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May 31, 2008: I Can Spell "Newsletter" I sent a mass mailing to all digital download newsletter subscribers this morning to let them know the Summer 2008 issue is now available for download. My mailing program quit on me halfway through the first attempt, and apparently I was so annoyed that when I tried again (successfully this time), I typed "newsleter" instead of "newsletter." My apologies to all of you. I do know how to spell. Those of you with Comcast e-mail addresses seem to be having difficulties: I got notes from several of you this morning saying that the message I sent was blank. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix that from my end. If you e-mail me at Janet@BigSkyKnitting.com, I'll resend you the download link. Or you may want to consider switching back to hard copy.
May 30, 2008: Lovely Lace When Myrna Stahman and I were at Midwest Masters in Wisconsin in April, she commented that if she hadn't become so involved with lace knitting, she probably would have gone for cables. I feel much the same way. If I hadn't gotten so involved with cables, I'd likely be doing lace. They have many similarities. I've been working on my lace class handout all morning. It's been lots of fun as I outlined the process of making holes in one's knitting. So many people have said to me, "I could never do lace—it's too hard!" that I want to make sure that my students tomorrow come out of class loving lace (or at least no longer afraid of it). I really enjoy the process of creating my handouts. I like thinking about what concepts I want my students to master, picking stitch patterns which illustrate those concepts, and arranging the material in a logical, easy-to-follow format. So much of good teaching is setting your students up to succeed, in whatever way they learn best. I have no idea what these goofy robins are up to. They have started nests—some of them further along in construction than others—in every single one of the rafter bays on the porch. There are 25 rafter bays on the front porch alone. Perhaps they are all messed up because of the cold spring. We really should have had a batch of robin babies by now. I'm off to pick up the Summer issue of the newsletter from the printer. They will be on their way soon!
May 29, 2008: The Summer Issue Is Coming, I Promise. Is Summer? The Summer issue of Twists and Turns got pushed back a week due to some wrenches in my schedule, but I checked with the printer and it is supposed to be ready today or tomorrow. If you're a digital subscriber, look for it in your e-mail boxes some time this weekend. If you get it via snail mail, it should arrive next week or the following week. The sneak peek is up here, if you want to take a look at what's included in this issue. I've noticed a definite uptick in newsletter subscriptions lately, which is nice. And I've noticed a definite uptick in overseas orders for books and newsletters, probably thanks to the weak US dollar. There is always a silver lining. DD#2 informs me that there are only four days left of school. I think I am happy about this; it means a lot less running around and more days at home when I can work. It also means my kids need to find things to keep them occupied. I've been mentally tallying a list of projects I want them to do, like cleaning out the kitchen cabinet where I kept the coloring books, markers, and crayons when they were younger. I am supposed to teach a lace class at Camas Creek this weekend, but only a couple of people have signed up. It's hard to have classes this time of year—the weather is finally nice enough that people (including the teacher) don't want to be inside. I will check with Melanie today and we'll decide if we should have the class or reschedule it for the fall. One of the very few things about Montana that I don't like (besides wind) is how short the warm weather season can be. Some years are worse than others. In 1996, when we moved into our house, it rained and rained and rained and rained from March to September. I remember waking up one morning that August and wanting to cry because all I could hear was rain drumming on the metal roof—again. DD#2 was born the following July, and I took her to the doctor for a three-day checkup on a day that never broke 70 degrees. It seems like we had a string of cool summers back then. I thought about this yesterday as I went around town running errands and everyone I met commented on how nice the weather finally was. Here it is, almost June, and it's just now getting warm. We'll have—if we're lucky—three months of this kind of weather and then it's back to winter. I try not to think about that too much. I do like cooler weather, but I like it most when it's punctuated with an adequate amount of Not Cooler Weather. It almost feels to me as though we've been robbed, and we're going to have to make do with a lesser amount of summer than normal. Of course, next week it could heat up into the 90's and stay there for the next three months, in which case I'll be pleading for winter to arrive early. As the husband always says, "Janet's favorite season is the one she isn't in."
May 28, 2008: Wednesday Wonderings Our minister was born and raised in Lancaster County, PA, and every so often during his sermons a bit of Pennsylvania Dutch sneaks in. This past Sunday he began by saying, "It wonders me that . . . " and continued on with a comment about his garden. So this is the stuff that is wondering me today. The wind has died down, thankfully. And I stopped at Lowe's yesterday and found these Season Starters to replace the Wall O'Waters, after I got a refund from the nursery for them. Fran, I like the milk jug idea, but we don't really drink enough milk here for me to have enough jugs to make that work. The veggie garden is done, so the gardening posts will likely wind down now. Things just need to start growing.
I popped in to Camas Creek Yarn yesterday while I was out running errands before the funeral. I sat down and had a cup of tea with Melanie, her husband Andy, and Kara, one of their employees. Their online store is now up and running, although a few products still have to be added. Be sure to check out the commercial—it's really well-done. I love this store; it's like an oasis of sanity in my life. A discussion of yarns has come up on the Knitting Beyond the Hebrides list. I have never hesitated to express my preference for certain kinds of yarns for texture knitting—specifically worsted-spun, highly-twisted yarns. It's hard to find those kinds of yarns in a good color range. I'm not sure if now is the time to be making capital expenditures on new products, but it has made me think (yet again) about having my own line of yarns. What do you all think? The robins are attempting to build a multi-unit apartment complex in the porch rafters outside my office:
I haven't decided yet if I should take down the nests. I may not have to; Rusty has parked himself under the construction zone so perhaps he'll just terrorize the birds to the point where they will go someplace else. And I am off again! Enjoy your day.
