• Cruise to Alaska with JC Briar and me aboard a Craft Cruise scheduled for September 6-13, 2009! We promise it will be full of knitting and great fun!

January 31, 2009 Addendum: Ice Rescue Training

I went to watch ice rescue training this morning. Besides the fact that fire training is always fascinating, I got to take some still photos that will be used for additional training. It was a nice, sunny day—temps were in the 30's but there was a stiff northwest breeze that made for some pretty raw moments.

So here you go—some pics of our department at work. Basically what happens is that we cut a hole in the ice, put a guy in a wetsuit in it, send another guy out on the rescue sled to get him, and pull both of them back in. All pretty cut-and-dried unless someone is drowning and you have to do this for real. Which is why we practice.

The husband pulling the rescue sled off of one of the engines:

The firefighters listening to the safety briefing:

Cutting a hole in the ice:

The ice was pretty thick—no chance of anyone falling through!

One of the firefighters down in the hole, waiting to be "rescued."

The rescuer taking the sled out to the victim—this sled works on both solid ice and in water, which is nice if the ice is crummy and in danger of breaking up.

Pulling the "victim" up onto the sled.

Taking the victim back to shore.

Our chief always says, "You perform as you practice," so it's good for us to do this every now and then. There were a few other families out there, ice fishing. Our chief also thinks it's good for our customers to see us practicing, and we try to answer questions if people stop to watch.

January 31, 2009: Shapes

Redsknits brings up a good point in the comments on the last post. The presence or absence of shaping doesn't depend so much on age as it does actual shape.

I had a bit of a crisis as a knitting designer a few years ago. I've always been skinny. I'm 5'7" tall. When I got married, I weighed 125 pounds. After my first daughter was born I weighed 137. When I had chemo, I went back down to 125 and my husband said I needed to gain a bit of weight. After my second daughter was born I went up to 140. Then I developed estrogen dominance and my weight went up to 150. Then my thyroid shut down and I went up to 160. Then 167 (which, coincidentally, was how much I weighed when I was pregnant with DD#1). And the whole time my doctor kept telling me I was "eating too much and not exercising enough." At my heaviest, in March 2006, this is what I looked like:

People, I don't have a medical degree and I can tell that's not normal, especially in someone who never had a weight problem in her life. As you might be able to tell from this picture, a lot of the weight I was carrying was around my middle (which is a classic sign of too much estrogen--that and the big boobs).

Alas, I had this lovely apple shape at exactly the same time that waist shaping was all the rage in clothing. Do you know what happens when you put a shirt with waist shaping on an apple? The very narrowest circumference of the garment is forced to go around the very widest circumference of the object. As a result, all of my shirts rode up as they attempted to find a skinnier part of my body to circumnavigate.

So there I was, looking at all that cute clothing made for shapely young women, and I resented it. I was angry at my doctor for refusing to help me, exhausted because my thyroid had gone south, and trying to stay current with knitwear design that no longer appealed to me. I didn't really want to design anything. Theoretically a designer should be able to design for any shape. But I had always been my own model and able to wear anything I designed. When I couldn't, my design mojo took a hike.

It took me a while to make peace with shapely garments. It started by finding a different doctor who was willing to give me the help I needed. I lost a fair bit of weight and discovered my waistline again. When I shop for clothing now, I want garments with waist shaping, because I like the way they look on my body. And just for the record, this is what I look like now (this was taken about a month ago at Christmas). Big difference, huh?

But this whole experience has made me a lot more conscious of how things fit on various bodies, and the damage that "fashion" can do to womens' self-esteem. I've begun including optional waist shaping in my patterns when it's appropriate. However, I still think that some designs need to be age-appropriate, and simply adding or removing some shaping at the waist isn't always enough to change something from a design that a 25 year-old professional woman would wear to a design a 65 year-old grandmother would wear.

Then again, maybe I am overthinking all of this. I still haven't decided what to do about that cardigan design I mentioned in the last post. I don't like to force designs and this design feels like it's being forced. So I'll just let it marinate for a few more days and see what happens.

In other news . . . the fire department is holding ice rescue training today. Our department owns a couple of rescue sleds that can be used on ice or in water, and we've invited a few neighboring departments to join us at a local slough this morning for practice in using them. I'm going to take my camera and get some pics. You might get a bonus post this afternoon if I can get some good shots.

January 29, 2009: Hemp Is Not Marijuana

My kids have advised me not to talk about underwear on my blog, so today I am going to talk about illegal substances.

That hemp yarn is so much nicer to knit with now that it has been washed. I wonder how many people have passed by the opportunity to knit with hemp because they thought it was just too stiff and scratchy. It is by far my favorite vegetable spinning fiber. Not that I get to spin much anymore, but if and when I do, I love the hemp.

When I talk about hemp yarns in my classes, some of the time invariably is spent on dicussing the difference between hemp and marijuana. They are not the same thing. They are the same plant, technically, but one is full of haze-inducing chemicals and one isn't. If you smoked hemp, all you'd likely get is a bad headache. And hemp grown for fiber is sown thickly and encouraged to grow without leaf formation, which is the exact opposite of how marijuana is cultivated. Botanists could have done hemp a big favor a long time ago by giving it a subtype name and differentiating the two plants.

One thing that just irritates the living daylights out of me is how proponents of maijuana legalization have tried to sneak it in under the legalization of hemp cultivation. As we all know, it's illegal to grow marijuana in the US, but it's also illegal to grow hemp. If I put a plot of hemp in my garden that had absolutely no THC content whatsoever, the DEA could circle my house in a helicopter and haul me off to jail. But the people who want to grow marijuana are hoping that if hemp cultivation ever became legal, no one would notice they were actually growing marijuana. As if.

This whole thing about needing marijuana for medical reasons also annoys me. If you really need the THC to help control your symptoms, it's available in pill form. And just for the record, I've never smoked so much as a cigarette, let alone an illegal substance. I've just seen way too many vehicle accidents caused by people who weren't in command of their faculties.

By far the best information about the history of hemp cultivation in the US can be found here. You have to wade through a bit of (I think legitimate) conspiracy theory, but it's all fascinating. And if you want hemp for spinning, the absolute best source is Aurora Silk. Cheryl Kolander is a well-known fiber artist. She imports hemp top from China and also sells hemp yarns and fabrics. She's got a comprehensive self-published book entitled Hemp for Textile Artists. It's a fabulous resource.

And those of you who subscribe to Spin-Off Magazine can check the Fall 2004 issue for an article on hemp by yours truly. I had great fun writing that article, and it's really the last time I did any serious amount of spinning.

One of my test-knitters is waiting for me to send her a project, but this particular project is giving me fits. I swatched up a cable pattern in a cotton-blend yarn, but I decided that the blend (it's got some angora in it) really wasn't suitable for the design I had in mind. Then the cable pattern said, "You know, I'd look a lot better if I were running horizontally around the base of the sweater instead of vertically." Okay, I like that idea, but I still need a different yarn.

I found some yarn yesterday at Camas Creek that matches the gauge of the yarn I used for the swatch. I'm getting hung up, though, on the style of the garment. The yarn has a bit of glitz in it, and I can see this being a dressy cardigan, but what kind of cardigan? Should it be a slinky, shaped cardigan for a young woman, or a less-structured cardigan for an older woman? I'd like it to be one or the other, because I think it's really hard to make one design that will answer to both age groups, even if I make the shaping optional. And I can't do two knitted versions. I'm leaning toward the less-structured, more mature option. I really think older knitters have been left in the dust by knitting magazines in recent years. Any thoughts?

