Playing with Blogger Beta...

They've made template editing much easier for those among us who are still intimidated by large quantities of html despite numerous classes.

But it's still really hard to reply to comments. Ongoing apologies to all...

Late breaking news: snow is coming. Or so they say.

Meetings

It's nice to have a job where I'm not always chained to a desk all day, every day. I do get to get out occasionally. Today was one of those occasions: not one but two library-related meetings to attend, on opposite ends of the county. But, despite being able to get out and driving around a little, the day was mostly a roadmap to a fully fried brain.

We're transitioning to a new system for handling Interlibrary Loan. The first meeting was, as the speaker said, "five hours of material crammed into two and a half hours". I hope I can remember half of what was presented. Technical and intense, my brain was stuffed to the brim.

The second meeting was, god help us, about money issues in cross-county borrowing. That involves enough number crunching and bean counting to make your head explode as various county libraries, each with its own financial agenda, tries to figure how to get funding from the adjoining counties whose residents use our county libraries. This topic is a perennial political minefield around here. And I don't think we broke any new ground today. Arggh.

On days like this I always stick a small knitting project into my tote. I was actually able to get in a few rows on the heel flap of my waffly sock. And hey--this is sock number two. Can I say I'm in the home stretch on this pair? One would think so until I realize that this pair has been underway since APRIL.

I'm chugging along more slowly than I'd like on the small couch quilt I'm quilting. I decided to use it as a bit of a lab for playing with some new (to me) quilting motifs. I'm just about the world's laziest quilter--I detest marking for quilting but free motion stippling and free motion goofy echoing, like I usually do, can get old. I'm experimenting with some squarish shapes.

I plan to intersperse some other motifs with some of the wobbly echoing dividing up the various areas of the quilt. So there will be sharp angles as well as curves in this piece.

And of course, there's nothing new under the sun. I opened up my new issue of Quilting Arts to see this:

This is part of an article called The Frayed Edges, by Cate Coulacos Prato. This quilt is called Encrusted Cairn, by Deborah Boschert. Looks pretty good to me!

Current Reading Journal

Not so much fiber content today. There is knitting happening but it's of the super-secret variety. Santa's workshop and all that.

It's a good day to trot out the books. So here's what I've been reading.

I've just finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's one of those books you finish and then the wheels of the old brain start turning. You find yourself saying, "Wait a minute!" and looking back through it to see just how this or that incident played out. This or that incident is suddenly Important. Clues have been meticulously laid and doofus that I am, I missed most of them. But the Aha! moment was well worth all the head-scratching.

This book is densely written. The voice is that of a very bright but somewhat world-weary teenager, Blue Van Meer, daughter of an even more world-weary university professor who's devoted to his daughter but clearly has his own agenda. He has fed his daughter books, books, books throughout their life on the road as he bounced from teaching job to teaching job. She quotes great books, she talks in footnotes, she throws around some exasperating and overblown metaphors, she digresses expansively.

It seemed to be playing out as a fairly typical coming-of-age story of a brainy kid, and I was tempted to give up on it. But then events took a turn and I was hooked to the finish. Then, like I said, I was looking back through the book to see what I missed the first time through.

And I was understanding why the story was told as it was. An unusually bright but very isolated girl, self-absorbed as only a very bright teenager can be, might just stretch the metaphor usage to the reader's breaking point when writing about her own life. As the story ends, Blue is figuring out what's been going on but she's still a kid and the reader sees more than Blue does about her situation.

If you enjoy words and wordplay, dive in. And give this one a chance--the actual story being told is barely apparent in the first half of the book.

And this is the reading that's currently on deck. Half of this pile is my cousin Jane's fault--whenever I spend a day with her, the subject usually turns to books at some point. She gives me ideas and suddenly I'm swamped with things I HAVE to read. Thanks a lot, Jane!

The top book is Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside--not such a good picture.

Mohair, Rust, and Cranberries

I'm new enough to knitting that sometimes if I venture away from the pattern there are unhappy outcomes. But sometimes there is serendipity too. Misty Garden #1 is completed.

There could be a Misty Garden #2 in the offing.