May 27, 2008: I Don't Like the Wind I discovered this fact when we moved to Montana, where wind is a saleable commodity. Fortunately I managed to find a spot for our house along the foothills of the mountains in a place where we rarely get any. Approximately three or four times during the year we will have a weather event in which a pressure gradient develops right along the Continental Divide. When that happens, the wind comes sweeping back down the mountains from the northeast—sometimes as strong as 40 or 50 mph. I tend to get mildly freaked out, but it doesn't usually last very long. Yesterday morning started out pleasantly. I headed out to the garden at 6 a.m. to get the last of the digging done. By 10 a.m. I could tell something was up: the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and a cold wind started blowing out of the northeast. It just felt weird. I gave up and headed inside for the rest of the day and worked on swatches for my DVD taping next week. The wind is still blowing this morning, thanks to a low-pressure system which is parked over the state. I hope it moves along soon. I went to the nursery Saturday to buy strawberry, tomato, and squash plants. I also picked up two more packages of Wall-O-Waters. I have half a dozen of these things which I bought about 12 years ago. I can't grow tomatoes without them. The original ones are getting a bit ragged so I thought I'd replace them with new ones. When I got to the counter, the cashier said, "Are these replacements?" I looked at her kind of funny (how could she know?) and said, "Well yes, they are replacing ones I've had for 12 years." "No," she said, "I meant that we've had customers bringing them back because the seams are popping and we've given them replacements. Are these replacements for ones you bought from us?" I said no, these were the first ones I'd bought in a long time. So I set them up around the tomatoes yesterday, and as I began filling them—sure enough—the seams started popping. I came in and did a Google search and discovered this post about the demise of the company and the associated decline in product quality. Lovely. One of the items on my to-do list today is to return the Wall O'Waters I bought Saturday to the nursery and suggest that they stop selling them. The eldest member of our church died this past weekend. I don't have to play for the funeral, but I did get asked to sing in a quartet at the cemetery this afternoon. This is the fourth or fifth funeral I've sung for—it's usually the same group of us and we've joked about giving ourselves a name and getting business cards made. And thanks for the anniversary wishes; we didn't go hiking because it was windy, but the girls thoughtfully disappeared to the neighbors' house for dinner after making us a cake.
May 24, 2008: Solitude I was home alone yesterday for the first time in over two weeks and although I was craving the quiet time, I hadn't realized just how much I needed it until I got some. I just don't do well when I am constantly running or constantly with other people. And I was starting to worry because it just seemed like I couldn't get myself motivated to get back to work. I sent everyone off to their respective jobs and went to my office. I've got a half a dozen fairly important things on my to-do list, so I picked one and began working on it. When I was at the yarn store the other day, Melanie asked me again about some of my patterns; I've been slowly working my way through the back catalog and re-formatting some Twists and Turns Newsletter patterns as individual ones. The newsletter does not sell well in yarn stores (I know this), but Melanie says the patterns fly out of there, especially the ones for which I've given her models. I'd like to begin selling the individual patterns from my website, too. Re-formatting the patterns is actually pretty straightforward—I set up an InDesign template and simply copy the pattern over from the newsletter. What was really amazing (and gratifying) to me was seeing exactly how much stuff I've designed over the past eight years! Nothing like having a deadline to force one to produce. Some designs are better than others, but I produce consistently and I am proud of that. I got a lot of patterns reformatted yesterday and organized into a binder for Melanie to keep. Now I need to do some work on the website. A kind soul has added a number of back issues of Twists and Turns to the Ravelry magazine database. Pictures were missing from some of the project pages, so I added those this morning. Some of those pictures aren't of the greatest quality (a 1.5 megapixel camera was bleeding edge eight years ago but not any more). If it stays overcast but doesn't rain today, I may get the models out of storage and shoot some new pictures. One thing I'd like to do is re-knit some of my earlier designs. I have several designs for which I don't even have models, because the models either were given as gifts or kept by the test-knitters. I don't have time to do it, but I could have some of my test-knitters do them. I'm still thinking on that. In other news, I managed to get this picture yesterday:
I was hoping to get a picture of multiple birds at the feeder, but the dogs were bouncing around on the porch and—except for this one—the hummingbirds didn't want to come down to the feeders. The six birds managed to drain the feeders after just a couple of days. When my bee balms start blooming, I will stop putting food out for them. It's been so cold, though, that they need the food for a while yet. We have a quiet weekend planned. Monday is our wedding anniversary. The husband has been working like a maniac the past couple of days. When I asked him what was going on, he said that he had forgotten that Monday was a holiday and the concrete suppliers would be closed. (The husband does not look at the calendar. Holidays annoy him. He would work 365 days a year if he could get concrete delivered.) He wanted to pour Monday but moved it back to yesterday, instead. So he'll be here and I think we're going to go on a hike to celebrate.
