The snow is melting

Receive each day as
a resurrection from death,
as a new enjoyment of life.
[William Law]

Photography by James E. Miller

Read Full Post »

Winter Class: Argyle Vest

Design is not just
what it looks like
and feels like.
Design is how it works.
[Steve Jobs]

Teaching classes is an asset for a knitting-pattern designer. At least it is for me. Not only do my students inspire me by their requests and enthusiasm, but they help me clarify the pattern details and how to word the instructions. I have been composing a basic vest pattern in multiple sizes and gauges for an argyle technique class. Here are details of the fun parts of the pattern and how the design works:

• Each of the eight students selected yarn colors in DK or light worsted weight from their favorite brands (Cascade 220, Berroco Ultra Alpaca, Brown Sheep Nature Spun, Rowan Creative Focus). I customized color charts (shown above) for each student to use with her written pattern.
• The lower edge is ribbing that is knit in the round so it lays nicely on the hips.
• The body is knit in two parts (back which is plain and front which is argyle) but the seam starts above the ribbing. Two stitches are added at the beginning and end of each piece as a seam allowance to produce an easy to sew, tidy seam.
• The armholes are finished with applied iCord and the V-neck is finished with ribbing and an invisible bind off.
• Attention is paid to smoothness of the fabric. Yarn joins and wraps follow the suggestions in the book shown below.
• The accent lines are worked in duplicate stitch.

An excellent source for refining intarsia technique is Intarsia—A Workshop for Hand & Machine Knitting from the studio of Sealed with a Kiss (Sherry and Keely Stuever). Select this LINK to download a sample swatch pattern for argyle intarsia.

Read Full Post »

Fond Farewell: Robert Pence

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
[Eustache Deschamps]

I have always known Robert Pence. I’ve counted him as my friend for seventy years. I bid him farewell just before Christmas with the gratitude that I’d had the opportunity to count him as my friend for as long as I did.

When I was a small child, he was enough older that I looked up to him and considered him brilliant. When I first left home to go to college, it eased my homesickness to know he was nearby on the same campus. When we were both in the military, it was a comfort to know that he was stationed just up the coast. When I edited a magazine, he took magnificant photos for the cover. When I needed air in my tires, advice on home repairs, or information about anything, he helped me.

I shared his fascination with antique machinery, railroading, computers and the minutia of history. I admired his talent with composition and attention to detail in his photography. He enlarged my world, helped heal the bruises of life experiences, and shared the depth of his spiritual self. Although we weren’t relatives, one of the greatest complements I ever received was when he introduced me by saying, “This is my sister….”

After all of these years, I still look up to him and think he was brilliant.

Read Full Post »

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Read Full Post »

Good Customer Service: Livescribe

It is not the employer who pays the wages.
Employers only handle the money.
It is the customer who pays the wages.
[Henry Ford]

I have a self-inflicted rule—to avoid impulse buying, I wait and save up for something that strikes my fancy. If I still want it in time, I’m more likely to get my money’s worth out of it. When I was in high school, my sister and I wanted a high fidelity record player. Our mother gave us a jar and encouraged us to save up for one. During the year it took us to fill the jar, stereophonic record players came on the market. Needless to say, we were glad we waited.  Several years ago, a participant at a writer’s conference showed me her Livescribe pen and extolled its virtues. It struck my fancy to the extent that I saved up and finally bought one. It was delightful and fulfilled its promises. Select this link to see what wonderful things it can do.

I have been on a learning curve for several other pieces of technology so I didn’t use my pen for several months. When I tried to recharge it, I had problems with the battery. That is the bad news. The good news is, I emailed the company and received a reply from a customer service person named Wendy. After trouble-shooting to no avail, she made arrangements to replace the pen since the battery was still under warranty (just barely). My new pen came promptly in the mail. Thank you Livescribe and thank you Wendy R.

Read Full Post »

A view from the window seat

Do you hear that whistle down the line?
I figure that it’s engine number forty-nine
She’s the only one that’ll sound that way
On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe
[Johnny Mercer]

My choice of a window seat on the Texas Eagle grew into a magical experience. I’d paid $210.00 for a round trip coach ticket between Chicago and Austin, Texas. I’d left my car in South Bend and caught the South Shore (electric commuter train) to Chicago. I’d hoisted my bags up and down steps, in and out of cabs, and through the crowds at Union Station. And then I found the magic window seat.