Oh, the joys of knitwear design.

January 28, 2009: Beating Up Yarn

I worked on the market bag a bit yesterday, but realized that I wouldn't be able to finish it until I softened up the yarn. My wrists were killing me. I finished knitting with one skein of yarn, then put all the stitches on waste yarn and put the bag and the remaining two skeins of yarn in the washer on very hot water. I ran it through a couple of cycles, then put it in the dryer. Then I repeated the whole process once more.

Hemp fibers, like flax fibers, are held together with a resinous substance. And just like flax (or the linen fabric it becomes), the more hemp is washed and dried, the less resinous stuff remains and the softer the fibers get. The trick is to beat it up as much as possible. I loved knitting with my handspun hemp because it wasn't nearly as stiff as the Lanaknits Allhemp 6 that I'm using for this bag. But I don't have time right now to spin my own hemp yarn. And this yarn seems to be softening up nicely. It's in the last dryer cycle right now. I should be able to finish the bag with less stress on my hands. The mesh pattern for the body of the bag has alternating rows of left and right twists, defintely worked best without a cable needle.

While the hemp was washing, I visited the stash and found this yarn (I had sort of forgotten I had it until Melanie brought me another yarn made by this company from TNNA last week):

It's Cornupcopia, by Kollage Yarns, and it's made from 100% corn fiber. I cast on for a scarf—an easy project for the Summer issue and one that will be a good traveling project for this weekend, when I'll be in Portland for a workshop (my friend and fellow knitting designer Chrissy Gardiner is having me over for dinner Saturday night—what fun!). This yarn is incredibly soft. And rather than being a plied yarn, it's actually a fine knitted tube of yarn. Such a difference from the hemp, and both are vegetable fibers. Fascinating.

DD#1 and I are off to the health department early this morning to get our typhoid shots. Now that the Spring newsletter is done, I'm allowing myself the luxury of getting excited about the Europe trip. I really do like to travel, although flying is my least favorite part. But this trip is going to be fabulous. I have lists of all the things I need to do yet (like order myself more contact lenses). We were told to pack lightly, because we have to schlep our own suitcases everywhere we're going. I think it's fun trying to figure out how to fit everything I will need into one expandable 21" suitcase and a carry-on bag (the definition of "need" changes quickly when space is at a premium).

For instance (we ARE talking about vegetable fibers, after all), I found the Women's Soytopia Seamless Bikini Brief from ExOfficio—underwear made of 77% soy fiber (I know—TMI, but I think it's cool that natural fibers are so versatile). The company claims that you can travel for six weeks with just one pair of underwear because they're so easy to wash and dry. I have no intention of putting this claim to the test in Europe, but our local sports supply store had these on sale last week, so I bought a pair. They'll go in my carry-on bag, along with one pair of SmartWool socks. Add a toothbrush, some knitting and a book and I should be all set.

January 27, 2009: Modeling

I tried something new with the Spring issue of Twists and Turns—all the garments were photographed on live models. I much prefer (and I think knitters do, too) to see things on real people. From a production standpoint, though, it adds a huge layer of complexity. I am forced to coordinate schedules with my models (for this issue, one model was the two year-old son of friends and he was only available on weekends between 2 and 4 in the afternoon) and hope that when I do meet with the model, I can find a good spot for the photo that has decent lighting options. In the middle of January in Montana, decent lighting options are few and far between, and Photoshop can only do so much.

DD#1 was home from school yesterday (teacher work day), so she got to be my model for the shawl. We actually had some sun for the first time in two weeks. Normally I don't like sunny days because they wash out the photos; on the other hand, when it's not sunny here in January it might as well be dark outside.

I set my camera on "sports" (so it takes multiple shots without me having to lift my finger off the shutter button) and told DD#1 to twirl around. I got some very interesting results. I thought this one was particularly intriguing:

because of the way the light was coming through the lace. I would have liked to experiment a bit more, but it was -10 degrees yesterday (even with the sunshine) and my model was getting cold. We got a decent shot for the newsletter and that was it.

Yesterday was supposedly the last day of sub-zero temps. Thank goodness—this winter is really trying my patience (and everyone else's, too). A friend of ours came over to get the jumper cables out of my truck yesterday morning because his truck wouldn't start. He returned them, and a bit later the neighbor came over and got them because his car wouldn't start. We have engine block heaters on all our vehicles, but they only work if you remember to plug the truck in about two hours before you need to go anywhere.

It's supposed to warm up into the 30s for the rest of the week, but it's also supposed to snow some more. So far we've been having a textbook Farmer's Almanac winter—we got hammered with snow and cold temps in December, and most of January has been fairly mild and dry (the past few days notwithstanding). If the prediction holds, February is supposed to bring more snow. Oh yay.

I wanted to mention that there is something really wonky happening with the comments. I think it's a Haloscan problem—I posted a comment in response to some made on yesterday's post. It showed up for a few minutes, then disappeared. Sometimes comments don't appear here, but when I go to the Haloscan website and check my account, they're all there. I'm going to play around with it a bit—just know that I am not deleting comments, so if you made one and it doesn't show up, it's because something else is happening.

January 26, 2009: To Market, To Market

The shawl is done and blocking on the floor of the spare bedroom. I have two Sew E-Z blocking boards

but the largest one is not big enough to block a 58" long shawl, so I just used a very large beach towel. I do like these blocking boards a lot. The little one is 18" x 24" and is perfect for blocking a batch of swatches. The bigger one can handle a whole sweater. They fold up and store out of the way.

In an attempt to avoid post-project letdown (does anyone else experience that?), I cast on for a market bag last night. I've had an idea for one kicking around in my head, so I picked up some hemp yarn at Camas Creek a few weeks ago. I was working on the base of the bag last night (done in garter stitch) when DD#2 came over and sat down to watch. The conversation went like this:

DD#2: Now what are you making?

Me: A market bag.

DD#2: What's a market bag?

Me: You know, a bag that you take to the market to put your fruits and vegetables in after you buy them.

DD#2: Oh. What pattern are you using?

Me: One that's coming out of my brain.

DD#2: Do you have a picture?

Me: In my head.

Then the husband felt it was necessary to put his $0.02 worth into the conversation.

The husband: That doesn't look like a bag to me; it looks like a square.

Me: This is the base. It's a square, and then I am going to pick up around the four sides and knit up, so it'll look something like that (pointing to my Namaste Vintage bag).

I felt bad about teasing DD#2 a bit, so we went downstairs to the yarn storage room and I pulled out another hemp market bag I made about 15 years ago (from my handspun hemp) so she could see what I was talking about. That one is constructed differently from what I am planning, but she got the idea.

Very rarely does my knitting produce this kind of commentary from my family. It's like breathing—I do it all the time, so no one usually takes any notice of it. I think I prefer it that way.

January 25, 2009: Go, Speed Racer

I came so close to finishing that shawl yesterday. I dropped DD#1 off and came home—she didn't need to be picked up until 12:45—and did some laundry and worked in my office, then ran back in to town and got her. By the time I came home the mail had arrived and brought us a couple of Netflix movies. I whipped up a batch of homemade salsa and the husband, girls and I sat down and watched "Speed Racer."

[The husband didn't last long—he noted that it was a lot of computer-generated effects tied together very loosely by a story, then got up and went out to his garage.]

