefit from sturdy, toothy materials. Merino is only one kind of wool. And toothy wool really DOES bloom and soften in water. Remember how sheep stand out in the rain? Nothing horrible happens. GOOD things happen. Too bad they don't know how to wash themselves -- they'd smell better AND soften in the summer rain!

Anyway: I promise to check back more often, with some photographs.

svb

I-Phone Covers

2011-12-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

....so I got a new Android Scary Telephone -- it actually responds to voice commands, which is uttery terrifying -- and decided that it needed a simple cover to protect the screen. Here is (roughly) what you do (I made five of them so far to sell in the studio):   To make front, wIth a size G hook and DK-weight cotton (or rayon ribbon) yarn, chain 15 +1 to turn.  I used a cool variegated cotton by Gedifra for most of them and a true blue Karabella rayon ribbon (with acrylic 'beads') for one of them. You need about 90 yards. Work about 24-26 rows in SC, ending with a WS row. The number of rows depends on the size of the intended telephone -- you might want to check against the actual instrument. My Samsung Galaxy S (i.e., the spaceship phone) with plastic back-case attached required 26 rows in the DK cotton and 24 rows in the slightly more rigid rayon ribbon. Fasten off.   For back and foldover flap: Repeat the exercise for the front until you have completed the 24-26 rows. Work 2 more rows even (fto give the flap you're about to make an opportunity to fold over the front of phone).  Then, on RS rows, decrease one stitch at each side of the flap (which will emerge, as if by magic), working even in SC on the WS rows, until you have about 5 sts left, ending with WS row. (To decrease, pull up loops in the next two sts, YO, pull through all 3 loops, work to the last 2 sts, pull up loops in 2 sts, YO, pull through all 3 loops). When done, chain 7 or so for a button loop; It should arc slightly over the 5 remaining sts. Anchor the chains at the far side of the button hole area to form loop; work back over the chains with slip stitch (to strengthen loop); securely attach at the point of origin (slip st deeply into the appropriate SC).  Now, place WS's of the two pieces together, pinning if necessary at the 4 corners. For DK cotton and other smooth yarns, work a row of SC all around the body (3 sides, excluding the flap) with 3 sc's at the two corners. I wouldn't use a contrasting yarn because, with simple SC edging, the wrong side is actually less attractive than the right side.  For textural ribbons and other unsmooth yarns, you can 'sew' 1 st in from the 3 sides with a simple slip st.  Darn in all ends, working a couple of whip stitches at flap end to better secure the points about to be subjected to lots of stress.  Put phone (or a phone-sized object) into the cover, close flap, and mark the location of button with a T-pin. Sew on the button (you probaby will have to fold the body of the case back to do this). Pick one that has some size and glitz -- at least .75 inches. I chose even bigger ones.   Fun, huh? Also easy. It's all in the yarn and button choice. You can do the same, of course, for low-tech cell phones -- just chain only 8-9 sts (use your phone as a model) plus 1 to turn and GO.  Variations: Depending on yarn, you of course can vary the st pattern, use a crab stitch or picot edging, make stripes -- on and on.

You could, of course, do the whole thing in the round and simply work the flap upward, once the body tube is done. But I wanted a flat case, one that wouldn't be tempted to roll around.

Or you could just buy one in the studio for a mere $19.50!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   smiling

Happy Christmas Eve!    svb

At the holidays...

2011-12-21T19:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not quite done with the mountain of essay and final exam grading that inevitably follows end of term. But, as usual, I'm drawn into a series of waking dreams about holidays past -- Christmases, Hannukahs -- in which the healing, life-saving qualities of wool have figured large, at least for me. I have been thinking about the long drives in very old, ramshackle cars (and in one case, a 1952 Ford pickup truck) from various small towns in Minnesota to St. Paul, where the grandparents lived, just in time for Christmas -- and for quiet times beside the fire and the jovially lighted Christmas tree with steel crochet hook, working steadily toward the lace curtain, the lace edging for a cheap pillowcase. Those were my grandmother's habits, the ones that helped her survive poverty, a partial mental breakdown at menopause, the hideously unexpected birth of yet another son at age 54. She would crochet. And she taught me to do the same thing. From tragedy and desperation came things of achingly beautiful delicacy.

I remember making my first sweater -- I'm about to reveal something I almost never talk about -- when my father filed bankruptcy. They hauled away his grand piano. I had never seen him cry. He cried and cried and cried. And so mother and I did the only thing we could do, once we had hugged him for awhile -- we took out the crochet hooks and worked on some squares for a blanket. And then we gave it away.

At every Episcopal church to which I belonged, and to most of the parishes for which I served as church organist -- something that continued until age 29 -- there were church bazaars at Christmas. We would make endless objects with needles, hooks, sewing machines, many of them literally out of nothing. My mother and I transformed old quilts into new ones by recycling the padding and making new covers; we covered cardboard boxes, tubes, and squares with all manner of cloth, embroidery, crochet. We made belts out of crochet thread and beads. It was the original environmentally sound society, wasn't it, this society of thrifty, lower-class women? And at the heart of it were our hands, our imaginations, our crafts.

When my first husband died, I knitted in the big maroon chair in the living room deep into the night, almost every night, and then slept there, because I couldn't stand to be in the bedroom. I don't think I would have got through it without my knitting. When the school year ended, I hit the wall -- so I piled an immense pile of wool in many colors into the trunk of the VW Beetle, complete with jeans and sandals, and headed west, making green modular squares at each stop between Michigan and Washington State. I made a particularly garish one in the Black Hills waiting for prairie dogs to pop up on an off-road departure from the main highway. I made others in Sioux Falls, SD, after driving right up to my old childhood home at 106 South Prairie, and Worthington, Minnesota..........and so on. When I got home, I assembled the whole thing into a cardigan that I now call my Running Away From Home Sweater. Wool kept me sane, didn't it?

I went to Rome the second year for Christmas -- with wool and needles, of course -- to forge new pathways for myself (it was a city that I associated with him), and I remember vividly sitting on the balcony of my gorgeous old hotel listening to the Christmas bells from St. Peter's Basilica, pealing over rooftops and onto the balcony like some kind of presence -- I knitted until there was no light, and in the morning knitted some more, and then wrote a long, long poem about being there and listening for the bells, hearing them fall away into darkness. Then my niece and nephew came, and Rome was saved for me -- because of them, of course, because they saw the place with new eyes and not with my old, saddened eyes, but also because of the rhythmic movement of yarn over needles.

For the next Christmas, I went to Barbados -- a huge pile of wool in tow -- made a sweater while I was gone, just made it up, free form -- taking color cues from the water, the sand, the sense of joy as water slapped against rocks. I sold it only a year ago for far less money than I'd paid for the yarn -- but it didn't matter. The knitting had done its good work long before the sale. And then, midyear, when I felt uncommonly sad, I made arrangements with my dear friend Vivian Hart (of Essex, England) to meet in the Orkney Islands. How could I forget sitting by myself (Vivian was watching birds) on a tiny spit of an island called Papay Westray, a game preserve, with seals not ten feet away -- and my knitting needles, a gorgeous pile of Scottish wool assuming the shape of a pullover, colors like moss and lichen and rock? The seals had no idea that they ought to be terrified -- though not of me. I cannot imagine harming something so gentle, so innocent and trusting.

There are more instances. Everyone who works with wool knows what I mean. Happy holidays to all of you, each and every one, and guard yourselves. We come this way only once.

svb

fair warning...

2011-11-30T14:46:00.000-08:00

....and know, dear loyal readers, that I am silent because I am in the throes of end-of-semester turmoil. This includes, e.g., students who appear for the first time and wonder what they've missed (!!!) (to which I say, Oh nothing....); students who ask whether the Supreme Court can pass an act outlawing immigration; students who put the text of footnotes IN the footnote instead of in the text and get furious with me for telling them to redo it; students who ask in class, without the slightest indication of shame, whether they need to read the rest of the books to pass the final. I could go on. To be sure, there are good students, even some wonderful ones. But MY GOD. I've not even mentioned the very sad situation posed by students who are smart enough but have gathered no (NO) writing skills in high school because the whole damn thing was multiple choice. Enough. I will reappear in the blog after December 8. In the meantime, I am knitting and crocheting hats to sell in the studio -- to stay sane.

svb

Black Friday, Small Store Saturday

2011-11-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

.....of course the Small Store Saturday schtick has been made up by Amex for their own benefit. But Artisan Knitworks really DOES have some tricks up its sleeve. There is a very long list available of discounted yarn, buttons, gifts -- including sweaters and hats, etc., made mostly by me. And we urge you to bring or begin making something to give to the Detroit Rescue Mission -- all day Friday and Saturday, people will be knitting and crocheting, we hope, for the charity -- and we will hand-deliver the result, this week and every week, until the cold season has passed. Detroit is not a happy place, so consider making something warm!

svb

Turkey Day and afterward...

2011-11-24T06:50:00.000-08:00

Today on Turkey Day, a term redolent of my youth, I am baking a leg of lamb, two mixed-berry gallettes, and a huge pile of roasted root veggies, asparagras, green salad, whole grain bread. I am SOOO sick of Turkey.
     Probably I should explain the Turkey Day crack. When I was very young, we lived in Worthington, Minnesota, which actually called itself the Turkey Capital of the World. Why? Midwestern towns are most often agricultural service centers -- and Worthington, with its mostly bored population of about 8,000 on a good day, was no exception. So towns of this kind invent an identity. There was a big Campbell Soup Factory in town -- made turkey noodle soup -- and a large number of quite smelly turkey farms on the outskirts. So -- why not? Turkey Day.
    On the official day, a small carnival was set up on a side street near the Nobles County courthouse. And of course there was a parade, featuring Miss Turkey Day (!!!), aka Miss Worthington -- a spot to which every comely young woman aspired (I didn't think of myself as comely, merely smart, and besides, I had too much work to do).  At the appointed hour, floats would start wending their way down Main Street, and -- blare of trumpets -- the entire sheriff's department would appear on horseback, herding a gigantic flock of white turkeys down the street. Totally astonishing. Small children followed in its wake, picking up white feathers shed by the terrified birds.
    Ah childhood.
    Today, I am thinking about my mother, who would secretly love the anti-turkey position, but who would pretend otherwise for at least fifteen minutes.
    Afterward, I'm going to knit for at least six hours.

svb

....meditation...

2011-11-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

Tonight, just as the sun began to fall over Lake St Clair, as it does every night -- the same liquid melting of colors at the horizon, a unification of two elements -- I found myself worrying about an odd drop in business at the studio over the past week or so, wondering whether we had done something wrong, or whether it might be the usual mix of football games, bizarre weather, economic pressures, out-of-sorts relatives demanding to attend enormous Thanksgiving dinners in less than a week -- and then I saw the most drop-dead beautiful collection of ducks, geese, and swans -- the impossibly white swans dotting the lake's surface like thoughts -- or maybe angels resting.

And it came over me that joy does not reside in cash drawers, certainly not in the ugly knowledge that at least one competitor hopes to run us out of business. It lives in the sight of swan-butts bobbing along beside swan-tops, in the sudden appearance of holiday lights on a tree along Lakeshore Drive that Larry and I call The Chrystalline Entity, in the pleasure a customer expressed tonight after finding one of my crocheted 1920s-style hats ("I'm never going to take it off!!!!!")..........Maybe we'll keep the place open after the end of this season, maybe not. Maybe other shops have become cause celebres....maybe we've had our moment in the sun and ought to leave well enough alone -- or not. What matters is that ravishingly beautiful lake-scene, that particular shade of ice-mauve where the water seems to vanish, the sight of an ecstatic woman with a new jewel-toned hat festooned with buttons.

And because I have been thinking about them all day, let me add this: Maybe what matters, more than all else, is my ability to remember my mother, my grandmother, my no-longer-living but still present brother Randy, who brought happiness into the world each and every day of their lives, even when we had nothing to eat but Wheaties and water. So -- my friends -- think only of swans. Remember, too, what the Talmud teaches: If you think often of those who have gone before us, they will never truly die. svb

The Promised Photographs from Massachusetts

2011-11-13T18:58:00.000-08:00

Several posts ago, I promised that I'd include some photos of Lee and Lenox and Springfield, MA, the points of interest during my trip to the Fiber Festival of New England.

Lee, Massachusetts, the kissin' cousin of Lenox, MA, has some wonderful old architecture, much of it ecclesiastical. Here is an old church building (18th century) transformed into a theater:

....and here are images of a fabulous old Congregational church, the kind that one always finds on a town square (as here), and the Cakewalk, where I got fabulous latte and an apple cake to bring home. Both are in Lee, MA:

But the images I captured in Springfield, MA, just before the camera's battery went out are the main event here. What a horrible, tragic sight in the wake of the heavy, wet snowfall. And just after the batteries failed I saw scenes much, much worse than what I captured here. Everywhere, trees and tree trunks and lampposts and cars were decimated. Limbs piled up on the streetsides often reached to half the height of trees. Click on the photographs for a taste of it -- and imagine entire blocks filled with worse than this. svb

Modern-Day Burning Bush?

2011-11-13T18:49:00.000-08:00

Look at the COLOR of this amazing bush in Grosse Pointe! I had to park illegally in order to capture the colors. WHEEEEE svb

Marching through time...

2011-11-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

....and how time does pass, when we're not looking! I just noticed about 9 million additional age spots on my HANDS, for god's sake.........how can I pretend to be 39 with 9 million of them?

I'm actually joking. I am home today with a really awful head and chest cold, which forces me to sit down and be quiet and soak in the march of time, my surroundings, the fact of an unfinished book, the prospect of actually finishing it, an attic mostly full of wool, all of those not-yet-imagined sweaters........There is something mostly wonderful about gathering up all of the learning of the past 60+ years (I can't claim to have learned much of value before about, say, age 7, which is when my grandmother taught me to crochet, and when I got into my first spat with a really boring teacher, and also roughly when my mother advised me for the first time to stop being such a smart-mouth!).

I thought of it again last week when I looked up from the podium in the big freshman class (a survey of modern American history), just after telling a small anecdote, and noticed a very young man making faces at the very young man next to him -- the kind of look and hand gestures that say, "GOD but she's not very cool, really dorky.").  I stopped and looked at him. He looked shocked, but not embarrassed -- just defiant. So I let it go. Hardly worth wasting class time. But it occurs to me that a barely-socialized brat like that is behaving more or less as I did when I was 7. He doesn't have a clue, does he, what a professor of history has gathered over 30+ years of in-the-trenches teaching at public universities, where you need to do all kinds of things to make sure that the poor students and the really fine students are equally able to understand what's afoot. Often, I slide in some personalized material to engage the poorer students, who perk up right away and even start talking. But -- the brats will just get impatient. I vividly remember when I was 7, 8, 9, maybe even 10, thinking that the teachers were just horrible old farts, not at all 'with it,' not worth listening to. On one occasion, by the way, I was right: They were trying to teach a pretty smart girl-child who got bored easily (I was reading at the 8th grade level in 3rd grade). But, on other occasions, it's clear to me that I just didn't have enough time on earth to make any kind of judgment.

Sometimes, students like the impatient young man appear in my university office years later and say, "I see now what you were doing." But most often not. They need another 25-30 years to figure out how complex the world really is, and how ungenerous and uncompassionate they're being.

On the studio front: If you haven't been in the studio lately, get there asap. We just got a huge trunk show of raku ceramic beads, buttons and jewelry. That's not even mentioning all of the very cool new yarn. And gallery sweaters are at least 25% off between now and the end of the year.

svb

The Fiber Festival of New England

2011-11-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

This past Thursday immediately after my Thursday class, I drove off in the general direction of Ohio and Pennsylvania -- this time on the American side of things instead of the Canadian side because, at late hours, it can be hard to find motels immediately next to the Queensway in Ontario -- and got as far as Astaubula, Ohio, which I have just misspelled. I HAVE NO IDEA how to spell it. The town does harbor a particularly nice Hampton Inn, and Hampton happens to be my all-time fave because of the nice, white, lofty bedding and great mattresses. Not to mention hot breakfasts. That's what you pay for, and they deliver, for only a few dollars more than the less predictable bargain hotels. I am really gunshy now about Super 8 and some of the others -- twice burned recently, and after long hours in the car, that's twice too many.

I booked another Hampton in advance for Friday and Saturday nights (though I ended up cancelling Saturday in order to get back on the road) in Lenox, Massachusetts, perhaps an hour from West Springfield, which is where the fiber event was housed. What a lovely, new motel, and what charming communities there near Tanglewood. I will deliberately stay there again if and when I return to the festival, which I probably will do next year -- it was worth it just to meet so many truly amazing new people (at least new to me). I will have photographs when I recover from the headcold I picked up along the way, and when Larry downloads what few pictures I managed to take before the camera's battery ran out.

For now, let me just talk a bit about what I found. First: The Berkshires are always beautiful, and I think I hit them just after their prime in fall-leaf-season terms. But they were still gorgeous -- the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers still wending their way along broad, sleepy courses, a watery iteration of Rip Van Winkle........The colors were mostly burnt-sienna, brown, spruce green, with the occasional spash of sumac red.....What complete joy when the forest covers an entire mountainside or valley! It's as if the decorating committee went out of their way just for me.

In Lenox, the marvelous staff at Hampton put me onto a small bistro, called Jonathan's, in an otherwise nondescript (though pleasant) small strip mall perhaps a mile back toward Lee, Massachusetts (which has a fabulous downtown area, a darling coffee house and bakery, and some high-quality antique shops). I must say that I have rarely enjoyed a meal or a setting so very much. If you are ever anywhere near Lenox, MA, find it. Go to dinner. Fresh food -- gorgeously cooked -- and well served by a young Argentinian named Andrea, who wants to go to graduate school. I didn't discourage him, though, given the state of our universities, I perhaps should have said at least something to the contrary. I still think that cream rises, though, and so he ought to see if he measures up. If he does, and if he indeed is cream, all will be well.

I drove from Lenox to the festival mid-morning on Saturday, had something of a time finding it (the address given on the website was wrong, and to make matters worse, the site was down when Larry tried to help), but I consulted locals and found the so-called Big E in another direction altogether.

While I was looking, though, I drove through some neighborhoods in West Springfield. And I must say that I have NEVER, EVER seen anything like what I found there. The news media has not given us anything like a true picture of what has happened there in the wake of the huge snow storm of a week ago. The snow was mostly gone, though not entirely -- in West Springfield, they apparently had 1.5 feet. But it was very, very wet and heavy. Old trees came down. Branches came down. Wires came down. Lampposts hit by falling trees came down. On sidestreets, where I did manage to get a few pictures before the batteries died, branches and dismembered trees are piled halfway up the remaining trees, waiting for some kind of pickup. I can't imagine what it will take to remove all of that lumber and dead foliage. It was enough to make me weep -- and especially because New Englanders are really attached to their trees, always have been. The people I talked to at the festival were really devastated. The oldest trees went first, of course, because the young 'uns were much more flexible. What a horrible, visually devastating freak of nature.

At the festival, which is medium size and very high quality (only two vendors of Peruvian cheap crap -- pardon my language, but that's what it is, and I wish they would be excluded from vendor lists), I remembered almost at once that I was at the epicenter of the Small Farm Movement, which stretches up and down the eastern seaboard. Booth upon booth testified to the power and productivity of the movement. Old breeds were in evidence in the animal section; and old-breed fiber was everywhere, beautifully spun from local flocks in local spinneries (a couple very old firms in Maine, some new spinneries in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and of course Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont). It used to be that spinneries no longer existed in the US; now, it's rebounding. Craft people are taking to the land again, harvesing very high quality fleece and other fiber from angora goats, Romney and Corriedale and Leicestershire sheep, on and on -- and the results are drop-dead gorgeous. The work of Romney Hills Farm, e.g., is dazzling -- lofty, softer than Romney usually is, and well-dyed. Kelly also overdyes some natural, single-ply blended yarn (done by Green Mountain) in small batches.

It is important to view American wool not only as an indigenous product, but as an ORIGINAL form of wool. Nowadays, there is a lot of ruined wool out there -- wool that has been overprocessed and plied far too loosely (or not at all), or blended with other fibers, or altered "at the molecular level," as one company puts it (it makes my skin crawl just a little -- why on earth horse around "at the molecular level"?) -- so that many of my clients think that wool is not supposed to be substantial, toothy, full of air spaces to keep us warm. It is supposed to bloom when washed -- and it does. But you have to trust in it. They don't realize that there is more to wool than merino. Merino is beautiful, but it may not be the longest wearing wool, and it surely isn't (in my view) the best wool for outergarments. So I am going to lend a hand to the movement by featuring some of their products -- knowing full well that people don't believe me, won't buy the wool, think that all wool is supposed to feel like silk. It actually annoys me, and I have a very hard time hiding it.

There were signs of economic hard times: Twist of Fate, where I bought some incredibly well-priced alpaca in natural shades, told me of clientse who drop off fleeces and fiber and then can't afford to redeem the spun yarn. What sadness that must be for everyone. But it really is a story of our time, isn't it?

On another front, the women (the vendors are mostly, but not entirely, female) selling their beautiful productions are making me very happy: They are charging MORE for their handcrafted yarn, buttons, jewelry, sweaters, and so on, than ever before. For YEARS, I have been giving little lectures to people (especially at the very small festivals) about women's labor and how we need to make a living, can't just keep giving labor away (something women often are trained to do from childhood), need to understand that sharing and generosity can't stand in the way of making a living.

Well. They are doing it more and more. The great irony for me, of course, is that I can't really expect women to make their yarns affordable for ME (I need to mark up what I find) if I want them to earn good money. This is particularly true if the women in question can sell everything they make at full price at the festivals -- and so, when I ask a woman if she CAN sell out at full price and she says yes, all I can really do is to give her a card and encourage her to call me if she does not. Wholesale discounts also have shrunk. So -- when you stock a shop with as much hand-retrieved yarn as I do, it's a mixed blessing, isn't it? On the one hand, people are doing what I have been telling them to do for at least 8 years.

On the other hand -- I have to sell at a very slim margin. (If I were to really factor in travel costs, I'd be selling at a loss -- but this is what I do for vacations, so....I choose not to figure it in). Probably, over time, I will be stocking less and less handcrafted, one-of-a-kind yarn, or at least buying it mostly after full-price sale has concluded, probably by photographs. And I likely will frequent the smaller festivals more and more, at the expense of the bigger ones. That's okay. In my view, New York and Maryland festivals have both been stuck in the mud for a couple of years -- same vendors, not much change in goods. But this requires a slight shift in the business plan. It's also hard to say how much of the downward pressure on discounting has to do with the recession -- probably some part. Time alone will tell!!!!!!!!!!! Meantime -- I truly LOVED seeing women defending the value of their labor.

I decided to come home on the Canadian side which, IF (and only if) customs doesn't slow you down, can be undertaken in two hours' less time than the American side. I was lucky: Especially at the American end, the bulging mass in the windows of the rented station wagon didn't even get a long glance. Still, I sometimes feel almost hurt that customs people never, ever see me as a possible criminal, smuggler, mafia accountant -- whatever. Must be the wasp-y face, the gray hair, etc. -- but just once I'd like to be viewed as a possible threat to national security for daring to haul thirty-six tons of knitting yarn and a half-ton of buttons across Canada without once offering receipts at either end!

Hugs to everyone.

svb

Onward to New England....

2011-11-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I am VERY excited to finally be attending the relatively new, huge festival in West Springfield, MA, this coming weekend -- the Fiber Festival of New England. The vendor list is very, very long -- I get to see friends, including Ellen Minand (Ellen's Half-Pint Farm) and maybe Candace Eisner-Strick, who hopes to be there, too. And I get to have a long, long road trip, where I can sort out my thoughts, make notes (I carry a lined pad on the passenger side), knit, and revise book chapters when I stop driving. Laptops were an amazing invention....You can literally work anywhere there is an electrical outlet. I'll of course take photographs. This one is in a huge exposition center (called the Big E), and my cheap-o motel, which I hope isn't terribly disreputable, is close by. I'll leave Thursday night after my class (on the road by about 5:00), stop maybe in Erie, PA, and come home again by at least mid-day Sunday. Stay tuned! svb

Asheville's Wonders

2011-10-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Well, Larry and I drove all the way to Asheville, NC, this past weekend -- It's a very long haul, but punctuated (as usual) with stops at various antique malls and shops along the way -- beside the freeways, but also in small towns, where the real treasures can be found. We returned, to give an example, to the marvelous shop in Candler, NC, where we found yet more entire cards of stunning vintage buttons at fabulous prices -- just as before. In Candler, there's a button collector I'd like to meet in person! I left before the haggling over prices started. Larry is MUCH better at it than I am.