May 21, 2008: My Knitting Is Around Here Somewhere . . . I haven't quite managed to get back into the knitting groove yet after my three-week-or-so-hiatus of gardening, camping, and hiking. I always think it's wasteful of me not to take advantage of the nice weather when it comes, because it won't be here for long. (I become an excellent rationalizer around this time of year, too—see Monday's post.) I thought I might put a couple of design ideas down on paper yesterday, but it's really hard for me to be creative when there is someone else in the house. As much as we enjoy having my father-in-law here, company—of any kind—tends to throw a monkey wrench into my thought processes. So rather than force the creativity, I decided I should just tackle the UFOs sitting in my knitting basket and turn them into FOs. My FIL and I sat and watched CNBC all day and I got one project done and a few others a bit closer to completion. Here are some things I know about my knitting personality:
We're pretty much done with the school events and I am looking forward to getting back to my knitting. I feel like I have a fresher perspective for having taken that little break. DebbieT, I had six hummingbirds at the feeders today! Someone must have sent a memo to all the hummers in the neighborhood, because I have never had that many at once. They seem to be getting along a bit better, too—at one point I saw four sitting at the same feeder. I guess they decided that they should be nice so that everyone gets to eat. Let's hope. It was getting dangerous out there.
May 19, 2008: Just Eat a Couple of Boxes of Twinkies I'm trying to get this dirt thing out of my system so I can get back to work. The problem is that the garden needs attention right now and if I know that if I try to sit down and work on some knitting, I won't be able to keep my mind off the possibility that the quackgrass is taking over the beds while my back is turned. So I am just bowing to the inevitable and giving myself over to this garden until I can't stand to look at it. It's kind of like making yourself hate Twinkies: you just eat them until you never want to see a Twinkie again as long as you live. I am at the point where if I never see another quackgrass root again, it will be too soon. This is today's quackgrass haul:
There are two beds left to de-quackgrass but I think I will hit them one more time with Roundup. I don't need to plant anything in those beds this year. A good dose of weed-killer and a covering of black plastic should keep them clean for next year. I was ably assisted by my two canine helpers today (Chester's legs are in the picture above). The most wonderful and maddening thing about our dogs is that they have to Be Where You Are at all times. If you are the husband and you are under the truck changing the oil, Chester will be right there, dropping a slimy tennis ball on your chest and barking in your ear. If you are in the garden digging up quackgrass, Rusty will be right there, trying to lick your face after eating a rodent. I have many conversations with my dogs when they are in the garden with me. Because the dogs don't talk, the conversations are mostly one-sided and sound like this:
I know that all the dogs hear is, "Blah blah blah Chester blah blah blah. Blah blah blah Rusty blah blah," unless I happen to utter the magic words "puppy treat." Why they understand "puppy treat" and not "The birdbath is not a drinking fountain" is beyond me, but that's the way it is. I figure the garden needs another day's worth of work. I stopped at the nursery on my way out of town this morning and bought twelve bags of garden soil and five bags of steer manure to plump up some of the beds. This weekend I want to get the strawberries, peas, lettuce, and (maybe) tomatoes in. Then I should be able to forget about I do have some ideas about knitting projects and I'll talk about them in tomorrow's post.
May 17, 2008: Why I Love Montana, Reason #126 We went to Glacier Park today. Our usual plan is to hike to Avalanche Lake, but it's been such a cold spring that the trail is still snowed in. We decided to hike up the Going-to-the-Sun Road instead, which is open to foot traffic and bicycles just past the Avalanche Lake campground.
Along the way we saw a pair of harlequin ducks floating the river. They seem to enjoy whitewater rafting—even the rapids.
The mountains are spectacular. I really need a wide-angle lens for my camera.
The next part is the coolest thing, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of the actual wildlife we saw because I forgot the telephoto lens at home (it might not have worked anyway). I do have this:
This is the husband with his eyeballs plastered to the binoculars (check out the tattoos). Honestly, I think he walked the whole road just like this. But thank goodness, because ol' eagle eyes spotted an elk grazing on the hillside above the road. We watched the elk for a while and moved on down the road. When we came back, the husband checked to see if the elk was still there, and then he said, "Hey Janet, I think there is a bear up there. Take a look." I looked through the binoculars and darn it if there wasn't a grizzly bear stalking the elk. We watched for a while longer and decided that it was a grizzly sow with cubs—two or three; it was hard to tell how many little furballs were actually up there. She had parked the cubs under a tree while she trailed the elk. Eventually, other people came along and asked us what we were looking at:
That group included a park ranger who had been riding his bike along the road. He said he thought they were cubs of the year and not yearlings, but none of us had spotting scopes so we couldn't tell for sure. We were hot (yes, hot—it was 70+ degrees up there, which is really unusual for this time of year), so we headed back to the truck. Along the way back we ran into DD#2's godparents, who were riding their bikes up the road. You never know who you'll run into at Glacier Park. We never did find out what happened to the elk, but it was pretty darn cool to have seen the bear. After we left the park, we went out to dinner where I had some really good red beans and rice and barbecued pork. I came home and wandered out to my garden. While I was yanking up quackgrass, I heard the pileated woodpeckers up in the trees. The next thing I knew, they flew down into the woods next to the garden and proceeded to dismantle some rotting logs in search of bugs, so I sat and watched them for a while. Four deer walked through the front yard, and a pair of squirrels ran through the woods where the woodpeckers were eating and caused quite a ruckus. I could also hear the grosbeaks, although I haven't seen any yet. I feel guilty about not putting food out for them. Days like this—weeks like this—are rare and special. I treasure them in the middle of winter when the birds are silent and the bears are sleeping. I love Montana.
