August 2011 - Change Time

Wow! Lots of changes this year. Some are good, some not so much, but we've reached a point in the year when all are evident. My daughter is transferring to a different university to finish her art degree. It is a friendly environment, a little easier to reach by car, and it has the area of concentration that she desires. It took a move from old university apartment to home, then big sorting and editing of possessions, then a move from home to new university house. Can you hear my joints creaking? Actually, my girl is strong and energetic. She carried 75 percent of her things, probably 98% of the upstairs moving, and I concentrated on sorting and putting away belongings. Now that the chores are done, I can reflect on my comfort with her recent choices. She picked a school and program that seem suit all her needs, and she's already making friends there.

Both of my parents are gone. Mama followed Daddy by just four months. We knew that after 70 years she was searching for her connection with him, but her death was still a shock. I feel unmoored. There's no one to call to report my car troubles or my latest encounter with one of their church members. When I made butter cream frosting for the first time, I almost picked up the phone to discuss the results with Mama. At least once a week I wonder why Daddy hasn't called to check in: "Hey, Esoo, how are you getting along? Haven't heard from you since last week."

One of my sisters and her hubby will arrive in town soon, buying the parents' house and making Chattanooga their retirement place. With four sisters here, that will strengthen the family hub. I've always liked living in the place where relatives are most likely to visit.

I have custom orders lined up: a large blanket made of a variety of Lorna's Laces yarns, a shawl in a complicated rainbow of colors. Just finished a matching hat and booties to go with an organic cotton baby blanket. A baby boy in New York will have a bright welcome. If I can figure out how, I will add the photo my daughter took with her phone.

All is well. This is a chemo (rituximab) week, so I will put my feet up and knit.

Peace. Peace.

Matlock Makes Me Laugh

Defendant's wife has an explanation for her affair that is laden with therapy-speak. Matlock says he understands: "You were hot for each other." Andy Griffith has been one of my heroes for decades. He always played characters that had good common sense and seemed much less intelligent than they actually were. His characters seemed to accept that people did strange and sometimes humorous things, and he was not too sophisticated to exclaim at them. Even as Matlock he sometimes pulls out his guitar and gives us a great song.

I am often watching Matlock this time of morning, turning from the Today Show as soon as Kathy Lee Griffin opens her mouth. This morning I need it more than ever, as I have been obsessing about my Turtlefat/Turtletots sales. I mean lack of sales. In five market or craft fair sales since the season started, I have barely covered expenses. I've been looking at my products and my displays and the economy and the things people are buying and how other vendors are doing, and on and on and on.

This is the first season that I have pushed so far into hot weather. I am discovering that people admire my scarves but it is too hot to try them on, yet I've sold one linen/cotton wrap. I've sold a few baby items (booties, hats). I've sold a few household items (cup cozies, organic cotton washcloths, grocery bags). People express interest in the fibers that I choose, chat about the soy, bamboo, corn, organic cotton, like the way children's clothing especially is done with less toxic choices, but they don't buy.

I'm doing better at labeling the items in my store so that people can recognize them from a greater distance and see the variety of items. I'm considering whether I should group them and only sell one class of item each time (baby things this week, household next week, etc.). I recently decreased some prices and made sure that every item had a fresh tag that was clearly labeled. I culled items that had been around for a while, and things that no longer conform to my aesthetic.

Yesterday I began exploring some fun creatures I call Shrunken Heads. Maybe what's fun for me will be fun for others. Maybe this will keep my mind off the constant worry about the stores.

Peace.

Preparing to Go to Market

Top photo is box of labels and a set of baby headbands that I've just labeled. I have to be careful to label adult and home items with http://essiewb.etsy.com and child/baby items with http://turtletots.etsy.com.
Second and third photos show scarves hanging on the new clothing rack. I hope this will show them off and allow shoppers to easily access them. I love people to touch my products and try them on.

Fourth photo shows the ends of the spiral scarf, loose yarn ready to be sewn into place.