I stuck it out, both because I was knitting and because Speed Racer was one of my favorite TV shows from my childhood, right up there with Ultraman. When I was little, I really didn't care for Speed Racer all that much (besides, he had a girlfriend), but I was madly in love with Racer X. And I knew that he was Speed Racer's older brother.

Anyway, by the time the movie was over I had about 10 yards of yarn left, but I had to stop what I was doing and cook dinner (my own Racer X was hungry), and then it was time to head to the knitting party, where I was teaching and couldn't work on anything. I'll finish the knitting sometime this afternoon and I'll wash and block the shawl tonight.

Speaking of Speed Racer . . . yesterday morning when I was coming home after dropping DD#1 off, I crossed the bridge coming out of town and looked up in my rearview mirror to see a semi tailgating me. He was right on my back bumper, and kept moving out into the center lane as if he wanted to go around me (which he couldn't because there was a double-yellow line and cars coming in the opposite direction).

The roads were lousy—it had snowed overnight—and the wind was whipping snow around, so I was going about 50 mph, not the speed limit of 70 mph. After about six miles or so of him trying to get me to speed up and me refusing, I came to the point where I had to make a left-hand turn off the road and onto the road to get home. This left-hand turn happens on a curve. As I slowed down, flicked on my turn signal, and prepared to move over into the left turning lane (thus getting out of his way), he suddenly sped up and shot around me to the left on that curve. If I hadn't been paying attention to what he was doing, I would have pulled over right in front of him.

Unfortunately, the wind was still blowing the snow around so I couldn't see the name on the cab of the truck, but I pulled off and called the sheriff's office and reported the guy. Anyone driving that recklessly shouldn't be on the road. No one called me about filing a report, though, so he probably got away with it. And he'll probably continue to get away with it until he causes an accident.

January 24, 2009: Weekend Mish-Mash

Okay, back to other topics.

By the way, the husband asked me exactly how many blog readers I have and I told him I don't know. And it's fine with me if I remain in the dark, although I do appreciate everyone's comments.

DD#1 takes the SATs today. This was the only day of all the testing dates this spring that she didn't have something else scheduled. I thought I'd drive her in and go hang out at the yarn store for the rest of the morning, but then I realized that she has to be there at 7:45 a.m. and the yarn store doesn't open until 10:00 a.m. Bummer. I'm not quite sure what I will do. I have about two hours worth of knitting left on the shawl and I need to get it done by tomorrow so I can block it overnight. But it's 11 degrees outside (courtesy of an Arctic front that stalled over Montana) and it's no fun to sit in the truck and knit when it's that cold. Perhaps I'll find a coffee shop that's open.

I tried to get the shawl done last night, but gone are the days when I could pull an all-nighter to finish a project (I did that regularly in college). I'm doing really well on the thyroid meds I've been on for two months, but even though I have plenty of energy during the day, I sleep like a rock at night. My eyelids pop open at 4:30 every morning (sometimes I sleep in until 5:00), but by 8:00 p.m. they slam shut and not even an afternoon cup of tea or coffee can change that. Insomnia is not a problem for me. The husband is fond of watching The MacNeil News Hour every night after the local news. I told him last night that it was contributing to my inability to stay awake. I prefer lively discourse in my news broadcasts.

Speaking of thyroid meds, my sister put up a picture album in her Facebook account with a picture of me from March of 2006, about six months before I went on thyroid meds. I look horrible. And I remember just how awful I felt physically, too. I'd like to send that picture to my old doctor with a note (and a picture of how I look now) so she can see what patients look like when their doctors refuse to believe that they have a thyroid problem.

I'm still not sure what project I will start once this shawl is done. I ordered some yarn for a sweater for the Summer issue, and it's supposed to arrive Tuesday. Should I start that sweater, or should I knock out a few small pieces instead? I need to ponder that one some more.

We've got another teen knitting party scheduled for this evening. One of the boys has been knitting the same 6" square for about a month now, and he wants to move on to a hat. His aunt (the lady who hosted the first knitting party) is almost done with a scarf—she's already working on her 2009 Christmas presents. Another girl couldn't make it to the first party, so I'll teach her to knit tonight. And my kids will probably want to start projects, too. We'll be busy.

January 23, 2009: A Rare Political Post

I know I said I wanted to keep politics off the blog, but I feel the need to comment. And it's my blog, so I can do that. Other comments are welcome, too, as long as they remain civil.

The husband and I both had pretty ambivalent feelings about the results of the election in November—he, because he's a registered Libertarian and feels rather disenfranchised in our two-party system, and me (who has been a registered Independent since the day I registered to vote) because I was fairly well convinced that the Bush administration had done so much damage to this country that no one—Republican or Democrat—could fix it.

So he and I have been watching the events of the past few days, and yesterday we took a few minutes to compare notes. I mentioned how impressed I was at the actions that President Obama had taken in the first few days of office. I like having a president who doesn't insult my intelligence by telling me he's doing one thing while his actions indicate he's doing something completely different. I like that this president appears to have a firm grip on reality, and doesn't pretend that things are going well when in fact they aren't, as if saying, "Things are great!" will magically make them that way. I like that his IQ is much bigger than his shoe size and that he speaks in coherent sentences.

The husband said that the more he listens to Obama and reads about him, the more he likes him. That is high praise from the husband, indeed. He likes the fact that Obama looks like he's going to govern from the middle (have I mentioned that the husband is a lifetime member of the NRA?). He thinks he's a fairly honest politician, in a time when "honest politician" is an oxymoron.

So while I know this country has a tough road ahead of it, I am now convinced that President Obama can get us out of the mess we're in, or at least get us headed in the right direction.

Of course, all is not perfect. This Tim Geithner thing really fries me. I met with our accountant yesterday and as he was looking through the reports and the tax organizer, he said, "You are a model taxpayer—everything is in order and filled out," and I thought to myself, "Maybe I should get Tim Geithner's new job." How nice that people in positions of wealth and power get away with not paying what they owe when the husband and I are so careful to make sure that we meet our tax obligations every year.

I hope that at some point this administration will examine the economy from a tax standpoint, and realize that cutting taxes would go a long way toward revving up the economy. The husband and I fall squarely into the 39% corporate tax bracket. Basically that means that if we want to live on $80,000 a year, we have to generate $120,000 in profits between our three businesses, because we have to pay $40,000 of what we make to the government. If we put $10,000 in our savings account, we'd better make sure that we have another $4000 set aside to send to Uncle Sam. Oh, and did I mention that we pay for our own health insurance?

And before all my Republican friends get all up-in-arms and insist that Republicans lower taxes and Democrats raise them, I'd like to point out that the Republicans had eight years in which to do something about the tax rate on small businesses and they didn't cut it (all while trumpeting how they were "friends of small business"). I'm sure that Exxon-Mobil's effective tax rate is less than what the husband and I pay, given all the tax breaks large corporations have gotten. If our tax rate was cut to 25%, the husband and I could afford to hire another employee. That's the kind of policy that puts people back to work and creates jobs.

What I'd really like to see is a whole government filled with people like Barack Obama, people who aren't concerned with lining their own pockets and those of their friends, people who—regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats or Libertarians—are committed to working together to make the world a better place for everyone.

January 22, 2009: Grading, Part 4

Did I lose everyone with yesterday's post? Today's post has pretty pictures.