I posted about beginning this scarf with a heavier mohair than called for in the pattern and being disappointed--the feather and fan pattern didn't show. (I've since been told, by someone wiser and more experienced, that I should have just changed the needle size. I'll file that nugget away for next time...) I bought some Whispers (50/50 mohair/acrylic) yarn and began again and I'm very pleased with the outcome.

The serendipity comes in because the Whispers is probably lighter weight than the proscribed yarn, but I kept the needle size as in the pattern--7 US. What I ended up with is a lacier version of Misty Garden, and I'm very pleased with it. It's feminine and frothy, although the slightly variegated colorway gives it a bit of edge and dash. It's a birthday gift for my buddy Rose. We'll be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with Rose and her family. So this baby will be wrapped up and delivered very soon.

This past weekend, I got together with my cousin Jane for a field trip to Madison, Wisconsin, one of my favorite places. Jane works in Madison and always has her ear to the ground for fun things to see and do. One purpose of this trip was to check out the recently-opened Trader Joe's in the Monroe St. area. What a place! We loaded up and each came home with some intriguing things to try. Mango sauce, Cuban Mojito Simmer Sauce, Gorgonzola Ravioli... If they would only open a Trader Joe's here in my little outpost community. But alas, that's only wishful thinking.

Our other mission in Madison was a annual holiday craft sale held in a wonderful Flemish Revival style home. I was supposed to be shopping for Christmas gifts but quilter Lois Jarvis was there vending and I discovered that she had hand-dyed fabric to sell. So to heck with Christmas gifts--suddenly this shopping trip was all about me.

Her fabrics were part of a line she calls Rust-Tex. She uses rust and other natural processes to produce one-of-a-kind images and colors. And there is a Rust-Tex blog... Several pieces of her fabrics came home with me.

And here we are at Thanksgiving Day. As I mentioned above, we're heading down to the northern Chicago suburbs to share Thanksgiving Dinner with our friends Rose and Jeff, their three daughters, and a number of their hounds. (These people are heavy duty dog people.) Hope we can safeguard the turkey from bands of marauding pooches.

I'm bringing a fruit salad, dessert--two apple pies are underway, and this cranberry relish:

Couldn't-Be-Easier Cranberry Relish
1 bag fresh cranberries
1 orange, cut into sections
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup candied ginger

Process all ingredients in food processor till chopped fairly fine. Refrigerate a day or two to allow flavors to blend. Enjoy!

Hope everyone who's celebrating Thanksgiving has a wonderful day. We all have much to be thankful for.

Stylin'

I'm a sucker for home dec magazines and spend a shocking amount of money on them. I love to see real people's houses, and nothing makes me feel so cheated as a home dec magazine full of showhouse photos or obviously faked and styled interiors. I know that some primping has to be done by the photographic team but I love to see REAL shine through. I'm a long time fan of British decor magazines because much of what they show is real, right down to battered sofas and chairs. I love it.

And occasionally, American magazines get it right too.

It's fun to see how people style their lives and environments. And it's not really that I have an insatiable urge to snoop. One of my previous lives was a decade spent doing retail styling and visual merchandising and this stuff is more important to me than I like to admit. I do need to fuss with objects until they're arranged just so and to see how other people fuss with theirs.

A few weeks ago I shared the stomach-churning experience of placing my first order with Amazon.jp. I'm happy to report that my order arrived, everything I requested was in the box, and I couldn't be more pleased. Service was speedy and next time I won't be so shaky as I hit the Purchase button. Maybe.

Two thirds of my order were two wonderful Japanese home dec books I had seen on a couple blogs. It doesn't matter a bit that all the text is in Japanese. One is Holland Home Style and the other is Stockholm's Kitchens, and the homes shown are full of wit, verve, and color. Fun and inspirational. And REAL.

The other book is an unusual Japanese quilting book called Simple Quilt.

It shows minimalist treatments of traditional block designs. Very different--so many art quilts rely heavily on black. These quilts use spare pattern and color, mostly on fields of white. I'm seeing new possibilities with traditional patterns.