I've been going to market events to sell my products for several years. Each time there's a process I go through to prepare. Because I am always knitting and crocheting I usually have a pile of new products that need to be labelled before I can pack them. I have printed tags on which I write the price, fiber content and care instructions. These are tied to each product with a length of yarn. I've learned that most people like tags. Some are too shy to ask, some check out tags to decide if they can afford to shop with you. Others, however, never glance at a tag, asking me for the price of each thing they examine. Go figure.

Next, I go through the products already in my rolling dufflebag and remove any that are out of season or that I don't want to display at the coming market. I replace these with the pile of new things. During this process I am also checking the condition of the items to see if anything needs refolding or a pass with the iron. If there are prices that need adjusting, I put on new tags. The few items that don't fit in my duffle (like felted rugs) are fetched and laid out with the bag so I don't forget them. I never feel compelled to take everything with me. I always have way more stuff than I have space to handle, and I'm constantly looking for ways to display them better. I'm toying with the idea of only taking one class of products at a time (housewares day, baby items only, etc.), but folks who are familiar with my store come up looking for their favorites when I finally show up to market. It's difficult when I don't have hats that day, or they've come for a newborn gift and I don't have them.

Getting my car ready is as important as preparing the products. My car is a large sedan with a decent-size trunk, but it wasn't made for hauling equipment. I must clear the way to put in a folding garment rack (new for this year!), two long folding tables, two portable chairs, a dolly, and totes filled with wrapping materials, a couple of knitting projects to work on during the market day, a money container, some snacks, my Turtlefat Collection sign, and extras like duct tape and a screwdriver and scissors, just for good measure. Oh yeah. I have to pack my tent-unwieldy and heavy, but with wheels on one end, thank goodness.

Many of the things that I take (and leave at home) are the result of many sessions at market, the trial and error of having too much of this or none of that, learning what makes it easier, what makes me function better during those long hours with my limited endurance and tendency toward swelling and pain.

Obviously, after I empty the car, I have to load all my gear. Sigh. On the other end I will have to unload it in the parking lot and haul it into the pavilion. Sometimes that affects the order of packing, other times I just go for random placement and hope for the best. We used to be able to drive into the pavilion and unload at our booth site, but that's no longer allowed.

There's always something waiting to be finished that I want to complete and take to the market. Today it was a spiral scarf that needed about 30 rows and then finishing work in order to be ready. It doesn't need blocking, so I knew it was a realistic goal. When I began this scarf I hated the short rows and turning it every few stitches. To avoid all the turning I taught myself to knit backwards. I hold my yarn in my left hand and knit continental (forward, that is), so I just leave the yarn in my left hand and throw it around the needle when I'm knitting backwards. Anyway, I finished the spiral scarf and showed it above, needle ready for weaving ends.

I haven't mentioned that I am excited the whole week before market. No matter how tiring, the preparation boosts my anticipation. Can't wait for Sunday's Strawberry Fest at the Chattanooga Market!

Peace.

Something significant happened today: I decided to make a slipper-sock. I chose two yarns-a skinny, self-striping sock yarn (Felicity by KnitPicks) and a light worsted merino (Luxury Merino by elann.com). After one false start I got the number of stitches right to do a ribbed low ankle cuff. I added a cable on each side just for good measure. When I pulled into heel territory, I decided without much deliberation that I wanted a short-row heel and that I would make one tiny, center short row and then run my short-rows from cable to cable.

The perfect thing was that knowing the construction allowed me to pull this off without big calculations or consultations or any kind of pattern. I knit four pairs of socks two years ago, but I could hardly call myself a sock knitter, so this was a revelation. I could see the three-dimensional shape I wanted to achieve in my head, and I knew how to use the short-rows to make that cupping. This signals my arrival at a level of expertise that I have only reached before in medicine. I have lived with this knitting thing long enough that my understanding has a depth beyond the ability to follow a pattern. It's been integrated with my other knowledge of geometry and engineering, the fiber finding its place and making use of what's already in my head.