I'm trying to pick out examples of patterns I've graded where things aren't straightforward, and one that I mentioned yesterday is an allover pattern. What I'm thinking of is something like a pattern in which a cable alternates with some kind of knit/purl pattern, like this:

It's hard to see in the picture, admittedly, but let's pretend that the stitch multiple is something like 13 stitches (8 cable stitches and 5 knit/purl stitches).

How I distribute that multiple around the body of the sweater sometimes makes a difference. I've already decided that I want to knit the body in one piece in order to avoid side seams breaking up the flow of the pattern. Now I need to decide where to place the buttonband. I have two options:

1. Place the cable pattern on either side of the buttonband (in other words, the stitches of the buttonband will replace the 5 stitches of the knit/purl section in the stitch pattern).
2. Arrange the multiple so that the buttonband is flanked by the knit/purl sections of the stitch pattern.

Let's flank the buttonband with the cables (I think that's usually the more asthetically-pleasing of the two choices). Because I am subtracting the 5 sts out, the multiple around the sweater actually now changes to a multiple of 13 + 8. This is where I start to lose track of things in my head, and I've found that it helps for me to draw myself a picture:

The circle represents the body of the sweater, and the "8 + 5"s around it represent the distribution of the stitch pattern. (I like to expand my multiple of 13 into the stitches of the cable and the stitches of the knit/purl section in order to help me see what's going on.) Note that I have a total of twelve "8 + 5"s and one additional "8," because that may become important later on. Now I need to divide my circle into quadrants (one for each front and two for the back) and see how that affects the distribution of the cable pattern:

So I've split my circle into four quadrants and added up the stitches in each quadrant. Right off the bat I need to do some adjusting, at least in my picture. Each Front has 39 stitches and the Back has 86 stitches. If I take the total number of stitches (164) and divide it by four, I should have 41 stitches in each Front and 82 stitches in the Back. "Easy to fix!" you say—"just take 2 stitches at either side of the Back and add them to the stitches of the Fronts!"

No, not so easy. If I take 2 stitches from the "8"s at either side of the Back, I'm disturbing the cable pattern—the imaginary side "seams" are now within the stitches of the cable pattern, and not even in the middle of the cable pattern. This has implications when it comes time to divide the Body for Fronts and Back and shape the armhole openings. I don't want to divide my body pieces at an odd place within a cable pattern. It doesn't make for good design.

What's the solution? Well, the math isn't so elegant, but what I'll likely do is shift the pattern such that the imaginary side seams fall in the middle of the 8-stitch cable pattern, like this:

I've actually divided the 8-stitch cable at each side into two 4-stitch sections to make it easier for me to see what is happening.

This is one of those areas that is a judgment call for designers. If I add 43 and 43, I get 86, which is 8 more stitches than are in the Back. Add in the stitches of the buttonband, and the total width of the Fronts is going to be greater than the width of the Back. Is this okay? For a Ladies' sweater—yes, usually it's okay. We women need more real estate in the fronts of our sweaters than we do in the back. But it's probably worth it for me to go back and do this exercise again with Option 2 just to see if the math works out a bit more elegantly with those numbers.

Let's say that I stick with Option 1. I've got the numbers plugged in for one size, but now I need to start going up and down in the size range. Let's pretend that the width of my multiple of 13 is 3", and remember that in the first size I had twelve of those multiples arranged around the body of the sweater, making the circumference of that size somewhere in the neighborhood of 38" (I have to add in the extra 8 stitches and the stitches of the buttonband). You might think that for the next size up I could add another multiple for a total of 13 multiples, increasing the body circumference by 3, or 41" around.

If only it were that easy. Going from an even number of stitch multiples around the sweater to an odd number of stitch multiples around the sweater is going to throw the distribution of the cable pattern off again. For that size, the imaginary side seams might fall within the knit/purl section of the multiple. Maybe that doesn't matter to me, but maybe it does (for one thing, the cable pattern is an even number of stitches and the knit/purl section is an odd number). I'd likely have to diagram that one out, too, and see how it affects the armhole shaping.

The easy answer is for the next size up to have 14 multiples around the sweater so that I stay with the even numbers of multiples. However, that means the sizing is going to jump from 38" around for one size to 44" around for the next size. That's a pretty big jump, and it's really not acceptable.

[And remember—I've diagrammed this out, which is helpful, but now I have to translate what is happening in the design in the picture(s) into formulas in the spreadsheet that represent what is happening with the numbers that knitters will have to follow.]

I won't bore you with the details of how I got all this worked out in this particular design, except to say that I actually had two different grading sets for this design—one that had an even number of multiples around the sweater and one that had an odd number of multiples. When they dovetailed, the sizes only differed by a few inches from size to size. It makes for a much longer pattern, but fortunately there is space for this kind of thing in the pages of Twists and Turns.

I think this is probably enough about grading for a while. I'm done with the Spring issue of the newsletter, except for finishing the shawl and getting it photographed. So we'll see what inspires tomorrow's blog post.

January 21, 2009: Grading, Part 3

Almost every knitting designer I know grades sweater patterns with the help of spreadsheets. They are flexible and allow the designer to change one value and have other values updated accordingly. If you're just dying to see a good example of a spreadsheet set up to grade a pattern, take a look at Marnie MacLean's excellent tutorial at her website.

It took me a while to become comfortable with using a spreadsheet (even though I got a very respectable B+ in my college calculus classes). Not being a visual person, I have a lot of trouble picturing in my head what is happening in the sweater and translating that to a series of formulas in a spreadsheet. Although I usually have the sweater in front of me, I still have to visualize how certain parts of the sweater will change with each different size. And then there is GIGO—programmer-speak for "garbage in, garbage out." Even the most powerful spreadsheet will be useless if even one formula governing a calculation is wrong (ask me how I know this).

With some nudging from my tech editor, however, I have learned to grade my patterns in spreadsheets and I think I get better at it every time I do it. I'm still prone to some boneheaded GIGO mistakes, but they're much easier to spot and correct.

I'm going to try to give you an example of what might be involved in grading a fictitious pattern (and why a software program might not be able to handle it). Let's pretend that I've designed a Ladies' Aran set-in sleeve cardigan and I want to grade it into half a dozen sizes ranging from 34" around to 60" around. For sake of clarity, we'll pretend it's being knit in pieces from the bottom up and seamed.

Setting up the spreadsheet takes a fair bit of time, unless you have a template such as the one Marnie makes available in the tutorial or that you've developed for your own use.

I'll need a section in my spreadsheet for gauge over stitches and rows, but which gauge do I use? Assuming there are at least three or four different cable patterns in this Aran, I could have three or four different gauges. My solution to that dilemma is to give gauge over Stockinette st or over the filler st (Moss, Seed, etc.) used at the sides of the sweater when I write the pattern. If a knitter can hit gauge over one of those basic stitches, it's a good bet that they will hit gauge over the cables. And cables can be blocked out if necessary.

For purposes of calculations within the spreadsheet, however, I have found that it works well for me to use the widths of the various cable patterns in my design rather than an actual gauge. I usually have a section in my spreadsheet where I enter each cable pattern individually, reflected in both number of stitches and width in inches. I'll also include cells with the stitch multiple of any filler stitches I use. Those values can get called in at various points in the spreadsheet to help me calculate total numbers of stitches to cast on and to check the widths to make sure that a set of numbers doesn't result in a sweater that is 18" around instead of 36" around (for an adult, that wouldn't be a good thing).