May 16, 2008: A-Camping We Will Go You haven't heard from me because I left Tuesday morning to go on an outdoor ed trip with our 5th- and 6th-grade classes. We went to Ravenwood, a program run by two excellent wildlife biologists and educators. DD#2 and I were packed like we were heading off to Siberia, but the great irony is that camp was only about three miles from our house as the crow flies (which turned out to be a great thing when we got there and realized we didn't have a coffee grinder—I ran home and got one). We got to camp, unloaded our gear, and hit the ground running. Brett and Laura, the camp founders and directors, are just masterful at keeping a group of 30 kids moving and engaged. We played games, hiked, journaled, ate, and commiserated about the lousy weather (it was 45 degrees and rainy for the first two days of camp). The kids were introduced to all sorts of new things. Our study on reptiles and amphibians was interrupted briefly to watch a great blue heron catching fish in the lake, because the kids were just fascinated by it. Some of them haven't spent much time outdoors even though they live in Montana. Here is DD#2's teacher. Both the 5th- and 6th-grade teachers are in their 30's and love to be outdoors, so the kids got the benefit of their enthusiasm and experience. DD#2 and her friends just adore their teacher. (Note that those of us in our 40's can no longer position ourselves on the ground like this without injury.)
One of the activities we did was "secret spot." We made a big circle, then each of us turned around and walked off in the direction we were facing to find a spot in the woods. We were supposed to sit in that spot until we were called back, and observe the things happening around us. I loved this part the most because it reminded me of when I was a kid. I had several secret spots in the woods behind our house. We didn't see much wildlife besides birds, but I didn't want to take any chances. I positioned myself so that I could see DD#2 and the other kids in my "clan" (I was responsible for six kids) in case a bear wandered by. Unbeknownst to me, DD#2 took the camera with her and snapped this picture of me on the hill up above her. It's hard to see, but I am the green speck in the middle of the picture:
My secret spot was at the base of a tree; it formed a great spot for me to sit and relax. We lucked out on the sleeping arrangements. There weren't enough tipis to go around (darn), so the 5th-grade girls and I slept on the floor of the dining hall. It was so crummy and rainy the first night that I offered the back of the MegaCab for a couple of the 5th-grade boys who got flooded out of their tipi. The restroom facilities also left a bit to be desired. We had ONE toilet for all the girls and a very cold shower. If we had been there longer than three days it would have been a real problem. I think that "restroom renovation" is next on the list of things the camp owners have planned. But as we reminded the kids, we were camping, not staying at the Hilton. They actually handled the discomfort and inconveniences with good humor. We had only minor discipline problems—nothing that couldn't be resolved with 50 push-ups or some litter patrol. The second night we had a campfire with friends and family, and as the sun set the sky cleared. Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. Because of a scheduling conflict, six of the kids in DD#'s class had to leave at 11:00 a.m. to go to the rural band festival. I brought four girls (DD#2 and three of her friends) back to our house, where we all had hot showers (thank goodness) and changed into clean clothes before heading off to festival. After four hours of practice, we played a concert for our families (yes, I played my trombone) and then everyone headed home for a good night's sleep. I am starting to feel like a professional chaperone (a few days ago I went to a plannng meeting for the trip DD#1 and I are taking with the National Honor Society to Europe next spring), but I love the fun I am having with these kids. We have lots of experiences and memories to talk about. Three days of camping in the woods is about all I can handle, though. I like my hot showers. My father-in-law arrived yesterday for his spring visit. It's supposed to be in the 80's for the next week. We went right from winter to summer with no spring at all.
May 11, 2008: Playing in the Dirt DD#2 and I spent most of yesterday outside in the garden. She seems to like dirt more than her older sister, although DD#1 showed up at the end to clean out the birdbath and water all the plants for me. We got quite a bit of work done. While I attacked a couple of beds, my assistant took a pair of scissors and gave all the thymes a much-needed haircut. She also planted the flowers I bought last week after I showed her how to knock them out of their pots and get them settled into the holes I dug. At one point (while I was pontificating about gardening) she asked, "How did you learn so much about plants?" I said it was from reading, and having a garden, and talking to people. I told her about my mother's father and the huge garden he used to plant every year. One of my favorite memories is spending the night at my grandparents' house and going out to the garden early in the morning with my grandfather, where I sat in the rows and ate peas for breakfast. I think my love of dirt was established early on. I'm trying to pass it along. I dug up the other half of the lavender bed (I just couldn't stand it anymore) and threw out the oldest and woodiest plants. I rearranged the remaining plants and filled in the holes with some of the gazillion baby lavender seedlings that have established themselves in various places. I won't have the huge hedge of flowers this year that I've had for the past ten years, but these plants will eventually grow and produce like the other ones did. I still have a billion baby lavender plants I don't know what to do with. Getting things to grow is not a problem in my garden. After I finished the lavender bed, I dug up the echincaceas. I almost left that bed alone, but there was quite a bit of quackgrass beginning to encroach on it. I dug up the bed, pulling out echinaceas (and quackgrass) as I went, then replanted the echinaceas and added the new ones I bought last week. I had a dozen echinacea plants left over that I couldn't bear to toss out. I put them in pots. I'll take them to church and offer them to whoever wants them. Hopefully this week I'll find the energy to pot up those lavender seedlings and the millions of little columbines. Maybe I should start my own nursery. I woke up in the middle of the night to hear a nice soaking rain. Perfect timing. A male hummingbird finally showed up at the beginning of last week—almost three weeks late. The husband thought it was funny that I was worried about them coming back, and even funnier that I was fretting about there only being one male. Usually there are two and they fight all the time. He says I am way too involved in the social lives of the animals in my yard. I shouldn't have worried about the second male, though. He showed up yesterday. I walked out onto the porch after dinner to get something and the two of them zoomed past my head, chirping as they went. I have two feeders up but I may have to get another one and put it on the other side of the house to keep them from fighting.
