January 29, 2010: What the Husband Does For Fun

We've been cutting trees in our woods and had a large pile of logs that needed to be split. This is what the husband has done over the past day and a half:

That shed to the right is where we keep the split wood to dry out until we burn it in the fireplace. This is the first year that we've actually made a dent in the contents; the husband starts a fire every morning and keeps it going all day. He's been doing that so that we will have some room to store what he's just finished splitting.

We will be warm, of that I have no doubt.

DD#1 is in Bozeman this weekend for the state speech and debate tournament. I went to their "preview night" on Tuesday and got to see her in action giving a 5-minute extemporaneous speech. She did very well.

It has been—thankfully—a quiet week here, and I've been able to accomplish quite a bit. The Spring issue of the newsletter has come together nicely, I've got Cables 2 open on my computer, and the tax stuff is ready for my meeting with the accountant on Monday. We were supposed to close on the new property today but it looks like that will happen next week, instead.

And I am off to knit for a bit.

January 28, 2010: Power Cables

I have Google Alerts set up to search the web and send me a notice every time it runs across an instance of "Janet Szabo." Sometimes I get very interesting alerts, like the one about the blonde belly dancer in the UK named Janet Szabo. Other times I get some exciting alerts, like today's. Lily Chin's new book Power Cables is available for pre-order, although the release date isn't until May. And yours truly is quoted on the back cover, which is why Google Alerts picked it up.

I am so excited about this book! Lily and I have taught and roomed together at a number of events, so I knew she was working on this—I just wasn't sure what the release date would be.

And a new Vogue Stitchionary on lace stitches is forthcoming. That one will be on my list, too.

The Spring issue of the newsletter is just about done; I have to finish a vest so it can be photographed and then the whole thing gets shipped off to the printer. Look for it around the third week of February. As soon as I get the vest done I'll put sneak peek pictures up here on the blog.

I've pulled out all my Cables 2 stuff and tomorrow I get back to working on it in earnest. Interestingly, the chapter where I stopped is the one on tuck-stitch and Brioche cables. The reason I got hung up there has to do with the fact that there are two different ways to make those kinds of cables. I prefer the knit-into-the-row-below method, because it's SO much easier to work cables that way. However, two-color Brioche cable patterns are generally worked using the yo-dec method.

I'll play with it a bit and see what I can come up with that makes sense.

January 27, 2010: Re-Treat And Reading

The 2nd Annual Camas Creek Winter Retreat was a lot of fun! As usual, I was so busy teaching that I neglected to take pictures (despite all my good intentions), but a couple of my friends took pictures and have promised to e-mail them to me. So I may have some for you in a few days.

The classes were all full—about 25 women in each—of both old friends and knitters I hadn't yet met. We tackled classes on fitting, cables, brioche, and reversible stitch patterns. The brioche class went especially well.

I did not do any skiing while I was there. For one thing, the snowpack was dismal, even in Essex where they usually have a good base for skiing. And I really just wanted to sit and knit, so I did. Even so, the weekend seemed to speed by.

I'm hoping we'll have a 3rd Annual Camas Creek Yarn Winter Retreat, so let Melanie know if you're interested and what classes you'd like to have me teach.

On Monday I got right back into the swing of things by subbing for the 4th grade teacher at another local elementary school. Her class does a lot of reading and writing—an hour of writing in the afternoon, followed by 40 minutes of dedicated reading time. I didn't have to do much "teaching," during that time (although we talked about writing and I told them about my knitting books), so I sat and knitted and watched them. I sometimes worry that knitting while I am subbing looks unprofessional; on the other hand, if I had had to sit for nearly two hours with nothing to do, I would have started chewing on my arm—which also looks unprofessional.

The kids do not seem bothered by it; to the contrary, they always ask lots of questions.

I was so pleased to see how much those kids wanted to read. We are all voracious readers here at Chez Big Sky Knitting, and I think that—along with knitting—it's one of the greater pleasures of my life. I know that the husband would like to be out working, but being off for a couple of months has allowed him to catch up on his backlog of books. One of my secret talents is being able to pick out books for him to read. I've done this for years (since before we were married), and according to him I am pretty good at it.

I am about halfway through this book:

It is the sixth (and final—sob!) book in the Wilderness series by Sara Donati. As I recall, I bought the first book in the series—Into the Wilderness—on a teaching trip ten or so years ago. I was completely captivated. I love love love historical fiction, and these are books that have a special place on my bookshelf. They are probably the only novels I have ever purchased in hardcover. I read them over and over.