As usual, I haven't photographed the thing I'm talking about, but I do have photos of the lace scarf I mentioned last post. It now hangs with the rest of my summer scarves, ready for the Chattanooga Market to open next Sunday. I also have things that I never offered before-linen/cotton hand towels with tiny ruffled borders, organic cotton face cloths, mug cozies. I'm experimenting. We'll see how it is received.

Peace.

Curiosity and Knitting Innovation

Two weeks ago Jumbleberryjam asked if my survey on the knitting experiences of black women had yielded results. The answer is "yes", but nothing usable. Unfortunately, it wasn't circulated to enough women to get out of the circle of women whom I know are knitters or crafters, whose contacts would more likely be knitters. I have tried to pursue the question on Ravelry (an on-line community for knitters and crocheters which is wildly popular). I did so by searching for groups that would-by name/subject of interest-suggest predominantly minority involvement. Most of them I confirmed by examining more closely individual member names and icons. It appeared that more of those groups were crocheters than knitters.

You might wonder why this question makes any difference to me at all. Well, some of it is curiosity. I just like to know who's doing what and why. Some of that curiosity can be easily satisfied by publicly available statistics; that wasn't the case with knitter demographics. The other reason I am interested is that I have enormous fun with my knitting. It also relaxes me, helps discipline my mind, and produces beautiful items for personal use and for sale. I want to share this with people and encourage others who may not have found their crafting niche to try it.

Aside from the above noted research, there are several things in my personal experience that lead me to think black women are underrepresented among U.S. knitters. First, when I am out at the market knitting and selling my stuff, people often stop to comment on their own experiences with knitting (their personal knitting or that of family members). These people are never African-American. Second, among my own acquaintances I only know a few black knitters, while I know many black crocheters. Third, only rarely has a black woman asked about joining the group of knitters that are my weekly companions knitting in a very public place. This experience has been echoed by some of the other black women I know who knit.

Lately I have been obsessed with nontraditional designs for scarves. I want to show a few of them and describe how they came into being. The top scarf was knit with self-striping yarn, a Noro that is primarily silk and cotton. I wanted to create some three-dimensional pieces extending from random parts of the scarf. To do so, I knit down a row to the spot I wanted to use, cast on 15-30 stitches to my right-hand needle, then used both needles to cast off those same stitches. That produced a two-row, coiling piece that could be pushed to the front or back of the piece before I continued to knit and complete the row. On the second photo you can see the triangular holes. I knit the posts in between the holes without a real plan, just knowing that I had to either start wide and decrease to a point or start with one stitch and increase gradually. I tried to keep the same number of rows in each triangle so the segment wouldn't make the scarf crooked. I cast on stitches in between their ends, picked up the end stitches of each triangle at the appropriate spot, and eventually had a new row to proceed from. This scarf has a variety of stitch patterns along its length, including a segment of cables and some rows of drop-stitch.

The experiment with the second scarf is knots. I wanted to create three-dimensional segments by making strips of scarf that would form knots or with other strips. I chose a place to start a strip, knitting and turning for a three- or four-stitch piece until I had several inches to work with. Then I finished the original row, keeping the piece in its place to form a loop. In some later row I would come close to the width that the first loop arose from and start another strip. When the strip was long enough to reach through the first one and back to it's home row, I would thread it through and then finish it's home row. I did this with vertical and horizontal loops, as you can see in the photos. By the way, that yarn is two lengths worked together, a bamboo from Southwest Trading Company.

Hope this is clearer than mud.
Peace.