May 10, 2008: What Comes From the Forests? Yesterday was a field trip to the Forestry Expo sponsored by Plum Creek Timber. We had our lumber mill tour in the morning and field work in the afternoon and thank goodness because as we got to the mill for our tour, it began snowing. The inside of the mill was nice and dry and warm. I've never seen firsthand the process of making plywood and it's pretty cool. I really have to be careful on these field trips because I have a tendency to ask five million questions. Chaperones are supposed to blend into the background (and dispense food). But our tour guide was very informative and now the fifth grade and I know a lot more about where plywood comes from. After the mill tour we headed out to some land owned by one of the logging companies, where (thankfully) it had stopped snowing. We ate lunch. We were paired up with another school and the 20 or so kids and half a dozen adults spent the next three hours moving from station to station. The first one was one on riparian (stream) habitats. We got to see different species of fish and happily, no one fell into the stream (always a concern with a bunch of 11 year-olds).
The next station featured an archaeologist who talked about the kinds of artifacts one might find in northwest Montana. He gave a really cool presentation. After that we went to a station where two Glacier Park rangers gave a talk on forest animals, including the ones that can kill and eat you. It's always good to remind kids that there are occasions when something else is above them in the food chain. We finished up with stations on forest fires and tree identification. Everyone agreed that we had learned a lot. Days like that remind me why I love Montana so much. I just like being outside in the woods. And that's where I am going to be today. I have some plants to put in the garden, and each of us was given a baby larch tree when we left the Forestry Expo yesterday. The three baby larches that the husband planted in our fron yard were too close to the house and got crushed by the snow coming off the roof, so I'll plant this one a bit farther out.
May 9, 2008: Stealing At a Wool Festival? I was astonished to read in this week's Knitter's Review about the theft and vandalism that happened at Maryland Sheep & Wool last weekend. It makes me angry and sad. I know many of the people in charge of that event and having to deal with this kind of nonsense is not the thanks they should be getting for all their hard work. What is wrong with the world? I'll admit that this news didn't help my bad mood this week, but I am working to get over it. Your comments have really helped and I appreciate every one of them. I'm glad this week is almost over. While it was good to have gotten all those appointments out of the way, it was kind of grueling. I was so glad to get Rusty's visit to the vet behind us. Chester has been to the vet so many times that he's really laid-back and low-key about it. Rusty, on the other hand, gets easily excited and barks a lot. The vet was impressed to hear that he's been hunting voles (he asked me if he could rent him to clean out his garden), but sent us home with a dose of tapeworm meds just in case. The Summer issue needs just a bit more polishing and then it's off to the printer on Monday. I am just a half a skein from finishing the shawl. Once it's done, I need to turn my attention to some cool-weather stuff. Speaking of cool weather, at our fire department meeting last night someone pointed out that this year's weather pattern correlates closely with the one in 1964—the year of the big flood. There is still a huge amount of snowpack up in the mountains waiting to come down. We have a seasonal creek just around the corner which usually begins running by the middle of April; it's still dry. A flood shouldn't impact us directly here on the side of the mountain, but the low-lying area known as Evergreen is between us and Kalispell proper, and if it floods (like it did in 1964) we'll be cut off from town. The husband was teasing me last night because I was thinking out loud about possible contingency plans if something happens. It's one of my constant, underlying concerns that in an emergency, I'll be at home, the husband will be on the other side of the valley, and I'll have kids at two different schools. (My mother is probably reading this and having a cow—sorry. It's under control, don't worry. Contingency plans are in place.) I'm off to the Forestry Expo today with the fifth grade. I wasn't scheduled to chaperone, but it's such a small class that getting chaperones for their trips is always a problem. The teacher called the other day and asked if I could come along. It should be interesting. We'll do some field work this morning and have a tour of the lumber mill this afternoon. I'll try to remember to take the camera (and some knitting for the bus ride) with me.
