Today I am attempting to catch my breath after a whirlwind week of work and fun at the Greensboro Chain Link show. Last you heard from me I was packing up to head out.
I spent most of this past Monday traveling home. As my husband drove me home from the airport I was amazed to see all the Autumn color that had made an appearance on our mountain in such a short period of time. Even down in the plains around Denver and Boulder there were dashes of fall color in the foliage.
My Front Yard
Now comes the un-packing (the Inverse Operation mentioned in the title), the piles of laundry from my travels as well as the accumulation of dirty clothes from my family to be dealt with.
Once I get that all ticking along I’ll be taking some pictures of the yummy yarn that came home with me as well as other tales of Chain Link. Though, still respecting Doris Chan’s rule that “What happens at Chain Link, stays at Chain Link”.
Amazing enough, I didn’t consume gobs of chocolate this time, was far too busy to actually remember it. Must do better next year.
Packing for my annual trip to the CGOA Chain Link conference is always an interesting experience.
First I need to choose a minimal amount of clothing. I want to have plenty of room when heading back to fit all the wonderful yarn I won’t be able to resist.
Then choose crochet items to go with clothing. Why haven’t I made more stuff for myself lately?! Ugh!
Look desperately thru sketch pad and stash for quick projects and yarn to make up a few nice items. Get lost and distracted by the stash, the sketch pad and the stitch dictionaries.
Completely cover guest bed with the various items I want to include.
Re-discover pieces I forgot about, check to see if any will work for this trip. Realize that I’ve got 10 more ideas I want to create proposals for to bring with me. Realize there are only 5 days left until I leave for Greensboro. Run around in circles screaming with waving arms, frightening the cat and amusing the children.
After finished with above exercise resume packing in a calm and orderly manner. Make sure not to forget the chocolate.
I don’t know how many of my readers share my aversion to having their photo taken, but I really prefer to be behind the lens and not in front of it.
Recently it was brought to my attention that I needed a current photo of me for professional reasons. So today my dear foster-brother DJ and I had a photography session using my lovely mountain back yard for our studio.
Comedy reigned supreme, as seen above…..but bless DJ he hung in there and got some shots that would work.
It has given me a greater appreciation for those that model regularly in the various magazines and such. I’m definitely happier stitching and working out the math for designs.
Well, it’s the truth. Chocolate is one of the main food groups in my book. I know, that is a terrible confession from a woman reputed to be a health and wellness writer.
The blog might be a little quiet this week as August has found me with a crazy busy schedule. I am pretty certain that my Mutant To-Do list has been either taking vitamins or doing steroids.
My boys are headed back to school in less than 13 days, I have 4 rather substantial designs to finish and ship in the month of August as well as all the prep stuff I need to take care of for the Fall Knit and Crochet Show.
I promise to be back soon with a nice juicy new post.
I am currently faced with the challenge of finishing 2 rather large projects by the 24th of August. So I am reminding myself that I need to stop and stretch my body and particularly my hands regularly.
One of the things I love about crocheting is that it’s easy to reach a meditative state while working. In that state I become less aware of the passage of time. The smooth action of making stitch after stitch is somewhat hypnotic.
Unfortunately, once I do stop I become quite aware of discomfort and even pain in my body if I have been sitting there for hours crocheting. So what to do?
It’s a simple solution. A timer.
My favorite timer is my kitchen timer. I even leave it in the kitchen. When it goes off I have to at least get up to turn it off (it’s quite loud and obnoxious) and that action alone breaks up the static position I’ve been working in. I generally set my timer for 25 minutes, but any interval between 20-30 minutes is helpful.
When the timer goes off, I stand up and stretch. Other things I do…move the laundry into the dryer or take it out to hang it up, get a big drink of water, have a bite of chocolate (that’s in the kitchen too), pet the cat, check on my boys if they are in a different room.
Taking breaks like these can be the difference between being very productive or being laid up with injuries to our hands and bodies. So sharing this lesson with all of you my dear readers will hopefully remind me to take care of myself as well. After all, Timing is Everything.