The husband laughed at me when he saw me reading the end of the book as soon as I got it. He said, "If you read the end of the book first, what's the point in reading the rest of it?" I responded that it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, and knowing where I am going to end up does not detract from the enjoyment of getting there. (I have since found out—by lurking in the readers' forum for this book—that lots of other people did exactly the same thing.)

Rosina Lippi—whose pen name is Sara Donati—had a blog that I used to read regularly. She hasn't written in it much recently, and it sounds like she had to get a "regular job" (I believe she has a PhD and was a university professor for a while) because she couldn't make a living at writing fiction. I can sympathize, but what a loss for those of us who are her fans.

Read something today.

January 22, 2010: Project Monogamy

I prefer project monogamy when it comes to knitting. If I get too many UFOs going, I lose track of where I am and nothing gets done. I had been carrying two projects around in my project bag—a vest for the Spring issue and the Taste of Aran Afghan squares—but yesterday I added another project. It's a shawl out of this:

which is a lovely 100% bamboo yarn from Fiber Trends (thanks, Bev!). I'm not a big fan of orange, though, so the color I am using is a pale lavender.

And the yarn is perfect for the stitch pattern I've chosen, which is Twist Brioche from Barbara Walker's First Treasury of Knitting Patterns. There are lots of stitch patterns out there which make my heart go pitter-patter, but Twist Brioche falls near the top of my all-time favorites list. Brioche and cables and lace—what could be more fun?

So last night I cast on about half of the 600 or so stitches I will need for this shawl, which is being knit side-to-side (I am using a knitted cast-on, because even I am intimidated by the thought of running out of yarn at stitch number 574 of the cast-on row were I to use a long-tail cast-on).

And technically, I still only have two projects going if I take the afghan square out of the knitting bag. That's a bit lower-priority project and can be put on hold for a few weeks.

On another note: are the feeds showing up better now in the feed aggregators, or have I done something that eliminates them altogether? It's just been kind of quiet here lately so I thought I would check.

See you again next week.

January 21, 2010: What to Write?

I haven't had very many interesting things to write about in this blog lately—although I have been knee-deep in knitting. This week was all about getting the first draft of the Spring newsletter done and getting my class handouts ready for the Izaak Walton retreat this weekend. And thanks to lots of meetings (two of them last night that lasted a total of four hours!), I've gotten much accomplished on my knitting projects.

What else? I finished and submitted the FAFSA (college financial aid application), and put the finishing touches on the tax stuff, which is now ready for the accountant. We have a scheduled closing next week on the property we are purchasing. It's directly behind and adjacent to our property, with a house and garage on 2 acres. The idea is that my FIL (who is helping fund the purchase) can come and live there at some point so he can be closer to us.

In the meantime, we plan to list it as a vacation rental. It needs a bit of work—the husband has to replace a rotted-out sill plate on the foundation and we want to paint the interior and replace the crummy carpeting with laminate flooring—but the plan is to have it listed and available to rent this summer. I'd also like to schedule some knitting retreats there.

And I am having fun scouring the thrift stores in town for furnishings. This won't be a glamorous luxury rental, but there are plenty of those around here. We want this to be an affordable, comfortable place for families to stay when they are visiting the Flathead Valley.

I'm packing the camera, so I'll try to have a photo recap of the retreat this weekend. It should be lots of fun!

January 15, 2010: Beautiful Brioche

I got a bit sidetracked by brioche stitches this week. I am teaching my brioche stitch class at the retreat next weekend. The handout needed a few adjustments and some new swatches. I've taught this class maybe a dozen times, so I am going to give you my personal take on brioche knitting (and teaching brioche knitting).

Making a stitch in a brioche pattern can be accomplished one of two ways: by knitting into the stitch below, or by making a yarn over next to a stitch and knitting that yarn over together with that stitch on the following row. Structurally, these two techniques result in very similar (but not always "identical") fabrics.

I teach both methods in my class. I tell students that there are times they will want to use one method and times they will want to use the other. We start out by kntting a brioche rib swatch using each method, and I ask them to label them carefully and then compare the two fabrics. Some students think the fabric is nicer (and "fluffier") using the row below method. Some students prefer the fabric made using the yarn over method.

I think there are too many variables (knitting style, yarn choice, needle choice) to say that one method makes a "better" fabric than the other, although I can say with confidence that most students find the row below method easier to execute. Sometimes students who are continental knitters using the eastern combined uncrossed method have a lot of trouble with the yarn over method due to the way they wrap their purl stitches. I always ask at the beginning of the class if there are any students who knit that way. It's a good opportunity to discuss knitting styles with the whole class, and I can head off frustrations before they start by working individually with those students.