Once I have those basic values entered, I can begin adding actual sweater measurements and making calculations. Keeping in mind that "all designers are a size Medium," I'm probably not going to be starting with the smallest size and going up from there. Rather, I'll plug in the numbers I used to knit the prototype, which is somewhere in the middle of the size range. Once I've got those numbers in, I can size up and down from there.

What happens next is hard to describe, as (for me, ast least) it's a combination of entering numbers and refining formulas and seeing how certain values change. Let's focus on grading the Back of this fictitious sweater. It's a set-in sleeve style, so presumably in my target measurements section I've got a value for the cross-shoulder measurement as well as the width at chest measurement. It's also an Aran, so I've got (I hope) a couple of options for making the Back larger or smaller as needed:

1. I can make the center panel wider or narrower
2. I can add or subtract filler stitches at the sides
3. I can add or subtract cable panels at either side of the center panel—for example, size XS might have two cable panels at either side of the center panel, while size XL might have three cable panels at either side of the center panel

The nice thing about grading Arans is that there are so many options for sizing. Other designs are not so forgiving.

Given these options, I might actually have several different formulas for calculating the number of stitches to cast on, with correspondingly different instructions for each size's set-up row depending upon what cable patterns appear in what order and how wide the center panel and filler stitch sections are. I might have a center panel that can easily be sized wider or narrower—if so, I might choose to determine how many stitches should be in that center panel by making its target width a percentage of the total width of the sweater—say, 40%. Or I might be limited by a certain stitch multiple, so that the center panel always has to be a multiple of 8 stitches plus 2. And because it's a set-in sleeve style, I want to make sure that any shaping that happens later for the armhole opening only happens within filler stitches and doesn't eat into the cable patterns.

See how complicated things already are, and we haven't even gotten past the set-up row on the Back yet!

Actually, it's pretty smooth sailing from here—at least in generating the rest of the numbers for the Back, and assuming that my numbers for the set-up row are correct.

Let's look at the numbers for the Fronts. Remember that this is an Aran cardigan. The first issue I have to deal with is how to split the Back into two Fronts. Will the center panel lend itself to being split in half vertically, or is it so complicated that a better choice would be to avoid it altogether and replace it with filler stitches on the Fronts? Either way, I'll have to treat the Fronts as a completely different pattern with their own formulas and set-up rows.

The really fun patterns to grade (I'm being facetious when I say that) are the ones that have an allover design with a stitch pattern that revolves around an axis of some sort. Maybe I'll talk about those tomorrow.

Once I've gotten the Back and Fronts done, I'll have to turn my attention to the Sleeves. I'll need to figure out what the "sleeve length to underarm" measurements are for each size, then determine how many stitches have to be added as the knitter works from cuff to top of sleeve. Those increased stitches have to be spread out over the appropriate number of rows based on the row gauge. There are lots of great functions, such as ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, MROUND, EVEN, ODD, FLOOR, and CEILING that allow me to refine these and other calculations, but again—it's a matter of knowing when and how to use them.

What if the shape of the armscye changes from size to size? The smaller sizes might have a higher, tighter armhole, while the larger sizes have a lower, shallower armhole. The shape of the sleeve cap—and the calculations governing the shaping of that sleeve cap—have to change accordingly. This is another place where I might have six completely different formulas for six different sizes. And just for giggles, let's pretend that there is a filler stitch with a multiple on the sleeve that governs the number of stitches that have to be cast on and the target number that need to be at the top of the sleeve before the cap shaping begins, as well as a cable pattern running down the center of the sleeve.

I'm giving myself a headche as I write this blog post, which is probably an indication that I should stop here and save something for tomorrow. I hope, though, that it gives some indication of the complexity of pattern grading and why it's not so easy just to say, "If you want to make this designer bigger, add X sts here and here."

January 20, 2009: Grading, Part 2

Everything I know about fit and design is hard-won knowledge gained through years of knitting, some trial and error, and lots of reading, because I graduated from high school without ever setting foot in the home ec room (physics was infintely more fun—right, Doreen?). Not that I would have learned sweater-grading techniques in high school, but perhaps I would have learned other practical things about clothing construction. Oh well.

A few weeks ago I found myself participating in a discussion of KnitML in the Designers forum on Ravelry. KnitML is a "knitting markup language"—those of use who code our own web pages immediately recognize the concept as being similar to HTML, or "hypertext markup language," which is the code behind what you see when you look at a web page. KnitML has a lot of potential as a way to control the expression of a knitting pattern—whether the pattern is expressed in imperial or metric measurements; what language it's written in; which parts of the pattern are written or charted out, etc. And just like HTML, the end user—the knitter—would not have to see the code itself, just what the code expresses—the knitting pattern.

One of the claims made by the KnitML technology was the potential to re-size a knitting pattern beyond the sizes which are given. Let's say Jill Designer came up with a darling cardigan pattern but the sizes only ranged from 40" around to 48" around. Jane Knitter wants to make a cardigan that measures 36" around. Theoretically, a knitting pattern built on the KnitML architecture could allow Jane Knitter to plug in the target measurements and voila!—the program would spit out a totally new pattern for that cardigan based on the measurements Jane Knitter wants.

In theory, that's an admirable goal. In practice, it would be a nightmare for designers. What happens if Jane Knitter begins working on her new, re-sized pattern and runs into a problem? Let's say that the stitch multiple no longer fits neatly around the body of the sweater and throws the whole design off. Jane Knitter is understandably frustrated and upset. Who does she call? She calls the designer, expecting to receive support for her revised pattern. The designer then spends a lot of time doing pattern support for a design she never intended to be knitted in that size.

If you're on Ravelry, feel free to read the whole thread. The bottom line is that re-sizing a garment cannot be reduced to a few keystrokes or a section of code in a program (if it could, designers' jobs would be much easier!). And you might ask, "Why not?" The most obvious reason (to designers, at least) is because garments do not simply become proportionally bigger all the way around as they go up in size. Let me draw you a (very rough) picture:

If grading were simply a matter of making a sweater proportionally bigger all the way around as the size increased from smallest to largest (as in the picture above, where the smallest size is shown in blue and the largest in green), grading and pattern-writing would be a snap. Proportions are an easy mathematical function.

What really happens, though, is that some portions of the garment—for example the "wingspan," or the distance from cuff to cuff—stay relatively constant or within a narrow set of values, while other parts of the garment vary within a much wider set of values. Thus, the picture above should look more like this:

You can see that as the body becomes wider, the sleeves do not automatically become longer—in fact, the sleeve measurement from cuff to underarm actually decreases as the body width increases. That's one of the most frequent questions I get about my patterns—why do the sleeve lengths get shorter as the sweater gets bigger? Now you know.

You might also see that in the second picture, the neck opening doesn't become bigger just because the body gets bigger. While slight variations in the neck opening measurement are to be expected from size to size, it is another one of those areas that should remain within a narrow range of values. That is something I learned from the husband, who has been my sweater guinea pig for nearly 22 years. He still has a sweater I made him when we were in college, which he says he loves and would wear constantly if the neck opening were not so big. Big neck openings on sweaters are his personal pet peeve.

Handling the different moving parts of a sweater when grading from size to size is a complex juggling act. I used to do it by hand with a paper and pencil and a calculator. Thanks to some nudging from my tech editor, I now do it with a spreadsheet, and that will be the topic of tomorrow's blog post.

January 19, 2009: Grading, Part 1

We're talking knitting patterns, not term papers.