One of the joys of “maturing” is that my eyes do not like to look at lots of crochet stitches without good light. They will punish me by creating whirling vortexes of pain in my head if I persist.
So every time I have seen a good sale on OttLites my little ears perk up. I do not work for the OttLite company in any way shape or form. I simply adore their lights, because they really do live up to their claims to reduce eye-strain.
Currently I own 5 different desk-style OttLites. I also purchased a portable OttLite that has a large rechargeable battery. It reminds me a bit of those first mobile phones. The ones called “The Brick”.
It weighs about 3 1/4 pounds with an adaptor that allows it to be plugged into an electrical outlet that weighs an additional 1/4 pound. I purchased it because I wanted a good OttLite to use at classes at conferences.
Lighting in convention center rooms is typically not great for working on needlearts, and I usually find myself dealing with the aforementioned whirling vortexes of pain. Electrical outlets in these same rooms are also a bit hard to come by, so something that doesn’t have to be plugged in is quite handy. I purchased my “portable” OttLite in preparation for the Buffalo Chain Link conference in August, 2009. Thus began a bit of an educational adventure.
First of all, I think that the solid brickish nature of it alarmed TSA. It was in my checked baggage and when I opened my bags at the hotel I discovered a nice note from TSA telling me my bag had been searched.
Being that the light is actually pretty hefty I decided to use my small rolling carry-on bag to schlep the light and my other class materials about with me. It was handy to have the light, but hauling it and the bigger bag around got old quickly. By the end of the conference I was leaving the light in my hotel room to use while stitching there in the evenings.
I still use it a lot at home, it’s especially great to grab when I want some extra lighting for shooting photos. But it hasn’t gone to anymore conferences. Too much additional weight in my luggage and to lug about at the conference.
So I was very excited this past Thursday when I was doing some retail therapy at Michaels and I saw a small LED Flip Light by OttLite. I was even more excited to see that it was regularly $20 and on sale for $10. I quickly grabbed one of the lights to purchase, the light had a white housing and was just a bit bigger than a pager.
Unfortunately, I had not checked the package very well. After taking the package out to open it at home, I discovered someone had already opened it. The compartment for the batteries was broken. It was a very sad moment. Fortunately, my family and I were planning a trip to Denver the next day. So I put the light and the receipt in my bag to take with me.
That morning we stopped at the same store on our way to Denver and I exchanged the broken light for a new one. The clerk at the shop was very nice and I looked over the packaging to be certain it hadn’t been opened. I set it aside and had a fun outing at the Aquarium with my family.
Once I was home again I quickly grabbed a couple of batteries and opened the package. I was talking on the phone at the time with my friend Stacy and she got to witness first hand my displeasure on discovering that the clip on the back of this light was broken. The packaging had disguised that fact earlier.
The following day I was headed to Denver for my monthly stitching group meet-up. Which was the reason for Stacy and I’s phone call…we were planning out our day and when to get together. Of course, discovering I would have to exchange the light again put a wee dent in our plans. I would need to stop at Michaels on my way to Denver once more.
Then Stacy came up with the brilliant idea of me taking the light to a Michaels near where we would be having dinner in Denver. That way she could purchase one of the little lights too and we would have more time to visit. I decided to bring batteries, a small screwdriver and my utility knife with me so I could open the package and check that the light worked at the store. I really did not fancy another trip up the mountain and back down to get a working light.
Saturday afternoon I headed down the mountain and picked up Stacy. We arrived at the Michaels store, which was one of the largest I’ve ever been in. We began wandering around the store looking for the OttLites, but couldn’t find them. Finally I accosted a Michael’s employee, who turned out to be the store manager. He quickly took us back to where the OttLites were displayed. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the little flip light.
I had told the kind manager the tragic story of the 2 broken lights and he said he would check with some other Michaels stores to see who had them. In the process he discovered that they were supposed to have the lights in stock at his store. So he had us make ourselves comfortable in the store class room and he went on a hunt for them.
A little while later he returned with this package. I was excited because the light was PINK! And not just pink but “in-your-face” Fuchsia Pink, one of my favorite shades. Note: this photo was taken today after I had already customized my light with my 2hands logo.