It's impossible to photograph the mountainous scenery, the advancing autumnal colors -- those warm sepia and orange and reddish and chartreuse tones (yes, chartreuse -- as green yellows, there is indeed quite a lot of it which , in combination with other fall colors, I've tried in vain to capture in free-form knitting. Something is elusive -- maybe the strokes of charcoal and dark brown, but more likely the very bright values where the sun strikes darker colors, and maybe even the blue tones of the sky). Here are two poor examples of what we saw:

This time, I bought a motel room at the Asheville end of things from HotWire. DO NOT USE HOTWIRE. First: The so-called bargain price was only 20 dollars less than full price. Second, and more important: The godawful room we got at the Ramada Biltmore West was so bad that I considered just leaving, prepaid or not -- Larry complained about the worn-out rugs, the sway-back beds, the general slum tone -- you don't expect to be in a slum for 120 bucks a night. Surprise surprise: They moved us to a slighty better room, although the electronic door barely worked (they have some problems with maintenance) and the bathroom sink had a faucet that was about to fall off. The beds were better, so we stayed.  I'll ignore the time when the electricity went out. Suffice it to say: Hotwire probably means (contrary to the ads) that you get rooms nobody else wants unless you complain. So I'll just do it the usual way from now on.

Asheville's Southeast Wool and Fiber Festival has expanded significantly since I was last there several years ago. It's now well over a hundred vendors, approaching 200 in fact, some of whom still only show primarily at this fair. NOT the same cast of characters, in other words, as one finds at, say, NY's lalalalooza festival or Maryland's. It occupies the HUGE agricultural expo center (really a mammoth, circular indoor arena) and out-buildings in Fletcher, NC, which is an Asheville suburb immediately across the street from the Asheville airport. When you are expecting to buy yarn, though, it's best to drive -- it's hard to find UPS or FedEx stores on Sunday!   Far better to load up a rental car and avoid trying to explain to airport authorities why your baggage is full of yarn and how an extra bag full of wool (you need to take an empty one along) can weigh as much as lead.

And the real joy, something I've been looking forward to for at least a year, was meeting the brilliant Stacey Budge, the driving force behind UrbanGypZ Yarns. We got to hug!!!! She was THE first indie dyer that I put in the shop when we opened. I learned this weekend that I was also her first wholesale account!   Here she is:

The particularly good part: It's always best to see yarn before buying it, and even better to see an artisan's full line before deciding what to buy. So this time, I could SEE everything she makes. I chose a boatload of her light-weight yarns, including fingering and lace-weight merino wools; but I also picked up some luscious wool-silk for makers of shawls and maybe cowls. The semi-solids were a surprise: I associate Stacey with variegations, and they were wonderful, but I LOVED her semis. So I actually picked up more semi-solid yarns than variegated. See? THAT'S why it's important to go to the horse's mouth, so to speak. No, that's not to call Stacey a horse. It's a SAYING, dopey reader!

Everywhere, Larry took pictures of yarn and people and oddities. Some important discoveries: First, I did not know that Amy of YarnSmith (Ohio) had reorganized her yarn business as Pandora Yarns. Apparently the wondrous Amy, who is a GREAT handpainter, got very tired of running a mill during a recession; now, she dies in her own studio and is MUCH happier. I was particularly taken with some buttery lace-weight merino, which I bought too much of, and of course with her sock wools. Here she is -- and don't miss the small sliver of the parking lot shown behind her. This is a VERY big exposition:

And then -- TA DA -- an example of WHY I go to the festivals. I found a replacement for the raku buttons by Tia of Olympia, Washington, who stopped making them. Two amazing women are making raku buttons and jewelry (!!!!) that is actually more interesting, and just as well crafted, as Tia Matera's work. We bought up a small supply to show our clients -- but -- blare of trumpets -- they are gong to send a trunk show on or about November 7, so we can select a lot more at our leisure. It's also important, if we mean to support small producers, to let them try to sell goods at full price at the festivals and make arrangements to buy what's left at prices we can deal with. So that's what we did with this delightful mother and daughter team (get a load of the chunky bracelets in the photograph, and the picture behind them!):

They aren't afraid of color, but they also seem to understand color. So the beads, buttons, and jewelry are eye-catching and original without being either gaudy or predictable.

And here's one of the out-buildings (the actual expo building is multi-tier and HUGE):

As to whimsical moments: Get a load of these, courtesy of the splendid Larry! More later. Come into the shop and see what we bought!!!!!!!!! svb

On to Asheville...

2011-10-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

.......And so, this coming Thursday morning, as bright and early as I ever manage (NOT), Larry and I will climb into a rental car and meander south through Ohio and other foreign lands toward Asheville, North Carolina. Along the way, we will visit wondrous antique shops in search of (what else?) vintage buttons, maybe some delightful old jewelry. (We all have words we think look funny -- is it jewelery or jewelry? Here I am, the winner of the 8th-grade Minnesota state spelling contest, unable to spell jewelry/jewelery). I have made a reservation at a Ramada Inn near the Southeast fiber festival -- actually in Fletcher, NC -- which is immediately across the street from the Asheville airport. I flew last time. But then you have the problem of figuring out how to get the TON of yarn you inevitably buy back home (Fed Ex and UPS are remarkably hard to find on Sundays!!!). So -- this time, a car, with my sidekick Larry. I'm secretly trying to get him the h___ out of the shop for a few days. He really needs to get at least within a few yards of a golf course now and again. I wonder if he realizes quite yet that I am going to put his clubs in the car? More later when I actually have something to say.

svb

O Loyal Readers....

2011-10-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

Dear loyal people, I have been silent because I have exams to grade (ARRRGHHH) and nothing, really, to report beyond the gorgeous fact of sailboat races on Lake St Claire, the ugly fact of virtually no yarn business (the warm weather), and the strange fact that, at this very moment, some idiot is firing off some firecrackers or rockets in my block. I wonder what on earth is going on? Do we shoot rockets on Columbus Day??? And in any case, it's tomorrow. I will write more when I have something to say. You do NOT want to hear about the schmo-like toy that I'm making from white string (Larry gave me a ball, having no idea that giving me a ball of something knittable or crochetable is like Coke to an addict). More later. svb

Change in direction....

2011-09-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Larry and I have decided to forego the local festivals (see previous post!) at West Branch and Romeo in favor of a long, lovely drive to North Carolina in late October to the fabulous Southeast Fiber Festival near Ashville. We will rent a car and take our time driving, from Thursday mid-day (if I can find a person to guide my Thursday class through a discussion) until late-day Monday. He loves Asheville; I love the antique shops along the way (think BUTTONS!), and both of us are eager to see what has become of the Asheville show, which is held at a huge agricultural center across the street from the Asheville Regional Airport. Since I was last there three years ago, it has GROWN. And I finally get to meet Stacy Budge, the maker of our wonderful UrbanGypZ fingering yarns. So that's the decision. I will have much more to say about this in a month. Meanwhile, fiber aficionados should check out their website (which can also be accessed through the events tab on knittersreview.com). svb

West Branch Ho....

2011-09-23T09:04:00.001-07:00

If it ever stops raining -- and only if it does -- I may head out on Saturday morning for the three little fiber events at Flint (International Alpaca Festival), Romeo (Mt Bruce Station Autumn Festival), and West Branch (Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival). I'll make report if and when I do! svb

Tea Party as Old Soviets???

2011-09-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

I was hugely amused today, while re-reading Bloomsbury giant Leonard Woolf's little essay Principia Politica, written in the heyday of the anti-Communist witchhunt, to find sentences about the diabolical communists that sound, for all the world, like a critique of the Tea Party. The 'enemies' list, of course has changed. But I'm taken with Woolf's clear sense of the ideological importance of enemies' lists and the whipping of communities into a froth of hatred. It's pretty ironic actually that Obama is being tarred with the broad brush of Socialism!!!!! Makes me smile, though darkly. Here's a sample.

"The persistent appeal to communal hatred is one of the most remarkable features in Russian communism. We have already noticed it in the use of ideology by Soviet rulers. The theme is always an attack upon guilty men or guilty classes -- capitalists, kulaks, imperialists, war-mongers, Trotskyists, or some other species of deviationist. The Russian people are subjected to an uninterrupted stream of what is now called propaganda. It is an unending stream of incitement to the hatred of wicked people who are represented as the unscrupulous enemies of Russia and of the masses. It is these capitalists or kulaks, imperialists or Americans, and their dupes and hirelings, who deliberately prevent the workers of Russia and of the world from attaining the Marxist or communist millenium. Therefore the first duty of the good communist is to hate them and the second to liquidate them."

svb

Young's Jersey Dairy and YARN? A Travelogue....Part Two

2011-09-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

....and, as promised below, here are the woodworkers' pictures, surrounded by the beautiful things they have crafted.

....and here is a spinner named Michelle who was simply SPINNING, smiling as if she had never been happier in her life, just to make everyone else smile.

I loaded up on some gorgeous felted bags (ready-made in my view for those who use circular knitting needles and other rounded tools) and smaller tool kits from an Ohio woman who also makes darling necklaces with pictures -- with slogans like "I love to hook" (!!!). I bought at least a dozen.

And then I left. This was a day trip. Someday, it will come over me that women in their late 60s aren't supposed to drive 7 hours in one day. But, until then, I'll continue to do it. And of course, on the way out, I took another final, long glance at the huge tents -- and captured another scene that will never be found on the streets of Detroit. Here I am, taking the picture of some parents taking pictures of children on a wondrous tractor:

Happy Knit and Crochet!!! And thanks to Ohio for having such lovely weather today. svb

Young's Jersey Dairy and YARN? A Travelogue....Part One

2011-09-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, I went to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to see what on earth could be going on at a dairy -- a fiber fair was alleged to be going on there, and I couldn't quite believe it. But -- I went. Yellow Springs is near Dayton, Ohio, in the middle of dairy and corn country, lovely rolling fields, healthy stands of deciduous trees and conifers, stunning wildflowers (at this time of year, mostly golden hues). Then, it was a small affair, enclosed in a single good-sized building, with maybe 20 vendors. They had great ice cream at Young's Dairy -- I remember that part vividly.

Well. I saw the notice again on Knitters' Review.com, where I go for information about fairs and festivals, and was astonished to see how many vendors had signed on. So this morning I quickly got a cute little red Focus from Enterprise Car Rental and headed to Yellow Springs. I learned two things along the way -- maybe three things. First: Ohio is just as rollingly beautiful along Highwyay 68 as I remember, and there are more Amish than I recall. Marvelous black buggies, beautiful horses. Second: The corn is MUCH less ripe than it should be -- heavy rains? Late planting? Warm weather in late September? Look at how green it is! (Click on shots to enlarge):

Third, and perhaps most important: Gasoline in central Ohio is 3.39 a gallon, not the 3.70 we are paying. WHY?

So I arrived at the Dairy and encountered a huge surprise: Once, this was a small-scale dairy store on beautiful grounds. Now, it's a full-scale amusement park, complete with miniature golf (called Udder and Putter, for god's sake). Here's the ice cream building and a small part of the blocks-long parking lot. And here is also a small slice of the amusement parkl, complete with children:

But let's get to the point. "A Wool Gathering" begins with a big, bright blue banner:

As you walk through the gate, you find HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of people, all having the most magnificent time -- including dozens of members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, two of whom can be seen in this shot (to the right):

Notice the SIZE of those big tents -- my photograph doesn't begin to capture the scale of things. This fair has exploded over the years. I found some friends inside, but also some new people -- like Michelle the spinner and two gifted woodworkers whose buttons and spindles I bought in profusion. He of the spindles works under the name "Sunset Turnings," and I must say he knows a thing or two about wood finishing. She of the buttons has THE cutest calling card I've ever seen (it's a piece of wood in the shape of a button!!!) -- Brenda K, of "A Remark You Made." Both of them have etsy.com shops, and I hope you'll all go have a look. I bought more wooden buttons than is decent.

I can't download more pictures (at my limit), so I'll undertake another entry: svb

Autumn in Michigan

2011-09-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

Autumn typically comes late in Grosse Pointe -- the result of our location very near the warmth of Lake St Clair (in my case, it's only a half-block away). It's SO pretty at this time of year -- and I must say, I greatly appreciate weather in the 70s instead of the 80s and 90s. I am NOT a tropical plant. Here is what's happening in my gardens!!! Purpley bushy stuff! The last of the hostas! Enjoy the season!

Home from the Wisconsin festival!

2011-09-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night just past, Lois and I took off in our rented Dodge Avenger (what a name! and what an uncomfortable car -- the windshield wipers sound like little grenades every time they move back and forth, and the seats aren't made for real bodies) and aimed for a super-inexpensive Super 8 in the southern part of Chicago, just off of Interstate 294. Do NOT EVER stay in a Super 8 that's less than 50 dollars. I honestly think that's the dividing line. This one was so awful that we considered trying to find another place. But we were exhausted. Let's just say that, in the morning, Lois saw a pair of men's underpants in the hallway. We also chose to find breakfast elsewhere. Enough said.

But then, of course, we found our way to Wisconsin -- and Matilda (the trusty GPS) took us to small Wisconsin towns, where we found some wonderful vintage buttons. Here's the sort of thing we saw in one particularly nifty 'mall' in one of those small towns:

The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, held annually in Jefferson, Wisconsin, at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, is a truly wonderful show. We have been hearing some sad stories about Michigan's festival -- one vendor told me, e.g., that the buildings have developed leaks so that displays and goods are ruined with water. The Wisconsin fairgrounds are in amazingly good shape -- and, most important, the vendors are numerous and of uniformlygood quality.

A sad note: Diane Edwards (Annie's Handspun) told me that, at the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo, she had TWO handknitted sweaters stolen. Now, this has nothing to do with Ann Arbor's show -- rather, it has to do with a shift in our world. Fiber people are notoriously and STILL honest, almost to a fault. More and more, though, thieves and scam artists are zooming in on festivals. One of them, I was told, scammed a large number of exhibitors on the last day of the Southeast festival at Asheville, NC, on the very last day, virtually the final hour, with a fake checking account and a bogus story about how she was buying for retail. Sad but true: Crime is increasing, and if we have to start being suspicious at our fiber-related events, it will be shocking and sad. In our shop, we have experienced only ONE bounced check -- and it was done (you guessed it) by a scam artist claiming to be a cancer victim in need of warm hats and scarves (I fell for it and gave her a hefty discount -- she paid us with a bogus check, accompanied by a bogus driving license).

But let's talk about pleasant things: Such a variety appeared at this show! I sometimes choose not to buy otherwise nice yarns from small producers because (to give one example) I don't much like tiny color runs -- they knit up looking speckly and sometimes muddy, as with this really beautiful display of yarn, done with very tiny dashes and dots of dark color on lighter grounds -- mind you, some people LOVE that effect -- it's just not my cup of tea. I like my color runs longer, and I REALLY like yarn with surprising colorations:

....but who could pass up the gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous SOFT-SERVE just outside one of the main buildings? We couldn't -- two really nice fellows trying to support FFA (Future Farmers of America, for all of you city-lubbers).

I didn't take too many pictures -- too busy looking at all of the possibilities -- two huge buildings, crammed to the proverbial gills with potential studio offerings. If money were no object (it's a recession in Michigan!), I would have had to rent a truck to come back home. Look at this wonderful scene -- a woman working fair isle from a double spooled feeder.

I bought some single-spool yarn feeders from an amazing man, the father of the young owner of Sun Valley yarns, that are MUCH better than the ubiquitous ceramic yarn bowls. They don't break, and the yarn doesn't collapse when it gets to the outer edges. The man who makes them (the ones I bought) is a talented woodworker who had the good sense NOT to use stain or other noxious substances -- just beautiful varieties of wood and hard-finish oil.

Here is the MOTHER of the very young, gifted owner of Ewe-Nique Yarns, with her brand-new grandchild. In the center of the photograph, behind her, is a basket full of wonderful little scarf kits -- dyed by the brilliant young owner -- called Skeleton Scarves. They contain ultra-soft kid mohair and an amount of hand-dyed silk. Made on big needles in garter stitch, with occasional shots of the silk, they end up looking like froth with fossils mysteriously embedded in the body of a scarf. SOME (not all) of my shopping bags full of wool can be seen in the left of the photograph. I didn't get a photograph of the young genius herself. Next time!

Finally: Here is Larry struggling to deal with the STUFF I brought back -- Ann Reisler's big, fluffy skeins of pencil roving spun with yarn or angelina; Ewe-Nique's amazing kid mohair (hand dyed -- see the photo of her mother above); some first-shear natural gray lambswool yarn; the wooden spinners; on and on. The scarf kits that I mentioned are in the middle of the drafting table, tumbling to the front. Also got some really gorgeous glass buttons from Michigan's Diane Edwards (Annie's).

Now I'm going to start another page and show you some photographs of fall in my garden!

svb

OKAY OKAY I can take a hint....!

2011-09-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

OKAY OKAY! What a lot of heckling friends!

Here are the other four hats -- cooked up especially for Labor Day, which, I'm pleased to say, is COOL instead of hot and humid. All of them look too short and squat in the photographs -- my photography, I'm afraid, isn't professional. But:

The first one is a crocheted Noro Kureyon thing (I don't like the hand of Kureyon, so I'm using it up on hats and other utilitarian objects) with two tagua nut buttons to conceal the beginning of rounds-- mostly puffs and half double crochet with crab-stitch edging. The second one is also crocheted with a single strand of hand-paint that I bought eons ago -- hard to see the stitch pattern, but it's an open shell pattern. The knitted terra cotta one is the same Rowan Drift that I used below to make the experimental Tunisian hat. A simple box stitch with crocheted chain top-knot. The last one is a triple strand seed stitch knitted cloche with a rolled brim -- 41 stitches, then 43 for the body, 7 inches worked even in seed, then decreased to 42 for the top, decreases in six wedges, initially of 7 sts each -- three strands include a Plymouth wool-acrylic variegated and tweedy light worsted-weight yarn, the name of which is lost in the mists of time; a strand of Valley Yarns novelty metallic/mohair; and a strand of fluffy wool-acrylic two-tone yarn from Reynolds ("Main Street"). Crocheted pieces were done with my default hook (Size H). Hats were done on 13's.

Wish I were a better camera-woman -- they all look better than the photos show, and are great fun to cook up. This has become a winter tradition at Artisan Knitworks: I go on a hat orgy, everybody stays warm. Except me. I don't wear hats. I have a natural 'hat' of nice, thick, gray hair.

So get a big pile of wool in colors and textures that you like and cut loose, blending yarns at will!

svb

and here's a funny little Tunisian hat....

2011-09-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

On Labor Day, what better thing to do than to cook up a simple little Tunisian crochet hat? I've made five hats so far this weekend -- for sale in the studio -- and this one was kind of a lark. Here's what to do: You need one ball (less than 90 yards) of superbulky wool or its equivalent, if the yarn is very, very lofty -- I used Rowan "Drift." It's working up at about .75 sts per inch on a size humungous hook (see the photos -- I think it's about a size S, an old plastic thing with a straight handle, and so suitable for Tunisian.....). The body was worked sideways in a strip. Chain 9. Work Tunisian simple stitch for about 19 inches. Break yarn. Slip-stitch the two ends together, RS facing. Decide which side is up (!!!). On top side, single crochet in back loops all the way around, then decrease radically (1 decrease in every 3 sts over and over until you have only 3 or 4 sts left. Fasten off and pull yarn end through the remaining sts. Go to the other side, now designated "the bottom." Work 1 round of single crochet all around; fasten off. Darn in yarn ends. Take a picture and put it on your blog!

svb

Mortgages and Tunisian Crochet.....???

2011-09-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Two topics at once: First, the mortgages part. Some time ago, as many friends know, I bought a big ol' house (c. 1896) to rescue, fix up and flip. I pumped oodles of money into it. I will never reveal how much (the idea was to hide money from the unproductive stock market). Of course the joke was on me, and so I find myself possessed of a HHHHUUUUGGGE mortgage (and other things) in a market that won't permit a decent house sale. And it's a house that's too idiosyncratic for Grosse Pointers, with a handful of exceptions -- a quirky urban house, marooned in a suburb. So much for the Big Flip.

So I went to an event in Novi, Michigan, sponsored by many banks for the benefit of mortgagees who were experiencing financial pressure. WOW. It was at the so-called Showplace, a gigantic expo center with a three-block-long parking lot. The lot was FULL. Inside, the scene was just plain grotesque. Bankers were lined up at half-block-long lines of tables across the full width of an enormous ball room -- in fresh little Polo shirts, differently colored according to their bank (Chase was royal blue). Each little banker had a shiny silver laptop -- hundreds of them, the lids propped open. Meanwhile, clients sat on the sidelines behind ropes, as if in a deli waiting to order chopped liver and pastrami, clutching little slips with NUMBERS. After 3 hours, my number came up. The little fellow in the crisp, obviously new blue shirt was polite enough -- but it was clear from his demeanor that he was in it for the money, literally. He even had a card specially printed for the occasion (how much did those mathing laptops, matching shirts, and new cards COST??). I tried to take a panoramic photo of the scene, but it wouldn't fit into one frame, so I just got a couple of random shots. Had to quit because a couple of Red Shirts (another bank) were eyeing me. Folks, this is emblematic of our time. What a commentary. You can't really sense the depth or width of the ballroom......

IN THE MEANTIME: While turning out hats for the winter season, I've also been working on a very thick, very easy Tunisian crochet shawl to show people when I offer Tunisian Crochet again at the studio.....just to demonstrate what nice objects can be made from Simple Stitch and a bit of crocheted fringe (beginning project!) and lovely yarn. In this case, I used 30-year-old LaGran mohair from my attic stash (I have an entire closet full of mohair, if you must know!), a strand of Silk Garden Lite (Noro), and for a bit of drama and light-catching interest, some to-and-fro rows of Trendsetter's Dune, one of my all-time-favorite yarns, at the ends and at the center. It's about 7 feet long and slightly less than two feet wide. Of course, I used one of Bag Smith's humungous Size S, 18-inch, hand-carved wooden Tunisian crochet hooks. The starting foundation row had only 28 stitches. Here it is!!!! You, too, can do it. It took me less than a week, working on it only for brief snatches of time. Every row (and each stitch) occupies an inch. The Dune doesn't show in the photo (blame my cheap-o camera), but it's in the 7th, 9th, and 11th rows, third photograph. The shawl is light, frothy, and hugely fun. Next will be a wide Prism black mohair three-quarter length coat with Dolman sleeves, with some Trendsetter Tonalita (and the occasional shot of Dune) worked with the mohair, done mostly in rectangles with slight armhole and neckline shaping. Might add a stand-up collar made from a Tunisian strip. This one will have HUUUGGGE buttons, mismatched and vintage.

More soon, after the Wisconsin show has come and gone. svb

Wisconsin Ho...!

2011-09-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

This Thursday, after my freshman class ends at 4:50, Lois and I will take off (from the university area) for Jefferson, Wisconsin, the site of the annual Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. It's a great show, medium sized, full of wonderful local and regional artisans working at a consistently high level. I have always loved this drive.....It's my old stomping grounds, sort of -- a Minnesotan can't help but love the landscape and people of Wisconsin. Besides, it's in Wisconsin that I broke my nose while skiing at Trollhaugen in southern Wisconsin, more or less on a dare.....You do NOT go skiing with a couple of daredevil lads and take their word for how you can ski down the expert slope with no experience whatsoever. They flew OVER a deep pit; I fell into it -- so much for the lovely Romanesque nose. Sigh. To this day, it doesn't work properly (I sniff all the time). Years later, a plastic surgeon tried to get some of the fragments out and straighten the nose....didn't work. The fragments part anyway.