This book also shows some interesting approaches to color and fabric choices. I love getting my sensibilities shaken up. Very fun.

Speaking of getting things shaken up, have you heard of mousing goofy? My right hand has been sore lately. I assumed it was from bundling a lot of books with heavy rubber bands at the library every day, but my husband thinks I might be suffering from too much mousing. So I'm experimenting with using the mouse on the left side. This might just damage the left hand too, but I'm willing to give it a shot to rest the right hand. We'll see...

My husband took off for an old friend's deer hunting camp today, up in the wilds of the Yoop. I'm on my own till Tuesday. But he's stopping on the way, in Neenah ,to pick up some yarn for me, bless his heart!

Love Notes

This was in our library suggestion box this morning. I wonder if there could possibly be any connection to the two teenage boys we had to eject from the patron computers yesterday afternoon?

So now you all know that I am ugly and mean. That probably is not news to anyone. The boys apparently had trouble deciding if my hair is highlighted or gray.

It's highlighted, folks!

In happier news, Caroline, the birthday girl,

has been knitting in earnest this fall. She's dabbled for several years but became truly obsessed with cables and began experimenting with them on her own, mostly without the safety net of a pattern. She completed a scarf and then a pair of fingerless gloves. For the gloves she did use this pattern. Great success with both.

Then she became curious about four-strand braids. She tells me she literally lay awake one night trying to figure how to knit a cable in this configuration, actually getting up out of bed to braid sleeves of garments in her closet.

I wonder if Elsebeth Lavold started that way?

She figured it out and this scarf is now finished and there's a hat to match.

I love her ingenuity in figuring out the cable without a pattern and suspect this sort of experimentation will make her a better and more intuitive knitter. We all need patterns, but it's good to take the leap of faith and fly free on occasion.

Pinned and Ready to Go

Feet preparing to march purposefully into the studio

Here's a day to mark down in the annals--I actually summoned the intestinal fortitude to confront the hellish mess that is my studio. I make the mess and then it gets built up in my mind as a big obstacle. One more lousy and illogical reason NOT to create.

This doesn't even capture the boxes piled onto boxes nor the layers upon layers of stuff... But things got tidied up with a minimum of gritted teeth and I got the scrappy black throw layered and pinned--all ready to quilt. Plus the studio looks passable. Now maybe I won't sit around thinking up excuses not to sew.

Still not exactly sure how to quilt this. I'll have to doodle a bit and play with ideas. My standard method on pieces like this is sort of a wobbly and squiggly echo quilting like this:

But I'm itching to try something new. Hope to play with that tomorrow night.

Inspirations:

I'm really enjoying Gerrie's accounts of her time at Art Quilt Tahoe. Living vicariously is kinda like being there. Especially when she posts photos of class exercises and projects. And I'm enjoying her "dessert du jour" photos too. Maybe someday...

Jan's finished Flower Basket Shawl. I started this one as my first lace project, and chickened out about twelve stitches in. Literally twelve stitches in. Two shawls later, I think maybe I could do it. It's definitely on the list. Bravo, Jan!

Brooklyn Tweed. This young guy--so dedicated to knitting and so accomplished, whether it's artful photos of yarn or the beautful finished projects. Total awe.

A bit of deja vu for me. Once long ago, in almost a different lifetime, I was a design student taught by this most accomplished teacher. Her skills and originality inspired me way back when and continue to inspire me now. Because of her, there is NOTHING in sewing that intimidates me. I may not seek them out, but thanks to her I could fit underarm gussets with one hand tied behind my back. And I've got to get my hands on one of these!

Finally, in a rash moment last week, I signed on to Blogger Beta. While it has made some aspects of posting easier, it has complicated the already Byzantine process of replying to comments. I think it's good manners to reply to people who are nice enough to comment on my blog. But Blogger Beta makes it very difficult--it seems to only provide links to bloggers already using Beta. And Beta also limits my ability to comment on other blogs. It won't link back, as far as I can tell. I'm not happy about that, but I seem to be Committed to Beta now. If I don't reply to your comment, that's why, and I'm not happy about that.