This is What Better Feels Like

I think I've described what it's like when I am sick or in a lupus flare. I was treated twice in the past two weeks with a very specific therapy that targets B cells from my immune system. (Those are cells that contribute to lupus, which comes from an overactive immune system.) I tried to pay special attention to what is better now that I've been treated.
Within three days of the first dose, my joint pain improved and my energy increased. At the end of that week I was able to take my first decrease in prednisone dosage. By ten days post-treatment, I was using approximately half the pain medicine as before. In the past week I've done house cleaning and grocery shopping much more easily. I walk faster and I can go to more than one store when necessary. This week I decreased my prednisone again, and with no rebound of symptoms. When I woke this morning I realized that-once again-I can start my day with no pain.
There are a few foundations that help patients like me pay for this treatment. Without their help, my out-of-pocket expense would be more than $8000 per year, impossible for me and my post-recession economitis. Medicare only covers a fraction of the cost. It's a frustrating situation, as my being free of flares means less other medication has to be subsidized by Medicare, my need for expensive physical therapy is reduced, I can care for myself independently in my home, and I have less possibility of side effects from prednisone, which can cause expensive chronic diseases like diabetes and osteoporosis and cardiac disease.
People think of preventive medicine as being about physical exams, vaccines, cholesterol screening, mammograms, Pap smears...For me, prevention is about minimizing the debilitating effects of lupus and of the treatments for lupus. Both kinds of prevention are good for the country's annual health care expenditures.
On the knitting front: Lately I have been consumed with ideas about nontraditional design. I'm trying to throw away some conventions and produce pieces that are more sculptural and texture-driven. I'll get some photos this week and post them.
Peace! All power to the Wisconsin workers!

But of Course I Am Still Knitting

I should be thanking the woman who ordered the scarf that is drying on the ironing board. She was insistent on Colinette's Point 5 as a jump-off point, but the addition of several other yarns and a mixture of stitches is what makes it super special. It has me thinking of garments in a different way - more art, less consistency. The bottom left segment is the original Point 5 in the Morocco colorway, knit in a herringbone pattern. Next is a segment of self-striping yarn from Universal, doubled to provide a long, continuous change of colors instead of just the three stripes. The next section is a long swath of Point 5 knit 2 rows at a time, alternating with 2 rows of a dusky rose single. The final portion is the dark purple/red segment in Point 5, with knitted fringe extending several inches in chunky strands.

I am knitting in two directions just now. It is a very cold, snowy winter in most of the U.S. It is going to continue for at least two more months, and I want to keep making warm things. You can see the teal fingerless gloves above, knit from a gorgeous hand-dyed yarn I purchased from http://kittygrrlz.etsy.com. On the other hand, the retail cycle has clearly moved to spring and summer and I need to produce a box of samples for Larue's. It will include cool scarves in bamboo and cotton that are decorative and comfortable for warmer weather. The pale lilac lace is a soft, silky bamboo. The multicolored, hand-dyed cotton is that herringbone pattern again, in a Cherry Tree Hill yarn that I believe is discontinued.

Everything I show here is pleasurable knitting. The process of taking the yarn and turning it into something that uses its attributes and becomes a useful, beautiful garment is so pleasing to me. This work is saving my life. In the midst of the pain and fatigue, I have something to grow.

Peace.

The Busy Season and the Bad, Bad Knees

A few minutes ago, I picked up the beret I was knitting and stitched my way about one-fourth of a round. Suddenly I realized that my cables had disappeared. I had turned over the hat and stitched on the wrong side. I took out the errant stitches and decided it was time for a break. I've been knitting furiously for days. Yesterday I finished an earflap cap in organic cotton, then immediately started a bright beret in Noro Silk Garden and Silk Garden Lite. When I finished the beret, I wanted to line up work for today, and I grabbed a ball of Kureyon and began the band for another beret.

That's the pace I've been keeping. This is my busy season and I want to have plenty of beautiful pieces on my table at the Market and in my Etsy store, as well as my custom pieces for Larues. It makes my heart swell to see a piece turn out better than I imagined, and I've vowed to only produce things that I love. Unfortunately, if I keep running my body like a machine, I'll end up with tendinitis and have to take a prolonged rest instead of this morning break.