Other memories are more positive. Wisconsin's glaciated regions are drop-dead gorgeous. There are butte-like landforms that invite climbing, vast reaches of sculpted hills and valleys. The most famous, of course, are the Wisconsin Dells landforms, but much of Wisconsin is just as beautiful as that riverbed area -- boulders deposited by glaciers, and the sharp edges of the escarpment where you can still see where the glacier ended.

In the countryside, a fat dairy cow inhabits every field -- I swear. Well, perhaps I exaggerate.

But it's a wondrous place, and I do hope Lois can put up with some rhapsodic exclamations from time to time. I'll also want to stop in Milton, Wisconsin, at the odd old house that's been made over into a craft and art center for the entire county. Last time, I bought some great hand-sewn bags there.

More later, with photographs of the event. Happy Labor Day. We are closing the studio for TWO DAYS IN A ROW, for the first time in the firm's existence. Everyone is tired.

svb

The MAD HATTER Initiative.....!

2011-08-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

ANNOUNCING THE MAD HATTER INITIATIVE and some wonderful spin-offs!

This year at Artisan Knitworks, I’m going to play around with the idea of warm and wonderful hats.

First, hats to buy: As some of you already know, each year I go on a hat-making binge and try to fill the shop with knitted and crocheted hats – a few of them with scarves, though I don't much like matchy-matchy hat/scarf sets. Buy 'em for yourself, or buy 'em for gifts. This year, I’m going to make OOOOODLES of them. They will be ready by Thanksgiving – so (ready for a bad joke?) hold onto your hat. In the meantime, I’m leaving one or two around the place for everyone to contemplate. Some will be slightly insane, as hats ought to be. They will be made up in all kinds of patterns, colors, and weights – though probably not in fingering yarn. Nobody would want to have to pay for the labor!

Second, hats to make: I am going to organize a couple of special hat-making sessions on Sunday at about 2:00. I hope to persuade Judy Champagne to run one of them. You may have seen her wonderful top-down I-cord hats in the shop. She will show you how to do it in any weight yarn during one of the Special Sunday Sessions (Larry will think of a name for them). In another such session, I will show you what fun you can have with the Mad Hatter pattern (bottom-up knitted hats, sometimes with big flowers). And in yet another, I’ll show crocheters how to create fabulous crocheted berets with free-form tops.

Third, hats to make you rich (well, sort of ...): We are going to have a hat contest. The deadline for entry will be December 10^th. Pick up an entry form anytime after Labor Day. Hats will be on display from December 10 through about December 15^th or thereabouts, so that you can give them as gifts if you wish. The contest has two divisions (children, adult) and several gift-certificate prizes. We ask only that you invent the hat yourself (you can base it on one of our patterns, but it has to be inventive, original and well crafted – no internet or published designs allowed). And we ask that you use our yarns for the hat. All winners will be published in our newsletter.

How’s that?

Fall is coming!!!!!!!!!! I will go to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in early September – a really wonderful regional festival that is growing by leaps and bounds – in search of yet more fabulous materials for everyone. In the meantime, KNIT AND CROCHET YOUR WAY TO GOOD HEALTH!!!

svb

The Allegan Fair, continued!!!!!

2011-08-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

As promised, I have some images of the annual Michigan Fiber Festival at Allegan -- though, because I'm the photographer, they're not exactly elegant. It's a wonderful event -- one of the best middle-sized fiber expos in the nation -- though, lately, I confess that I think the very best fiber festivals are the smallest ones, as with the wee gaggle of vendors at Sandhill Crane Winery a few weeks ago. Has to do with table costs (lower!), and so the newest artisans can actually afford to attend, often for the first time -- so I get to see them at the outset, before they've actually gone big-time. I also get to follow them over time to see if and how they develop!

But Allegan is a good, good show.....Here are some indoor and outdoor scenes:

...and here is Lois about to SIN ......

.... and here is HUMPHREY the Camel (I have never been this up-close-and-personal with a camel!

....and, finally, here are the lovely people from Mohair in Motion, from whom I bought oodles of holiday-ready mohair with glitz -- shawls, shawls, shawls!!!!

More sometime soon.....time to get to work! svb

To Allegan and back.....and back....and back....

2011-08-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

Well, my wonderful studio employee Lois and I took off for the Michigan Fiber Festival this past Friday, very early in the morning -- too early, if you ask me! -- and had a wonderful, sunny time driving along the freeway (which can be prettier than in other parts of the state) and back roads to Allegan, a sweet little town almost to the western shore of the state, but not quite. The festival is now a fixture in the lives of fiber fanatics in Michigan and surrounding states. I have noticed with interest the growing number of non-Michigan vendors from neighboring states such as Wisconsin and Indiana -- but also the absence of vendors who used to travel long distances. No doubt this has to do with travel costs. In my little rented car, it cost about 50 bucks just to drive across the state and back. Imagine if you were driving a truck or an RV full of merchandise!!!

We briefly met up with some other friends of Artisan Knitworks, and then prowled the one big building and then a second, smaller one in search of wonderful things for the studio. I also talked for awhile with Ellen (Minand) of Ellen's Half-Pint Farm, whose gifted sister Carol Buskey has been diagnosed with cancer and is slated for additional surgery on September 16th. Ellen has a darling little pink book that people are signing for Carol's pleasure -- we all wish her godspeed, and if there is justice, she will be FINE.

I will publish a small boatload of photographs tomorrow or the next day, once Larry has loaded them into the computer (I can't figure out how to do it -- I do NOT know why my once-formidable mechanical skills are slipping away, but they are). For now, let me tell you that Lois and I found wonderful, wonderful yarn. One bundle is made of Merino Wool and DOG -- yes, as in puppies -- the kind of wool found in double-coated dogs, the down only, not the upper hair. Lois was, shall we say, unsettled by the whole thing. I think it's wonderful. Maybe you have to like dogs. I bought ten skeins of lovely undyed, fluffy doggie and wool-blend yarn as an experiment. I also bought thirty cookie cutters in the shape of sheep (Lois again was unsettled -- "This isn't yarn!!!!!") -- an armload of Bag Smith's wildly expensive but wonderful mega-crochet hooks for Tunisian and other varieties of big-gauge stitching (think 5 strands at once!). I'd love to play around with wide strips for coats, jackets, ruanas. And I will, when time appears -- maybe I"ll do what I've done with big knits -- simply work with two balls at a time and let the yarns run out, then add other balls. What a coat that would make in Tunisian!

[[NOTE added later: The doggie yarn is NOT being received very well -- people say, WHAT? A dog? I wonder why they don't say WHAT? A musk ox? instead, they pay 40 bucks a yard...I'm smiling. Probably has to do with the absence of musk oxen in the living room....!].

The vendors hadn't all arrived, which surprised us -- usually there are 3 or 4 buildings full, but on Friday, there were only 2. I hoped, as we walked around, that it was not an indicator of waning interest. I didn't think so then, and I don't now. It has to do with costs.

But then disaster struck. We got about a third of the way home and poor, conscientious Lois (who had offered to carry heavy parcels) discovered that she had left behind the bag of big, expensive hooks. I thought for a minute that she was going to fling herself onto the highway. We kept going. No point in worrying -- I have SO much faith in fiber people. In this world, we worry about things that matter -- viciousness, racism, sexism, people who lie, people who kill other people, and so on. Fiber people don't bounce checks. Lois doesn't make any more mistakes than I do. Knitters return things that don't belong to them, and so on. In five years of business, we have had one bounced check, and it was written by a scam artist who, we learned, was known to the police. NOT a fiber person. We then had a sumptuous, old-fashioned supper at Schuler's in beautiful downtown Marshall, Michigan, which really IS beautiful, the streets lined with dazzling painted ladies and other astonishing reminders of a bygone time.

The next morning, bright and early, I simply drove back by myself, while Lois manned the shop. I secretly loved having to do it -- Three hours to think about matters of importance (at least to me) and to listen to the Coffee House station on Sirius, more time to look at the verdant countryside, to smell the late-summer cornfields -- a pungent, grassy-polleny odor that gives a kid from Minnesota great pleasure. I confess, dear readers, that I got out of the car on one occasion and walked for maybe 15 minutes between the rows. We'll ignore the terrifying thunder storm that sprang up out of nowhere near Allegan. I simply waited it out under an overpass. I asked for and received a big black trash bag from a coffee shop to use as a raincoat (you simply punch out the eyes, or make a neck slit!), but by the time I got there, the rain had stopped and sun had reappeared.

....and of course the green tote bag with those expensive crochet hooks had been turned in to the main office. Of course. We're dealing with knitters and crocheters, after all. Thanks to Audrey, if she's reading this, for helping me find them!!!

More later, when I can offer illustrative images!

svb

Something Unexpected....

2011-08-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when we think that everything is ugly in the world, unspeakably ugly -- politics, the complete idiocy of political brinksmanship at public expense, the idiocy of Sarah Palin, the idiocy of journalists who keep showing pictures of her, on and on -- an image appears that reminds you that ugly things aren't always ugly. Sometimes, it's your point of view. I mean that quite literally.

Consider the fish fly. In Minnesota, we called them May Flies. It's unclear why. They appeared in June, invariably. In Michigan, they appear in late May or early June, and they're called Fish Flies. They are just awful. They cover windows with their totally useless bodies. They are born, they eat nothing, and they die in 24 hours. What possible utility do they have? And they smell. And they accumulate in DRIFTS (you can sweep them up). Outside the studio, they formed a kind of coral reef (remember that reefs are the skeletons of creatures, so you surely can have a reef of fish flies). Ugly. Well........

Just look what Larry saw. Larry managed to make them beautiful. There is a moral here.

Candace!

2011-08-05T15:10:00.001-07:00

Candace Eisner-Strick is coming from November 10th or 11th through the 13th!!! Stay tuned. svb

Jackson, Michigan (continued)

2011-07-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

...........as I was saying: I found this wonderful artisan at Jackson! Picked up a dozen of her fabulous sock skeins, and she is going to send me a dozen more, once the show is over. With small producers like Cakewalk Yarns, it's often best for the artisan to try to sell materials at full price during the festival and then to deal with people like me, who need to buy at some kind of discount. Here she is -- we will see more of her. She's talented.

In addition, I found a pile of gorgeous yarn made by a woman from Fort Wayne, Indiana, under the name Hippie Penguin (!), who is leaving the business. This isn't a recession story really. She says she can't do both -- raise a family and dye yarn. So, really, it's a story about women's lives. I wish her luck. I bought a LOT of what she had left.

After a delightful lunch in the winery's newly spacious tasting rooms, a big fat egg-salad sandwich on Zingerman's fabulous rye bread with some watermelon on the side -- all for five bucks -- I took off, or at least would have liked to take off.

The difficulty was this: When I came west to Jackson, it was hard not to notice that the entire eastern side of Interstate 94 was completely choked with single-file traffic moving at about 10 miles an hour. The geniuses in charge of road construction have apparently decided not to pay attention to weekends. It used to be that, when lanes were not actively under construction, people took down the barricades and dreaded Orange Cones over the weekend so people could move about. No more. Now when there are no workmen anywhere, the cones remain, even though work is only prospective. So I couldn't get home the easiest way.

The solution, of course, was Matilda: Larry suggested that I set her (she's my GPS) for Lansing and do what she said until I ran into I-96. So I did. She took me through the wilds of rural Michigan for a long time. It was gorgeous. Finally, I ended up on state road 127, which leads to I-96, but NOT before I went through Mason, Michigan, and noticed signs that said ANTIQUE DISTRICT. You KNOW that I can't resist that kind of sign.

So I went into Mason. The district turned out to be a series of antique shops and 'malls' (not big enough to be malls, but never mind) occupying a square block. The first one, which was otherwise interesting enough, had no vintage buttons. The second one had no antiques!!! This, too, reflects our economy. So much of the texture of America is simply vanishing. BUT. This weekend the building provided a home for a craft festival. I found some DARLING brooches made by a woman I'd never met before, Linda Maxwell, from vintage zippers, buttons, and silk neckties. The prices were, shall we say, ridiculous (someday women will learn to value their labor, but I'm tired of delivering lectures everywhere I go, so increasingly I'm just rolling with it). I bought about 20 of them. They will be wondrous on hats, coats, and god knows where else....our clients have good imaginations!

Here is the porch area of the no-antiques antique mall containing the craft show -- The lovely person sitting at the table had been handing out pie samples all day and was just plain exhausted. It was VERY hot, with humidity matching the temperature.

I forgot to mention the amazing Suri Alpaca handspun yarn that I bought from a Michigan producer at the festival, and the root beer float procured at a genuine old-fashioned A and W root beer stand (shades of childhood). (I will never be thin, I guess). Got home in one piece and dumped everything on the lounge coffee table, much to Lois' and Larry's astonishment. More soon. I'm going to be home now for awhile, the better to get some scholarship done!!!!!

svb

Wine and Wool?

2011-07-31T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I visited Sandhill Creek Winery's annual, modestly sized fiber festival -- one day only, maybe a dozen vendors. It's a wonderful spot -- close enough to Jackson, Michigan, to be near a grocery store and espresso shop, but far enough away to be well and truly in the wilds of rural Michigan. At the very end of this photograph, you can see the start of the festival -- the driveway is VERY narrow, the booths drawn along in a medieval string until you get to the winery's wonderful tasting rooms.

Before I was done, I should say in advance, I had found more truly fresh, engaging wool than I sometimes find at some of the big, better established and better-known shows. There are reasons for this: The brand new people often choose to show their work first at small shows, where table costs are relatively low. So -- in search of new blood, I go to such places, and find WONDERFUL yarns and buttons -- it's SOOOOO exciting. The great find for this trip was Cakewalk Yarns (see the next posting).

....and here are some of the vines and scattered picnic tables that make things so pleasant:

I visited with Ann Ryan of Color Bug Yarns at long last. We have been missing one another for quite some time. She is a Detroiter -- I want her to come to the studio with her yarns, which are unusual and quite beautiful (colorways that are surprising and deftly painted, particularly in fingering weight), but she has two kids, ages 3 and 5, and both parents told me that I do NOT want the kids in the studio at this stage in their development. Too bad. Maybe later. In the meantime, I bought a boatload of her yarns in a wide array of colors. Here's Ann from the back, standing behind her booth. I know. An odd photograph. But -- I couldn't find her later when I could have shot her booth from the front!

....and then, of course, there was Riin Gill (Happy Fuzzy Yarns) -- Riin of the delightful purple-y hair and stunning yarns, woven pieces, roving, and so on. I bought only a handful of her skeins and then some gorgeous green-toned rovings for our spinners. But -- it was great to see her, and, right next door, also to see Barb Lambrecht (Winding Creek Wool), from whom I secured lovely sheepy-y pendants and glass buttons. Barb is the one who does NOT have purple hair. The third photograph shows the back side of Barb's booth with its cool baskets -- Riin's booth off to the right.

The new find for the day was this gorgeous woman -- the owner of Cakewalk Yarns. She makes truly delectable sock yarns with speckles in two dyeing stages, and at a reasonable price -- has only been doing it for six months or so. What a gifted person! But Blogspot won't let me download more photos, so on to the next entry. Two can play this game!!!!!!!!!!!! I've got a Ph.D., and Blogspot does NOT. smiling........... svb

....and now a reduction in force....

2011-07-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

Just now, the faculty and staff at Wayne State got a message from our president (A. Gilmour) which said (a) that the budget has been reduced by 22 million dollars, the largest loss in the university's history, (b) tuition would go up almost 7 percent for undergrads and more than 7 percent for graduate students; and (c) that after cutting out all kinds of inessential services, the only recourse is now to "reduce the force" of support staff and, presumably, untenured part-time people. So here we go. We now bear the fruits of recent shifts in the nation's political preferences. "Liberty" now means freedom from public employees, good roads, first-class education at public universities, police, fire fighters, and social safety. Public employees means people like me -- with our huge salaries,our swollen pensions, etc. What a dark, bleak joke. Our pensions and other benefits pale when compared to those provided by major corporations to their middle-management people, much less to those at the helm. I truly despair. And I wonder why people aren't rebelling in the streets. We protest, but it's as if we are protesting in a black hole. Time to knit.

svb

The City People Never See....

2011-07-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I'm thinking tonight about Detroit -- the misconceptions beyond its borders, the physical disarray and collapse within its borders, the perpetual optimism and courage of its citizens, the gallantry of Mayor Dave Bing, the city's cultural tapestry (Albania! Africa! China! Korea! Lebanon! Syria! Iran! All of Europe! India! Lithuania! on and on, and with restaurants for each and every one). I do wish the NY Times, which seems to revel in trashing the city, could see what we see when we look a little closer.

To be sure, driving through the city engenders enormous sadness. But what resilience! The new Chrysler ads are real jewels for exactly that reason: IN YOUR FACE, everyone -- here's a city that can find beauty and possibilities in the face of grinding poverty and rank injustice. There are FARMS springing up along Jefferson Avenue, for heaven's sake!! Here are some of Larry's photographs, now a bit old. I love the fractured flag, which flies in spite of it all; the arch on Hart Plaza, just enough of it to catch the light; the rugged stone face (also from Hart Plaza); and a mysterious woman in a gray trenchcoat -- can you find her? who is she? -- pretending to be part of the Underground Railroad crowd in the River Walk memorial statute. svb

Up North...!

2011-07-24T06:03:00.000-07:00

Where I grew up, in that most intemperate of all American climates, Minnesota, we used to talk about Going Up North -- by which we meant that we were going to take a drive to Duluth or Grand Marais (there's more than one!) or Lake Mille Lacs (yes, I know -- I can't help it if Americans don't know French) or even Brainerd and Bemidji.  Bemidji is the home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I understand that people from other states think that Paul and Babe belong to them. Wrong. Babe and her owner hailed from Minnesota.

Minnesota really does have over 10,000 lakes, and Brainerd is a resort community situated smack in the middle of a half-dozen of them.  Duluth (in the early 20th century, home to the dread Finnish Socialists -- how scary is THAT?) is now one of the most entirely delightful small cities in America, with a splendid array of old Victorian B and B's, a gallery district near the waterfront, and a spectacular walkway from the B and B district along the water to downtown. I was shocked during a visit a few years ago to see how sophisticated Duluth had become. It used to be imagined as an outpost of human civilization, as if everyone lived in igloos. And of course part of that reputation is well-earned, given the fact of temperatures so low in winter that you can't even think about taking a long walk. In fact, throughout Minnesota, from about November through March, people look a lot like pillows moving along on two sticks.

In Michigan, Up North means Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island or, short of that magical place (marred only a bit by endless fudge shops and too much hawking), towns like Traverse City and Charlevoix and Petoskey. It's a true wonderland. To get there from Detroit, you drive through some quite ordinary, if lovely, farmland (flat, green) and then, increasingly, the woodlands encroach until you are moving through a long, green tunnel.....miles and miles of it.   It can be mesmerizing. I had to turn on the radio at one point to stay awake. Then, when you finally get to leave Interstate 75, the tunnel gives way to charming small towns, collectible shops, rolling farmland, and glimpses of the bay, with roads running along the lake shore like curly ribbon. In July, there are plots of corn, lots of cherry vendors ("Washed Sweet Cherries!"), and potato patches. It's candy for both eyes and mind. I also bought a truckload of cherries, of course. Ambrosia for the tummy and a reminder of simpler times in life, when all it took was a bag of farm-fresh SOMETHING to rescue a bad day. Wanna see some pretty Michigan flowers?

Up North can be extremely wild and scary. Some years ago, in 2001, when I decided to run away from home for a month or so in my VW (my first husband had died and I had to think long and hard about the future), I crossed the bridge into the upper peninsula and promptly got lost in the woods -- not on purpose. It was terrifying. You can actually run out of gas and starve to death. But if you do NOT get lost in the woods, northern Michigan has dunes and woods and cliffs and soaring flocks of waterbirds and woods and walkways along gorgeous lakes and woods ... Did I mention the woods?

I stayed at a particularly dreadful Day's Inn. Never, ever book a room at the Day's Inn in Petoskey, Michigan. The beds were both swayback, as if doing an imitation of old horses -- the toilet didn't flush -- the sink didn't drain -- and when I mentioned these things in the morning, the manager said without cracking a smile, "Well it doesn't cost much, does it?" But it did. It cost more than 130 bucks with tax. What kind of management style is that???

I skipped the so-called breakfast, for which in any case there were no available seats. Instead, I went downtown in Petsokey, which is a charming place to go -- found a woman who looked friendly, described myself as a Day's Inn Refugee, and asked her where I could find breakfast. She recommended a great place called the Bistro on a side street, where I found a lovely, ungreasy tomato-basil omelet, fresh fruit, and good coffee -- not to mention a really nice wait person who didn't keep asking me if everything was all right -- and, most important, didn't tell me everything she was about to do ("Now I"m going to pour water," "Here's more coffee..." or my all time favorite, "How is everything?" after only a bite and every two minutes thereafter.....)(this from an ex-waitress who was trained in the good old days to just DO it).

On the positive side: On Friday night, I set out in search of a decent dinner and found myself in an area of Petoskey called Bay View, which of course wanders along the water. Bay View is a dazzling collection of Victoriana. There, I took a chance on Stafford's Bay View Hotel, a rambling place built in the late 19th century and apparently operating at a high level ever since. After a truly savory, well-prepared cedar plank of whitefish, I went on a short tour of the place. It has 30+ rooms, all different, marvelous views of the bay with seating, nice gardens, a sun room, gathering rooms -- just the thing for a fiber arts retreat. And it only costs about 250 (with meals) for a weekend. This bears thought. I need to find a visitor willing to teach an intensive workshop in the woods!

The Charlevoix fiber festival, held each year in mid-July, occupies a place called The Castle. To get there from Petoskey, you need to drive THROUGH Charlevoix, which can be a disaster. The fiber fest is held during the so-called Venetian Festival, the name for which someone had better explain to me someday, and it's simply impossible to get through the town, particularly if there is a foot race -- as there was yesterday. So I waited with everyone else and finally took a side road to get around the snarl. What some people won't do for YARN! Next time, I'll lay better plans.

The Castle is (how can I say this?) a bit weird. Why would such a thing exist in upper Michigan?

It was a fun time, well-organized, and possessed as usual of the world's best caramel corn vendor on the castle green. But as compared to the last time I was there, I think the number of non-yarn offerings has expanded (that's GOOD for non-yarn people -- really good for spinners and rug hookers -- not so good for me). That's not to say I came away empty-handed. Oh no. Deb McDermott of Stonehedge Fiber Mills -- the maker of the incomparable Shepherd's Wool in East Jordan, just down the road from Charlevoix -- had experimented with hand-dyed sock and sweater yarns, so I snapped up almost all the fingering yarn. She has some kettle-dyed wool-silk that I also will snap up if she esn't sell it (no point in selling at a discount if you can sell it full price). I found Barb Lambrecht of Winding Creek Wool, from whom I've bought yarn and scarves and hats in the past -- and grabbed some really spectacular handspun wool made basically from scraps. I even bought several bags of the raw materials so that our spinners can replicate what she's done.

And of course I found the gifted and delightful Kim Leach. Kim is from Palmira (Palmyra?), Wisconsin, a town I've never visited, nor do I know exactly where it is.....despite my fairly close knowledge of the Wisconsin landscape. (I adore Wisconsin). Kim's yarn line is Happy Hands. She makes Toe Jamz sock yarn (good for more than socks) as well as other gorgeous yarns. She has a great-and-getting-greater color eye -- what a talent! Just eccentric enough to be fascinating, never dull, and always technically first-class. No muddy borders in Kim's offerings. I bought a fairly large stack of Toe Jamz in colorways like Brown Eyed Girl...and walked off with some pretty amazing alpaca-wool in a watery colorway. Here's Kim (who is about 5 feet tall!!!)!

Kim says she could be talked into holding a trunk show in the studio in late autumn -- I surely hope so. She is someone worth meeting, a joy to know, and one of the forces of nature that make life a little better when you see the smile, hear the optimism in her voice, touch the beautiful yarn.

I drove home amidst hundreds of people who decided to beat the traffic by coming home early (!) and suffered mightily from road construction and a car accident that left grizzly images in my brain -- but it was great fun to get to the studio before closing and dump all of the yarn on the floor, to the amazement of customers enjoying the Saturday Knit-Together. It's become a kind of custom: When I am on the road and apt to return before closing, people hang around. What a delight.