My Keeping Quilts

This past Friday morning I was lucky to be asked to read to a class of fourth graders at the elementary school right next to our library. It's an annual thing where adults from the community are asked to share a story as part of a "drop everything and read" campaign. This is the fifth or sixth year I've participated.

I love fourth graders--they're sweet and eager--old enough to get it but not jaded. Many of the kids recognize me from the library and I get to experience a little bit of the rock star effect. Ha ha.

The book I read is The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco, which tells about a quilt lovingly made from scraps of clothes, and handed down through the generations. And of course I like to bring in a couple "visual aids" to share, along with the book. Here are the quilts I took along with me, and their stories:

I'm really lucky to own several quilts made by my great grandmother. She made them on a Wheeler and Wilson treadle. And she hand quilted them, always in the Baptist Fan pattern, although she was French-Canadian, and probably knew it by a different name.

Melissa Senecal Hines

My favorite is this one:

It's a mellow Log Cabin, most likely made somewhere in the 1910 to 1915 era. When I was a new-ish quilter, I used to be dubious about the pinks used in the light areas, but now I understand how they give this quilt sparkle and zip, and marvel that my great grandmother, who was working with materials on hand, knew that this quilt needed just that touch of pink.

My mother used to say that the blues were scraps from her brother's shirts. So this is how little boys dressed a century ago:

The fourth graders always ooh and ahh over this quilt, especially when I tell them that when the maker of this quilt was their age, Lincoln was president.

Melissa at about the time she married, at age 16.

I always bring a more modern quilt to share with the kids also. This is the second large quilt I made; the label says 1990. This Silver Maple pattern was in a QNM issue from the early '80s.

I had seen this unusual Log Cabin setting in another magazine, probably another QNM, and decided the leaf blocks would work nicely with the Log Cabins. It amazes me that I figured it all out--I was pretty much flying blind with my quilting back in those days. And I was hand-quilting back then. Flying blind with that too!

I still like this quilt--even with the sad array of mostly small-scale calico fabrics I was able to find back then. (I'd like to give this pattern another go, with today's fabrics...) It always reminds me of the mountains of northern Pennsylvania where I grew up, where the leaves really flame in the autumn.

So Log Cabins bridge the generations in my family. And it all made a nice presentation--the kids liked the book and loved seeing the quilts. And I got to hear about some grandmas and moms who have made quilts for the kids. Very fun. May they treasure them as much as I treasure mine.

Sweet and Spicy

Adding to my own library... There were two excellent booksellers at the library conference last week: Woodland Pattern Book Center and the University of Wisconsin Press. Both had unusual, thought-provoking books for sale. Here are some of the titles I fell for. A couple are not new but seemed like good additions to the bookshelf. Any bets as to when they will get read? I'm trying, I'm trying.

Well, well. Tuesday was a pivotal day for those of us in the U. S., and the repercussions (as in Rumsfeld's departure) may be only beginning. Those heavy gray clouds that have been hovering over my head since Election Day 2000 are lifting a bit, just a bit, and life looks more hopeful. We celebrated Wednesday with large quantities of M&Ms at the library. Say what you want, but librarians do know how to party.

The hopefulness is tempered with disappointment that my adopted state Wisconsin, a state with a great tradition of progressive thought and action, voted to add a marriage amendment to the state constitution. I had so hoped that Wisconsin would be the first state to emphatically say no this concept. The law student in my family says there's no way this amendment would stand up to court challenges. But how discouraging that we have to deal with such unecessary divisiveness and meanspiritedness in the first place.

Showing my colors

Our state also voted, in an advisory referendum, to reinstate the death penalty for the first time in 153 years. Also disappointing.

If THOSE aren't enough issues to grapple with...... On to the really important life and death stuff.

I'm a cinnamon lover and one of my favorite things in the world is Atomic Fire Balls, those incendiary little red jawbreaker candies. I have loved them dearly since I was a kid buying penny candy after swimming at the 'Rec on hot summer days. I keep a jar of them on my kitchen countertop and always have a bagful in my desk drawer at work. Two people bought me quantities of them for Christmas last year.