Last night I struggled with my plans for the remainder of the season. I had hoped to sell at the Market weekly until the middle of December, but the first two weekends wore me down a good bit and pointed out the severe difficulty with my arthritic knees. I've written a good many "doctor notes" advising people to stop activities that are not good for their conditions, but I can't afford to have one for myself right now. I can only pay my bills if I add handiwork to Social Security. I'll have to keep working on opportunities to sell my work that don't involve lugging many pounds of heavy equipment, loading it in and out of my car, setting up and taking down my equipment and products and the long hours in the booth doing customer service (my favorite part of market sales).

With this disease, I find myself compromising at times. Take the knees. For more than a month I've endured the severe pain and difficulty standing and walking. I didn't want them injected with steroids because I know the effect it has on my metabolism and weight. Finally, last week I gave in and started a hefty steroid taper, taking my prednisone up to 40 mg daily and gradually bringing it down over two weeks. If I had been in town I could have gone to my rheumatologist for intraarticular injections, but I was out of town and had to settle for increasing steroids orally. My knees are better and I'm not hollering when I stand up. It makes me much better company. The compromise is in dealing with side effects. Makes me want to growl.

Today is lesson day. The two young girls that I am teaching will be over after school. It's good incentive for me to do some picking up. I can get so focused on work that my home (which is my workplace) is neglected. My Hoover could use a bit of work.

Today I'm writing about such ordinary stuff that I wonder why it should be here. My life is ordinary with the usual hassles that affect everyone. They don't go away because I have lupus or because I'm neck-deep in a new creative venture. Sometimes I'd like to daydream them away. Hah.

Peace.

Turtlefat Collection Goes Retail and I Can Write Again

The only thing that could keep me from blogging for almost two months is the need to keep a secret. Finally I can reveal what made me keep silent! Only a couple of people knew that my handknits were being considered for retail sale in a lovely Minneapolis boutique. Last week, Larues officially gave me my first order! I am thrilled beyond belief. I never thought my hats and gloves would find their way to a sweet, fashionable, modern store like Larues! My baby sister lives in Minneapolis and shops there, and she thought we'd be a good match, so she asked me to send her some samples to take in. Thanks, Dot!

Meanwhile, I had to get back into the swing of the Chattanooga Market, so I've had three days of great sales and fun there. With a limited display I can do setup and breakdown alone. I will have to endure whatever weather we have for the next few weeks, but this year the Market will have two weekends of preChristmas sales at an indoor venue! I'm going to be at Warehouse Row on the 10th and 11th of December, and again on the 17th and 18th. Hurray for working warm.

I hate to mention health right now. I am really feeling my weight. My knees hurt terribly with any walking or standing, and even sometimes when there's no weight on them. My fracture is healed by x-ray, but I still have a good bit of work to get my full motion and strength back in the right arm. I am having digestive problems and hoping it doesn't herald another episode of colitis. I've been free of it for years, and it has only occurred rarely, so I can't remember if indigestion and stomach pain preceded it before. I just remember having bloody bowel movements. I'm not anxious to have another colonoscopy but if it recurs I certainly will.

I've been looking into surgical weight loss procedures. I think I've exhausted my alternatives. I can't make my body handle the prednisone any better. I'm not making headway using a very sensible, reduced calorie diet. My exercise options have shrunk drastically. I'm ready to start seeing surgeons. (The time is now...did the Walrus say that because she had a big belly, too?)

The good good news is that I am inundated with design ideas. They are in my head multiplying all the time. I'm excited by color and texture to a ridiculous degree - a gorgeous hank of hand-dyed yarn can make me tear up. I showed some of my recent favorites. The hot pink with navy accents is Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. The flowers are crochet. The blue/gray/tan beret is knit with Noro Silk Garden, one of my all-time favorite yarns. The combination of silk, mohair and a touch of wool always feels great to me, and I admire Noro for his perpetual production of organic yarns using innovative, ecofriendly processes. The tan scarf with the ruffled edge is organic cotton. I've had enough people tell me they don't tolerate animal fibers to convince me that it is worth making some winter hats and scarves from the bulkier, thick organic cottons like this Blue Sky undyed. The scarf pin is a hand-dyed polished wood from one of my favorite Etsy stores, South 4th. I've used a number of his beautiful pins and buttons. Just running my fingers over them is soothing.