• The first gentleman who sat next to me had served as a seabee in the Navy when I’d served (I wonder why he looked young enough to be my son). He’d had river-boat duty Vietnam then came home to Minnesota to work for the power company. He was soft-spoken, genteel, and thoughtful.
• We passed wind farms, and fields of early crops across the Illinois prairie. We appreciated our tax money at work as we sped along smooth stretches on the track where wooden ties had been replaced with concrete.
• We crossed the Mississippi and rumbled into St. Louis past the arch.
• My table mates at supper in the dining car were excited about the wedding they were going to in Galveston. They, and many members of their family, had taken the train from Detroit and would catch a bus in Longview to finish their trip.
• It seemed odd to sleep the night with strangers but it was also nice in a way. When I awoke at three a.m. in Little Rock, I was struck by the trust folks had in order to sleep instead of keeping vigil.
• My seatmate and I woke early and made our quiet way to the observation car while everyone else slept. We watched the East-Texas sunrise, sipped coffee, and visited until he disembarked in Dallas.
• My next seat-mate, a stunningly-beautiful young woman, boarded in Fort Worth. We shared our time together by looking at a bride magazine. I was fascinated by the process. The magazine tied our generations and our conversation together. We discovered that we had the same taste in gowns. She told me that the fields of flowers out of the window were Texas blue bonnets. We discussed her wedding worries and high blood pressure. I advised that she focus only on pleasing her groom and herself with the wedding plans. By the time we got to Austin, I felt like her grandmother and she kindly called a cab for me on her cell phone.
• The point of my journey was to attend the biennial memoir-writer’s conference held by Story Circle Network. It was enriching, encouraging and energizing. It also helped me focus on story sources. Maybe this was because the conference was sandwiched between two such interesting journeys.
• My first seatmate on the return trip was another veteran seebee. He was 92 and had built runways in the South Pacific during World War Two. Ever since college on the GI Bill, he’d worked as a civil engineer. He told me stories about growing up in Texas in the ’20s and ’30s. He bought me a cup of coffee and treated me in a courtly sort of way. He kissed my cheek when he departed in Dallas.
• The lady across the aisle and I went to supper together. We sat at a table with a writer and her husband, an artist. They were on a book tour. My aisle-mate, a singer with a lovely speaking voice, exuded wisdom when she spoke. I basked in the beauty of it all. It was like turning a kaleidoscope. Each combination was beautiful but not to be captured again.
• In the night’s wee hours, a lad boarded the train in Arkansas. Every time I awoke, he was taking a nip from a hip flask and another dip of snuff. He was finally asleep by the time I crept to the observation car for coffee. I mused at the combination of experiences that providence had dealt me on this trip. He was awake when I returned, and he talked with me the rest of the way to Chicago. I was surprised since I must have looked as old as dirt to him. He was returning home to bury his 19-year brother who had been murdered. He looked like he was in shock as he told his heart-wrenching story, and our wise aisle-mate reached over to  put her hand on his shoulder. He relaxed at her touch.
• The experiences went on and on through a discussion I had with a kindly Pakistani taxi driver, and a visit with my seatmate on the South Shore train. He was studying a booklet about his upcoming trip to Patagonia!

On my drive down U.S. 30 toward home, I felt like I’d just finished reading a novel based upon John Donne’s poem:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
… any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
[John Donne]

Read Full Post »

Drum roll please . . .

Win as if you were used to it,
lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

I just mailed the new book to Caitlin in Minnesota, the winner of the drawing. However, I want the rest of you folks to win something too so I’m emailing a PDF file to each of you. It is my newest pattern that I developed for a workshop here in Fort Wayne. It is written for any size yarn, needles and feet. It is also written for both magic loop and a 5-needle sock set. Three of the folks who commented are among the only 14 knitters who have seen this pattern so I’ll dream up something different for you.

Thanks so much to everyone for playing along.

Read Full Post »

The hurrier I go…

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.
[Lewis Carroll]

My April was full of activity, and my to do lists were longer than my time and energy. My blog posts were non-existent. Now that I have taken a long breath, I do want to share several things.

Knitting Retreat

First, the Dayton Knitting Guild annual retreat at Bergamo featured Debbie Wilson as our teacher. The tea pot cozy in the photo above was just one of the projects. She also presented us with the challenge of knitting brioche stitch in the round. Hum-m-m. I got the gist of it but raveled my sample to knit the cozy. Debbie is an accomplished knitting teacher and a lovely person. I also enjoyed the yarn market and, of course, renewing old friendships.

Knitting Book Contest

Next, do subscribe if you don’t want to miss hearing about the contest. I plan to review the new knitting book by Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrott later this week. I’ll be drawing a name from the commenters on that post so that I can mail the winner a copy of their new book.

Train Trip

Third, my account of a trip on the Texas Eagle is coming soon. Instead of the Orient Express, it could have been called the Blue Bonnet Special.

Read Full Post »

Just so you know

And the day came when
the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
[Anais Nin]

Northern Indiana can have a March without snow. I just snapped this photo in front of my house.

Read Full Post »

Keeping Up

Once a new technology rolls over you,
if you’re not part of the steamroller,
you’re part of the road.
[Stewart Brand]

We all have our odd turns of the mind. One of mine is a fear of ending up as road kill on the information super highway. After working more than 25 years in graphic design, I still spend as much time in training as I do designing. Software upgrades are a big part of that, and Lynda.com is my main training resource. One of my favorites there is Anne-Marie Concepcion of Seneca Design and Training, and InDesign Secrets.

Fear of not knowing enough can hold a person back from finishing a job, just like fear of the marketplace (agoraphobia) can keep some folks entrenched in their homes. A thought struck me as I was scrubbing out the toilet bowl this morning. I was doing that chore to procrastinate from working on a design job. I really enjoy my design jobs so why put it off? I realized that I don’t necessarily procrastinate because I’m lazy. I usually procrastinate because I’m not quite sure I have the right solution to a production issue. The question is, how much of my mental block is based on a misperception?

I’ve successfully completed countless design jobs over the years, but I’d just watched a video about advances in the software I’ve used for a decade. There were five more hours of lessons available. What if I missed something that would make a difference in the project? Well, phooey, I thought. If I’d waited to upgrade like other designers I know, I couldn’t even do what I didn’t yet know how to do. I simply finished the job. I’ll watch the other five hours later.

The conclusion to all of this goes back to maintaining a balance (but then I wonder if I can get a life-time membership on the training site?).

---

When I was hunting a “keeping up with technology” quotation for this post,
I had trouble picking just one. Here is another quote that nudged my funny bone:

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has,
we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG
[Bill Gates]

Read Full Post »