I promised you a review of the Nancy Marchant book Knitting Brioche. In terms of sheer eye candy, it is unsurpassed. It's simply a beautiful book. There are clear, full-color photos of each technique and stitch pattern. Every time I open the book I am blown away by the number of stitch patterns and variations that are included. The project chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I am going to have to put this book away somewhere for a while or it will certainly distract me from cables and what I am supposed to be working on. This book is destined to be the reference for brioche patterns knitted using the yarn over method (Elise Duvekot's book Knit One Below addresses brioche made using the row below method).

My only quibble—and I freely admit that this is a problem with me, not Nancy—is the use of the terms "brk" and "brp" (or "bark" and "burp"). They are terms that Nancy uses to code what is happening with the stitches on the needles. I realize that it does make the patterns shorter and easier to read—much like 1/1 LC is used as cable shorthand—and I suspect that if I were to spend any time at all knitting from Nancy's patterns, I would quickly get the hang of the terminology. I think part of my problem must come from the fact that I feel like I am constantly having to go up new learning curves and I've reached the age where that is no longer as much fun as it used to be. But that's my problem, not Nancy's. The books is so crammed full of explanations and photos that it's not like Nancy has left knitters to figure it out for themselves.

Back to my class: it's only a three-hour class and I simply don't have time to teach much more than the basics. Even a six-hour class wouldn't afford the amount of time needed to really explore this stitch technique. My goal with my class is to get students familiar with both techniques (and with the structure of the resulting fabrics) so that if they do want to explore further, they can do so with some confidence. I remember having to do the brioche swatches for Level III of the Master Knitting program and how daunting that was because they just seemed so incredibly complicated. (Hint: because of the way they are written in the Barbara Walker Treasuries, they are indeed way more complicated than they need to be.)

So I've included instructions in the handout for simple brioche ribbing, half-brioche (or half-fisherman's rib, as it's sometimes called), double brioche (also known as brioche honeycomb), and two-color brioche ribbing. The first three stitch patterns are worked using both the yarn over and knit in the row below methods. The two-color brioche rib is worked using the yarn over method. Yes, it's ambitious, and we probably won't get through everything. But I'd rather have too much material than not enough.

January 14, 2009: Knitters Without Borders

The Yarn Harlot has a must-read post today about Doctors Without Borders and their work in Haiti. If you're looking for a way to donate, this is a great way to do it. Click on the button below and you'll be taken to the Yarn Harlot's page for Knitters Without Borders, which has information and links for donating to Doctors Without Borders.

And I think that's all that needs to be said today.

January 12, 2009: Felting Success!

I finished knitting the bag Saturday night, but I waited until Sunday afternoon to felt it. I have learned (yes, the hard way) that to do something important with a project after 6 p.m. is to court disaster.

I am delighted with the way the bag turned out. It only required two trips through the washer. I might have been able to felt it in one pass, but the first time I put it into a pillowcase. It hardly felted at all. I took it out of the pillowcase and ran it through with a load of towels, then tossed the whole lot into the dryer for a bit, then let it air dry completely.

Here is a sneak peek for you. You'll have to wait for the Spring issue to see the rest:

Renewal notices for Twists and Turns went out Saturday. I know I am a bit late—usually I try to get them sent right after the newsletter gets mailed. I still have to come up with some kind of pro-rated subscription system for those people whose subscriptions end some time in 2010 but who want to get the newsletter through the last issue.

I started a man's vest project in Classic Elite's Verde Collection Chesapeake. It's an interesting yarn—50% cotton, 50% wool. The appearance is slightly marled because of the way the two fibers take the dye. And I can't crunch it down in gauge the way I normally do with wool. Still, I like the way it is knitting up—so much so that I knit an entire skein of yarn yesterday.

These two projects have gone a long way toward helping me feel like I've got my designing legs under me again. I've also spent some time finishing a couple of projects which were languishing. I've always thought of myself as a process knitter, but productivity is a very satisfying feeling!

January 9, 2010: Learn Something New

This is EMT refresher weekend for the husband. Every two years he has to take 24 hours of training to keep his EMT licensing up-to-date, and it gets crammed into one weekend of two 12-hour days. I hear the alarm clock going off upstairs. He is not a morning person, so I may have to go nudge him gently out of bed. Class starts at 8 a.m.

(I, on the other hand, AM a morning person and the husband fondly (I think it's fondly) refers to me as the "shining supernova." I really have to be careful that I don't overwhelm him when he wakes up.)