Enough! I am running over with conversation because of my long absence. I can write more later.
Peace.

A Day for Action

It's been ages since I woke like this - alert, moving, ready to go. I've had a series of minor setbacks with the body, plus been through a round of rituximab treatment. I felt like I was putting fingers in multiple dikes, just trying to make it to the next hour, next day...a painful way to survive. No thriving involved. But today (courtesy of lots of meds and a good night's sleep) I am good. I'm actually waiting for the post office and drug store to open so I can do the errands that I want to complete before it hits 90 degrees again.

I have so much going on in the knitting arena that I have to list it to make sure I'm pushing each project forward: one custom cape, one custom afghan, one custom baby ensemble, patterns and ideas for my book, a box of products to post to a northern boutique for consideration, a couple of local Christmas markets to apply to, and refreshing my Etsy store with new photos and products. At some time in the past this knitting thing officially crossed the line from hobby to business. Now I'm trying to make it a profitable business, and sell more wisely.

One thing the broken arm has taught me - don't rely so much on physical methods of doing business. I have not been able to return to selling at the Chattanooga Market, and I don't know if I'll be ready by the end of the season. My days of heavy lifting and tedious setups in bad weather may be over. We'll see. The arm has made progress, maybe the rest of me will move forward a bit, too.

My girl is safely off to school in Georgia, three hours away. It's a blessing. She loves the UGA art school and sends me teeny phone photos of her work. Our conversations about ideas and creating stimulate my work and make me think of new ways to do things. Seeing the way she tends to the tiniest detail on her drawing and fabric work reminds me that I can do much more embellishing with my knitted items. I even have plans for some embroidery on pieces that I'll publish in the book.

The loneliness from my daughter's absence is a lesson to be learned all over again. She was here for a year, and I forgot the void that her leaving creates. Moreover, the past two months my sweet pooch was cared for by a friend while my arm recovered enough to be the caretaker again. I have talked to the walls and the television set and mostly to myself during this time. I've had to learn again how to laugh by myself, and how to breathe out the pain and sadness and let myself be okay. Some of us are created to be social, and it is a struggle to be physically restrained from that. My body as anchor, keeping me rooted to this spot...

I have had more than enough thinking time. I have come to terms with the fact that desire and will power and hard work may not be enough to reign in my weight problems. I'm totally satisfied with the way I am managing it, trying to keep my prednisone low, moving when I can and cooking healthy meals. I must accept that when I get on my bike for 10 minutes and then have a week of inflammation in my knee, it is beyond my control. Yoga? Chair yoga is my next exploration. I so want to lose. Even 50 pounds would make it easier to get around and care for myself. I've cut some real favorites out of my pantry (peanutbutter!) and stocked up on high-fiber ingredients. The price of tofu just dropped dramatically at one of my favorite groceries, and I'm learning more ways to enjoy it. Curry is in my kitchen vocabulary, and I'm baking regularly instead of buying $7 loaves of bread. My strawberry muffins are to be envied.

Can you have a fling in your mind? An old flame has been in touch, and reminded me of the positives in our relationship, long past. For a few weeks I entertained thoughts of us together, brought to an abrupt stop by some recurrences of behavior that is intolerable for me. I didn't have to think twice about mentioning this here - one huge incongruity in our non-relationship is his refusal to learn any computer function beyond email. Oh well...

Enough supposing. This day is for action! Peace!

Do Women of Color Knit?

Last night I slept laying down. Talk about being grateful for small things! For ten days after my fracture I slept sitting, as my arm lost its therapeutic position as soon as I reclined. Every day my legs and feet grew more swollen. It was more difficult at the hotel without my recliner. I struggled to prop enough pillows and balance against them waking every hour to readjust everything.

Oh yes, the hotel. I was bored and stir-crazy in my little house, so I returned to college town with my daughter while she finishes her last week of summer school. Alone in the hotel I have gained a new perspective on designs for my book, as well as a few more words to be said.