May 7, 2008: Knitting Ennui I am rather disenchanted with the whole knitting business right now. I am hoping this passes soon, or I'll have to find something else to do. What's annoying me most is the 800-pound gorilla again (I think you can figure out to which company I am referring). When Aran Sweater Design came out I signed up to sell through them as a publisher. They would order a few books at a time, insist that they be mailed Priority Mail, and then sell each of them for way less than retail. They made money on each book—I pretty much made nothing. And knitters would buy the book from them, not me, because it was so much cheaper. I didn't go into this business to make other people and companies rich, so I stopped selling to them as a publisher. I've been selling my books through them as a merchant, and paying $40 a month for the privilege. For the past 18 months or so it's been (very much) worth it to pay the merchant fee and get orders that way. I noticed about two months ago that sales through my merchant account on that website have dropped (like a rock), but sales through one of my distributors have picked up correspondingly. Then I discovered that when I pull Aran Sweater Design up, I am listed as a merchant of the book, but so is the 800-pound gorilla, and they have it listed for way less than I am selling it. They must be getting it from my distributor. I don't know how they can sell it at the price they have listed, but perhaps they have some deal with said distributor. It's a fact that people will almost always buy from the entity selling at the lowest price. I'm still thinking about what I want to do, because I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but one option is to stop selling through that distributor and cut the 800-pound gorilla out of the equation. Or at least make it more difficult and expensive for them to get my books so they stop undercutting me. I am at the point where I don't care how widely my books are available if it means that I have to give them away to get them out there. I'd rather follow the Apple model of charging a premium—people will come to me if they want the information, and I believe that what I am selling is worth the price I am charging. The current distribution model works great for larger publishers, but not for niche authors like me, so I don't feel compelled to play by the existing rules. Then I went to Ravelry this morning and discovered that a twenty-something newbie knitter felt compelled to lecture me about my marketing techniques when I mentioned an upcoming class in Columbus, OH on one of the Cincinnati knitting forums (with moderator permission). She told me that Columbus is 100 miles from Cincinnati—I know, I grew up in Ohio—and that Cincinnati has its own stores which offer classes. (There were people from Ohio in my classes in Wisconsin two weeks ago so I am well aware of the willingness of knitters to travel to take classes.) She said she was just trying to offer me some advice about how she has been able get success from using Ravelry. Because—as you all know—I am a 42 year-old dinosaur and can't possibly know anything about using something as hip as Ravelry to promote my business. I've been in this business for almost 12 years and I think I've done a pretty good job of predicting trends in both the wider industry and for me, personally. I see a big storm coming with the downturn in our economy, and I am just not sure I want to be around when it gets to the point where everyone wants knitting patterns and books but doesn't want to pay for them. I see the potential for people to justify all sorts of sharing of electronic media—as in "It's not my fault that gasoline is $5.00 a gallon, and I can't afford this knitting pattern so I am going to ask my friend to share her copy." Maybe it won't get to that point, but maybe it will. So as of right now I plan to finish up the Cables series and will continue publishing Twists and Turns for the foreseeable future. It's just hard to find the fun in it right now.
May 5, 2008: Another Monday, Another Week DD#2 and I worked in the garden again yesterday afternoon and I got half the lavender bed dug up and pulled out. I think I'll leave the other half because they are newer plants and not as woody. As I pulled out the largest plant—which was easily 3' across—I discovered that the log edging had fairly well disintegrated underneath. The husband went out into the woods with the chainsaw and cut me another log. So that bed is back together and looks a lot nicer now. I'm still slogging away on that lace shawl. I'd like to get it finished so they can display it at Camas Creek and I can move on to something else. If I hustle, I can knit a skein a day (I am not a fast knitter), and I calculated that I have four more skeins to knit before it's the length I want. I pulled those four skeins out and put them in the knitting basket by my chair. Hopefully it'll be done by the weekend. The other reason I'd like to get it done is because lace looks ever so much better after it has been blocked. Right now it looks like something the dogs dragged in and slept on, and it's hard to pick it up and work on it. This is the week of appointments. I am subbing for the music teacher this morning at the elementary school. I get off at 11 a.m. and need to squeeze in a quick trip to town, and then it's home because the piano tuner is coming this afternoon to tune the baby grand. I should have had it done two months ago but couldn't find the time. And I keep running into him in town. It's one of the benefits of living in a small town—when you see your piano tuner at the grocery store, he reminds you that you wanted to stick to a schedule of tuning every six months. Tomorrow is Chester's visit to the vet, Wednesday I have an appointment at the eye doctor (I am almost out of contact lenses and they won't refill my prescription unless I come in), and Thursday is Rusty's vet appointment. It's better just to cram all of this stuff into one week than spread it out. I almost got drafted to chaperone a field trip on Friday, but DD#2 informed me that space was limited and I couldn't come. Darn. In between all of this stuff I need to finish the Summer issue and then it's time to get back to Cables 2! Yay!
May 4, 2008: Winning the Quackgrass War The garden-intensive posts will end soon, I promise. It's just that I have to put a lot of work into the garden right now to get it ready. Once that's done, I can get back to my knitting. I had to accompany DD#2 to a dance performance yesterday morning. While she was rehearsing for it, I scooted over to the nursery and bought some plants. They need to be hardened off before I put them in the garden, and that's going to take a few days. Here is what I got:
There are three new varieties of Echinacea, two new bee balms, some pennyroyal (I used to have lots of it but it died out when it got really dry here), chives (also died out), a couple of kinds of sage, and—for fun—some primroses. Years and years ago we had a grocery chain here (now defunct) that sold primrose plants in the spring for $0.99. I used to have a dozen or so primroses in the garden and could always count on them to be the first things that bloomed, even under the snow! Sadly, they fell victim to the voles. Hopefully these will survive now that Rusty the Rodent Killer is on patrol. In the afternoon the husband brought his flame-thrower over and helped clean up the veggie garden. He was having so much fun that he asked if he could do a few spots in the herb garden. I said that was fine as long as he didn't kill anything. When next I looked over, a few of the lavender plants were on fire. I should have wet them down, first—we had a hose handy so I just went over and sprayed out the flames. They are very dry and full of oils and I should have known they would catch. Oh well. I decided to clean out the bed so it's no great loss. Sure was entertaining, though.