We had a very nice funeral yesterday. As the family was setting up the sanctuary for the service, someone brought in a rag rug, made by the lady whose life we were celebrating. It looked something like this:

Now I learned how to spin (and a bit of weaving) 20 years ago, but I had never seen a rug like this. Turns out it is a "buggy-rim rug," and it's a style of rug that dates back to the days of the pioneers crossing the plains. Every wagon had a spare wheel rim, and the women used them to create rag rugs to decorate their new homes in the west. I've decided that when I am old and retired, I will try making some of these rugs. It looks like fun.

It just goes to show that you never know when or where you might learn something new.

January 7, 2010: Cables To Gush Over

I am featured in a short mini-article (longer Spotlight article to follow soon) over at Zina's Another Long Yarn blog. I got a chance to wax poetic on one of my favorite subjects—cables. Go take a look. I am looking forward to working with Zina on the longer article.

I've got a stack of knitting books sitting by my chair, waiting to be read. One of the ones I am most looking forward to devouring is Nancy Marchant's Knitting Brioche. I love Brioche stitch and teach a class on it. As soon as I have a chance to look it over, I'll post a review here.

In other news . . . the husband and I are frustrated. I am probably more frustrated than he is, although his frustration level is pretty high. This past year, our two businesses spent close to $5000 on legal fees in order to 1) protect ourselves from frivolous litigation 2) attempt to collect on unpaid debts (and in fairness to the three other yarn stores where I taught in June who do not deserve to be tainted by innuendo, the store which still owes me $1620.12 is Threadbear Fiber Arts in Lansing, MI) or 3) and fight (unsuccessfully, as we found out Wednesday) a decision on the part of the Montana Department of Labor and Industry to award unemployment benefits to a former employee of ours who was fired because he stabbed another one of our employees at an after-hours social function.

It's a sad commentary on the state of our society when people who make bad choices not only escape the consequences of those bad choices, but get rewarded for making them, at the expense of the people who make good choices. When I was growing up, my father was fond of telling us that "Life is not fair," and I know exactly what he meant.

So it's been a struggle this week, having had to take a hard look at the realities of being in business and wondering how much longer I want to be a masochist. I apologize to those of you who came here looking for an upbeat report on how fabulous the knitting industry is right now. This isn't the place to get it.

I am a musician, not a knitting designer, today—a quartet I sing with is singing at a funeral. We're doing one piece at the gravesite and one at the church. Yesterday morning the air temperature was -16 degrees at 9 a.m. It's hard to sing when it's that cold! Today it is supposed to warm up to 13 degrees. I think we may look odd, singing while we're all bundled up.

A friend of mine asked me yesterday if we were going to sing "Amazing Grace" or some other well-known song. I responded that no, Mennonites have this interesting habit of picking very old songs for funerals—most of them come out of hymnals from the early part of the 20th century, although the song we're singing at the gravesite is actually from the late 1800s. My musical repertoire is eclectic and wide-ranging. The other piece we are doing is entitled "How Can I Keep From Singing," and it's one of my very favorites.

Stay warm.

January 6, 2010: Counting

I was at Camas Creek all day Monday helping with inventory. Heather and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon counting books, and then moved on to needles. I still need to inventory my books, and then I should be done with the year-end financial wrap-up. Yay.

I looked at my planner yesterday and realized that TNNA is this weekend in Long Beach, CA. This is the semi-annual trade show of the National Needlearts Association; another show is held in Columbus, OH in June. I am curious to see what comes out of this show. A group of my designer colleagues and I have been having a discussion this week about the state of the knitting industry, and we feel that there is a seismic shift happening with regard to designers, knitting books, and knitting patterns. We're also a bit more than anxious about how it's going to affect all of us and our ability to make a living. While it's comforting to know that we all have the same perspective on what's happening, it's a bit distressing to realize that we all have the same perspective on what's happening—which means that what we're seeing is more than a blip or an isolated trend.

What's happening for me, personally, is that I am testing some limits: How long am I willing to wait this downturn out? How flexible am I willing to be in considering new avenues of product distribution? How much in debt am I willing to go to produce new patterns and books while I wait for the money to come in? That last one is a real biggie. I have always plowed back profits into new product development to keep my debt load low. I couldn't do that this past year. And now I am looking at a year when profits are down and I am going to have to figure out how to finance the printing of Cables 2 and reprints of the finishing book and the DVD.

