Homebody

This month of November I took three trips out of town in three weeks - Milwaukee, Boston, and Chile. I got back from Chile on Tuesday after an overnight 9 1/2 hour flight to Atlanta, then another 6 hours til I was home. Thankfully (really) some good friends invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner sooooo I didn't have to cook. Tuesday I slept most the day, Wednesday bought rutabagas and a pumpkin pie and supervised bringing down Christmas decorations from the attic, and went to the movies. Thursday was the holiday of course; Friday I got up early to go to the auto mechanic, then stayed home and avoided Black Friday til I left for Sit and Spin at A Tangled Skein. While at ATS I bought Nancy Bush's new book Knitted Lace of Estonia. Today, Saturday, I started unloading some of the Christmas boxes. I collect nativity scenes, mostly Latin American, and started putting them out. This afternoon I had a crochet class at ATS, and on the way home stopped at Vertigo Books, bought a pile of books, all for me, to support a local retailer.

I am editing this post to include some pictures from Chile. My students raised $400 and I brought a suitcase full of children's books (in Spanish of course) to the school for the deaf in Santiago, where my friend Lucia is Director. I had one day of sightseeing and we went to Valparaiso, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited one of Pablo Neruda's houses Sebastiana (he has 3). Neruda, a Nobel Prize Winner, is one of my favorite poets, and his Memoirs (or in Spanish, Confieso Que He Vivido) and ate seafood in a crowded local (not tourist) restaurant.
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Stitches - The Good, the Bad and the....

During the summer I signed up for 2 classes at Stitches East, but this weekend I only went to one (more on that later). I had a good time in the Marketplace. Shopping was fun with friendly vendors and I bought: - 3 skeins of Habu silk mohair (40% silk; 60% mohair) in a dusty purple (last 3 skeins); 186 yards for $8.65 - 2 skeins of Lisa Souza : 1 skein Sock! Merino (superwash 4 ounces 560 yards, $18) in Lapland, and a skein of Baby Alpace Lace in Petraglyph (6 0z., 1500 yds, $34) - a cute Christmas sock yarn set with a skein of red, white, pink, green sock yarn with a mini skein of red yarn for toes and heels ($21) and a Thrum Mittens kit from Fleece Artist ($28.95) from a Worcester, MA based business Yarn4Socks - 3 patterns - 2 cards of sheep buttons from Black Water Abbey total damage : around $175. When I have time, I'll take pictures and add them to my Ravelry stash.

My class experience was ok. The instructor was excellent, well organized, the right amount of teaching. but there were 30 people in the class. It was very hard to see with us sitting in rows at tables. At the stash wall, I met an instructor who said she had come all the way from the west coast to teach. She said teaching a couple of classes, covers her costs of coming to Stitches. All teachers get the same travel stipend which doesn't cover their actual cost. Makes me wonder - hmmm - 30 students x $75 - and only a small part of that goes to the instructor. I know putting on this kind of production is costly, but... I wouldn't have signed up for classes if I had stopped to think how big they might be, and the implications class size had on learning new techniques.
So today was a beautiful sunny day. I was supposed to go back to Stitches to an afternoon workshop. I drove to Baltimore to drop off my friend Becky who came from Pittsburgh to go Stitches. I decided not to go to my afternoon class and instead went to Hampden and Lovely Yarns. I bought 6 skeins of red and green yarn (Cascade, and Berroco Ultra Alpaca) and with my Stitches badge was given a gift which was a big yarn tote basket! I was awed - and happy I had make the trip. Then I had blueberry pancakes for lunch at Cafe Hon.
A final note - I used some of the yarn I dyed indigo at the Golden Gate Fiber Camp to knit a scarf/shawl for a project sending scarves to girls in Pakistan. Here is the posting about the successful scarf drive and a photo taken of mine - it's the indigo colored one on the left.

Buying local

Local bookstores have had difficulty competing with big box stores for years, and more recently, online businesses such as Amazon. Just this month Olsson's, a local chain, closed its doors. The local list of casualties for the past year also includes

• A Likely Story Bookstore, a beloved children’s bookshop
• Chapters Literary Bookstore suspended business, but hopes to make a comeback
• Karibu Books, offering books by and for people of African descent
• Candida’s World of Books

Vertigo Books , in College Park, is in trouble. I go there a few times a year as College Park is off the beaten path for me.
I read in the Washington Post this week that public libraries are busier than ever, as people go to the library instead of buying books. Now that tax revenues are down, libraries will have to cut back. I have made a conscious effort to get books at the library and cut back on my book buying for the last couple of years. I read a lot of mysteries and now that a mass market paperback averages $6.99 and up, I buy fewer of those. These days, I tend to save my book buying money for books I am likely to hold on to.