More later. svb

Off to Charlevoix...

2011-07-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't gone north (it's a long way!) to the Charlevoix. Michigan, fiber festival for the past two years -- I see most of the vendors at other festivals anyway, and gas has been VERY expensive (in case you haven't noticed! Last time I filled my wee little VW, it was almost fifty bucks!!!!!!!!). But I need a road trip. Really need one.   So I have rented a sedan (to save wear and tear on the aforementioned Bug, which is aging: One of my students asked, somewhat incredulously, whether I really DID have duct tape on the front of my car holding a chunk of facia in place.....answer was Yes). (The poor thing also lost a big chunk of something plastic underneath in the front, some kind of mud shield, and I haven't had the time to drive it to the very distant dealership).

It feels like an uncommonly difficult time. I've been contemplating the many things that have conspired to produce that feeling. First, I am trying to sell the big, expensive house to clear the deck for retirement, and of course there is some worry about whether ANYTHING will sell in this dreadful market, much less an idiosyncratic big ol' thing built in stages (1896, 1911, 1967, 2004). It looks a lot like a beached ship, complete with a pointy prow. But someone will LIKE that kind of house, you'd think. I did. It doesn't look like other homes in this area. It's asymmetrical. It's not safe or predictable. It has a California carport instead of the ubiquitous (and boring) garage. It has acres of parking. It has no real yard, only beautiful patios and gardens. We'll see. It's a quirky urban home stuck incongruously in a conservative suburb.

Second, and more important, I am experiencing real desperation about the state of the world, helplessness as I think about what individuals can do to change American politics, to make the "my way or the highway" Tea Party either fade away or blow up (I'd prefer the former, but at this point, I wouldn't mind a little well-placed rough-housing -- I'm thinking of the way they used to throw unpopular speakers off the stage bodily in the mid-19th century). The United States seems to me to be fracturing, atomizing, ceasing to resemble its better self. I am deeply worried about my country and its people, who seem to me to be affirming the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson's many pleas for solid, ongoing education (Only an "educated citizenry" could ensure the future of republics, he insisted, and look how right he was!).

On one side of the political aisle, we have a huge number of people pitted against laboratory science (no global warming?????) as well as fact (if a liberal says it's true, you can disregard it -- 'facts' are liberal constructs -- etc. -- so you can make up your own 'facts'). There is an unprecedentedly purist defense of cowboy capitalism afoot as well. On the other side, we have a bunch of Democrats who apparently had group surgery recently to eliminate their spines. If you hold majorities in the Senate and hold the White House, why on earth do you need to be the only party continually giving ground? Bad enough that insurance companies still hold the nation in thrall. Now we are going to whittle away at social security programs to make sure the wealthiest Americans can have huge tax deductions for private jets?

Taken together, nothing could be more distressing. If we don't have the ability to reason together based upon agreed-on facts, we are lost. We are a diverse people, incapable of being entirely homogenous no matter how hard we try (and the right wing wants to continue trying, it seems). The only way to pull off a mutt republic is to embrace science and informed conversations and compromise. We also need to figure out that sharing excess wealth is a good thing -- when people die for lack of health care, that's both immoral and unethical for a people who can afford to build multi-million dollar fighter jets and 24-million-dollar mansions, not to mention Hoover Dam.  So here we are.  Congress is hamstrung over one of the stupidest disputes imaginable. It defies logic, doesn't it, to insist that you can just keep cutting programs and never, ever gather in more revenue? NEVER MIND that we are the least seriously taxed of ALL developed nations, or that we are now taxed at levels lower than we were fifty years ago. I know. I'm raving. Somebody has to do it. The Democrats aren't. And that's part of the problem. Republicans have always been much better at political maneuvering than Democrats have been. It's as if it's beneath us. So we lose.

The greed, the self-regarding infatuation with wealth and its unregulated pursuit, make me stay awake at night. And then there is the overt racism that has bubbled up like some kind of nasty tarpit in the wake of Obama's election.  He's a constitutional law professor, for god's sake, the fruit of the nation's finest universities, the smartest person in the room at any given moment. Yet complete fools feel qualified, not just to call him wrong -- we all have the ability to do that, if we can make our point -- but to call him stupid. I have never seen such presumption, such insult to accomplishment, such rhetorical and intellectual vulgarity, in all of my 66 years. I've wished, more than once, that he'd turn to some of these people and say, in a rude voice, "Don't you have work to do?"

The odds are against the USA at the moment, and what's different is that I am not entirely sure we will be the same optimistic, insanely up-beat people on the other side of the crisis. I really hate that kind of uncertainty about what the nation will be in a decade or two. It's foreign to me, and I hope to hell it's a false alarm.

Third, and important to me, if not to everyone:   We are headed now toward a new school year; I am not done with the book ms. that lurks in my upstairs computer.  I should be; yet I am continually diverted from it, and probably more than a little depressed by all of the aforementioned situations, which work against a clear focus and the necessary stretches of uninterrupted time in the study.  I need to finish a review essay for the Women's Review of Books by August 1 (the book is not as good as it should have been), and I confess that I find the prospect exhausting -- I'm at a low ebb.

So tomorrow in the afternoon I'll drive north, up Interstate 75, blissfully free of ringing telephones, words on the page, student essays on the screen, and so on.  I will take only knitting (well, I'll also take a chapter that an ex-student sent to me from Indiana -- a book chapter I've promised to read for awhile now).

Kim Leach (Happy Hands Yarn) will be there -- I'll pick up two skeins of yarn she has custom-dyed for one of my customers, and she wants to show me something wonderful that she just got from a new mill in New Zealand.  We badly need sock-weight yarn, so I'll be looking especially for fingering weight lovelies, semi-solid and variegated. Also wonderful buttons.

Then there is a small show at Sandhill Crane Winery near Jackson, MI, on the last day of the month; there, I'll find Color Bug Yarns, who promised me a long time ago they'd do a trunk show (I'll have to remind them) and our good friend Rita Petteys, who has to be talked into another trunk show (the last one was a roaring success).

And, right now, there's a trunk show in the studio courtesy of FloraFil Cotton, a really lovely plump and juicy (!) American-made cotton.  It's really NICE stuff.

This entry didn't start out to be about trunk shows. You never know what'll develop, do you?   Love to all of you. Over and Out.

svb

The Wonderful Riin Gill Trunk Show...

2011-07-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today was the big Riin Gill Trunk Show -- from which a number of people carried away quantities of Riin's brilliantly dyed fingering, sport and worsted-weight wools. The middle room was jammed with evidence of her growing creativity: We had not only the handspun and handpainted skeins that she was making when I first met her some years ago....now she has handframed and handknitted hats, scarves, felted jewelry, sock flats, roving, and her own patterns (a nifty modular-topped sock, e.g., and a modular-knit hat). I grabbed some of the patterns and of course some yarn -- though not as much as I will grab from her when summer doldrums begin to ebb and the cash supply increases.

Here is what the middle room looked like today, for those of you who will live to regret not coming!

Riin and I (and her great friend Robert) also talked about collaborating on some designs. I am going to use four of her handspun colorways, mixed with some marvelous new semi-solid Michigan Romney wool she has added to her line, to work up a side-to-side vest I've had on paper for quite some time. People who come into the studio often admire handspun but don't quite know what to do with it. I have meant to work on a pattern series aimed exclusively at handspun -- designs that would take advantage of the amazing texture and color (but especially the texture) that only handspun yarn delivers. But of course there is the small problem of my day job. With luck, I can use this trunk show and the GORGEOUS pile of yarn I bought for the purpose to actually knit the vest design and work on a pattern (in sizes 36 through about 56) in regular and tunic length. I also want to use Terrie Voigt's dichroic glass buttons.

If all of this works out as planned, the result will be an All-Michigan Vest -- we'll be working on a really good name -- and both of us can sell it with her yarns. Then I can move on to another design. Here is what the pile of yarn AND buttons looks like at present. I will be posting photographs as the piece progresses.

Riin will be at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which always coincides with the hottest day of the year -- this coming weekend. Look for her in the fiber booth!!!

svb

Summer Doldrums...

2011-07-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

.......as if at sea with no wind and only a sail: The house is on the market, which required a thousand hours on the third floor sorting, cleaning, making decisions about which yarns ought to go to the studio and be put on the block as "Stash," our all-purpose category for yarns that I no longer want or yarns that I buy at a steep discount (many of them discontinued). Friends helped. Without Lois, Katie, Ava, Ann, et al, I doubt that anybody could have navigated the stairs to the third floor, much less found it habitable. So now it's presentable -- vacuumed, for heaven's sake, and possessed of a fully clothed dress form to suggest 'fiber studio' instead of attic. I had the place re-insulated a couple of years ago to hedge against the chill of winter and heat of summer. But, while the air conditioner and furnace are more than adequate, the ductwork up there is NOT adequate. So there is still heat in summer and cold in winter, though less of each. Were I to stay here, I'd spend time finding a company willing to redo the ducts. As it is, people mostly want to stick an expensive separate air unit in a wall and be done with it. A shocking lack of gumption and imagination. The problem with my third floor is that some complete fool put the intake register in the main room and the exhaust register (which spews out heat and cold) in the hallway.   DUHHHHH.

My real estate agent, Patti Bargnes, who is wondrous and recommendable -- we have worked together on three buying and selling projects over the years -- tells me that people are just sitting around on the showing and viewing schtick because they're used to sellers not getting offers and think they don't need to act. I hope nobody will be disappointed when I abruptly take the thing off the market in a couple of months. It can go back on the market next year. Or maybe Chase would like it back!!!!!! I am SO sick of house nonsense.

At the studio: We are experiencing the summer doldrums, made more insufferable by invading swarms of smelly, aggressive fish flies. The outdoor sign, the windows, the walls of the building are covered with them, and this year, unlike in past years, we had at least two separate generations of them. They crunch underfoot and under automobile tires. When brushed off of windows, they leave oily smears. The whole thing is ghastly.   And because the house is close to the water, we have them at the house as well -- indeed, during the broker's open house last week, people complained about an odd smell near the entrance, which Larry and I now think had to do with piles of dead, fishy fish flies all around the house.

With any luck at all, local artisans will rediscover Artisan Knitworks' collection of hand-crafted yarn and vintage buttons, and so on, SOON so that we can pay rent!!!!!!!!   I hate summer in that respect. I am working on financial matters, to make it worse, and not crocheting or knitting very much -- this will change.

Thanks for slogging through this vacant entry to the bitter end!

svb

Free-Form Crocheted Lace

2011-06-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm laboring against all odds to clean out the huge, huge house sufficient to sell it....In fact, it goes on the market tomorrow, which is pretty terrifying. We haven't finished painting the deck, which we must do before it rains tomorrow night, and the third floor (1,000 square feet, for god's sake) looks like a yarn museum. A very MESSY yarn museum, I should add quickly, complete with dress form and yarn winder, etc., and you do NOT sell houses that way. I won't mention the basement, which is full of rugs and MANNEQUINS. You walk into the 1896 basement, turn left, and run smack into a gigantic CROWD of mostly-headless mannequins. Talk about a nightmare.

At odd moments, I am working at a free-form lace shawl -- some images for you to enlarge.

Size H hook, with a mohair-acrylic yarn (Botticini) that I bought I know not why many, many years ago. It will settle down when I get done and give it a stiff block. But, for now, the challenge is to complete the entire shawl without breaking the yarn, all the while keeping it flat. It tends to ruffle out at the edges, so I have had to backtrack a couple of times. This technique, like other free-form craft forms, has its own DNA. Each maker does it a bit differently. Mine looks completely unlike Myra Wood's productions, even though I was introduced to this cut-loose exercise from her some years ago in a class at the Madrona fiber retreat (Tacoma, Washington).

I was a crocheter before I was a knitter -- thread crochet, of course, not wool -- so when I am under stress, crochet is my default position. It calms me down, soothes the raveled sleeve, and so on.

More later, when the house is ready for Grosse Pointe house hunters, who spend far too much time planning their next, bigger house purchase, and tend to keep track of every little flaw in a house so they can deduct it from the price. This time, they have a shock coming. I have no intention of paying for someone else's renovations. I'll simply take it off the market.

svb

Australian Goats!

2011-06-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we had a wonderful encounter (complete with trunk show) with Brandyn of Cotlinton Angoras, a firm now situated mostly in the USA for purposes of manufacturing and distribution, but with solid roots in Australia, where the angora goats still live. Brandyn and her husband had a farm for long years (still do, but it's being run day to day by someone else, I gather) with a large herd of very fine angoras (NOT angora rabbits, which yield very fine, hairy yarn! Angora goats yield mohair). The yarn is delicious -- smooth, silky, strong, natural in color, ready for knitting, crocheting, or dyeing. There are some darling little boxes with yarn, beads, and patterns (both knit and crochet) called Tucker Boxes, which is Australian basically for lunch boxes (!!!) (see? I speak Australian!). You can also dye the yarn or the resulting shawls, scarves, and so on. She also left us some bags of yarn all by itself in three weights, for people who want to make something else out of it. This should help educate people as to the merits of pure, fine-grade mohair, which is NOT scratchy or nasty, but which instead is one of the most alluring luxury fibers the world has ever known, with only a slight halo unless it's deliberately brushed. More later. I need to rest! svb

Wild Ride Concluded...

2011-06-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well, the trip to Columbus for this year's big TNNA event was (to make some kind of pun) uneventful, in the sense that nothing awful happened, and there was NOT A BIT of construction on I-75, which I take to be some kind of modern miracle. One of our clients, Lois, who may well become a part-time employee, went with me, and I was glad for the good company.

At the show itself:   We spent a few minutes at lunch and, of course, at Jeni's Ice Cream (at the wondrous Farmer's Market near the convention center), where you can find Cherry and Goat Cheese, Lavendar-Honey, and a number of other amazing flavors. I am sure there are better ices in the world, but I can't say that I've ever found anything better. Over our splendidly abundant Mediterranean lunch plates and ice cream, I have to say that we had an unpleasant encounter with a shop owner from a Detroit suburb who, against all odds, still refuses to learn my name or even to remember that we know one another. I get very tired of this idiotic game, which might be called East Side-West Side. The West Side thinks it's superior to the East Side. I had hoped we would be over this kind of Queen of the Mountain nonsense upon high school graduation. But no. Once again, and even though I saw her two weeks earlier in her own shop, where I pointlessly invited her to a reception, she did the same diengenuous "Don't I know you?" thing that she's done for the last four times. We have even co-sponsored visits by a certain well-known knitting designer (I'll withhold specifics).  This kind of thing makes me want to yell, "When was the last time YOU were asked to address the United States Supreme Court?" But why? I would make a spectacle of myself -- as I'm probably doing right now.

Inside the convention floor, I had a wonderful time with Laura Bryant, whose work is changing -- it's as if she is cutting away everything except the essentials of design (color, structure, texture) to get at the essence of a particular garment. She thinks that something is going on, too, and it's really gratifying to watch her work through this stage in her own development. What a brilliant woman, and possessed of one of the nicest life-partners imaginable (the handsome Matt).  At Trendsetter, I finally met Heidi, the woman with whom I trade e-mail notes, and got to hug Barry. I was surprised not to see my Tonalita vest design -- but he may not be ready to publish the pattern. Everything happens in its own good time. Trendsetter Yarns don't really fit the studio's hand-crafted profile -- but I carry them anyway, because I'm the owner and I think they're beautiful. I can be indulged.

Beyond that, I filled in some holes in the studio's holdings. I ordered some of Lorna's Laces new sock yarn (Sole Mates) in a half-dozen colors, filled out our button collection from 3 or 4 different vendors, and picked up some wonderful one-skein lace patterns from a new firm, Fickle Knitters. But two encounters were the most memorable.  I found an American cotton-spinning and hand-coloring firm from Pennsylvania and bought up quite a lot of their product (lofty, delicious balls that will please people who can't work with wool). And, most fun of all, I had a riotous conversation with Leslye Solomon, who mercifully has no memory of my temper tantrums in one of her continental knitting classes: I sat there, doing it just fine, bitchily insisting that I couldn't do it, didn't want to do it, might leave any minute, etc. etc. What a crank. What a terrible grump.

The button problem is actually more complex than it appears.   I had hoped to be able to maintain a fairly large collection of hand-crafted, dichroic glass buttons. But, in the present economic climate, a lot of the glass button makers have either stopped producing glass or diverted energies to other glass products. The good news is that we have one of the nation's finest glass button makers in our own midst. So this past week, I called up the gifted Terrie Voigt and asked her to stop by with some of her least symmetrical buttons -- and of course I grabbed a huge pile of them. But I continue to be worried about the button makers. Terrie says that the shops aren't calling as often as they used to, and others have told me much the same thing. How could they stay in business?  Worrisome.

But that was it. There were quite a few absences on the floor -- people who apparently didn't think that travel and set-up costs could be justified in the present economy. Let's hope recession eases and that Americans don't stupidly blame the whole thing on Barack Obama, which would be to blame the messenger.  More later.    svb

Housecleaning, Harris Tweed, and a Wild Ride

2011-06-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm still cleaning and sorting and rearranging -- the house goes on the market on June 22, and at the moment its a wooly, dusty shambles. Friend Jean Rudolph stopped by and hauled off most of the Harris tweed that I bought years ago when I visited the Hebrides, some of it purchased directly from crofters working in their small homes on Lewis and Harris, the rest bought at mills on the north side of Harris. All of it is wasted in my third-floor rooms; Jean is a tailor; so it goes to Jean.

On Saturday, I plan to leave Grosse Pointe Park in what Enterprise Rental Cars calls an Intermediate automobile -- that means big, in my view, but what do I know? -- and drive pell-mell to Columbus, Ohio, where the annual summer TNNA convention occurs. (TNNA stands for The National Needlearts Association, the main trade group for people in knitting, crochet, needlepoint, and -- to a much lesser extent -- other forms of embroidery). The winter TNNA event is in California, and it's usually smaller, less well-attended, and given over mainly to warm-weather fibers, which don't appeal to me as much as do animal products. So I only go to the Long Beach meeting every two or three years. Once I get to Columbus' convention center, I'll go through the market to see what's being sold this year, hug some friends, have dinner (I have hopes of connecting with a couple of colleagues, with luck at one of the truly great restaurants on High Street), and then drive pell-mell back to Grosse Pointe Park, collapsing in a heap on the sofa and probably sleeping the next day until ten in the morning. I'll let you know if any of this happens.

svb

JUNE FEST, plus more Sally photos....

2011-06-04T04:48:00.000-07:00

Today is June Fest in St Clair Shores, on which day, and if it doesn't rain, the main drag in the town is shut down and all of the merchants set up tables, hand out samples, mutate into circus hawkers. Two of our friends have agreed to sit in front of our two tables and show everyone how to spin -- Larry plans to hand out coupons by the hundreds -- and, most important, we will meet lots of new, good people. That's the real joy, isn't it, of having this enterprise. Also today, some more new acquaintances will come into the place to learn how to knit. This is community building at its best -- but it's also a healing community. That's perhaps my favorite part, and the thing that keeps me going, even when revenues drop in summer -- even when people don't want to learn how to make seams!

And while I'm at it: Here are some more of those clients/friends at Sally's recent workshops. Look at the absorption, the determination to learn, in these beautiful faces. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing in my university classrooms!

Riin Gill Visit......!

2011-06-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

When my two wonderful beginning knit-crochet people came last evening, they found ---PILES AND PILES of utterly gorgeous yarn and roving and combed top........Riin Gill (who makes and sells Happy Fuzzy Yarn) had arrived! Riin is an up-and-coming Michigan fiber artist, a dyer and spinner, expanding her stock and colorways and fiber offerings steadily and brilliantly. She brought us some of the prettiest and most ARTFUL hand-painted Tencel I've seen in a very long time, truly painterly, and in colors that are both engaging and unpredictable. I do so look forward to seeing where Riin goes -- each time I see her, she has done something new and adventursome. Sometimes, hand-painters are content to do the same thing, year after year. It's at that point, I confess, that I stop watching them develop -- because they aren't developing anymore. Not this young woman. Two of the skeins walked off the premises before she had pulled out of the parking lot. The only problem I see right now is that she is still not making more than about ten skeins in a single, reliably similar colorway. But never mind. That's better than the four she used to do. She works in turkey roasters in her basement!!!

NOTE, please, if you are a client, that Riin will return for a trunk show on July 16 from noon to 6:00. This is a rare opportunity -- you get to buy MICHIGAN (she lives in Ann Arbor) and you get to buy GORGEOUSLY, all in one stop. She will have yarns (including some handspun) and fiber suitable for spinning or needle-felting. They will dazzle you. They certainly dazzle ME! svb

The Great Lakes Fiber Festival at Wooster ...!

2011-05-30T06:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I drove off fairly early in the morning (for me, that can mean 8:30), aiming the car in the general direction of Ohio. When I finally woke up, I was in Toledo, so I turned on Matilda (my trusty GPS) and told her to find Wooster, Ohio.

Wooster is one of my favorite towns in America. I can't tell you how I look forward to the not-quite-four-hour drive, and then to the town itself. To get there, Matilda takes me through at least a hundred miles of rolling, verdant farm and grazing country in northwest Ohio -- Amish country, peppered with mostly prosperous farmsteads, herds of fat sheet and cattle in lush green fields, and an array of small-town restaurants and collectible shops.  Some of the towns have fallen on hard times, with the rest of us. But not all of them -- which was heartening. In Indiana, I thought I saw greater rural hardship overall than I saw in Ohio. That could be misleading, of course. This was one route in a very densely settled state. But -- we use the evidence at hand, don't we?  I didn't find any remarkable vintage buttons in the two shops that caught my attention -- but I did find an amazing lunch at a place called C & J Cafe along a small state road.  The delightfully grumpy waitress was a throwback to about 1956, complete with French-roll hairdo (think peroxide, dark roots, and smokers' wrinkles -- but what a great, in-your-face personality!).

The big shocker, though, was the fact that much of Ohio seemed to be under water -- and I'm not talking about the condition of real estate. Recent deluges have caused flooding in the Detroit area and in many other regions. But, in NW Ohio, entire quarter sections are under water. I wished more than once that I had brought the camera. What a sight to see oil wells inundated half-way up their pipework and brown cattle huddling in a temporary lake (cows absolutely love water -- they'll crowd into almost any sizeable pond or lake until they can't move -- not the brightest animals in the world!).

Wooster hosts the festival at the large, well-kept county fairgrounds at the edge of town.  I didn't buy much -- I sometimes think I go to Wooster for the drive and to go to the town plaza, though the fair is very good quality and quite large. Or maybe I go so that I can have some of the incredible espresso and Hungarian pastry at a gorgeous little cafe on the town plaza -- it's called Tulipan. This time, I treated myself to an open face sandwich composed (it's an art form) of pate, cucumber slices, and some kind of delectable spread, on homemade bread, with a hand-carved pickle on top. The fruit cup was also an art form, with everything so fresh you wondered how they had kept it in a case for more than an hour. I bought Larry some Hungarian pastry, put it on the floor in the front of the rental car, and headed for the fairgrounds.

Grace (of Amazing Grace Farm) had some pretty amazing handpainted sock/shawl yarn -- amazing because it was very simple, suitable for summer, not overdone or too densely colored. I worry only that she sells her work for too little money -- and I keep telling her so. She ignores me.  (This is a problem with women and their labor, as many of you know. I can't remember how many women have heard my little lecture, as I contemplate handspun skeins for, say, 8 dollars, about how self-sacrifice doesn't pay the rent).   All I can do is to pay a little bit more than the asking price. It doesn't happen all the time -- and I have noticed that a lot of the handspun (and to a lesser extent the handpaint) at the festivals has come up in price over the past year. I hope it's related to the light dawning and NOT to the need for money in a recession.

Anyway: I bought her out of fingering-weight yarn, basically, because my fingering collection has suddenly sold down a bit too much. And then I bought a modest supply of handpainted roving for our nascent spinning program from Sue at White Creek Wool. I decided as well to pick up some samples of Gita Maria sterling silver pins and buttons, to see how people respond to them. I have been looking at their work for a couple of years -- enamel on silver -- and have worried about high cost in the present economy. But with the economy on the rebound, it might be time to mount a small market test. So I now have a scarf keeper, a shawl pin, and some buttons. We'll see. If they go, I can connect with her at the Michigan Fiber Festival at Allegan, Michigan, in August, and stock up. If not, I'm not saddled with a large inventory that has to be discounted to sell.