When my local grocery remodeled awhile back, they put in a big bulk-foods area, with lots of candy. Most everything else was priced by the pound, but the Atomic Fireballs were priced by the piece. So if you bought a big bag of them, as I always do, you would have to dump them out in front of the cashier and count them, one by one. Drove me crazy, and I imagine it drove the cashiers crazy too.

I did some reconnaissance and found that two other affiliated supermarkets in the area had their Fireballs priced by the pound. This information was greeted with total inertia on the part of management at my local store. Total stonewall.

The nerve! Like they have better and more important things to tend to?

But I'm pleased to report that last night I discovered that Atomic Fireballs are now finally priced by the pound. It's taken what? Two years?? Life is good again; life is SWEET and HOT, just as it ought to be. It's good to have campaigns to wage. They add purpose to life, don't they?

My pink and fuzzy Misty Garden is just about half finished. The effect is very lacy--different from the example illustrated in Scarf Style, but I'm liking it. I'm probably using needles larger than what would normally be used with the Whispers yarn but that's OK. Life is too short not to color outside the lines occasionally. This scarf will be perfect for the recipient, whose name, as luck would have it, is Rose.

There is a cooperative blog devoted to projects knit from Scarf Style. I ought to join up--I love the book and have yarn purchased to make four projects. SO FAR.

Back from the Kalahari

Sounds like it was a mysterious safari of some kind with Isaak Dinesen overtones but no such luck. It was a library conference, which was held at a themed resort hotel in the Wisconsin Dells complete with staff in safari attire and pith helments, plus a gi-normous indoor water park.

This was some very quilty-looking carpet. Hope we don't find out later that

it's lifted from some quilter's designs...

And of course I totally forgot to bring a swimsuit.

It was a good conference, and now my head is full of RSS, RFID, wikis, the esoteric implications of intellectual freedom, and other similar stuff. It was fun connecting and reconnecting with other library folk. And I gathered up enough free pens and mouse pads from the vendors' area to last till next year's conference.

I got precious little knitting done while I was there, which was disappointing. Much as I'd like to, I'm a little reluctant to whip out the knitting in small-scale seminars, especially when I'm sitting right up front. I guess I need to work on my gutsiness.

It had been a long and fiber-deprived week. On the way back home, I detoured to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, to visit one of my favorite quilt shops--Quintessential Quilts. This shop never lets me down--it's always been a great place with room after room of quilt fabrics. There's even a Christmas room. Joy of joys--I realized that I had a filled punch card. So my several yards of fabric came to a measly $14.

This is a shot inside Quintessential Quilts. We have over-the-top fabric shops in Wisconsin too!

Then on to a welcome weekend of decompressing. And not a moment too soon.

I should be quilting. This is the first free time I've had that could be devoted to quilting in nearly a month. But somehow the crisp fall weather aims me toward my knitting needles. I always have been the wooly type.

I decided to make a scarf for a good friend whose birthday is closing in fast. I've been intrigued by the little fan and feather one, Misty Garden, in Scarf Style. I had bought some gorgeous variegated blue green mohair for this scarf when I was in Northern Wisconsin in September. Friday night I swatched it. Or more accurately, I just tossed caution to the winds and launched into the scarf.

The example in the book uses Jo Sharp mohair, with 95 yards on a ball weighing 25 grams. My mohair had nearly the same yardage on a 50 gram ball. Hmmm. I got through three pattern repeats and realized that my mohair was so fuzzy that it obscured the pattern. Lesson learned: not all mohair yarns work up the same. Message to self: read labels and pay attention.

So. This necessitated a Saturday trip to Knitch, the brand new yarn shop in Delafield, about 25 minutes away. I was delighted with what I found there--great yarns, great ambiance, and a friendly and enthusiastic staff. I came home with nearly $60 of new yarn, and this after last weekend's mammoth shop-o-rama in Neenah. Big sigh.

I re-started the scarf in Whispers, a 50/50 mohair acrylic blend. I'm hoping this will block out OK. I'm a wool snob and am dubious about acrylic in any form, but the soft and fuzzy pinkness is looking and feeling good and it's going fast. For me.