Like LYS's I can't imagine not having bookstores to browse in.
Look at these - most interesting bookstores in the world.

Blame Lime & Violet

Lime & Violet's Daily Chum features different Etsy shops everyday in a feature they call ESotD (and I have no idea why it's called that). So last week I succumbed and bought lace weight yarn from Blarney Yarns. I loved the name, and even more I loved the idea of 800 yards of lace weight for $16 - so I bought two! One purple and One Sea Grass green
They came neatly wrapped with a lovely handwritten note and a small sample skein of pink dahlia!

Casting on

Since my unsuccessful attempt to learn provisional cast ons, I had wished someone would teach a class in various kinds of cast ons. Well when I saw that one of my LYS's Woolwinders in Rockville was offering just such a class, I told myself, I couldn't pass it up.
Today, October 26th, Cathy Cea taught the class. We learned severn cast ons (that are many more), and I learned the provisional cast on. Yay! Another cast on technique I will be adding to my sock knitting repertoire is the Twisted German cast on. It's stretchy making it perfect for socks and other cast on edges that we want to be stretchy. There are some good videos on You Tube and other sites, to see these techniques. But there is nothing better than direct instruction.
The Knit Witch demonstrates the twisted German cast on on YouTube.

Staying afloat in hard times

Just this week, I was chatting with my friend Martha via email (she's been on the road ) about the closing of ArtFibers in San Francisco. On their blog, ArtFibers summarize the reasons their store on Sutter St. is closing (lease is up, gas prices, etc.), and commented on the state of the yarn business in general (lots of options, hard to stand out). This statement particularly hit me:
Yarn is a durable treasure, easily stashed, abundant. New web tools allow people to engage in 'stash sharing', extending the usefulness of what is on hand. If no yarn sold in the next year nobody would be without a project.

I have friends who earn their living through crafts. They live in Maine; Hillary is a weaver and Mark is a potter. They do a select number of crafts fairs each year. This is not an easy way to make a living, and the cost of gas has had an impact on the artisans expenses, and attendance. The public pays $8 to $10 to get in to spend money. This August I went up to the League of NH Crafts Fair in Lake Sunapee to see them. Word was that business was OK, but down.

This has led me to think a lot about the current economy, the need to cut back on spending, while at the same time trying to keep local artisans and my LYS's in business. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this summer, I have expanded my awareness of buying local, and noticed what choices I have to do so. If I ask myself would I be happy buying all my yarn, fiber goodies, and books online, or in large chain stores, the answer is a clear no. If I ask myself if I have enough yarn to keep me knitting for a couple of years, again the answer is yes.
The approach perhaps I should focus on would be to try to shop more locally knowing it is important for keeping my LYS's open, and when I can, support local artisans, who enrich our community so much. This holiday season, I will be more aware of reducing my purchases, get by without lots of holiday consumables, and making purchases that contribute to others' well being.

Tiaras, books, and anarchists

In 2006, one sunny Sunday in October, my friend Linda, who lives in Silver Spring, and I were at a local fall festival. There was ethnic food, ethnic crafts, diverse musicans and vendors, but we noticed that there was little diversity amongst the attendees. In a way, it felt as though exotic foods, the people selling them, and exotic crafts were on display - kind of like a museum. We decided to cut out and drive to Baltimore's Book Festival. The event was full of diverse folks enjoying themselves, not just on display, in contrast to the one we'd left.
We have returned for the past two years, each time enjoying ourselves even more! Last year, we joined a tour of Mt. Vernon Writers' homes. This year,we went on Sunday, Sept. 27th. There was a Radical Book Fair tent! Most of the vendors were young, tattooed, anarchist types :), and I bought several birthday presents for my son.We drank pink champagne and got plastic tiaras from the Sweet Potato Queen, and to top off the day, we went to Greek Town for fried calimari (Linda) and moussaka (me).