All of this is the expected result of what's been happening in the knitting industry over the past couple of years. Many knitters (my loyal customers notwithstanding—thank you) no longer think they should have to pay for information, because so much of it is readily available on the Internet. Yarn companies give away pattern after pattern with their yarn. Copies of digital patterns get passed around like recipes at a Tupperware party. It's enough to make a lot of designers throw in the towel and go do something else for a living, and many of them are doing just that. It makes me wonder—in 10 or 15 years, will the pendulum swing back in the other direction? Will we go back to a time when very few knitting patterns or books get published because there just isn't any profit in it? And then will their value start to increase again because of their scarcity? I've often said to my husband that the best way for me to make money on my books would be to make an announcement that they are going out of print, because all of a sudden people would pay to own them.

(That's not going to happen, by the way, but it's an interesting commentary on the state of this industry.)

So, having said all of that, I am off to sub again today for the music teacher at our elementary school. While I'd really rather be home working on Cables 2, I also really like the idea of a paycheck.

January 3, 2010: I Will Be Clean and Moisturized

I got a cute gift yesterday from Sue, one of the women who works at Camas Creek:

It's soap! Sue found a wonderful soap mold that has this imprint of yarn and needles on the top of it (it looks like a skein of Brunswick Germantown to me). How cool is that? I can't wait to use the soap. It's got shea butter in it and that will be great for my dry skin.

I'm going to try to include something knit-related in each of my blog posts this year. I've got such a diverse audience for this blog, but I know that the majority of you come here for the knitting.

Having said that, now I need to vent a bit. I have been very careful with my food choices since I finished the hcg diet. I made it through Christmas without gaining weight, although I did miss the pumpkin pie. I am still eating a lot of protein, veggies, and fruit, with a few slices of homemade bread (whole wheat flour, eggs, and honey) thrown in for variety.

Last night I made chili for dinner. I make a ridiculously easy chili that DD#2 loves. It consists of ground beef, a can of tomato sauce (no sugar or HFCS added), two cans of kidney beans, and one can of diced chilis, with spices to taste. I put some in a bowl and tasted it and thought to myself, "Why on earth does this taste sweet? Did I forget to buy the right kind of tomato sauce?" I checked, and the tomato sauce was fine. I looked at the kidney beans—kidney beans, for pete's sake!—and discovered that sugar was the THIRD ingredient listed, right behind beans and water.

These are S&W brand beans that I buy at Costco. I stopped buying S&W brand tomato sauce at Costco last year after they began adding sugar to it. Apprently they have decided that beans need to be sweet, too. Why? I want my chili to taste spicy, not sweet.

So one of today's tasks is to clear the pantry of all S&W canned foods containing sugar. I know the house brand of beans at the local grocery store doesn't have any added sugar, so I'll just have to make sure I buy those and not the S&W brand at Costco. And Del Monte (S&W's parent company) got an e-mail from me about their products.

I am almost finished with the cabled bag; it will just need to be felted and I'll do that sometime this week. I am still waiting for yarn to arrive for a vest, but I've also got Taste of Aran Afghan squares in the queue, so I am not lacking for things to work on.

I'm trying something new with the RSS feed today, so will those of you who read this blog with an aggregator let me know if anything has changed? Thanks!

January 2, 2010: Begin As You Mean to Go On

I like to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's getting all the financial records in order and ready to archive. A few years ago my accountant challenged me to get everything to him by mid-January so he could have the tax returns done by February 1. I made his deadline last year, and I have every intention of making it this year, too. I just have a few more reports to run and then we should be good to go.

Looking at the numbers for my business in black and white was kind of sobering. I keep an eye on things as the year progresses, and I knew that revenue was down in 2009, but I wasn't quite prepared to see that it was down almost 35% (of course, it wouldn't be down QUITE that much if the yarn store that stiffed me for $1600 for a weekend workshop had paid me, but that's another story . . . ). And almost a third of what I made last year came from teaching gigs. I don't have many teaching gigs on the calendar this year, so I am preparing myself for another year of creative money management. I am a bit relieved that this will be the last year for Twists and Turns—the layout, design, tech editing, and printing for each issue runs a minimum of $2000. Purchasing designs from other designers can add up to another $1000. As much as I love that publication, it's becoming a drag on the bottom line.

The upside is that selling individual patterns has been a real boon, and has gotten my name out to a lot of knitters who've never heard of me. So I just need to reposition myself and be creative about how I run things. And hope that business picks up a bit in 2010.

I wanted to celebrate the fact that in 2009 I managed to get my health back—I am finally down at a normal weight, I'm hormonally stable, and I have lots of energy. So I went to my stylist and asked her to take off the bottom 4" of my hair:

Forgive the goofy look--it's hard to take a decent self-picture.

I like it a lot. It's certainly easier to take care of; I've been lazy and just letting it air dry curly instead of blow-drying and flat-ironing it—that saves me at least 45 minutes in the morning.

Let's go knit.