I grew up knitting at a time when knitting was an "old lady" hobby. Funkier new crafts were being taught-think macrame-and more portable handcrafts like crochet seemed to be favored. The back to the land movement that followed hippie life seemed far removed from me, as I worked to acquire highly technical, scientific knowledge for my career. By the turn of the century and my retirement, knitting was on the rise with new fibers and better tools and a younger following who created modern, wearable gear.

When I joined that modern knitters movement, what I didn't see was women of color. Without fail, I am overwhelmingly outnumbered in groups of knitters. I am aware of only one African-American woman who regularly appears in knitting design circles, my hero, Shirley Paden. Drawn to a career in knitting design after her high-powered business position suddenly ended, she became incredibly successful. I am trying to determine if the scarcity of minority women in knitting is personal experience or reality. I've fashioned a brief survey to help assess that. Feel free to participate or pass the link to any adult women you know. I will publish the statistics.

I always like to share what I find, if it is useful and good. Knitting has done some amazing things for my life, and if there's a population that isn't getting the exposure, I'd love to aim some teaching in that direction.

Peace.

Patterns Plus Talk Equals Book

I am writing. Turns out this whole pattern writing/design thing just flows without any big worries. I have decided that this group of patterns should have a theme, and be published together. I think that is called a book. Since I have great difficulty just stating the facts, it will have to be put together with lots of other words, chiefly a collection of my essays (or should I say "Essies"?). This will give me an excuse for lots of talking. I think I need that right now. Whenever I am consigned to living alone, I begin to have these long dialogues in my head. Putting them down on "paper" is a good way to silence those voices and bring the conversations to some kind of natural conclusion.

My patterns for this book are going to be done in some of my favorite yarns. I've ordered a bagful of them, old favorites and favorites-to-be, and just seeing them close up brings to mind the garments and home items that I should design. These are just crying out to be knit up into gorgeous pieces. One cool thing is the affordability of this bunch of yarns. I didn't go out and shop at Wallyworld (I don't ever do that, on general and political principles). I headed for a type of yarn that typically provides lots of yardage at reasonable prices. I threw caution to the wind in my selection, going with colorways that move me rather than practical solids and neutrals. Well, occasionally I am moved by a neutral, but only if I can really feel the fiber in it and maybe smell the sheep. I do have a variety of fibers represented, including animal and plant fibers, but those hydrocarbon-eating synthetics are at a minimum.

Speaking of synthetics, I've been requested to make some baby blankets that are going to get an ungodly amount of washing. For them, I found synthetics to be my best bet. I knit the first one in Lion Brand's old reliable Homespun. The second is in progress after a search for another yarn, one easier to knit. The inevitable snagging in Homespun's boucle construction drove me crazy in a way that only a frustrated knitter would know. I enlisted my daughter's sensitive skin to help me judge other synthetics and we settled on Deborah Norville's Serenity chunky weight. It is impressive in its softness and knits very easily, even on the $2.99 bargain plastic circular needles that I purchased with it. I'm enjoying working with an acrylic, even though my brain keeps circling back to that hydrocarbon issue. I think I would consider this for my next afghan that requires lots of washing, like one for an invalid or someone immune-compromised. It would also work for chemocaps, as they sometimes go on very sensitive scalps. No I don't have an interest in the company, but it is nice to see Deborah Norville's success since she's from Dalton, GA, 30 minutes from here.

Yesterday I served as babysitter for a wonderful toddler. It was great thinking time. Watching him play reminded me of the mobility and speed of that age group, and the qualities that their clothing should have. It also made me remember trying to satisfy a two year-old's ideas about proper dressing. I'm designing some clothes that can quickly change an outfit from down-and-dirty to church-worthy. Kids need that single piece that you throw on after they have dribbled toothpaste on the shirt or picked the same plain-Jane dress for the 50th time. I think I've got it covered. Hahaha, that's a pun. Some days I am just plain smart.

Peace.