Fortunately they also had the light in white or black so Stacy wasn’t stuck with a wild pink light. She does not share my enthusiasm for pink. Though it’s a good thing there wasn’t a purple one as we might have had a battle over it.
A Wonderful Palm Sized Light
We opened the packages and put in the batteries I had brought to test that our lights worked. Then we did a bit of shopping in the store, made our purchases and headed off to have some dinner. After dinner we went to PJ Jam where we both showed off our nifty new lights.
I am thrilled with my little light. It is very light weight in my project bag and the light output is marvelous. The clip on the back will allow me to attach it to my clothing or on my notebook to use it easily at conferences. It is also going to be very handy when I am doing color matching for fabrics and yarns when I go shopping.
One of the challenges of crocheting or sewing garments for myself is getting a good feel for how the garments will hang on my body. A handy aid for this is a dress-makers dummy (also called a dress-form).
A few years back a neighbor was getting rid of her dress-maker’s dummy. I was happy to adopt it, but found that the dummy wasn’t a good match for my body measurements. Still I’ve become fond of her over the years and named her “Betsy”.
Betsy has been very handy for photographing finished designs or helping me to visualize how design elements can be combined for sketches of potential designs. Unfortunately, Betsy is far more generously endowed in the chest area than I am. Genetics being the luck of the draw I seem to have taken after my Mom’s side of the family instead of my Dad’s when it came to chest dimensions.
So I’ve been haunting the JoAnn’s website and drooling over the variety of dress forms they have available. Then one happy Sunday evening I discovered the one I really loved was on sale!
A week later this box arrived. Inside was my wonderfully adjustable new dress dummy (she doesn’t have a name yet). I happy took her out and started measuring and adjusting the various dials to create my twin.
Of course the ego-deflating aspect, of having a dress dummy you can adjust to your exact measurements, is you get a very realistic view of what you body shape really is.
Oh well, at least I’ll get a good fit for my garments and it will encourage me to get more exercise.
Funny, when I first decided to pursue crochet design work I thought it would be a long while before I would be really busy. I was wrong.
I’m certainly not complaining about being wrong, in fact it has been a delightful discovery that I can be as busy as I would want to be. But it does mean life is a bit of a juggling act.
I just finished up a very large project that will be coming out in Fall of 2012, and I am currently working feverishly on 3 more design projects that are all due within the next 3 weeks for Fall and Winter publication.
The bad part of this is the poor blog gets a bit lonely. Time to write is one part of the issue, but having projects that I can share progress reports and pictures of is the other part. Everything is Top-Secret until publication.
So the photo today shows some of the tools of my design work, minus the yarn and swatches.
Yesterday, while in Boulder I took these pictures of some blossoming trees and shrubs.
This morning I woke up to this scene.
One of the challenges for a designer is that you are often required to design items for a season that is 6-8 months ahead of you. So I guess I should be grateful for the snow, since I am currently coming up with design ideas for Winter.
Still, I really wouldn’t mind if we were getting rain instead of snow. I’m quite ready for some warm Spring like weather, instead of our typical Mountain Spring time weather.
Well, my experiment with knitting half an hour everyday for a month was over yesterday.
I made one more little swatch, that took me a bit over an hour to make. There was a near miss there, when I had 3 stitches pop off the end of my needle. I did manage to get them back on without losing any though. So that is an improvement in my skills.
I do feel more comfortable with the needles than I have in the past. Casting-on and binding-off are easier. I even found myself knitting “Continental” style a few times.
I can’t say that this experiment went as hoped. For one thing, I didn’t knit everyday. My knitting ineptitude doesn’t seem much reduced, I still haven’t figured out how to increase and the “Moss” stitch seems to be completely baffling me (sad this, as I have done it before).
I have decided that I will have at least one knitting project going for the next couple of months. Something easy, like a scarf in garter stitch. Maybe eventually I will attempt a scarf in Moss stitch.
The simple fact remains, I am devoted to my crochet hooks. I love the flow of crochet, and how easy it is for me to change direction or stitch up just about any thing I can visualize. That ease with knitting is many years into the future, if ever, and that’s okay.
Mamas2Hands 