DD#2 and I spent another hour digging up a few of the veggie beds (again—I did them a few weeks ago) in an attempt to clean out the quackgrass. We pulled pounds and pounds of quackgrass roots out, and although I know it won't eliminate it completely, the quackgrass is going to have to work awfully hard to re-establish itself. Sometime in the next week or so I'll get the peas, beans, and lettuce seeds planted and put the tomatoes in (with the Walls O'Water around them). I also want to re-plant the strawberry bed with an everbearing variety. DD#2 asked for cucumbers and squash. I've never been successful at getting cukes to grow, although one year I did raise a massive 25-pound Hubbard squash. Late in the afternoon the girls and I went up to the school so they could get their pictures taken. Some of the parents arranged for a company to come and take old-time photos as a fund-raiser for the school. It was a rousing success and we'll probably do it again. The husband asked if I was going to dress up as a lady of ill-repute and have my picture taken but I told him only the kids were going to get their pictures done (in nice dresses). He seemed disappointed. DD#1 drove us up to the school—she recently realized that her temporary license expires in a few months and she needs to get her butt in gear and get more driving hours in so she can take her driver's license exam. She seems much more confident and relaxed now, which is good. It feels so good to be out there working again. My body is sore, but it's a good kind of sore.
May 3, 2008: The Calendar Says Flip-Flops I should have taken a picture of DD#1 as she left for school yesterday. It was 43 degrees, with a forecast high of 60. She had on a very pretty dress, over which she threw her wool letterman jacket, and on her feet were a pair of flip-flops. I sent her out the door with the expressed hope that we wouldn't have a freak snowstorm. This is the way kids dress in Montana. The calendar says May so it must be time to wear flip-flops to school. Never mind that it's cold enough for a wool coat. I sent the Summer newsletter off to my tech editor on Thursday, and yesterday morning I decided that I needed to spend some time in the garden as a reward. (Fran, I read your blog this morning but Blogger wouldn't let me leave a comment.) After cleaning the living room while I waited for it to warm up a bit, I headed out with my two trusty assistants, Chester and Rusty. I attacked the herb garden first. All the dead vegetation from last year had to be raked up and hauled to the compost pile. I discovered about 200 (okay, maybe not that many, but close) baby columbine plants all over, as well as a good dozen lavender seedlings that will need to be transplanted. If I were more ambitious, I would dig up the entire lavender bed; it's all woody and overgrown (and when all the snow is gone, it serves as a good place for Chester to hide the I got the herb garden cleaned out and noticed that Rusty was sniffing around the veggie garden. There were a few pieces of black plastic lying in one of the paths, and when I moved them (with the rake, thankfully!) a couple of voles ran out. Rusty picked up the scent and took off after them. It was really funny to watch—he would dig in a bed and a vole would run out between his legs and hide on the other side of the garden. He finally got the hang of what he was doing and when I checked on him a few minutes later I am pretty sure he was having a couple of rodents for lunch. Some things I just prefer not to have too many details about. Voles are not green and round and do not have "Wilson" stamped on the side so Chester does not care about them. The Roundup did absolutely NOTHING to the quackgrass, by the way. It's all green and thriving. The husband offered to bring his propane flame-thrower over to the garden this afternoon and burn all the grass off the beds. He says that as an added bonus it will likely drive any remaining voles out so that Godzilla can dispatch them. That's fine with me—I just want to get the beds cleaned out so I can start planting things in them. Camas Creek Yarn had an open house last night. When Melanie and her husband bought the building last year, the plan included converting the upstairs into three apartments. The apartments are now done (one is rented), so they held the open house to celebrate. I took my knitting and hung out and visited with customers. The apartments are fabulous and I heard many comments from women who said they wished they were single again and could rent them. Can you imagine a better place to live than in a posh apartment above a yarn store?