Of all the things I do as a knitwear designer, writing the pattern for a design in multiple sizes (= "grading") is by far the hardest. I could churn out design after design after design if all I had to do was come up with the idea, then hand it off to someone else who would knit it up and write the pattern. Alas, I do not have staff. A design only makes it to the production queue after careful consideration of what's going to be involved in presenting it in multiple sizes.

I completed the Master Knitting program from TKGA in 1997. One of the requirements—the "final exam," if you will—is to design an original Aran or Fair Isle sweater. I chose to design this Aran:

This sweater remains one of my personal favorites. It was published in the Winter 1997 issue of Cast-On magazine. In one size. Because grading it for multiple sizes would have been a nightmare even for an experienced pattern writer, let alone for a noob designer. However, publishing a pattern in only one size is a rare happening these days. Knitters now expect to see the same design presented in a range of sizes from 32" around to 60" around.

To see how things have changed in the last 60 or so years, I pulled out one of my vintage knitting magazines. From the Summer 1947 issue of Smart Knitting, I chose a pattern at random—the Double Breasted Two Piece Suit. It says, "Directions are for size 14. Sizes 16 and 18 are in parentheses." The finished measurements for the jacket say, "At bustline when buttoned 33 (35, 37)."

Oh, wow. A couple of things jump out at me:

1. The design is presented in only three sizes.
2. The size range differs by only 4" in circumference from smallest size to largest size.
3. A sweater measuring only 33" around qualified as a size 14 in 1947(!!!!)

It's no secret that Americans, at least, are much larger on average than we were as a population in 1947. I blame some of that on the use of high fructose corn syrup in everything and the soup of estrogen-mimicking compounds that we all float around in every day (and the fact that most of us don't exercise as much as we ought). But that's a rant for another day.

When I knit up a design, I usually aim for something in the middle of the size range. By coincidence (or not), I fall roughly in the middle of the size range, so I am usually able to make something that will fit me. (We have a joke that "All designers are a size Medium.") I like to see how a finished design looks on a real body.

Here's the kicker: What's a "real body"? While there are published lists of standard clothing measurements, very few people match those measurements perfectly. When I teach my fitting class, I ask students to pair up, measure each other, then write down the numbers. It's amazing to see the variation just within a group of 20 or so women. I once taught a class where the shortest woman in the class had the longest arms. Go figure.

One of the points I strive to get across is that a knitter should not expect that a pattern knit up exactly as published is automatically going to fit that particular knitter's body perfectly. It can't—there is simply too much variation in the size and shape of bodies across the spectrum, and it's impossible to factor that variation into a knitting pattern.

It's been my experience that people who sew rarely expect to make up a sewing pattern exactly as drafted—most sewers are prepared to make alterations in the garment as it comes together. Knitters, on the other hand, are not. I'm not sure why that is. I suspect some of it has to do with lack of knowledge—knitters simply may not know how to make alterations to a pattern. Or they may feel that because they paid $6 for a pattern, they shouldn't be required to make any changes to it (has anyone looked at the price of a Vogue sewing pattern lately?). Whatever the reason, I am aware of the expectations knitters have of knitting patterns.

I want to post more about this subject in future blog posts. I've spent the better part of a week now grading and writing sweater patterns, so this happens to be at the forefront of my brain. And it's just not as easy as it looks to grade a design in multiple sizes, so perhaps a word of explanation from the designer will help illustrate exactly what goes into the creation of a knitting pattern from concept to hard copy.

The Spring newsletter layout is just about complete and will go to my tech editor tomorrow for edit #2. I'd love to say I'm ahead of schedule, but I am still furiously knitting on a shawl pattern that is included in this issue. The pattern is written, but the shawl isn't ready to photograph yet.

One design is swatched and ready to go to one of my test-knitters; I just need to get the pattern written today. And then I expect I will be working on the shawl.

January 16, 2009: The State of the (Knitting) Economy

I've heard it said that knitting is a recession-proof industry, and if ever there was a chance to test that aphorism, this must be it. My personal observation is that nothing has slowed down. However, my perspective is somewhat skewed. It will be interesting to hear the reports from The National Needlearts Association Trade show, which is being held this weekend in California, because they will reflect the state of the larger industry.

Camas Creek Yarn is still busy. Retreats and knitting events are still happening. Yesterday morning I got three big wholesale book orders filled and was congratulating myself on getting my desk cleared off when two more big orders came in on the fax machine. The supply of books I picked up from the warehouse on Monday is gone and now I need to pick up another batch to keep here. I knew I was going to have to order another print run of the Aran book sometime in 2009, but it looks like it's going to be sooner rather than later.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. It's just that I see very few people out shopping these days (I went to Lowe's to get a replacement light fixture the other day and the place was a graveyard). And historically, book sales have always dropped to near-zero levels in the first quarter of the year. I'm just trying to make sense of it all.

The husband and I were eating lunch together yesterday while I was working on my editorial schedule for the year and making notes about projects for my test-knitters. He, of course, saw that as an excellent opportunity to campaign for some knitwear for him. This is a frequent and ongoing discussion. He would happily wear anything I made him. I, on the other hand, cannot bear to see my hard work come home covered in concrete. We have not yet figured out a solution to this impasse, other than he only gets to wear my handknits when he goes to an event at which there is no risk of there being any wet concrete.

The conversation went something like this:

Me (having located a really cool cable pattern in one of my stitch dictionaries): Wow, I love this stitch pattern. This would be great in a cotton yarn as a guy's pullover.

The husband: Cotton? Why would I wear a cotton sweater? It gets wet and makes you cold. I like wool.

Me: Hmmm, this design isn't for you.

The husband: It's not?

Me: No, this is for the Summer issue of the newsletter and wool isn't really an appropriate choice.

The husband: What guy wears a cotton sweater in the summer?

Me: Think "metrosexual."

The husband: I'd rather not.

Obviously we did not make any headway in the "knitting for men" department.

After lunch I went down to the stash to get some cotton yarn for swatching. The yarn storage room is a bit of a mess and needs a new light fixture (hence the trip to Lowe's). Every so often I collect the yarn lying around the house and cart it down to the storage room. It might be leftovers from a project, skeins I've taken out for swatching, or new acquisitions from Camas Creek. In any case, it needs to get filed in the storage system.

I located the cotton yarn and took it out, then spent a bit of time reacquainting myself with my stash. I just like to look at yarn and think about what it could be. It always helps to get the creative juices flowing. And now I have lots of projects to put in the queue. I think I even know what I am going to take to Europe with me.

January 13, 2009: How Much Yarn to Buy?

Debbie, you asked about my stash. Let's take a look:

I keep my yarn in these storage bins—about 20 of them (there are a few on the other wall, too). This is a storage room in our basement.

When we moved here to Montana fifteen years ago, I had a much smaller stash (maybe four small boxes of yarn). When I became a knitting designer, I had the opportunity to buy yarn at wholesale prices from yarn manufacturers. The catch was that I also had to buy in wholesale quantities, although the minimums are smaller for designers than for yarn stores. As a result, the size of my stash grew exponentially.

Most yarn manufacturers require sell only full bags of yarn. A full bag of 100g skeins of worsted-weight yarn (something like Cascade 220) is 2200 yards of yarn. A Ladies' medium Aran requires approximately 2000 yards—how convenient. When I am wondering if I have enough yarn for a project, I'm usually thinking in terms of that 2000 yard mark or a full bag of yarn, at least for wool. It drives me nuts to shop at stores that don't carry enough of one color of yarn for a sweater. Michael's—which carries Lion Brand Lion Wool—is notorious for this. I must have visited at least six Michael's stores in three states last summer and not a single one of them had enough skeins of Lion Wool to knit a sweater. And why Lion Brand thinks that is okay is beyond me.