I really hate having to deal continually with recession-era economies. Let's hope everything heals.

On the way home, Matilda tried to take me along two roads, and over one bridge, that had been washed out -- so she yelled at me the entire way along multiple detours ("RECALCULATING!! A BETTER ROUTE IS AVAILABLE! TURN AROUND ....."). What a nag.   But a person like me, with NO sense of direction whatsoever, benefits hugely from this miracle of modern science. Hard to believe that I used to flounder around without her.

More later. It's Memorial Day and it's time to think about my irreplaceable brother Randall Thomas (Randy), who died at age 56 from a minor heart condition exacerbated by alcoholism, which in turn was a consequence of traumatic experiences on a hospital ship in Vietnam. When I flew to San Diego to pick him up at the naval base, I remember a sense of utter shock and sadness: He was gaunt, hollow-eyed, not the achingly handsome, puckish young man we'd sent away in a Navy uniform (GOD he was beautiful -- I always coveted his long, long eyelashes, which I lack altogether). Randy was the brother who took madcap dares, made jokes, thought the rules didn't apply to him, and I absolutely adored him. He also never really believed in his own worth. So he drank. Once, when he was young, he actually 'borrowed' a bread truck that was parked outside of some bar in St. Paul, drove it around to everyone he knew handing out free bread, and returned it to the bar. He also would hop a plane (his wife worked for the airline) and surprise me at my university office ("Hiya Doc"). Vietnam destroyed him.  He picked up dying young men from a helicopter, took them to the ship, watched them die, then went back to the same hill, over and over again. It was senseless slaughter. And he never recovered. I loved him more than I can say, and the injustice of that war for those who KNEW it was senseless, because they were there, still makes me cry.

svb

Have a look at Sally!!!

2011-05-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

At long last, I have photos of the Sally Melville workshops -- too many to post, in fact, but better to share at least a few of them than none at all. In a separate post, I'll tell you all about my trip yesterday to the annual fiber festival at Wooster, Ohio. But -- here's Sally!

.....and here are some of the attentive students, our wonderful clients, in a couple of the workshops.

Now, on to Ohio! svb

Sally's Visit

2011-05-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

Now that's it's over and Sally Melville is safely deposited at the train station in Windsor, I can report a perfectly marvelous weekend in the studio....Her workshops (and her great "Creativity" presentation to knitters in Plymouth on Thursday night, where the hall was filled with 4/5ths of the guild's membership!) drew rave reviews and generated more energy in the place than I've seen for a couple of months. What a splendid time. ... At least three people told me that they had never taken classes before, hadn't known they ought to take classes, and had seen the light.........Really gratifying. In the fiber arts, the eastern side of Detroit might be called a 'classless' society -- Over on the western side, classes have happened (and filled to overflowing) for decades. I took my first finishing class at the Knitting Room in Birmingham almost 20 years ago, and it was full. It also cost almost twice as much as we charge in the year 2011 for the same course. I do NOT understand why this is the case. But experiences like these could help change the dynamic. Working with exciting people who teach theory as much as concrete projects leads to smart AND creative fiber people. More later, with some of Larry's photographs.

svb

WHERE is spring?

2011-05-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Spring is missing in action. Today, after a couple of tantalizing warm days, it's pouring very cold rain, the flowers are exposed as complete fools for having trusted in the whole proposition, the PROMISE.... even Lake St Clair was visibly annoyed, butting dozens of heads of gray-green hair tipped with gray against the shoreline..........as if angry or hideously frustrated ........I don't suppose it's easy being a big wide spot in a river, stuck in the same gigantic tub for your entire life. Sooner or later, you'd want to lash out, wouldn't you? And what better excuse than a rain storm?

In a week, Sally Melville comes to town, and the classes are almost full, which will be very good for everyone concerned -- us, our clients, Sally, the people who come to the reception. I have also learned that my dear Jean Frost has not been entirely well -- so I hope the book comes out without incident (it will make her very proud and happy), as it's scheduled to do on June 3, and that we can lure her back to Michigan. She claims still to be interested in a workshop using Michigan yarns. In two weeks, I'll drive to the Wooster, Ohio, fiber festival, which is actually one of my favorites, and not only because of the incredible Viennese coffee shop and bakery on main street. svb

Michigan in bloom, and memories of France

2011-05-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last night, as I drove home from the studio along the shore of Lake St. Clair in that peculiar gray-mauve light that sometimes appears at dusk, I was suddenly back in Normandy at a small museum lined with ancient, petit-point tapestries and intricate embroideries bathed in the gray light of a rainy day. The water reflected pinking cloud masses, flickering with mystery, and the trees! People who don't live in Michigan don't know about the trees. In spring, Michigan experiences a revival unlike any I've ever seen. It may be the stark contrast with the intense and lifeless gray of winter, which in Detroit is more severe than in many other places. But the flowering trees are also more numerous than elsewhere -- tulip trees, apple and cherry trees, early rhods and some very early azaleas, immense swaths of brilliantly yellow forsythia, and now the redbuds........and of course the tulips and daffodils (white, yellow, some with orange trumpets) burst from the ground like neon elements in somebody's dream fabric... But last night it was particularly amazing. Because of the graytone background and failing light, the explosion of blooms might as well have been done by a Frenchwoman centuries ago -- tiny white petit-point stitches, red-fading-to-pink puffs, baby green French knots, all over the dull ash-brown branches....but delicate, the blossoms like very precise decorations on a fading landscape. This happens only at a particular time of day, in pre-storm weather, at certain times of year. And it cannot be captured on a camera, so I can't share it. But those of you who live by water in big industrial cities may recognize the medieval quality of what I can barely describe.

svb

Alpaca Fest?

2011-05-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Well, today I drove NW on Interstate 75 for awhile in order to attend something called the Alpaca Fest in Davidsburg, Michigan, which is near Clarkston, which is midway between Flint and Plymouth. And so on. It's a lovely part of the state -- very wooded, small rolling knolls and larger hills, mixed farming, and Davidsburg itself is a village aspiring to towndom, with a handful of interesting looking small businesses in a two-block-long "downtown."

The Alpaca Fest was supposed to be at one of the Oakland State Park System's small fairgrounds, and indeed, after some miles of delightfully curvy country driving, a big sign blaring "Alpaca Fest" suggested that I had arrived. I drove up the small road toward a huge building surrounded by cars -- a dead give-away, typically, that the advertised event is at hand. I went in. A large room crowded with parents and children but no alpacas set off alarms. I walked around in the space for awhile, noting a tomato-planting contest, a woodturning demonstration, face-painting tables, and so on. But no fibers, and certainly no alpacas. Not even in the small (SMALL) petting zoo outside. Finally, I asked one of the Information People: "Are there no fiber booths?" She looked at me as if I might be speaking ancient Sumerian, or maybe Bag Lady-Ese. "Um, no," she said, turning away a bit too quickly. She thought I was a loon, pure and simple.

So I left. I had seen some kind of big barn or arena, or both, behind the big community center building, so I drove down yet another road to see what it might be. There were no further signs indicating any kind of alpaca event. But Dutch people with a certain amount of Jewish blood don't give up easily. So down the road I went. I found myself in the middle of a horse race. Literally. There were horses lined up and galloping, horses trotting along, horses all done up in braids. This was not an alpaca fest -- at least not yet.

Then I saw more barns. So I climbed a hill in my little bug, avoiding horses as I drove, and came to a building marked "Sheep Barn." Indeed. It was full of sheep. Also more children. I got out of the car, now quite thoroughly annoyed. I found some kids with what looked like parents in tow. "Is there an ALPACA FEST anywhere near here?" I asked in a tone of voice that I'm sure scares my students. "Well, I think it's out back somewhere." Still no signs, by the way. I went behind the "Sheep Barn" on foot and found a barn labeled something like "Seeds of Life," though that's not exactly right. Something to do with lambs and other small life-forms. Another person, this time an adult, told me that the alpaca were in the Goat Barn.

Of course. Where else would they be?

So I went to the Goat Barn. Sure enough, there were about a dozen stalls with alpacas, and next to the Goat-Barn-Cum-Alpaca-Fest was a small shed within which there were alpaca showings. In the building itself, I found mostly animals for sale. But two vendors had handspun alpaca yarn nice enough to buy -- one in particular had some perfectly stunning marled handspun with photos of the animals from whom the fiber had come. She wasn't there. I waited. I waited some more. I made the rounds one more time and talked to a woman I'd met two years ago at the Flint International Alpaca Festival (not held in a goat barn). Finally, I learned that the woman who had abandoned her booth UTTERLY was involved in some kind of showing at the small arena. So I left a card near her chair with an invitation to call me.

That's it. I went home and then to the studio. What a hoot!

svb

Next?

2011-05-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

Next, as it turns out, is not the Minnesota Shepherd's Harvest at Lake Elmo, but rather a whole lot of exam grading, paper evaluation, and blocking. Also, I am going to take a small trip Saturday morning, before a learn-to-knit class, to Davidson, Michigan, the site of a small but interesting alpaca festival. There will be animals, but also alpaca products, so it's worth an hour's drive. I've not noticed this one before; it may well be a new event. Michigan (with Indiana and a couple of other midwestern states) is developing into a major alpaca-growing location...... More soon. svb

....using what's at hand....

2011-04-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

....driving to the studio today along our exquisite lakeshore drive....and as I looked at the way spring is unfolding, near water and elsewhere, it came over me that, if I only could become a technically proficient yarn dyer (not Laura Bryant, not Ellen Minand, but at least competent), I could work to develop a sock yarn line that would be keyed to particular local vistas and vignettes of particularly striking beauty. This will be a trick. All I have done, really, is to overdye some natural grays and browns, and then kettle dye some of Green Mountain Spinnery's nice medium-weight natural wool.   Of course I've sat through a dyeing workshop with Ellen, and I've read the requisite books. But that's not how one learns about dyeing and color. So maybe I'll start with one vignette and see how I do. I won't want to sell yarn that isn't done properly.

The idea here, though, is pretty wonderful:   Larry or I would take some photographs of riveting moments along the lakeshore and elsewhere -- he would reproduce the photographs (or at least the best and most telling one) on a yarn band, and we'd call the series something like Water and Earth by Artisan Knitworks -- he can come up with something more elegant than that. And it will take me the summer to figure out if I can do this. If not, then not. Two friends promised today to tell me if the things I turn out are not up to snuff.

Or maybe, like the mama spider, I can lure someone over here to help! I have in mind the brilliant Nancy McRay from Woven Art in East Lansing, whose parting shot was that she might try to come visit someday soon.  I can easily envision a dyeing workshop...... Failing that, or perhaps in addition to that, I could ask friends at Lorna's Laces in Chicago if I can drive over there and watch for a day or two.  (For Laura: Florida is too far away!!!!!   And I don't think I can dip-dye. This has to be done with poured dye and brushes, etc.).

The first vignette -- it almost made me cry to see it -- will involve some willows covered with brilliant, almost neon baby green (the color of what? maybe a cross between lemon and lime, though it's not that either -- it has some gold in it -- close to Classic Colors' golden pear) with some other greens, draped over water that shimmered with blues and grays, and then of course a shot of deep, deep yellow from a patch of daffs newly sprung from the trap of winter.........We'll see. This idea has appeal to me, but everything depends on technical competence.      svb

APRIL FOOLS???

2011-04-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

It SNOWED, for god's sake....!!!! When I lived in Minnesota, this would have been more or less normal. But this is Michigan. It snowed on April 18th! My poor Mesopotamian sheep (concrete, sitting on the front steps) shivered his way through the day. And the poor trees -- still naked, after all, from winter but daring to run some sap -- and then, POW. And the DAFFODILS, their green leaves taller by the day....God help us all. Here is evidence:

.... I hasten to add that all of it disappeared within about 6 hours. But, while it lasted, the colors and contrasts were amazing. Don't miss the dash of red against black and white provided by the Japanese maple (center stage in the 2nd photo, and directly above, stage right!). I have faith that spring will actually come. In the meantime, we find beauty where we can -- as with pristine puffs of snow over the back of a concrete ram (yes, ram -- look at those horns!).

svb

On to the festival at Greencastle

2011-04-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

Greencastle, Indiana, is the home of DePauw University, a very good liberal arts school in some of the prettiest countryside in America. The hills roll like some kind of voluptuous frolic -- as if living and breathing, maybe laughing -- and because spring has already happened tin this south-of-Michigan place, the slight greening turns yellow light an array of green tones, none of them precisely grass or apple or any of the other shades we think we can name. The festival itself is at the Putnam County fairgrounds. To get there, you have to drive through town-- a tableau of painted lady Victorian houses mixed with small bungalows, most of them in good condition. A college town is a benighted town: It has a year-round industry, unlike places like Harlan, Indiana.

Here is what the booths looked like inside one of the three display areas. In the second photo you will find the darling, DARLING felted crocheted baby slippers that I pounced on ("I'll take all of them!").

One woman had a spectacular vase of brilliantly golden-orange flowers calculated to draw the eye to her array of natural yarns. That's a good strategy: We have learned at Artisan Knitworks that nature's ivory, tan, ash brown, and sienna tones don't attract customers unless you point them out. We are so sated with saturated colors, noises, hype of all kinds that we just can't see understated beauty anymore -- subtlety and modesty increasingly have no place. There is nothing more modest than a sturdy Corriedale sheep -- unless its a stalwart Angora goat. Indeed, to make your way in the world, I sometimes think that all of us should be given huge trumpets at birth and training in their use by age five or six. So here is the vase of flowers, and here also are a couple of those goats -- Don't miss the 'natural', silken, curly locks:

And here is a wonderful, quite new dyer of wool and silk and cotton yarns -- Lisa -- who's also a clothing designer (see behind her!). She doesn't want to make more than a few skeins of each colorway. She may change her mind in the future if she gathers some clients who want repeat performances. But, for now, she's content to turn out 3 or 5 or 7 unique skeins, moving on to another idea -- and then another.

Finally, I made a friend, though I dare say his primary attachments lie with the young woman holding him as if her life depends on it. Look at that face! He was bawling like a newborn child, protesting his owner's insistence that he NOT run, NOT walk, NOT do what kids want to do:

I left after about four hours -- up the freeway this time with Michigan on my mind. I decided at the last minute to cross Ohio on the turnpike so that I could have another 'go' at the big antique mall in Maumee (just off the turnpike) -- where I indeed found quite a huge number of really beautiful vintage buttons, and a half-dozen dazzling examples of thread crochet. One of them is a perfectly enchanting little crocheted pinafore cover, complete with straps. Every time I handle these things, I'm transported back to my mother's mother's home in South St. Paul, Minnesota, where she and I sat for hours and hours working on filet curtains and big, complex tablecloths -- me trying to match her gauge, knowing that I could never match her speed. I'm going to use a dozen or so of these lacy lovelies (I have been collecting pieces of a certain tan color for a year now) to trim the lapels and cuffs of a crocheted cardigan, should I live so long.

Until later. Everyone, don't forget to say "I love you" to someone close to you. You never know what will happen next -- an hour from now, a day from now. Take nothing for granted.

svb

Indiana and the Peeling of Rural America

2011-04-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

The trip to Indiana (which also featured some time with one of my former advisees and her colleagues) was both wonderful and troubling -- both heartbreak and much-needed nourishment for the soul. In the heartbreak department: I spent quite a lot of time driving around in small Ohio and Indiana towns -- the stuff of childhood, in my case. 'Home' once meant places like Worthington, Minnesota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Little Falls and Royalton, and so on -- places very few people will ever know about, much less visit. So, when I drive through wide-skied countryside, particularly in spring when everything is full of promise, the trees blushing with baby green and baby yellow, I am taken back to childhood, as if in a home movie. Take this scene in a small town in Indiana -- the ubiquitous grain elevator, the wood frame houses:

...or these sites -- a typical old Victorian home on a manicured street, and a mile away, at the very edge of town in Harlan, Indiana, this gorgeous, well-maintained post-civil war manor house with its equally stunning, staggeringly huge red barn:

But other discoveries in the same towns or on farmsteads make me want to cry. I think of it as the peeling of America, particularly in the rural countryside, where young, tired men and women are leaving farms founded by their grandparents, and where once-sturdy homes in tiny towns have been abandoned or stand behind well-worn "For Rent" signs. Everywhere, paint is simply too expensive, and so the wooden frames and doors and eaves are molting in layers, like feathers or snakeskin. If you look closely at the woodwork on this 1908 school building in Harlan, you'll see serious shedding -- and have a look at the wooden trim on these typical town houses, now "for rent" (which means, of course, that they haven't sold or, worse, are no longer saleable):

Once, all of these buildings were the town's pride, the legacy of parents to children, passed from generation to generation as if according to the laws of nature. No more.

I'll have more to say in another entry. svb

Upcoming adventure...

2011-04-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

.....and this weekend, I'm going to rent a car of some kind and drive directly away from my late Thursday class in the direction of Indiana.....There is a remarkably interesting annual festival at Greencastle, Indiana, which is just south of Indianapolis. It features the second most boring stretch of highway I've ever experienced -- roughly from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis (what's the MOST boring, you ask? The drive from about Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to the start of the Badlands, when suddenly it's almost worth it...). (If you make that drive in July or August, don't be so foolish as to think you can carry nice cool bottled water in the car, or have ice in a chest --- everything practically vaporizes in the heat).

Judging from the vendor list, the festival has grown again, so I'll scoot down there, finish the drive on Friday morning, hit the festival at 1:00, when it opens, and get back on the road by about 4:00. That way, I can be home again by late evening -- or stop at another motel and expect to be home by noon Saturday. I even notice a half-dozen yarn dyers whose names don't seem familiar -- This is where you find the NEW artisans -- the smaller shows with low table costs. They test the waters, increase production, and within a year or two move on to the bigger festivals. And it's at that point that I really begin to pay attention: The world of new dyers seems to divide into those who continue to grow, change, innovate, and those who replicate colors and textures they've already created. In the latter case, I'm sorry to confess, I lose interest.

But quite a few fall into the first category, and I look forward to seeing who has done what over the past while, and from show to show as they develop and feel more powerful. Life is about exactly that -- gathering our own power year by year, finding the path that leads to growth and away from stagnation, the mere replication of things already known, things already done. svb

Spring, Lake St Clair, and World-Changes

2011-04-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's spring in Michigan, or so it seems, bit by bit, as if to tease us. We have giant crocuses in the side yarn, their non-hybridized relatives in the front yarn -- gorgeous lavenders, whites, yellows -- with their welcoming and welcome green shoots. How trusting! Can instinctive behavior ever be anything but completely trusting? The assumption, of course, deep down in the gene pool, has to be that everything will come out as it's supposed to come out, that progress toward new seasons will be steady and certain. It was modernity perhaps, and the hard knocks of human experience, that stripped us of that instinct, at least for the most part.

The lake right now is huge, bigger than usual visually, I suppose because of all of the liberated water churning around, the grey sky merging with it, covering it over, like some kind of overlord. I wonder if waves have always been these colors and I just haven't seen them? For the past two days, it has seemed to me that the water is almost not blue at all, except in the far distance. Up close, it's cream, white, dove gray, slate gray, sage green -- and I am thinking yarn, of course -- what a truly amazing colorway that would be. When summer comes, I'm going to try my hand at dyeing again, and I just might work up some sock skeins and call them Wave.

More later. Papers to grade.

svb

Amazing Grace...Farm, That Is!

2011-03-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

I ALMOST FORGOT!!! Here is the gorgeous owner of Amazing Grace, who also had a marvelous booth at Bowling Green -- and from whom I bought 20 (!) sheep-shaped hand-crafted soaps in a myriad of scents/flavors, including Jasmine and Cinnamon and Lavender. What a gifted woman! And what an empathetic shepherd: She sells Shetland rovings, to give one example, that carry the names of the sheep from whom the fleeces came. I bought quite a few bundles, not surprisingly. Soaps and other sundries in the first picture, rovings (etc.) visible behind her, and in the second picture, some of the handspun yarn that she sells at each festival (with more rovings). Last night, I finished an organic-cotton loopy soap holder and bath scrubber, with strap, for which I'll do up a simple crochet pattern -- I'm calling it Loop-ah. Sigh. Probably I should leave naming to Larry.

svb

Second fiber fair of the season...!

2011-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

As promised, I drove off to Bowling Green, Ohio, late on Friday afternoon. I had made what I took to be a firm reservation on Expedia.com a day before at a motel across from Bowling Green State University (a Best Western), but when I got there -- I have trouble depicting the scene in words -- the two young women behind the desk claimed to be unable to find my reservation, even though I had a confirmation number, and were decidedly uninterested in doing anything about the situation ("We don't have it..." -- period...looks of vast boredom). I stomped out and went to my old fave, which I should have undertaken from the start, the local Hampton Inn -- which was full. But, in good Hampton fashion, a young woman named Jessica got on the phone and found me what turned out to be a sensationally nice room back up the road near Toledo -- for a huge discount -- with a sofa bed to sit on and a magnificant manager who helped me find a genuinely sensational restaurant in downtown Perrysburg called Stella's. If anyone is driving up or down I-75 at meal time, go into downtown and find it. REALLY amazing. And if you are tempted to drive into Bowling Green long enough to patronize the Starbucks (advertised from the freeway), keep going PAST the Starbucks into Bowling Green's newly spiffed-up downtown and look for Grounds for Thought, a marvelous independent bookseller and espresso shop -- great coffee, great people, and not a burned coffee bean in sight.

Then on to the Bowling Green fair, where I appeared at 9:30 AM (a world's record for a woman who typically is barely awake by 10AM). Each year, the Black Swamp Spinning Guild (named after the early American land company of the same name? I wonder if they know that?) sponsors a high-quality, ever-expanding festival at the Wood County Fairgrounds, which is at the outer edge of Bowling Green. This year, I was gratified to see a LOT of very high quality people in attendance, not least of which was our friend Carol from River's Edge in Grand Ledge, Michigan -- maker of unusual and beautiful rovings, handpainted and novelty yarns, and some other gorgeous things. With any luck at all, we'll soon have a large supply of her rovings for Artisan Knitworks' small but growing spinning program. Here is the inauspicious entrance at the fairgrounds:

....and here are a couple of shots of the interior of this surprisingly spacious building (the Junior Fair Building, whatever that means -- for young fairs???).

And here is the talented, aforementioned Carol of River's Edge -- a happy woman, I'd say!

One of Michigan's most interesting (and less well known) hand painters is Maureen, one of our customers at Artisan Knitworks who used to own her own yarn company and now spends most of her time hand-dyeing and hand-crafting a number of other items for the festivals. She, too, is a happy woman these days running her company, Twisted Stitches, and talking to people like me (look at the dark plum semi-solid wool-Tencel in the very bottom rack -- before I got there, she had maybe 8 of them -- now she has two):

And I met Amy. What can be said about Amy? She is a very naughty, very funny, amazingly gifted maker of small and large project and notion bags -- so of course she calls the company Bad Amy! I bought one gorgeous little square bag made of fabric with brassieres all over it -- a smaller one with black and white sheep (and a chartreuse sipper!), AND a drawsting-top project bag (suitable for sock knitters) with a genuinely astonishing mix of fabrics. Really cool stuff. I decided to buy three and see how people responded-- we have had some trouble with bag sales in the past. Well. I got back, put them out, and sold one within about 25 minutes. I guess people like them. I will be in touch with the delightful Bad Amy SOON to get a larger supply of her zany, colorful bags. If you have a yarn operation of any kind and want something FUN, you should do the same thing. It is also true, and equally important to know, that she is a very, very, very good technician at the sewing machine.

Now I need to grade some papers -- which I hope is a less depressing exercise than two weeks ago, when I graded a stack of very sad mid-term lower-division exams -- and buy some groceries, so that I can say we have more than milk, Egg Beaters, and ketchup in the refrigerator. More soon.

svb

Bowling Green upcoming...