May 2, 2008: Just Say You Don't Want My Business and Stop Wasting My Time Our church had a copy machine whose lease term was up. It's still a good machine, so I offered to buy out the lease (for a couple hundred dollars) and take the copier to my house. The new machine arrived at the church yesterday. Our facilities guy asked if I could come get the old one. I stopped by just as the copier company people were finishing up the installation of the new machine. Our pastor asked what I planned to do with the old one. I responded that if we could get it into the truck, I would just take it to town and have it serviced (I know it needs a new imaging drum). I asked the people who were there if their company would service the old machine. They said I would have to call and find out about bringing it in. (I did not want to take it home and then back in to town, and at no point—either then or in the following conversations—did anyone suggest that someone could come out to my house and service it there.) I called and explained the situation. The woman I spoke to said I could bring it in. When I mentioned this to the copier people at the church, they said that there was no one at the office who could unload the machine and asked if I would be willing to wait until they got back to town when the could unload it for me. I said sure, as I had errands to run in town. I left them my cell phone number and they said they would call me as soon as they got back to town, which they thought would be in about an hour. Our pastor and one of the copier company people loaded the old copier in the truck for me. I drove to town. I did errands. I drove around town. I shopped. No one called. I stopped in at the copier office. The people who had been at the church weren't back yet. The woman in the office said she'd look up the cost of a new imaging drum for me. I went and shopped some more. No one called. Finally, after I had been in town for three hours, I went back to the copier office. The woman who had been at the church was there; her partner (a guy) wasn't. She said she had just sent him to lunch and could I wait another half an hour until he got back? I said no, I had already waited longer than I wanted to. She came out to my truck and looked to see if she and I could unload the copier. She opened the door and said, "Why did you put it on its side?—all the toner has probably dumped out!" I said, "Your partner did that." She responded, "Well, it's his first day—he doesn't know these things!" She continued to make such negative comments that I asked again if they were willing to service the copier. She said, "We don't usually service these Konicas, we throw them away." At that point I said, "I don't think you really want my business—I am going to the other copier place in town." I didn't get angry, I didn't yell, I simply said I was going to take my business elsewhere. As I was driving away, the owner of this company called my cell phone and demanded to know what was going on. I said that I didn't think they really wanted my business, and told her what had happened. She defended the employee and said I was the first person ever to complain about her. She asked why I had even brought the machine to town intead of having someone come out to my house. I said that no one ever suggested that to me as an option (I've always taken my other copier in to town to be serviced). I said that I had followed the instructions I had been given, but her employees hadn't held up their end, and that I was especially annoyed that her employee made it sound like the copier I had brought in was a piece of junk and should have been tossed in the landfill. She claimed that that was because they couldn't get parts for it. I suggested that someone should have mentioned that fact before I hauled it in to town and waited for three hours. She responded with, "Well, it appears that nothing I say or do is going to make you happy," and I said, "I think you're right" and said goodbye. I know, they are interested in selling new copiers, not servicing old ones, but I'm not likely ever to buy a NEW one from them, either, after this treatment. And I came home and did a quick Google search and found half a dozen places selling toner cartridges and imaging drums for that machine, so I don't buy the argument that they can't get parts for it anymore. I think I am a pretty reasonable person. I am willing to meet people halfway. But I can also take a hint when it's clear that a business doesn't want my money. I am happy to give it to businesses who do. In this case, though, I shouldn't have waited three hours to do that. But I have a nice digital copier and it makes automatic two-sided copies. It costs me about $100 to get my class handouts for teaching trips copied at Staples, so this copier will pay for itself in no time.
May 1, 2008: Back From the Land of Cheese Here it is Thursday and I am just now getting time to write another blog post (be warned, it's a long one). My trip to Wisconsin was wonderful—great students, a well-organized event, and lots of good food (we ate two nights in a row at the Thai restaurant if that tells you anything). Oh, and we had a tornado warning Friday night just to liven things up a bit. I got to see Myrna Stahman, Margaret Fisher, and Lucy Neatby. Great fun. While I was at Yarns by Design, I picked up a couple of skeins of Mini Maiden, from Handmaiden Yarns. It's absolutely yummy stuff and will become a shawl one of these days. I bought the silver colorway.
Now I am back and trying to get my life organized. While I was gone I somehow managed to get volunteered for a bunch of stuff, which is just chopping my week up into tiny little bits. There is nothing that drives me round the bend faster than having to drop what I am doing to go to the school/church/fire department and handle some small crisis. I thought the month of May would be relatively uneventful, but I am looking at my wall calendar—which is covered in five different shades of Dry-Erase marker—and it is anything but. Honestly, the teachers save up all the field trips for this month and then try to cram them into the remaining few days of school. DD#2 has three field trips, a band festival, and two ballet performances. DD#1 has several evening meetings and a band concert (no field trips, thankfully). My father-in-law arrives mid-month for a week-long visit. The dogs have vet appointments next week (and I can't take both of the together, so it means two separate trips). I need a personal assistant. I suppose that the one ray of sunshine in this whole mess is that spring has yet to arrive here in western Montana, so while I would love to go out and plant things, actually to do so is to invite disaster. I content myself with occasional visits to the plant store and make lists of what I want to plant when it finally warms up. If it ever does. I've been working on the Summer issue of the newsletter; the interesting thing about this issue is that warm-weather items do not take up much space in the layout. Consequently, I have almost twice as many projects in this issue as I do for the other issues. I need to spend another hour or two on it today and then it heads off to my tech editor. Depending on how this first round of editing goes, I may try to cram my current project into the layout—my trip knitting for Wisconsin turned out to be a cabled lace shawl out of this:
It's from Lanaknits (yes, I seem to be patronizing Canadian companies of late) and it's a blend of 60% cotton, 30% cashmere, and 10% hemp. I am using this color, which is called "Pistachio." The pattern is from Susanna Lewis' book Knitting Lace. My tech editor, JC Briar, steered me toward the pattern during a discussion we had about the lace and cables chapter of Cables 2. It's a great pattern (one of only a couple in that book that features a cable), but—as written—it's a bit problematic. It's given in the book as a 6-row repeat, and the edges of the multiple are funky. I played around with it and rewrote it as a four-row pattern (two of which are wrong-side purl rows) with neat edges. It was nice, mindless trip knitting. And it attracted a lot of attention. Several people came up to me at the various airports and asked what I was making. The funny thing is that—while I love to knit them—I don't wear shawls very often. But this one will be the basis of a lace class I am teaching at the end of the month at Camas Creek. I am off to the school this morning for an hour to help with DD#2's Girl Scout troop's community service project. They organized a book swap at the school. I saw lots of books I remember reading as a child (anyone else read A Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes?) but I will try to restrain myself and let the kids have first pick.
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