Over the past year—coincidentally, since Camas Creek Yarn opened—I've stopped buying yarn from manufacturers and begun buying yarn at Camas Creek. I have to pay a bit more than wholesale (I get a store discount), but the rate and volume of yarn acquisition has slowed. Now I only buy yarn if I have a project for it. That allows me to design with more currently-available yarns rather than pulling a two (or ten) year-old yarn out of the stash just so I can use it up. And I can see the yarn before I buy it. No more wholesale ordering only to discover that a yarn doesn't look or feel exactly like the 2" sample on the shade card.

The nice thing about having a large stash is that it's comforting to know that if modern civilization collapses, I'll still be able to knit for a long, long time. My friend Susan has fleeces from 25 years ago when she and her husband worked on a sheep ranch in Wyoming. We figure that between the two of us, we'll be able to keep the whole neighborhood clothed.

I had another productive day today tying up all sorts of loose ends from 2008 and getting the rest of the newsletter layout in place. And now I'm off to town. We have a Europe trip meeting tonight and I am looking forward to getting all the travel details so I know exactly where we are going and what we are going to see.

January 12, 1009: Editing and Layout

The newsletter was on today's schedule. It's got to go to my tech editor in a few days, so I spent about 8 hours grading patterns and working on the layout. I made great progress but I am mentally wiped out. After that much time spent working with numbers, my eyes start to glaze over.

A sweater scheduled for this issue arrived back here from one of my test-knitters a few days ago. I am so fortunate to have two really good test-knitters. One does a fabulous job with my wool cable and Aran designs, and the other one is a terrific cotton knitter (it's hard to find test-knitters who can do cotton well, at least in my experience). The design that just came back is a man's pullover out of Sublime Soya Cotton, a 50% cotton/50% soy blend yarn. The hand of this yarn when it's knitted up is just exquisite. Who knew soybeans made such nice yarn?

Here is a peek at the stitch pattern.

This stitch pattern and I did quite a bit of arguing back at the end of the summer. I swatched it originally in wool, which looked good, but the stitch pattern kept yelling at me that it really would prefer to be knit in some nice cotton (and here I need to say again that I am not crazy—stitch patterns and yarn really do yell talk if you're willing to listen to them). When I swatched it in the Soya Cotton, I had to agree. This stitch pattern needed a sharp cotton to show it off. Who am I to argue?

I have my tax stuff ready to go to the accountant; I always try to get everything together and out of my hair as earlier as possible. Last year I got it to our accountant by the end of January, and he told me that this year I should see if I could get it done even earlier than that. I cannot resist a challenge, so that's what I spent the better part of last week doing. Besides, if I don't get it done now, I won't have time to do it before April 15th.

I am really enjoying the break in the near-constant snow we've been having. It got a bit slick and icy there for a while, but we seem to have reached a period of relatively smooth sailing, at least where the weather is concerned. The poor husband has been out nearly every single night for either a fire or medical call. They do tend to come in groups like this, but that's little comfort for a group of sleep-deprived volunteer firefighters.

My schedule has readjusted a bit and I actually like it better. The roads have been so crummy that we're not letting DD#1 drive herself to school. She has after-school activities two days a week, though, so I've been going in to get her and running my errands then. It seems to be working so far, and it gives me a much bigger (read: more productive) block of time early in the day when I am fresh.

And now I think it's time for some knitting. It doesn't make my eyes glaze over.

January 9, 2009: A Camas Creek Yarn Update

It looks like we've got a tentative date for next year's Camas Creek Yarns Winter Retreat. We talked to the lovely people at the Izaak Walton Inn and they have reserved the weekend of January 22-24 for us. We're planning two full days of classes on both Friday and Saturday. I'll post more information as it becomes available, but if you're interested, put it on your calendar.

I had two hours to kill in town yesterday so I went to the store and hung out and helped with inventory. That's an interesting job. I saw some yarns I didn't know the store had (but I didn't buy anything).

I keep meaning to mention (and keep forgetting) that Camas Creek sells some absolutely gorgeous pashmina shawls imported from Turkey. Melanie's oldest daughter lives and teaches there. Melanie's youngest daughter also lived there for a while with her sister. These two young women made some contacts and now the youngest daughter—who currently lives here—periodically imports a shipment of shawls to sell in the store. The first couple of shipments were small and always sold out before I had a chance to see them. This most recent shipment was huge—two bales—and I was at the store when they arrived. I have quite a few pashmina shawls I've collected over the years and these are by far the nicest in terms of quality and design.

You can see the shawls at the Touch of Turkey website. It's wholesale ordering only on that website, but there is a list of the retail locations that sell the shawls. They make fabulous gifts. And the best part is that ten percent of the net profits will be donated to the Street Children Volunteers Association, an Istanbul volunteer group which provides homeless children with shelter, clothing, vocational training and schooling.

I know I said I wouldn't talk about the weather, but I can't help myself. . . I decided yesterday—as I slogged through 8 inches of water on top of a layer of ice to get to my dentist appointment and prayed I wouldn't slip and fracture my arm and be unable to knit—that I would much rather have had another foot of snow than this horrible melting raining and freezing mess that we've had the past couple of days. The roads in town are all clear now, but our road is still hideous. I was happy to see that the plow operator finally plowed out a section of the state road so the bus could turn around there.

More website work today. I have other stuff I need to be working on, too, but the site stuff is pretty critical.

January 7, 2009: Snow, Rain, You Name It

Somewhere under all this snow is my garden. I made the mistake of looking at it yesterday.

I know that it must have looked even worse in 1997, the year of the "big snow," but back then I was pregnant with DD#2. She was born at the beginning of July. I wasn't exactly itching to get out and dig in the dirt that year. The only thing that comforts me is that this snow is excellent insulation for my plants. One year I had a rosemary plant last out the entire winter—it was only when all the snow was gone and we had a hard freeze one night that it gave up and died.

What a miserable day it's turning out to be. This is starting to sound like the "I hate winter weather" blog and it isn't really meant to be. I'm just thinking about having to go out in this and how complicated that's going to be. We got notified this morning that dispatch is on emergency backup for dispatching because some of the repeaters around the valley have ice on them. Not good. Right now it's about 40 degrees, but when this freezes—which it will—what a mess we will have.

Let's talk about knitting. Yesterday was a good, productive day. I worked some on Cables 2, got the details for upcoming classes taken care of, and worked on the shawl. It's about halfway to being done, so I am allowing myself the luxury of thinking what I would like to do next. I need to get some ideas fleshed out and patterns written for my test-knitters. I'd like to figure out what my Europe trip knitting is going to be—I may have to break down and knit socks on that trip, because I can't imagine being able to work on anything much bigger than socks. I think it's kind of funny that all my anxiety about that trip is centered around having enough yarn to keep me occupied for ten days.

So far today I've spent all my time working on my website. I'm not as good as I should be about website and store maintenance. Part of it is that those activities are not knitting, and I'd rather be knitting. The other part of it is that maintenance is so time-consuming because of the clunky interface in my store software. Going in there to work is like going into a very dark and messy closet.

