SALLY IS COMING BACK!!!

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

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...

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....!

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....

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....

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.....!

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