2011-03-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I'm going to Bowling Green......For those of you who don't live in Southeastern Michigan (or northern Ohio), that's a small town in which can be found Bowling Green State University (which has a really good graduate program in history!!!), a sweet little downtown area with an independent coffee/book store on the main street, an array of fast-food restaurants on the avenue across from the campus, and LOTS of flat flat flat farmland. Larry knows how tired I am -- he suggested that I reserve a motel room on Friday night and just rest, so that's what I'm going to do. it's almost end of term, the students in one class particularly are incapable of college-level performance in too many cases, and I am not capable, really, of fixing what ails them (no writing or analytical skills to speak of, a problem that cannot be fixed quickly, once students receive a high school diploma basically for good behavior). It is very stressful to know that you can't fix things -- especially for a first-born girl child. So I look forward this time to end of term so that I can write in the morning and migrate to the studio in afternoons, each and every day.

MEANWHILE: The Black Swamp Spinning Guild will hold its annual festival at the Wood County fairgrounds -- and I will attend for the first time on Saturday I will be looking less for rovings (I hope to take on a huge pile of River's Edge rovings soon for our spinning program) than for unfamiliar spinners and hand painters. More soon!

svb

First show of the year, Part 2...!

2011-03-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

SO we moved beyond northern Kentucky through increasingly gorgeous countryside -- though browner than it ought to be in early spring. I wondered aloud whether there had been enough rain. Horses, though, and those wonderfully atmospheric creosoted tobacco barns.... We decided to go to Berea, where we had so enjoyed ourselves on another trip. The town has created a Visitors' Center at an exit just off I-75. But prices are high, the selection geared to tourists, and the building not at all like the town itself.

Berea, home of the unique and important Berea College, has long been devoted to the advancement of the manual arts. I used to spend considerable time in Berea -- also in Bybee, home of one of the oldest continuously operating potteries in the nation -- while completing my Ph.D. dissertation. The College trains its students, not only in language and science and all the usual stuff, but more importantly in carpentry, wood turning, weaving, decorative arts and painting, clay work of all kinds (GORGEOUS pottery), glass blowing, on and on.....I was astonished this time to notice that there was almost NO handspun yarn, and NO apparent attention to handpainted textiles beyond the materials used in some pretty fabulous weavings. After a good lunch, we headed for the shops, including the big gray wooden building called (oddly) The Log House. (it's not made of logs, except in the sense that all things wooden begin life as logs). Here is one room, crammed with handcrafted wooden brooms, rolling pins, walking sticks, bowls, chairs, tables, quilts, rugs and crockery I almost fell for a spectacular piece of weaving with metallic, embroidered insets, but stoically resisted:

The yarn room was a HUGE disappointment. To be sure, there were nice selections of Koenig Farms beautifully crafted and colored yarns, and other fairly well-known Kentucky producers of hand paints. But -- no student work to speak of, and I associate Berea with student work. At this point, both of us began to fear that Berea College has begun to cater to tourists at the expense of their traditionally unique work -- evidence included the fact of lots of stuff from Pennsylvania and other non-Kentucky places. Maybe it's more important to support the town. But I can be sad if I want to be. It's also likely that some of the more entirely authentic work can be found away from the main shopping area. I have a feeling that's true, and we didn't have time to find out. Anyway: here is the yarn room (an actual term for it, emblazoned on a sign), with Koenig Farms against a far wall:

Then we took off for points even further south -- to Tennessee, once upon a time the westernmost county of North Carolina, much as Kentucky was the westernmost county of Virginia.

In due time, we reached the Mystery Place -- Townsend, Tennessee. Much to my surprise, it appeared only in 1901, unlike the rest of the state, which dates to the late 18th century. And it doesn't have a town center. Townsend is scattered all along the bottom of a Smoky Mountain ridge, just at the edge of the national forest, and it's mostly new, built for tourists -- the same pattern found in almost every resort community in America. It's our version, I guess, of the medieval village, which used to have the village church at one end of a curly street and the manor house at the other end, with cottages scattered all along the length of it.....only now, we put a motel at both ends.

But that's not necessarily bad. One particular point of Pure Joy was Miss Lily's Cafe. Before we left, there had been much laughter on the point ("OOOOH here's something called Miss Lily's..."). But, in fact, it was just fabulous. I hate grits. REALLY hate grits. So I told our marvelous wait person (a native of South Carolina) that I couldn't possibly order the fish she was recommending because it rested on a bed of fancied-up grits, and she basically dared me .....so of course I couldn't resist . The joke's on me. The most scrumptious combination appeared on a white plate -- stone-ground grain and cheese and something spicy with a delectable corn sauce, draped with tender, well-seasoned tilapia. Larry also thought he had died and gone to heaven (REAL pulled pork). That's our silver rental car, the unfortunately designed Impala (see Part I of this posting, below), in the foreground. Keen-eyed readers will also notice that I am standing near the trunk:

At the Smoky Mountain Fiber Festival (finally!), we had quite a rompin' good time. It was a very small show. But we knew that when we started out. Often, newcomers start out at the small shows -- the table cost is low, and you can test your wings without losing your shirt (sorry for multiple trite metaphors). We had wonderful chats with two people I know fairly well -- Amy from Jehovah Jireh Farm in Paw Paw, Michigan, and the wonderful proprietor of River's Edge Weaving in Grand Ledge, Michigan, from whom we are hoping to get piles and piles of exquisite rovings. But others we hadn't seen before. I found some really fine, narrow semi-solid bamboo ribbon in muted colorations from a household operation (Unique Yarns) and bought more than I should have bought, but the colors are subtle and unusual (rose shading into corals, e.g., with binders picking up color at a slightly different rate than the yarn itself). This will fill the spring-summer gap until we get Laura Bryant's "Rapport."

But the rest of the show was mostly just fun. What can be said about Sheep with Balls (sorry! maybe I should have said Sheep that Lay Colored Eggs?) and an authentic sheep-herding show, complete with border collies? The last time I saw dogs doing that kind of thing, I was in England....and I have NEVER seen sheep with colored eggs -- had always thought they were mammals!!!!

And then Sunday arrived and we started home again, with sunlight for most of the trip, the Cumberland and Smoky Mountains laid out before us like ancient friends, welcoming us back. The Rockies, the Alps, aren't welcoming; nor are they as old. These stunningly colored hills have been on earth almost forever, softening and reshaping themselves as they age. The valleys are bathed in shifting tones of blue, gray, taupe, with puffs of vapor rising from creeks and lakes and rivers. The hills and mountains, with sun at the rear, look exactly like big heads with buzz haircuts, at least for now, before leaves fill out the trunks and branches. Everywhere in trans-Appalachia, we watched for signs of baby green and baby red, early blushes of color on trees as spring sap begins to flow through deciduous trees. But of course the water carvings are the whole show, aren't they? Just look at this expanse of water and flatland, taken from a breathtaking Tennessee lookout.

I'll have more to say soon, once we've both rested. Next weekend, it's Bowling Green, Ohio, where the Black Swamp Guild mounts its small but locally important, annual fiber festival. svb

First show of the year..!

2011-03-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it....Larry and I drove off this past Thursday, headed for the mysterious Townsend, Tennessee...had NO IDEA what we might find there, beyond the Smoky Mountain National Forest. It's important at this juncture to remember that Larry considers himself a Tennessean -- more like a closet Tennessean, if you ask me, since he only has relatives there. But there is no accounting for what people think they are....So we'll let him have this one. He's a Tennessean. The closer he gets to the place, the more he aspirates the first syllable of words, dragging vowels out to outrageous widths (do vowels have width???). We had a big ol' rented car, a Chevy Impala, which I do not recommend. Sluggish, like a very badly designed bobsled. Seats badly proportioned. No padding on the steering wheel. And so on.

First night, we got over the Kentucky line to Covington and found the first motel for which we could find a tourist coupon -- lovely room at a Holiday Inn Express for only 69 bucks. Don't pass up those coupon books at rest stops! Friday morning, back in the car, plunging ever more precipitously tinto (shudder) The Land of Rahn Paul. We stopped, as usual, at a number of antique shops in search of old jewlery, wonderful vintage buttons, the usual distractions.....Here is downtown Georgetown, home to the picturesque Georgetown College:

and, courtesy of Larry, you're about to learn what happened to Baby Jane. Remember her? One of the spookiest movies ever made.....Not many buttons in this particular collectible shop in Georgetown, Kentucky, but they DID have these:

...not to mention the absolute ugliest crocheted hat in the entire world, encrusted entirely with glass beads....

and here is the shop itself -- notable because it's very much like every other small-town shop in which we have found our wonderful vintage buttons. In this case, no luck -- but that's the exception to a general rule of "small-town shop, big-time buttons."

I'll create a separate blog entry for the rest of what we found......! Google accepts only a handful of photographs per entry. svb

Up and running....!

2011-03-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Larry and I are still planning to take off in a rented car (the poor, sweet little VW bug is getting old, and we all know about THAT!!!) (wry smile)..........Townsend, Tennessee, apparently has a place called Miss Lily's Restaurant, or some such amazin' thing (I'm practicing my southern accent, which Larry says is THE worst he's ever encountered)........Stay tuned!

Yesterday, by the way, was an amazing red-letter day. My handsome nephew Nick (who lives in Anoka, Minnesota) surprised me by coming into the studio as if he were just another customer. What a delight! He and his friend Jeremiah had been to Niagara Falls, and were headed for a local casino for the night.....Remember what it was like to be in your twenties??? Up all night? On a lark? TRUE joy. We had a wonderful, no doubt fattening dinner at a new Mexican joint, they came to the house long enough to meet Bubba and Sheba (the cats), and they were off to the MGM Casino/Hotel. Lovely lovely lovely. svb

Catching Up, Gearing Up, Checking In...

2011-03-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

It's now past midterm at university, and I can begin to see the end of the tunnel -- my god, what a long, gray, often unpleasant term this has been.   There are always good students. But there are infuriating ones as well, and this semester, I've had more than my share. You keep saying to yourself, "I got a Ph.D. WHY???" To give one particularly galling example: I gave the midterm in a freshman class maybe a week ago, a two-hour exam and a fairly hard one in my view, and....guess what?   After 20 minutes, eight students got up to leave.   I asked them, one by one, if they'd perhaps like to spend at least a few more minutes trying a bit harder; only two took me up on it. Those exams, of course, are F's. Then another big group left by the one-hour mark. Only 20 students out of 54 stuck it out to the bitter end. And then there is the sadness of their writing skills -- the poorer ones, some of them very SMART, in fact, but massively underskilled -- laboring away, as if carving something deeply into the desktop, and after two hours, managing to produce maybe three paragraphs. Even the penmanship shows a comparative lack of experience with writing -- very round, or simply printed, as if high school had been skipped. It's enough to make me throw a desk through the nearest window.

Another example: We were reading a short text written by Herbert Hoover, who only some of the students could identify, and he approvingly mentioned "American liberalism," and so of course I asked them to tell me what he was talking about.   It may be important at this juncture to remember that Herbert Hoover was an old Progressive and a Republican. One student loudly and confidently said, "SOCIALISM." Could have knocked me over with a feather.  So even Herbert Hoover is a commie pinko. After some pointed inquiry, it turned out that only the smallest handful had taken high school courses in which they actually TALKED about such concepts as liberalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and so they have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the (idiotic) signs accusing Barack Obama of BOTH fascism and communism. It took me an extra thirty minutes, but MAYBE, just maybe, they now understand that liberalism is not a synonym for socialism. My god. What has it come to, my friends?  Thomas Jefferson is spinning in his grave: It was Jefferson, after all -- that archetypal liberal -- who insisted that sound education in political principles would be critical to the maintenance of a republic.

But then I go to the studio, or I sit down to write something, and it starts to go away. The wonderful Amy Hoffman from Women's Review of Books was back in my mailbox last week asking me if I'd like to do another long review essay for her -- this time a biography of the ever-fascinating Elizabeth Packard, a barely-known, important figure in the history of medical and psychiatric sciences.  I have wanted to write something about women's biography for awhile now, and this could be the occasion -- depending on the quality of the book. So -- first thing out of the gate when term is done, I'll sit down to think about that amazing woman and the whole poblem of writing the life of a woman -- a remarkably difficult task actually, given the nature of the historical record.

Finally, the wool, the yarn, the possibilities -- exhaustion has made it difficult to knit or crochet very much. I am not given to sketching or making swatches or any of the rest of it when I'm too tired to put myself into it entirely. I wonder if I will have anything to offer this year for the CGOA and TKNA design contests.......? But I now have enough of the back of a man's sweater in three colors of Naturally's gorgeous Vero (chunky weight variegated wool made in Australia) to know that it will be a nice design -- ABC stripes, three shades of Vero. It will be some kind of Henley, don't quite know what yet, with some interesting vintage buttons. The front will tell me what it has to be when I get that far. And I have some ideas for simple light-weight garments-- one a side-to-side in Fibonacci stripes, from the cuffs up and across in asymmetrical undulations, maybe in bamboo or bamboo-cotton, and again in at least three colors. This one will have a wide funnel collar which I hope will collapse, and I will try to reverse colors front and back.

Speaking of which: In the newest Knitters magazine, Laura Bryant has done some of the most wonderful colorwork I've seen in years.   I hope this is a harbinger of the color book that she is producing: If it is, we are in for a once-in-a-lifetime rreat. What masterful stitchery and coloration! I hope everyone will have a look (we of course have copies in the studio).  I need to find out as well about her Rapport (bamboo-cotton), which I don't remember seeing, but which is advertised in the same issue. Might be the right yarn for the side-to-side that's stuck in my head (see above) in some of Prism's sandwashed colors.

Spring break arrives in the nick of time the week of March 14-19, and I'm going to take the occasion, maybe with Larry in tow, to drive to Townsend, Tennessee -- wherever that is (must be a Smoky Mountain town) - to a small, atmospheric fiber festival. The vendors aren't numerous, and I even know three of them -- but the rest are unknown to me, quite a few of whom are spinning and dyeing, so maybe I can find a couple of promising new people. Then, after the tiny festival at Bowling Green, Ohio, the next weekend, the fiber festival season will be off and running.   I cannot say how eager I am to be blessed with summer -- writing in the morning, maybe on the second-story deck in the treetops, exercising, being in the studio each afternoon until closing. The exhaustion this year is almost palpable -- I need a road trip, some kind of rural eye candy, and landscapes (colors, textures, water, the occasional deer flicking a white tail before dashing off as if its feet hurt!) have that effect.

I also need to learn, once and for all, how to download my own photographs. Stay tuned.

svb

Patience patience...

2011-02-18T14:34:00.001-08:00

To my loyal readers: Please be patient!!! I am not writing anything or posting photos because I am half-crazy with university responsibilities. SOON!!!!! svb

To lace or not to lace, THAT is the question.....

2011-02-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Thinking about crochet today. What has always interested me about crochet -- at least since the day I discovered that I didn't have to stick to doilies, curtains, and blankets, which I learned to make at my unpleasant but thread-adept grandmother's knee -- is the crunchiness of crochet stitches. Knitters think that thickness, chunkiness, real TOOTH are all major shortcomings.   They rightly say that knitted fabrics are drapier, at least most of the time, from which they wrongly conclude that crochet can't really be used for clothing -- UNLESS it's lacy and open and more or less like a doily shaped into something to wear.   Now, I don't have anything at all against lace. I really did make 200+ lace doilies while preparing for my doctoral written exams -- which, by the way, make really wonderful small-gift wrappers!!!!

So it follows, as night the day, that if you make garments, you should work in drapey and usually complicated, open lace fabrics?   I just can't make myself believe that -- despite the huge admiration that I have for Doris Chan, who told me (more or less) at the knit-crochet guilds' national conference to remember that crochet didn't "have to be done in rows." She probably had noticed that almost everything I've done is very, very simple -- usually solid in texture -- and almost never full of air spaces, almost never like a blown-up table cloth -- which people like Doris do SO well that there is no point in doing the same thing less well than they do.

Again, what interests me about crochet IS its appealing crunchiness, and then its simplicity, when worked as a solid fabric -- on a hook, of course, that's big enough to create a fabric that doesn't resemble medieval armor. "Looping' is just incredibly easy, liberating in its simple math, its almost numbing regularity and logic.  I take it as a challenge to adapt SOLID crochet to garments, to make it drape, to take advantage of that lovely, thick, crunchy texture to create heft, which is a GOOD characteristic.   It has to be true, in crochet as in knitting, that everything depends on the integrity of the shaping, the attention to proportion. It has made sense to me to get THOSE things right, and to execute the resulting scheme in the most beautiful yarns available in a simple, inobtrusive stitch that's just right for the yarn.   As with knitting, you have to make swatches. You have to go through the Harmony Guide and all of the other dictionaries to play with textures. But there are hundreds of solid-fabric alternatives, some of which fairly scream Chanel, Lanvin, the Old Vogue couture.

In the pieces I have done, I almost always work side to side, which drapes (!!!), and which also permits the insertion of pockets very easily (you simply chain for the height of the pocket, then go on as if nothing has changed in the piece, picking up stitches later for trim and an inside liner).   I love the elegant, lean lines of the resulting vests and jackets -- nothing tortured, just great texture and a nice hand.  My all-time fave stitch for these simple pieces is half-double crochet -- a time-honored way to have soft, squat, fat little stitches that aren't leggy, that make clustery, dimensional 'seeds' without any effort at all. Besides, because I have always viewed double crochet as a kind of default stitch, I have that delicious sense of CHEATING as I go along, skipping the final yarn-over.   Everybody likes to feel naughty. And it's even naughtier to use knitting for trim....as with I-cord button loops.

Now, I need to figure out how to use the lacy textures as embellishment, trim, secondary effects, the better to enhance the great, hefty, side-to-side fabrics. I'm thinking about a tunic in half-double that carries a fairly wide border at the bottom, some kind of blown-up pineapple stitch maybe, or a FILET design?   Filet just isn't found very much anymore except in thread work.  It has a tailored look that appeals to me, and you can chart out your own motifs. It will have a single row of half-double stitching used as a lace that goes through holes in the very low vee-neckline (to the waist low!). I made a really cool cardigan this way once -- it sold within days -- from Noro Silk Garden Lite (which is coming back on the market!), with some open-space lattice stitching around the edges and cuffs and in the middle of the balloon-ish sleeves (the lacing went through the front band and was simply tied). But -- no lace anywhere in sight.

In the end, I could be the main problem: I'm just not very girly. I don't want to make things that look like doilies and lace masquerading as a tunic, as if crochet has to be girly to be "right." Lord knows, there are some spectacular lace pieces out there -- but they're not ME. I was once a wool tailor, and I didn't have lace on any of those suits. More on this later. There are problems to solve here -- I need to go to the notebook and draw for awhile.

svb

SALLY IS COMING BACK!!!

2011-01-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

Sally Melville will return to Artisan Knitworks the weekend of May 21!!! We don't have the schedule yet, nor the workshops' costs. But! We do know that one of the three workshops will probably be her brilliant Essential Skills (suitable for knitters of ALL levels, including advanced knitters) -- a course designed to teach new skills AND to correct errors that we pick up when we are self-taught. Another probably will be her amazing course, Making the Most of Your Yarn Collection, which is THE essential course (lots of knitting involved!) if you want to use up what you already have in the closet and don't quite know how to do it imaginatively. Call the studio quickly if you want to be put on a list for either of these workshops. We have yet to designate a third workshop. We're going to do a general survey first -- so read our newsletters in the next week or so. We want to make sure that, in this dicey economy, everyone gets something they really want. Stay tuned!! svb

Charity Knitting Dilemma

2011-01-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

I have been puzzling over how to establish a charity-knitting group at Artisan Knitworks – headed by the wondrous Elaine Clark, who knits continually for Russian orphanages and a number of other worthy institutions – and now find myself confronting an unanticipated problem. The orphanages want woolen socks, sweaters, etc. It lasts, and it’s warmer than anything we ordinarily use for basic garments. But other institutions want acrylic. So I told Elaine that I didn’t want members of her group buying yarn at the Big Box Stores. Why? Because the yarn people ordinarily buy for so-called charity projects at those stores is often of really poor quality – and I have been yelling and yelling and yelling for years now about how women should respect their labor sufficient to rule out that kind of knitting stock. So the question becomes: Why would I recommend nasty yarn for charity projects and not for other projects? I can’t. Either we use a worthy fiber or we don’t. But I’m not sure that Elaine agreed or understood, so I need to think it out carefully and come up with something more intelligible than the sputters I managed to come up with the other day. In the meantime: I need to find some really good quality acrylic yarns from companies with whom I already do business. That will be a challenge. First, I really don’t like plain worsted-weight acrylic. It feels like fishing line to me. But, second, it will cost more than at our Big Box friends. So I’ll give a discount – but – it still can’t cost VERY much. And, no, I don’t deal with either Plymouth or Cascade. Ideas?

Mea Culpa...

2011-01-17T15:46:00.000-08:00

I apologize most heartily for being so negligent with this wonderful way to 'talk' with friends....The new semester started, of course, on the 11th, and I am feeling a bit like a skindiver struggling to find air under a thick layer of ice. What a time these first few weeks always are! Yesterday, a new student wrote me an e-mail to tell me, after one class period, that she "doesn't think much of history," and to ask, "What will you be doing to help?" Now, this gives pause. This is part of the idiotic assertiveness training (so-called) that students are getting, in a quite distorted form, in some of our public schools. When you're feeling unhappy, make it someone else's burden. So I had to write back and ask her please to come visit during an office hour -- at which point, I'll ask her how she knows that she doesn't think much of history -- certainly not from any experiences of MY classes. I also have to say, don't I, that the work will be hers to undertake, not mine. I get so weary of this kind of thing.   Time to retire. I love teaching too much to get jaded.

On the fiber front:   I think I'm going to go to the rapidly growing Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Show in mid-February -- not a long drive, an opportunity to be alone with myself and my unfinished book chapters (motel or hotel evenings are prime writing time with a laptop), and a vendor list that contains maybe 7 or 8 dyers that I've never met.   I might even take a workshop -- though I can't quite decide which ones. Maybe I'll bone up on color work. It's been awhile and I have listed a colorwork class at the studio. It wouldn't hurt to take a refresher course!

In the meantime: I'm more and more into disencumbrance. Wouldn't it be FUN to have a wide open loft, or some such space, full of a handful of precious books (instead of 12,000 books), piles of yarn, the cats, the husband, and necessary furniture? I want OUT of this huge, expensive, drafty house. Why do cats, one man, and one woman need 3,200 square feet? So I have sold the baby grand piano to a reputable piano company. And I"m selling spare books steadily on Amazon.com. I'm also hauling bag upon bag of yarn that I'll never use out of the third floor (two more huge bags found their way out the door today) to sell in our infamous Stash area in the studio. People don't quite believe that it has mostly come from my attic. But it has.   If it weren't so funny, I'd be embarrassed!

More later.   I need to rest awhile and maybe work a bit more on the wonderful men's sweater I"m cooking up from three shades of Naturally Vero in half-linen stitch.  Tomorrow, two classes, two office hours, and a meeting.     Sigh.      svb

How NOT to ring in the New Year....!

2011-01-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

What a joke! Last night at midnight, when literally everyone in the world was toasting the New Year, where do you suppose I was? You guessed it: at the computer, completing a course syllabus and sending the draft around to a whole bunch of no-doubt-sotted students. I need to get a life. So over the next week, I'm going to be thinking about 2011, what it ought to contain -- what kinds of things we have the power to control, which things we simply have to do, etc. -- and I'll make report. I was reminded yesterday, when a wonderful woman named Linda came into the studio after months of valiantly battling a fairly serious form of cancer, that the fiber arts really ARE life-giving. She is switching gears, away from marketing and her former occupation, to art history, tapestry preservation/restoration, and classes at a great local university. She is knitting up a storm. So let's think about Linda right now, and all of the Lindas of the world, who confront disaster and decide to grab hold of it, transform it into a triumph. Every one of us needs to find a way to do that in our own lives, with our own disasters, large and small, and use fiber arts as an ally in our own recovery from the ravages of the modern world. Love to everyone, and of course happy new year. svb

....being sick, with wool....