I'm trying to make it easier for customers to find and order stuff in my store. All the products are kept in a database. In order to rearrange the way those products are displayed in the product list (so I can keep all the 2001 issues of the newsletter together, for instance), I have to rearrange them manually in the database (there is a sort function, but it's pretty limited). I have 84 products in my store. If I want the product at the very bottom of the list to be at the very top of the list. I have to sit there and click the "up arrow" button 83 times to get it moved to the top of the list. I've checked the documentation. There is no workaround.

But I am making progress. It needs to be done, so I'll keep at it until it's right.

January 6, 2009: Storm Train

Debbie, you asked about the classes at the retreat. We had a cabling class Friday night, a fitting class Saturday morning, and a lace class Saturday afternoon. The wonderful thing about the classes (from this teacher's perspective) was that Melanie didn't load down the schedule with classes—she left a good bit of time for socializing and skiing. I can't tell you how many "vacation spots" I've been to around the country and never actually visited, because I was so busy teaching that I didn't have any time for sightseeing.

I have to talk about the weather a bit. Hopefully we are close to the end of what has been a near-constant conveyor belt of storms off the Pacific. Poor Mary Lou (Melanie's mother) has stayed in Kalispell much longer than she planned to, because she can't find a safe window of time to drive back to her home near Spokane (I shouldn't complain—those poor people in Spokane really have been hit hard this year).

We were supposed to get a storm yesterday, but it appears to have gone south of us. However, another storm is on the schedule for tomorrow, and it promises to be esepcially messy—snow, then freezing rain, then rain, and then cold again. Wow, I can't wait. After that, though, it is supposed to be warmer and dryer for a while.

I probably wouldn't be this cranky, except that the county has done such a lousy job plowing this year that getting around the valley is the equivalent of an arctic expedition. Apparently, the head of the road department retired over the summer, along with half the road crew personnel. The county didn't hire anyone to replace those who retired, citing budget shortfalls. The husband says he doesn't understand that, as our property taxes certainly haven't decreased. Yes, we have more roads in the county, but even the main roads haven't been plowed properly. DD#1's bus driver is now turning around in our driveway every morning and afternoon (we're at the end of the bus route). He used to be able to turn around across from the north corner of our property, where a road leads into state land. However, it seems that the plow driver can't be bothered to plow a short section of that road out for the bus driver to turn around in (something they've always done in the past), so he comes down to our driveway and turns around.

The husband and the employees went back to work yesterday, which was a good thing. He gets twitchy when he can't work because of the weather. He's out today doing some community work; someone ran into the local grange hall, so he's working on repairing that, shoveling snow off roofs, and helping a neighbor lady whose porch roof collapsed. She can't get out of her house so he's going to go over and shovel her out.

I am going to sit in my chair by the fire and knit, after I get a pot of chicken and dumplings going for dinner.

January 4, 2009: Retreat!

I think the First Annual Camas Creek Yarn Winter Retreat was an unqualified success. I had a few moments of uncertainty Friday as a big winter storm was blowing through. The husband was not thrilled with the prospect of me driving up to Essex, MT in a snowstorm. However, the weather is always worse where we live (on the side of a mountain) and by the time I made it to Kalispell to meet Melanie and Andy at Camas Creek, the weather and roads were both much improved.

Six of us in two trucks headed up to the Izaak Walton Inn and arrived just after sunset. The Inn is an enchanting place: no TV, no cell phone service, some Wi-Fi (when it is working, which is wasn't when we arrived), and three pay phones (also not working when we arrived). Somehow Andy managed to find a five-minute window of time when the Wi-FI was up and running, and got a message to one of the Camas Creek employees, who called my house and let the husband know we were there.

I took pictures for the blog.

The Inn:

Melanie and Mary Lou (her mother, who is one of the sweetest people on the planet) sitting next to the big fireplace in the lobby:

The lobby is the social center of the Inn, made all the more so when all the knitters are sitting there, knitting and visiting. Mary Lou and I had the lobby all to ourselves in the mornings, because we were the only ones up at 5:30 a.m. Everyone else made fun of us.

The hallway to my room (last door on the left). The inn is an old railroad depot built in the 20's:

The lamp in my room, which had the neatest switch. You push down on this to turn the light on and off:

Sorry, I didn't take any other pics of my room (too busy being enchanted with the light switch), but it was cozy and quaint.

The building across from the Inn where we had all the classes:

On Saturday afternoon we had a few hours of downtime and the weather was gorgeous, so Andy and I went skiing (we wanted Melanie to come, but she and her mother took a walk, instead). I have not been on my skis in a couple of years. It's like riding a bike and I wish I could ski more often.

We had to walk over a bridge to get across the railroad tracks to the ski trails:

The scenery was beyond stunning (that's looking into Glacier Park):

And this picture doesn't do justice to the sparkliness of the snow on the trees:

The ski instructor was teaching a group of people how to ski:

On the second time around the loop we met a bunch of my students, who also decided to try skiing:

Coming back, the Amtrak train was just leaving the Inn, where it drops people off and picks them up:

Back at the Inn, the lovely Lou modeled her coyote hat for us.

Lou also dropped a pair of knitting needles in the parking lot in the darkness Friday night. We found them Saturday:

All in all we had a wonderful time, picked up a few knitters in class who were staying at the Inn and thought it was fabulous that we were having a retreat there, ate well (I had a half-pound buffalo burger Friday night, topped with Gouda cheese and sauteed onions—oh my), slept soundly, and enjoyed the beauty of Montana. What else could you ask for? Oh yes—some knitting. We had that, too.

January 1, 2009: Another Trip Around the Sun

And here we are, at the beginning of another year. Happy 2009! I'm grateful that everyone in our fire district, at least, made it home safely after the festivities last night. We weren't called out on any accidents.

Our newspaper ran a story yesterday comparing our current winter to the one we had in 1996-97. That year we had something like 216" (that's 18 feet) of snow at our house, and it remains the snowiest winter on record. That year, the drifts were so high that our dogs were able to walk on the roof of the garage. By contrast, we only received a third of the snowfall in December 2008 that we had in December 1996, and this still seems like an incredibly snowy winter to me. We're under yet another winter storm watch today and tomorrow.

Our pastor sent out his weekly newsletter yesterday and it included this little tidbit:

Each year brings its own uniqueness, and I noticed this past year that one of the growing interests in our church family is knitting. Knitting has been happening in Sunday School classes, at committee meetings, and in the worship services. One recent Sunday after church I noticed a gathering of knitters getting their projects evaluated and checked by the other knitters. I have been asked if it bothers me to have people knitting during these times, so let’s get one thing clear: it doesn’t bother me at all. Indeed, it seems to me to be a good thing. Sometimes the mind works best when the hands are busy. If I knew how to knit (and at one time I did) I might knit while I preach too. And it is a wonderfully creative and productive thing to do.

So there you have it. We will be knitting in church in 2009.

The house is mostly clean, the Christmas stuff has been put away, and the furniture put back in its pre-houseguest arrangement. Today I look forward to spending time getting my class materials ready for the retreat and getting the first half of Cables 2 printed and off to my tech editor for the second round of editing. I've been having trouble with InDesign (the layout program I use) crashing at random moments, so a few days ago I uninstalled the entire Adobe Creative Suite and reinstalled it. That seems to have done the trick—the program is running efficiently again. I rely so heavily on InDesign for nearly everything I do that if it's giving me fits, I can't get anything done.

I've been craving minestrone soup lately. That's on the menu for today, along with some crusty bread. I just checked the radar and there is an enormous blue blob headed our way. It looks like a good day to stay home.

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