The Mittens From Rovaniemi




I was able to get into Susanna Hansson's class up at Threadbear. These are the mittens that were featured in the Piecework magazine dated January 2008. They are very interesting. The technique is unlike anything I've ever seen. Susanna is an excellent teacher she gave lots of information about the Sami people and the areas in which they live as well as the background of the technique. I came away with my head so stuffed with new information that I forgot to gather up all of my materials (guess that means another trip up to Threadbear).

A (Mitered) Square Packing Project

The obsession continues... Lea-Ann had these great suede bottoms and handles for bags. The red one just cried out for some mitered squares and I am weak. The knitting is fun and almost done. Then comes the sewing....

SNOW ON EASTER Enough to sled on and we did find bunny footprints in the snow.

A mindless week
I took several knitting wips to the cabin along with some reading and some writing and some work but in the end my brain shut down and all I worked on was this mitered squares blanket. Totally mindless. The Grand Pooh-Bah wasn't any better. Verna and Jillian came up to spend a night with us and we had one energetic morning walking around town and swinging Jill in swings and hammocks. Otherwise the week was: lying in the hot tub watching the hawk circle above us and thinking that we better move lest he think that we were lunch; looking out the windows at the deer that surrounded the cabin and talking about Hitchcock"s "The Birds"; whenever the electricity went off, we took it as a sign that it was time to take a nap. Why is it that those commercials for the premium cable channels (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc) always look so interesting but when we are actually in a place that offers those channels there's never anything interesting on?

Lea-Ann made me do it

A swatch of Araucania Pomaire on #6 needles, hand washed and dried flat for "Modern Kimono" by Ann Budd in Piecework Jan/Feb 2008

RAVELRY
To be A-Ravelry-er you must B-Ravelry invited and then you can C-Ravelry members' pages and all D-Ravelry mysteries R-Ravelry revealed to you. I haven't put much on my Ravelry space. I have even avoided exploring the site, the whole thing is just too intimidating. First off there's the "Friends" thing. You "Friend" people and then they "Friend" you and their avatar appears on your "Friends" page. And then everyone can look and see how many, or how few, "Friends" you have. It gives me flashbacks to Jr. Hi, when my "Friends" see I'm not popular will they still want to be my "Friends"? Some of my "Friends" are very popular, does that make me their charity case? Insecurities that I haven't thought about for decades have been popping up. Even the word "popular"- I haven't used that, much less thought it, since my children were in High School and I can't remember the last time I thought about it reference to myself. And then there's the list-keeping. The thought of revealing to total strangers, or even my closest friends, how many pairs of #3 needles I own, how much yarn owns me, how many ideas I have that come to naught, how many UFO's hang, albatross-like, around my neck, ugh. In addition, Ravelry has brought my tendency toward voyeurism, something I've tried to suppress. I can explore my "Friends" queues of future and finished projects and by clicking on my "Friends" "Friends" I can peek at theirs and then the "Friends" of the "Friends" of my "Friends" and so on ad infinitum. I have been surfing from my "Friends" to their "Friends" to the "Friends" of the "Friends" of my "Friends" etc and I'm wondering; how many degrees of separation are there on Ravelry? Is the number dependent on how many "Friends" one has or is it some statistical thing that is the same for everyone?

The wind blew me and Kathy down to the Fort yesterday and we dropped in on the two new yarn shops, "Off Broadway" and "Sarah Jane's". It was a fun day, despite the discovery that our favorite grease spot, Long John Silver's, has closed.
It's beginning to look like the reason that we won't have a woman president isn't because a woman can't take the leading role but because her spouse doesn't know how to take a supporting role. To me that just makes a woman's accomplishments all the more impressive. Men do it with the help of a spouse, some women have to do it in spite of one.