2010-12-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

There is something about coming down with a truly vile case of gastro-intestinal distress right in the middle of a final examination that surpasses all other experiences. This is not to recommend it -- only to identify it as one of those genuinely sui generis experiences, like driving a dark green vintage Jaguar while naked.......

....which, by the way, I add quickly but sadly, I've never done.

What do other people do when they're almost but not quite well? I can't grade papers unless I'm in tip-top condition (not fair), and I don't usually write -- though reading is not out of the question. The ideal activity is knitting or crochet.  The alpha waves set loose are healing. The feel of the wool passing through the fingers is primal, soothing, next to godliness. So now I'm ready to knit -- not yet well, but not as sick as I was four days ago.

What will I make?   Well, I have some experimental skeins of Ella Rae wool with some amazing, truly surprising color runs, so I am going to cook up a pullover with a rolled hem, a body made of garter stitch box stitch (big boxes), and a Henley neckline as wide as one line of boxes. Might put a hood on it. Might also make it into a tunic.     And I have this idea for a quite strict but LLLLLOOONG tunic jacket made of Trendsetter Merino 8 Shadow -- maybe in burgundy shades -- with wide front bands and an equally tall stand-up collar, hidden slit pockets, strict set-in sleeves, wide cuffs, with the cuffs and bands made out of Cha Cha. A ribby but flat texture fabric, with traditional ribs at the sides to slightly draw it in. Need to figure out how to make it look elegant instead of like a clown suit. I want to make the bands horizontally so that the ruffles are short and side to side. That means, I think, sewing the band as well as the cuffs onto the jacket.  (Yes, I know they can be knitted up the front row by row -- but the cuffs? I'll wing it). Off-center buttons with loops, and so on.   All of this will go up in smoke if the band is too stiff.

Then I have a coat in mind -- Prism's big-ball kid mohair in black (or maybe it's mink), mixed with a really fine ladder novelty yarn in jewel tones that a friend found for me at a dollar a ball (I think it's Karabella), which I'm going to use as a wild excuse for playing with triangles again.   Full length coat. Wide sleeves, maybe cast on at the armholes.   We'll see.   HUGE jewel-tone mismatched vintage buttons.   Collar creeping up the neck quite high at the sides of the neck.

All of this might indicate a fever. Time to check the meatloaf.   Over and out.

svb

'Growing' Flowers....

2010-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Well, the term has ended at university -- at least class sessions have ended (we set aside for the moment the inevitability of seminar papers and final examinations and smaller comparative book reviews, and so on, most of which comes home to roost a week from yesterday). For the moment, I am at peace in my big late Victorian house, with a black-and-white not-quite-adult katten (compound word) demanding attention by rolling on the floor, digging at door bottoms when I dare to close them, mewing pathetically.....outside, snow has fallen just enough to coat the inner and lower parts of lawns, patios, steps with icing -- as if somebody spilled a big bowl of it and tried to wipe it up but couldn't get at the joints and interstices, and ....Here I am, thinking about flowers -- woolen ones especially.

As a child, flowers were one of the few pure pleasures -- alongside practicing the piano in the morning (yes, I looked forward to it....I could be alone, completely private, lost in beautiful spaces somewhere in the back of my mind); walking in woods with my big, goofy, sorely missed father; crocheting a lace curtain. In the gardens of childhood, at my grandparents' house in South St Paul, Minnesota, or in our own (which always had vegetables and perennials), I would spend hours pulling up weeds that dared to intrude, digging up the unbelievably broad, heavy clumps of tulips and daffodils in order to split them for next season, making dolls with huge, voluptuous skirts out of the frilly, upside-down blooms of hollyhocks. The soil was always warm; the smell was like nothing else on earth, full of promise.

....and then there were the flowers that my brilliantly resourceful mother and I made out of felt, cloth, pinwheels, all kinds of shapes and materials, to decorate everything that seemed to need some attention. We invented some felt tray covers, embellished them with felt flowers and beads/sequins, and then had the idea that we could sell them as kits -- So off we went to buy bolts of cheap felt, some stencil paper, bulk sequins, and we made kits with a label that said Van Bee Originals (I am NOT making this up). Mom then took the kits to big department stores, where one buyer actually ordered three dozen (!!!!). They didn't re-order; in retrospect, the kits were pretty amateur, with their mimeographed labels and stapled tops. But what a joy to see our flowers and plastic-backed circles of felt in a Donaldson's department store window!

...and I think, more recently, about Val Devine, whose crocheted flowers embellished shawls and jackets and coats -- Mags Kandis, who encouraged two students at a Stitches camp in Riverside, CA, to cover over a less-than-artful section of a small handbag with ravishingly beautiful embroidered flowers -- and of course Karen Klemp. I saw Karen recently at the annual crochet and knitting guild conference, and hauled her around to one side of our booth to show her the big tray of crocheted flowers. She smiled and smiled -- no doubt recognizing that some of them were inspired by a class that I took with her at a TNNA meeting so that I could reconnect with some of the blooms of my own past. I especially love the idea that we can cover over moments of pain or ugliness with beauty, simply by crocheting or knitting or embroidering shapes that originate in gardens.

....a customer came into the studio the other day in search of crocheted flowers. She bought one of mne and then asked me if I could make a dozen more for her. She designs scarves around individual blooms. When I cut the price, she was astonished. But......flowers bring peace, don't they? They take us back to those long-lost gardens of childhood, where hollyhocks could be dolls. Such joy to make flowers for her late at night, when the world is utterly still. I can be 12 years old again.

svb

The Crawl.....!

2010-12-05T07:43:00.000-08:00

It was a ROARING success, this latest multi-shop crawl. We organized it over a mere two weeks' time, at the instigation of the people at Labor of Love in Romeo. Three of us were 'urban' establishments (our Artisan Knitworks, of course, and then City Knits Mt. Clemens and Crafty Lady Trio in Macomb, MI). What a splendid troupe were we!!! Everyone was smiling. I took our client Jean Engerson around for the entire 6-shop tour this past Friday, and both of us were thrilled half to death with the rush of urban and rural landscapes, the splendid sunshine for most of the trip, the crisp autumn atmosphere.

And the people! Everyone was having a spectacular time. In some respects, the mood seemed even more festive than during our Halloween crawl. I arrived at the last stop in Romeo too late to take pictures -- it was only 5:30, but the sun is vanishing at a remarkably early moment these days, so no possibility of snapshots. But we managed to get home before night was very far advanced. All in all, a marvelous day.

Two shops bear special notice. They are mostly unfamiliar to Metro Detroit artisans, and so I urge all of you to take a road trip, first to Sweet Pea in St. Clair, then to Knitters' Hideaway in Armada.

Here is what the Sweet Pea shop looks like on River Drive in St. Clair -- and here is also what the river drive looked like from the car (and from the St Clair Inn's dining room, where Jean and I had lunch):

Once inside the darling Sweet Pea, which had some wonderfully unusual yarns, we found NATHAN and his mummy. Here is the young lad with his amazing handcrafted hat, with Penny, owner of the shop, on the right, and mummy on the left...!

....and then we got to Knitters' Hideaway, which is just the cutest thing. Isabell and her husband have carved a darling shop out of the second floor of their shed on the farm -- which has horses as well as a vintage Sinclair gas pump.

All in all, this was just a marvelous, marvelous event, a warming moment for new friendships, and perhaps a prelude to a much longer process by which the walls come tumbling down, one by one, beween all of the fiber-related enterprises in Metro Detroit. svb

Dealing with Recession...

2010-12-01T05:43:00.000-08:00

The question arises:   How do we get through the present economic emergency? If only we could say when it would ease! But the experts agree only that it will go on for awhile.   If only we could persuade people to begin spending some of their inactive cash! We do know that 70% of the American economy is driven by consumption. (Whether we like it or not!).  But. For now, it simply IS. So we do what we can do.   At Artisan Knitworks, we are dealing with it by making choices that are likely to succeed (though I confess to have bought some hats and super bulky yarns that I KNEW wouldn't sell right away -- there is the problem of my taste for the uncommon, the beautiful, the idiosyncratic....!

But there are other things that can be done, and some of them have unexpected consequences. We have organized two multi-shop crawls, e.g. -- one of them over the Halloween weekend, and another upcoming on December 3-4.  The first one involved 7 shops ranging from Grosse Pointe to Plymouth, a distance of perhaps 40 miles.   The new one moves in the other direction, toward the small town of Romeo, with six shops.   There will be all of the usual benefits -- discounts, small bags with surprises. (all of which affords shops an opportunity to get rid of valuable items they haven't sold or otherwise want to eliminate -- we also give away copies of our own patterns). The proceeds go to a charity -- in this case, a wonderful shelter for women and children in Mt Clemens, Michigan. And of course that's one consequences -- the shelters run out of money at this time of year, just as the weather turns ugly, and at the bottom of a nasty recession, both of which increase domestic violence under the best of conditions).  We'll have another huge crawl in mid-summer, when all of us experience the summer doldrums. And I'm trying to arrange a kind of 'visiting professor' program with friends in Ann Arbor, by which we will teach classes in each other's shops for travel expenses.

But look at what has happened! When the recession lifts, we will have forged links with people we barely knew, enriched our own lives, and grown as artisans through interaction with new people. I had never met the wonderful women from Sweet Pea and Labor of Love, far to the north of us; now, we can visit and talk and compare notes.   Perhaps more important:   Everyone talks about the politics of yarn shops in Michigan (a phrase actually used by a yarn rep); we can break down walls, make it USUAL rather than unusual for owners to mix and mingle and visit and share. This will be a lasting legacy of an economic disaster. We will have succeeded in chipping away at those walls in ways that have not happened over 20 years of prosperity.

Second, and in some ways most important, we have been forced to fall back on The Local, our own resources -- local teachers, local resources. I now carry a huge supply of Stonehedge yarns from East Jordan, Michigan - gorgeous medium and fine-weight woolens, including Deb McDermott's exquisite mill-end yarns, which our people have been fashioning into socks and amazing little sweaters. No two skeins are identical.  Local talent, local materials, and local self-reliance. Cultivating one's garden.
During World War II, there were victory gardens; we have gardens of knotted wool.

What a joy to contemplate all of this.   . svb

For those of you who've asked...!

2010-11-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

..........Here is what she looks like. Who, you say? Well, Lisa James, of course, the maker of those amazing sheep-spinnings (yes, I got a new supply at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival, for those of you who snap them up when I have them in stock!). Her sister (in the purple hat) has one around her neck:

She's also wearing one of her astonishing hats. We have three of them in the place right now -- a red one (like the one she's wearing, though not identical, of course), plus two other warm colors. There is a story here: Lisa has a friend who makes felt constructions (I don't know exactly what kind) and she takes the voluminous leftovers and sews them into hats -- It takes amazing creativity, because the leftovers have been cut into a myriad of shapes. Pick one up and look at it. And imagine the spinnings on cuffs, lapels (they can be both knitted and crocheted, though with big tools), handbags, or needle-felted into hangings. How about handles? Or just do what Lisa has done. She's a force of nature -- someone who reminds me of the region from which she comes (the southwest). svb

Copyright violations and resistant women...

2010-11-26T17:49:00.000-08:00

...and today I had another jolting encounter with yet another woman who doesn't REALLLLY believe that pattern writers have copyright. Or so I gather. I will describe this briefly because it really annoys me. A couple of weeks ago, a woman came into the studio and was rifling through "the stash," which is what I call the discounted yarn supply in the middle room. I asked her how I could help, and she explained that she had bought my pattern for a slouchy beret (one of the patterns in our own line of patterns) and now wanted to get a number of different kinds of yarn so she could make a whole lot of them for sale. I said, Well, you know, that design is under copyright, and you can't make copies for commercial purposes -- have a look at the back of the leaflet, and so on and so forth. She said that all of this was news to her and looked annoyed. But she bought a small supply of yarn and disappeared. Today, she reappeared with yarn and the pattern and prouldy explained that she had made a lot of the hats for sale. At that point, I hardly knew what to say, so I simply said, Why would you do that? And she said, quite remarkably, that nobody else paid attention to this copyright thing, so why should she? And she was smiling!!!!!! I'd like advice from others as to how to deal with this persistent problem. There may be no answer, so long as women continue to think that copyright applies to everything except things that fall within 'women's sphere,' where everything is supposed to be shared (otherwise we're selfish), and where women continue to starve to death -- Remember that women continue to make 60 cents for every dollar that men earn for the very same work. Selfish indeed. svb

On Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

......a day for contemplation of riches, past and present, including pumpkin pies and dressing. In the deep past, I can see my father's mother's face clearly today, as if she were here, the Jewish grandmother from Stillwater, Minnesota, who hid her Jewishness under a thick layer of denial. Lillian had married the love of her life, whose first name really was Orange, at the cost of complete alienation from her family. It is hard to imagine, at this remove, the cost of being the only Jewish family in Stillwater, Minnesota, in the first half of the 20th century.   But there she was, in love with an Episcopalian with a big white house on Elm Street and little else. During the prohibition era, in fact, Orange converted his auto repair shop into a rum-runner conversion shop (to make pots of money!). There, he and Francis, my father (who had dropped out of high school for the purpose), installed heavy springs in the undercarriages of vehicles that were carrying illicit alcohol between Somerset, Wisconsin, and the Twin Cities (Minnesota). Dad, who had a naughty twinkle in his eye, once showed my brothers and I the night club along the main highway where he used to hide out under a trap door to evade the feds.   I don't think he was making it up.

In any case:  the Stillwater grandparents were the most serene and insular of the two sets of forebears -- I now think because they had been cut off from Lillian's family (they sat shiva when she got married) and because she was ill most of the time (psoriasis and a host of other maladies). But could she cook! I wish I had tumbled at the time to the cabbage rolls and other dishes that smacked of Jewish family cooking....but I really had no idea.   Only later did I learn what kind of questions I should have been asking the sad woman who spent so many hours in a big chair in the living room. And of course by then it was too late.   Orange and Lillian, however, remained in love, perfectly content to spend time mainly with one another: In their late 90s, they'd pile into the big old Oldsmobile every Sunday, weather permitting, and drive slowly to the A and W root beer stand to "watch the kids."

It was the other grandmother, the one I didn't like as much, but to whom I owed the very most, who joined us for Thanksgiving, to whose house we migrated almost every year, once we moved back to Minnesota from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.   I was about 10 when we made that penultimate move -- Dad's partner, Dick Erhardt, had literally walked off with the checking account in South Dakota, so .... time to relocate. In Worthington, Minnesota, we were just close enough to St. Paul (it was across the state, but not impossibly far) to make the drive once in awhile. When Thanksgiving was held in South St. Paul, we could at least have fun with Swift and Company foreman Toolie (nickname for the wonderful grandfather, besmirched only by his youthful dalliance with the Ku Klux Klan -- which, in South St. Paul, could ride its motorcyles to Lilydale and harass Jewish people........no blacks in town, so you pick on what's available).   I have always wondered how such a gorgeously funny, genuinely nice man could have been hateful. I can't ask him -- he died thirty-odd years ago, leaving his unpleasant wife behind. As with Lillian, I didn't know what I ought to have been asking him.  When he died of kidney failure, a little bit of me died with him -- what a hoot that man was. The dark underside was nowhere to be seen when we were young.

His wife, my mother's mother Carrie Beedle, was not a nice woman.   She paced up and down in front of the local church waiting for Toolie to cease all the annoying chatter and socializing. She flicked the porch light up and down to let her 30-year old daughter, my mother, know that she was watching every move on the porch swing when she brought a boyfriend home. In old age, she moved into our final resting place in West St. Paul, criticizing everything my mother and father did. I was actually glad when she died, and didn't have to say so. One of my fears, in fact, is that life will end that way for me as well, with everyone smiling at the funeral.   Perhaps we all entertain that fear.

Yet it was Carrie -- the tyrannical, unloveable Carrie -- who taught me everything I once knew about thread crochet, the one thing she loved to the point of devotion, more than her children and husband, more than anything I ever noticed in her household. I think now that she used her doilies, tablecloths, edgings, bedskirts, curtains, on and on, as places to live, when the real world became intolerable. She made afghans too, and quilts, but her real love was thread lace -- and so, together, this awful woman and I 'spoke' to one another in the language of pineapple, filet, Irish crochet.   When I was taking Ph.D. written exams, I made over 200 lace doilies and used them for years afterward to wrap little gifts -- all because of her. I made dozens and dozens of things as a young woman, all in ecru, white, sometime mixtures......and I owe it to her, don't I, that when I want to relax and find sanity, I escape into crochet, the one that's most natural. There is a very rich irony here somewhere, because I really hated the way she lived.

Carrie -- the same Carrie -- could cook up a storm. When my parents joined forces at Thanksgiving to cook dinner, the results were spectacular. Nobody had any money. And, when Carrie finally did have enough money to be comfortable, she continued for the rest of her life to patch her clothes with flour sack patches, to buy everything on sale, to raise chickens, as if the Great Depression were still afoot.  But the old ways led to groaning tables and a week of leftovers. Yams. Whipped rutabagas. Home-cooked cranberry relish. Overcooked brussel sprouts or carrots, or both.  The apple pies were tall and tender. The whipped cream dolloped onto pumpkin pie had been 40% butterfat, and so it stood tall as vanilla-flavored Minnesota snowbanks. Turkeys with savory bread stuffing called to mind past turkeys.  One of the men, grandfather or father, stood proudly at the end spot at dining room tables and exercised the mysterious male art of carving. The women, of course, feigned ignorance of carving, even though they probably had shown them how to do it when they were boys.  Tradition reigned. Women cooked, men carved and took credit for the success or failure of The Bird, and everyone else sat there (it was always mid-day, an echo of the days when farmhands ate their big meal at noon) for the entire afternoon, unable to move, unwilling to make an end.

Even in adulthood, when I was living in Washington, D.C., for example, I often drove home (I was supposed to think of St. Paul, Minnesota, as "home" even after decades of living elsewhere) to share that same Thanksgiving dinner in my parents' West St. Paul house.  The dressing (the one I still make, that my brother David still makes) is Lillian's dressing. The gravy is my mother's gravy. The pie ingredients and method that I still use originated, when I was in my teens, with Elvira Ballou of Round Lake, Minnesota, who was a Paris-trained chef marooned in the middle of corn fields, who taught my mother to make to-die-for pastry, who in turn taught me. So when I make pies, I self-consciously conjure up Elvira's amazing face, her carved nose, her loose bun on top of her head. She had a big old house filled with antiques, and struck me, then as now, as an exotic creature victimized by some kind of time or space warp.....I never did learn how this fascinating, well-travelled woman came to live in that town, where everyone except Elvira made Campbell Soup hotdishes and ate Wonder Bread in the name of Progress. Nobody made their own bread anymore -- except Lillian and Elvira -- because Progress had given them store-bought bread. When we were kids, we made little objects at mealtime from the horrible, white, doughy center of those bread slices -- we'd remove the crusts and squeeze it into shapes as if it were Play-Dough.

So tonight, when Larry and Katherine and I migrate to a restaurant for our repast, I will be thinking about those meals, those family gatherings, and maybe I'll silently apologize to Lillian and Carrie and Gladyce and Elvira for not celebrating their ways this year.....for not making that wonderful sage dressing that Mom used to run through a manual food mill (an improvement on Lillian's original method). I will do it next year.   This year, we need to rest. I need to spend the time making hats and scarves for sale at the studio, and I need to plan classes for the rest of the semester. But memory survives.  It will happen again.

svb

....laggardlyness...

2010-11-20T20:54:00.000-08:00

Is there such a word? I have been laggardly with this blog. I am SO tired -- it's near the end of the semester at Wayne State, students are doing what they do at term's end, particularly in the lower division class ("What??? You mean we have to write more than one paper? Is that on the syllabus???" or "How do you expect us to read that whole book by next week? I don't remember you telling us that....") and so on and so forth. This term, I learned many things I didn't know before. On midterms, for instance, I learned that "slaves were entirely destroyed during Reconstruction" (!!!) and, no doubt less shockingly, that William Jennings Bryant was a famous black reformer. Not to mention this: "The sixteenth amendment gave women the vote, except for Indian women, who were reserved." I couldn't make this stuff up, folks.

More later, when I can think clearly. svb

and a fabric to die for...

2010-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Finally: I need to get some work done SOMETIME today......Here are two images of one of our visitors during the recent Yarn Crawl............Her coat was made of such an intriguing woolen fabric that I forced Larry to take pictures. This could be replicated in knitting with black woolen tweed (or plain black with a carry-along) and a row of fair-isle birds-eye done with variegated handpainted wool. Or maybe with a row of stockinette deliberately done on the wrong side to create some 'bleed.' I love it. One of the best ways to devise new knitted fabrics is always to remember that fabric is fabric, fiber is fiber, and all we have to do, really, is to translate one 'language' into the other. When time appears, I'll find the yarn.

svb

Alex's triumph.....

2010-11-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to report that the splendid Alex Peabody, age 12, has finished his first garment -- a wondrous sweater vest made out of Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair in a great, heathery shade of teal. He began with a Knitting Pure and Simple pattern, but soon began adding things -- like pockets, a wider neckband, and then some buttons made of handblown glass in the shape of fish. So it's truly an original. So is he. And don't miss his equally splendid friend Dierdre, shown at the table in the studio (second image), working diligently on HER first sweater, a pullover of my design made of Trendsetter's Tonalita. Alex now has in mind making a Henley pullover...........stay tuned. svb

Middle America: Larry's Pictures

2010-11-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

So here are some of the things we saw in Ohio and Indiana. We hang out in coffee shops whenever we can find them, and one of the true signs that midwesterners are gaining ground, perhaps advancing on the rest of us, is the proliferation of espresso houses -- NOT Starbucks and other big-box chains, but independent shops, like the ones we photographed here. Wonderful places. One of them, in Indiana, featured amazing (and amusing) images and icons from Florida -- where one of the owners apparently preferred to live.

We also went to a restaurant in Van Wert, Ohio, right on the border with Indiana, which promised to be one of those very old-fashioned "grub" joints where you could get REAL mashed potatoes and REAL meatloaf, and so on..........so Larry took a gorgeous picture of the vintage neon sign (vintage to us -- everyday news to them!). Unfortunately, the food was less than ordinary (Larry got one uninspired salmon patty; I got some meatloaf much less flavorful than my own, and the meringue pies had no discernable flavor). But it featured all of the trappings of my childhood, and probably Larry's -- the soda fountain-style counter seats in chrome, the wait people who looked like their names must be Maude and Susie Q.

And then there were the antique shops. Here is an image of the interior of one of them in Indiana -- the kind of place where we find out vintage fasteners and jewelry by just plain rooting around in piles and piles of STUFF, most of it hidden from view.

We made a nice haul this time -- though mostly at the Jeffreys Antique Center near Findlay, which was more or less where we began to look. We'll go back there periodically.

And, just for the fun of it, here's an all-American street corner -- on the road to Maumee, Ohio, just because it reminded me so very much of childhood in places like Royalton and Worthington, Minnesota.

In another post, I'll publish some very important images of a very important young knitter.

svb

Ohio, Indiana, and Intimations of Winter

2010-11-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

..........Yup.   As we drove through Ohio on the way to Indiana, it started to snow. So we called the studio to find out how everything was going and to say, "Hey it's snowing here!" and Katie said, "Hey it's snowing here!" So I guess winter is coming whether I want it to come or not. Mind you, I despise warm weather. I'm one of those people who has to have a fan in the bedroom every day of the year. (Poor Larry). And because I'm from Minnesota, I think much more kindly on prospects of winter than many people do.  I remember, to give one example, how people went door to door in Worthington, Minnesota, with a Folger's coffee can to gather money for families who couldn't pay the heat bill. I vividly recall squads of neighbors helping one another with massive, truly daunting snow removal challenges -- with snowbanks at corners so tall that car owners had to put flags on their aerials in order to be seen while driving.  I also fondly remember the long, languid evenings at the fireside with nothing but one another.   We didn't have a TV for a long, long time, and when it came, it was an old, used Edison........too small to be all-consuming. We talked to one another; we helped with one another's paper routes in mid-winter, we laughed our heads off when we ran out of groceries and had to put water on the Wheaties. And so, in many respects, winter was an opportunity for engagement and learning and love, not a burden.

But, still, it's better to be able to walk down the street, to sit on the deck, to be able to go to a lake and roll up the jeans and wade. My main objection to summer, in fact, is not the opportunities for movement it offers, but the heat, the decreased productivity, the suffocating miasma in the big stucco house that can only be cut with big fans and, yes, air conditioning. Intolerance of heat, in fact, has increased as I age. It's so much harder to get cool than to get warm.   But what do you expect from a Minnesotan? No lover of year-round heat ever spent more than a few years in Minneapolis -- a city, by the way, that has adapted almost perfectly to cold. University students can move from builcing to building in shirt sleeves all winter long -- there's a tunnel system! -- and shoppers in downtown Minneapolis can do the same thing through a series of above-ground tunnels (can you describe a glass tube connecting one building to another as a tunnel?). Snowplows move like a well-disciplined army to clear every street in record time -- and, mind you, they're at work DURING the blizzard, not just afterward. Detroiters, by contrast, seem to be in denial ("Are we really in the temperate zone?"), throwing salt at snowbanks. How stupid is that?   Salty slush in the place of snowbanks.

So we went on our trip to Ohio and Indiana. It was fun, and of course we found oodles of really wondrous vintage buttons.   I also found scads of vintage crocheted doilies that I'm going to use to create lush, frilly necklines on a series of crocheted sweaters, should I live long enough.

But more later, when I have pictures.

svb

...taking a drive....!

2010-11-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Larry and I have decided NOT to go to the wonderful inaugural New England fiber festival in West Springfield, MA -- this weekend, in fact -- because, well, we're just too tired, and the last thing we need right now is more yarn. So -- we have decided to fully staff the studio with good people and just LEAVE. We will drive generally into Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky -- the general objective will be to search high and low for out-of-the-way antique and collectible shops -- that's where we find extraordinary vintage buttons and jewelery -- but, mostly, we just want to look at beautiful countryside and have good meals and REST. I'll take pictures; so will Larry; and I'll make report. Maybe we can get as far as the Bybee Pottery in Bybee, Kentucky, and raid the seconds shop!

svb

Entering the month of Thanksgiving....

2010-10-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

It's almost November, a month that I associate with cool, fragrant air and the coming of white icing on trees and flowerheads........I don't think I'd survive in a semi-tropical climate. I look forward to the coming of the Big Chill. It makes me walk briskly, maybe to experience the crunch of leaves and last summer's flower stalks underfoot. There is a smell that only occurs in autumn woods -- a mixture of damp moss and moulding leaves. I learned to love it in Minnesota, where woods abound, and now I find myself wanting to drive to some woods and just go for a long, long walk.   Maybe get lost. So I'd better make it a Metro Park so 'getting lost' wouldn't be life-threatening.  Maybe I'll call up Karen Turlay so that we can tromp around the Cranbrook grounds.

Anyway: I'm thinking, ruminating really, about what the next month holds.   We have moved into new studio digs, which almost everyone loves better than the old digs -- if only because we can watch the winter skies roiling and churning through the huge picture window. The new sofa is perfectly positioned so that everyone can OOOH and AHHH, as yesterday, over the swift-moving clouds and seagulls. Everyone wanted to grab grays, lavenders, whites, hot pinks to knit a sunset.

There are start-up costs, and we are still struggling with them. We have had to cancel a big event because of the local economy, which still can't support luxury purchases (such as workshops). So I will postpone expensive visitors for awhile -- and that's fine. We need to feel our way along. In the meantime, I have some wondrous trunk shows lined up, mostly with Michigan people (this makes me VERy happy, all this Michigan stuff!), and the line-up starts this weekend with the brilliant Rita Pettreys of Yarn Hollow (near Grand Rapids). She'll be there when the Second Annual Shop Crawl commences two days from now.

And that's another wonder. When we started the crawl last year, there were five shops. Michigan is infamous for a general failure to band together (as shops do in Minneapolis or Seattle), whether rightly or not. So we have been determined to do something about that. Five shops were a good start, and the shop crawl was a success.   This year, we have SEVEN!   The stops form a long arc from Plymouth, Michigan, to St. Clair Shores -- a really cool development. It can be done in one day, but we have made it a two-day crawl, complete with passports, bags of treats, refreshments, and nice discounts. There is a 200 dollar door prize at crawl's end. Proceeds from passport sales go to ovarian cancer research. This is thrilling. It will help us financially, of course -- all of us. But, more important, it gets people out of the house, into the loop, into one another's shops to talk and make friends and SOCIALIZE. This past week, the owners of the Knotted Needle came to visit us. If we can keep all of this buzz going, everyone will benefit. The boats all rise. It's really true. You CAN combat a recession (and a culture of isolation) by taking serious swipes at it -- we have proof.

In the meantime, I will go for a walk and inhale the amazing evidence of seasonal change, growth, advancement toward whatever lies ahead for all of us.

svb

the palette...

2010-10-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

to continue the previous discussion: This otherwise poor photograph has the entire autumn palette -- the various greens, including chartreuse, the shots of madder red, the warm yellow-gold-orange range, and the grays/browns. Notice the way the limbs sketch through like charcoal strokes. It's particularly apparent in the maple tree on the right. The grays are critical to the result, and I'll bet it's the sketchiness of the darks and the 'grounding' effect of the grays that have eluded me.

svb

Autumn Colors and Wool...

2010-10-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

I began today with a big ol' camera roaming the yard, the patio, the view from my second-story deck (which is in the treetops) because the light today is that particular kind of damp gray that usually causes warm colors to pop. Too bad.   They don't show on this screen, and I doubt that they will show on anyone's monitor. The saturation is just astonishing.   The first photo, by the way, is the little fellow who lives on my front steps -- an incredibly heavy little stylized sheep (I think of him as Mesopotamian) who came from a nursery in Ann Arbor some years ago, and who is my answer to all of the cloned dogs and lions on dozens of Grosse Pointe front steps. He lives with a concrete hedgehog, on the other side of the steps -- a reminder to me of my dear friend Julie Larson, who years ago started a small collection of hedgehogs and gave them to me, year after year, on the ground that I looked just like them.  Isaiah Berlin might say that's a good thing -- better to be a hedgehog than a fox (his remaking of a classical Greco-Roman statement) -- the hedgehog knows how to dig deeply, whereas the fox is all about surfaces.....

Anyway: Here are some faded photographs. Each year, I try to capture the colors of autumn in wool yarn with at least one freeform knitted/crocheted project, typically a jacket, and each year I give up in disgust. What I see with my eyes (not in the photos) are rich, saturated tones of ocher, sienna, some greens (very dark, almost black in the hemlocks, then a kind of green tinge in some of the changing leaves), dashes of cochineal and madder red (the little bush near my driveway provides an example), some dark chocolate (in the sketchy branches that form a lattice through some of the warm tones, and in bark), and then the backdrop of grays and blues.   The backdrop conditions all that we see -- so I hesitate to add serious blues to the mix.   It will change everything.   But grays are another story.   Grays have a way with color, as if celebrating or selling them to the world. I'm going to try again this year.   I have a basket of wools, mohairs, some boucles, at the ready -- I wonder now, as I think about it, whether the problem is proportional.   I should pay attention to the amount of each color family.

More later.   Enjoy whatever you see outside of your house -- I hope you live in a place with gold and orange and red and green and chocolate, changing each day..............          svb

In Retrospect

2010-10-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

....and now that a few spare moments appear, here are my additional thoughts about the New York festival.   First, I still think it's more exciting than Maryland Sheep and Wool has been for the past two years.   People pushing and milling and smiling in large numbers, filling the many show buildings well beyond what the fire code should permit.....lots of energy everywhere, even in the parking lots, where you could find plates from Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Georgia (!), South Dakota (!!!).

Second, and more interesting, there are more men than in the past. That's not to say that men were knitting and crocheting. I have no idea whether any of them can knit.  But they were THERE. And it was fairly clear to me that they were not there simply to be guarding against excessive spending by spouses. They were smiling, looking at the merchandise, offering opinions about the quality of this or that pile of roving. Young men walked along with young women, hand in hand, as if they'd done this all their lives.  America is changing.

Third, and most important of all: People were taking their time, making friends, talking to perfect strangers at the luncheon picnic tables. Now, this is always true at fiber festivals. It's part of why these events are so importand to the cultivation of arts and crafts. The sociability idea is reinforced. And it seemed to me that, year after year, I've seen more and more of it. At New York, friend Ann met up with two women she'd encountered on a website, shopped with them all afternoon, introduced them to me, created a network. Over coffee, I met three women whose cards I now have in my wallet and who will be called when I'm next in the Fingerlakes region. On and on. There is a social fabric forming always, but it does seem to me that it is becoming stronger.

That's enough for now.  svb

FROM RHINEBECK...!

2010-10-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

Home again!

Here are some images from my wonderful trek to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival near Rhinebeck, New York..........though I messed up badly.   Larry's fancy camera has a 'manual' setting that I accidentally triggered, so virtually all of the photographs that I took indoors are out of focus. Here are some that are at least see-able. First is a shot of the fairgrounds with happy walkers/shoppers........and then there's the brilliant Lisa Joyce (Arizona) with her sister in two of the hats she makes from recycled felt pieces. Lisa makes gorgeous sheep's wool yarn, chunky, deeply satisfying to use as trims or textural elements. Thurd, I got a shot of Ann, one of our friends and clients, with whom I played phone tag for awhile at the fair. Then there's the talented woman who's making tapestry bags (I got four of them) with hand-crafted hardwood handles. And, finally, a shot of the entrances to a couple of the MANY buildings at the expo. The Sheep and Wool Festival is so vast, and spread over so many buildings, that it's easy to become disoriented. But.... it's also more fun than almost anything I can imagine.

The drive was long and mostly gorgeous. Pennsylvania along Interstates 80 and 84 is endless, but in mid-October, it's also unspeakably beautiful. It's as if a demented painter spilled colorful pots of paint all over the trees throughout the Allegheny National Forest and then into the Appalachians. As New York appeared, the colors continued....broken only by pine expanses.  I didn't bother to photograph any of it. Some things can't be captured on film; you're always disappointed. Memory is a better archive. So I can't share what I saw -- except to say that, if you ever want to soothe the mind, drive east in mid-October in full sunlight -- or , better yet, in grayed or end-of-day sun, when the colors are even more vivid.

More later.   I have to sit on a panel today at 4:00 and I'm unprepared.   svb

UPCOMING STUFF....!

2010-10-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

Just want to quickly tell everyone what's coming. This very next weekend, I will climb into a rental car (the poor little BUG is getting a bit creaky after all these years, so I'm only using her for short trips, say, to Ohio or Indiana) and drive to Rhinebeck, NY -- made famous recently by Chelsea Clinton, but known to fiber aficionados as the site of the amazing New York Sheep and Wool Festival. I had hoped to hook up with Cynthia Grosch, who makes samples for me and test-knits some of my designs, but I don't think she can come -- so that's a disappointment. But I will be able to find old and new friends, and of course grab some delectable new yarns (and so on) for the place. Most of all: I can think while driving, feel the power of the landscape as it rushes by, and get caught up on work in the quiet privacy of a Hampton Inn. That's pure bliss.

Then -- to make matters more amazing -- Larry and I will drive away the very next weekend and go to Asheville, NC, where the rapidly growing SOutheast Fiber Arts Expo will take place. More on this one later -- but most of all, I look forward to seeing it grow -- it's now about twice as big as when I first went, so it should be really really really fun.

In the meantime: If I don't finish the sweater model that I promised Barry Klein by October 15 or so, and maybe make some headway on some academic work, I will have to leave the country.

svb

Past, Present, Future

2010-10-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

In the past, the amazing little class just conducted in the studio with children -- taught by me, my wonderful Alex (age 12) and Dierdre (age 12), and assorted adults. There is real magic in the way young brains function.   What flexibility and agility! Show 'em something and they soon are not only doing it, but making it look like, well, child's play. Why do people underestimate children so completely?   "Well, I'll cast on for you because children can't do it," or "OOOOH dearie, how ARE we???" (in baby talk).   Ask a twelve year old a complex question, you'll get an answer that is both honest and penetrating. Maybe we should start a permanent children's group and put Alex and Dierdre entirely in charge. The problem, of course, is that I can't pay them in money. The feds would come get me. But I can give them endless yarn! Alex is almost done with his first vest, complete with pockets, buttonholes, and nicely crafted bands.   Dierdre is making a pullover out of Trendsetter Tonalita -- really beautiful.   I drafted a simple little pattern and off she went.

Also in the past, a truly nightmarish encounter with a button maker who apparently didn't believe that we had cancelled her visit for lack of space and traffic, etc., and showed up anyway.   I'm exhausted.

In the present, a studio that is picking up steam, attracting new people, making everyone happier than we've been in a long time. I wish I could spend more time there.   It's frustrating to be doing everything less well than I could do if I were there more regularly. I could be designing sweaters regularly, dyeing more yarn, teaching more people...........Oh well. In good time.   For now, I have a book to finish.

In the future, the near future, in fact, there's the New York Sheep and Wool Festival at Rhinebeck. I probably will rent a car and take four days to come and go by way of Canada (better roads). It's a long way to Albany and fairly tedious -- but the festival is the biggest in the nation, at least to my eyes (some people think Maryland, but I haven't sensed as much energy there in the last two years). And there are so many wonderful vendors that I hate to miss it -- not to mention antique shops.

Then the Southeastern festival across the street from the Asheville, NC, airport. I need to figure out how to kidnap Larry. He needs to get out of the studio. The NC event is a natural. He loves the Carolinas, and it's the right time of year. So -- I need to plot, cover the studio for the weekend, and pile him into a car. When we were last driving through NC, we found just an amazing number of wee antique shops with genuinely interesting buttons and old buckles. They were off the beaten path, with prices not hiked up to meet the expectations of interstate travelers, who frequent the big malls along those roads (sometimes by the busload). Better to go to the smallest of the small and find the truly original and unique buttons at good prices. And the additional reward is that you get to visit all of those sleepy towns with a single old-fashioned cafe on Main Street, filled with people who haven't seen strangers in awhile.  I remember once in Kentucky having the distinct feeling that I was scandalizing everyone with my black fitness pants and (to their eyes) rather garish Marketplace of India jacket........not at all ladylike, I suppose, particularly because you're not supposed to be braless at age 65..........oops..........almost 66 (on Wednesday).   Too bad about that. I keep thinking it's going to stop, but it doesn't. I just keep getting older.

The Southeastern festival is actually a joy. I didn't go last year (conflicts). But it keeps getting bigger and bigger. It's held in a huge agricultural arena/center, which includes an immense main building with tiers, and then a series of drafty but atmospheric outbuildings/sheds. The sheds are not entirely visible, so the people who rented space there were not entirely happy when I went the last time. Maybe they've fixed that situation with better signs. But the big building has dozens of high-quality dyers, spinners, and so on -- and you go round and round in circles, tier by tier, to explore the place. What an immense amount of fun)

That's it for now.   Believe me, when there are travels to report, I'll be back atcha, as Palin would say.

svb

I fixed it!

2010-09-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

At least I think I fixed it so that everyone except spammers can post comments more readily. Blogspot has a default position that makes it possible only for Google account holders to comment. I hope I took care of that, so try it. svb

....off to northern Michigan!

2010-09-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today, I got in the car late in the morning and drove to West Branch, Michigan, where the often neglected Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival happens every year. What an amazing drive! The skies were threatening rain most of the way, and on a couple of occasions made good on the threat -- and the air is now cold. But I also witnessed the most astonishing celestial show of elegant grays, cream tones, blues punctuated with roiling, boiling charcoal. I was wishing I could get out of the car and knit something that looked just like that layered, linsey-woolsey sky -- summer becoming autumn, almost -- not quite. (My students have never heard of the old fabric linsey-woolsey, so don't feel badly if you have no idea what it was....only historians like me get all excited about things like that). In a week, autumn will insist upon itself. For now, the heavens are full of resentment and indecision.

The festival was interesting but a little bit odd. I was surprised at the number of yarn shops with booths full of manufactured yarns; I don't remember seeing booths like that in past years. And roving, spinners, spinning wheels were everywhere -- many more than in the past. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the expo at Ann Arbor in that respect, though bigger. In Michigan, it's fairly clear to me that spinners and makers of roving are outnumbering knitters and crocheters at the festivals, at least for now. Allegan was showing the same tendency, though on a lesser scale.

Nevertheless....I found some of my favorite people. Rita Petteys of Yarn Hollow promised to contact Larry about a trunk show, so I decided to wait before acquiring some of her lovely, lovely skeins. And then I found Kim Leach (Happy Hands Yarns) and Riin Gill (Happy Fuzzy Yarns). They share more than the word "Happy," so I hustled Kim away from her booth over to Riin's booth. They HAD to meet. They share a kind of eccentric eye for color -- never predictable, always elegant but whimsical. Both have a way with names ("Brown Eyed Girl" for one of Kim's; "Duck" and some other amazing names for Riin's.) Kim took one look at Riin's stuff and understood what I wanted her to notice -- not just the similarity in sensibility but the great skill with color. I hope they become friends -- that would make me very happy.

I came away with a pile of limey lightweight wool from Kim, some stunningly beautiful lace-weight alpaca, a pastel combination that I've not seen in her repertoire, and some delightful wool-tencel. From Riin, I gathered a few skeins of ravishingly painted orange, plum, red fingering weight yarn. Not many. I still have lots of her yarn. But I couldn't leave them there.

All of it now hangs on the new studio wall that I'm going to give over to new acquisitions. Larry will make signs indicating where they came from (in this case, the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival and Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool) so that people can see what's happening month to month and maybe grab things before they merge with the larger collections.

In the meantime, I am in desperate need of sleep! I hope to dream in technicolor.

svb

are you there?

2010-09-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, faithful readers, are you there? Strike up a conversation. I feel as if I'm writing into a gigantic black hole!!!!!!!!!!!! Use the comment section -- and really comment!!

On Saturday, I'm going to take a quick road trip up Interstate 75 to West Branch, Michigan, to the Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival (might have the name slightly wrong) that has always struck me as one of the undersung festivals in the region. VERY pretty setting -- a parklike fairgrounds, trees everywhere, an impression of unusual verdancy. There will be seventy-some vendors, some of whom are friends -- Riin Gill from Ann Arbor, who paints her beautiful yarns in a turkey roaster (!); Kim Leach of Wisconsin whose Toe Jamz are both whimsical and masterfully dyed; and some others. I am particularly tired right now and a tad dejected: My grad seminar tonight fizzled after two hours from lack of reading, so I need some perking up. A road trip almost always does that for me. I am not sure what it is about the motion of the car, the way the countryside whizzes by and the air whooshes on my face -- particularly when I can have either the windows or the sliding top hatch open. The mood is meditative, zen-like, as if mesmerized by the motion, the peace, the absence of contradiction and tension. Right now, I could use a big dose of it. Stay tuned. I'll take the camera.

svb

...one final image....

2010-09-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

and here is something to make everyone happy: Look at the colors, the texture! This is what I love to find when I travel to these festivals. I didn't buy any of this woman's beautiful work because I have too much that's like it in the studio. But I might next time, and I was dazzled by the artistry, the colors (think grapevines!), the texture. svb

Fingerlakes Part II

2010-09-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

.......and here are some special shots from the festival. The wonderful chap at the top is Jim, owner of Ram's Horn. He's with his daughter. Ram's Horn makes some of the most amazing hand-cast pewter buttons and shawl pins I've ever seen; some of them are retro, but the rest are Jim's own designs. I bought more than is decent.

Second: Have some lovely yarn! I tried uploading many more photos like this one; the computer refused -- so you get only one. I'll try some more tomorrow.

And finally, what a splendid chap is Mr. Llama! He didn't glare or spit at me, which is a first. I seem to get on with alpacas much more completely than with llamas. What elegant creatures they all are. I'm glad that, in my lifetime, these denizens of the Andes have found their way to the northern United States -- including Michigan, which has a flourishing alpaca industry. This coming weekend, in fact, Flint (the home of Michael Moore!) hosts the International Alpaca Festival, which I'll visit in conjunction with the cozy festival at Romeo's Mt. Bruce Station, and maybe the wonderful little fiber festival at West Branch. It can be done in a day if you start early, so if it doesn't rain, I'll make the circuit on Saturday.

Hugs to anyone reading this!!! svb

Fingerlakes Journey, Part I

2010-09-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

Since I'm not really a photography aficionado, you'll have to turn the top photograph sideways -- but look at it! Wild Stuff! You should have been there. Ravishing wild flowers in every imaginable shade of ochre and gold and lavender and creamy white, surrounded by stunning sun-drenched green.....really gorgeous, not really photographable. Have you ever noticed that photographs of drop-dead beautiful things are almost always disappointing? Memory holds every detail; photographs do not.

But that's not all: The second image appeared on a small walk that I took on a small New York farm. I love the geometry of that broken door. I love the fading of the white paint.

Third, we find a form of conveyance rarely seen in downtown Detroit.

And finally, here's a wee portion of the parking lot. Everyone at the festival in Hemlock, NY, was astonished at the turnout. My friend Ellen Minand (of Ellen's Half-Pint Farm, Vermont) said they were swamped within the first half-hour of opening. Nobody told those people about the recession -- or maybe they really BELIEVE that it's over (as everyone on every TV channel is explaining today: "Hey folks, it's been over since June." IN MICHIGAN???).

All of this (excepting the parking lot) eased my eyes, made the brain less fevered, HEALED.

Now go on to the next part. svb

home again ...jiggity-jig

2010-09-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Notwithstanding a very slow start (I had one of those debilitating intestinal maladies that we all get from time to time last week for two entire days), I managed to drive away Friday afternoon in the general direction of New York's fingerlakes region -- by way of Canada. I have always preferred the Canadian route to the northeast - in part because it's shorter (allegedly), but also because it's so very pretty, with roads many time better than their US equivalents. This time, the queen's way was heavily under construction, two major auto accidents held up traffic, and I confess that it made me quite tired. The route took about two hours more than the US route might have taken. But never mind. Here's why:

The countryside in Ontario cast a spell -- the lighting, the way the cornfields were making the journey from summer green to autumnal browns (the stalks were beginning to look like emaciated scarecrows), the pristine mixture of eastern woodlands and almost-prairie. I say "almost" because I grew up in the Great Plains, and nobody who's grown up there would ever mistake long-settled and cleared woodland for plains. The woodlands gently undulate; the plains do not. On the plains, the sky is enormous, almost a cariacature of a normal sky; in easterly places, it's comparatively boring, normal, balanced. I'm also pleased to report that Canadians have Halloween-period orange cones with black and orange striping instead of the US's white and orange stripes. (Don't worry -- I have that kind of mind.....). I noticed, too, that the coffee at Tim Horton's is still better in Canada than in the company's American shops. I wonder why???

After a good night in Batavia, New York, Matilda (the bossy GPS) took me overland, away from turnpikes onto small paved roads to some of the state's most beautiful little towns. One was founded in 1789, another in 1802. Here and there, you can find vestiges of those early republican beginnings -- the occasional old Dutch facade (I last saw some of those rooflines in Edam and Amsterdam), fields with furrows much deeper and less temporary than the ones to the west. After a couple of century's you can't really eliminate furrows that have been ploughed in a certain way over and over again; if you don't believe me, just fly over the English midlands.

I bought some really amazing vintage buttons in an Ontario collectable shop, and then some genuinely antique fasteners in a very old, creaky shop in one of those sleepy NY towns.

But I'd like to save the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival descriptions until I can download the camera. I made some new friends. Be patient: I'll get the job done tomorrow. svb

and just LOOK at these things.....

2010-09-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

....and before I quit for the day, just LOOK at these gorgeous vintage buttons. We took this shot at the Manchester, NH, show......and, as I think about taking another road trip in search of more of these wonderful historical artifacts, I'm reminded that we have found buttons, buckles, frogs, all kinds of old reminders of past practices in California, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, on and on. Once upon a time, all of them graced a garment or shoe or bag or cloak long since gone. What remains are the silver, Bakelite, horn, celluloid, glass, and wooden closures, the mechanisms that transformed flat panels into garments. I really love finding these things. Tap on the photo to get a closer look. We have thousands, all with the state's name on the card. svb