Winter Comes to Kalamazoo (Finally!)

What a winter this has not been. I'm looking at the snowfall records, for this season so far. By Christmas day, the total for the season was a mere .8 inches. We got several inches over the week following Christmas, and then it was scarce again til this past week. Finally, hurrah! Real snow: 2 inches on Monday; 1.3 inches on Tuesday; 4.2 on Wednesday; 3.1 on Friday.

It was also bitter cold this week - the max temps from Monday to Friday were 19, 11, 17, 17, 24 (Friday felt really warm!).

But look at the beauty:

Wednesday - looking at the park,
after shoveling the driveway

Friday - when Bonnie and I finally ventured out again.
This was on Highgate, I think...

Saturday - when it warmed up to
28, and the sun came out

Saturday, on Highgate

I love winter, and will enjoy this snowy weather while it lasts (although I do prefer temps in the 20's, rather than the teens!).

Would You Like a Hand-Knit Scarf?

Updated 3/4/13: the websites for donating to GOTR are no longer available. But you can still donate by cash or check (made out to Greater Kalamazoo Girls on the Run) - contact me at RobinVanderRoest @ gmail dot com to coordinate payment. Thanks!

Today, I attended a beading workshop, sponsored by the Kalamazoo Knitting Guild, and taught by Jill June, of Studio June Yarns. (Jill is a local dyer, based here in Kalamazoo!) The workshop fee included yarn, beads, a crochet hook, and a pattern. The yarn is really yummy - 100% superwash merino - and my skein is a lovely caramel color, in subtle tonal shades.

We started with this

The pattern is the Kal-Haven Trail Scarf. From the pattern description:

The pattern is named for a 33 mile hiking/biking trail in Southwest Michigan, built on an old railroad bed. The trail runs from Kalamazoo to South Haven and is a popular spot for outdoor enthusiasts.

The scarf suggests the old railroad, and its ties, and features a lace edge and decorative beads. You can go to this link to see pictures of the completed scarf.

Here is what I accomplished today on my not-yet-completed scarf:

When I finish knitting this scarf, I will give it away, randomly choosing the recipient from a list of folks who contribute to Girls on the Run. For each $5 you contribute, you'll have one chance of winning the scarf.

Why Girls on the Run?

My friend Jess and her daughter are raising funds for the Girls on the Run organization here in Kalamazoo. Here's what Jess has to say:

Girls on the Run is an amazing organization that works with girls in third through fifth grade. It is a program that teaches healthy living, goal setting, and most importantly it teaches girls to be happy with who they are. [My daughter] had the opportunity to participate in Girls on the Run when she was in third, fourth, and fifth grade, and participated in Girls on Track (for middle schoolers) last year in sixth grade. This year she decided that instead of participating in the program, she would run her first half-marathon to raise money for this organization that she loves so much. In Kalamazoo, the goal is to allow every girl to have the opportunity to participate regardless of their ability to pay; most of the participants in Kalamazoo receive a scholarship for part or all of the program. We are committed to raise $600 total ($300 each) and this is enough money to sponsor four girls through the program.

They completed their goal of running the half-marathon together, but are still working to reach their fund-raising goal.

After running the Grand Rapids half-marathon

Please consider making a donation (and maybe winning the Kal-Haven Trail Scarf). If you want to send a check, send me a message at RobinVanderRoest @ gmail dot com, and we'll sort out the details. Sorry - the online sites are no longer available. But you can still donate via check!  To donate online, you can use these links:

Jessica's donation page

Jessica's daughter's donation page

Thanks for supporting this worthwhile cause. I haven't decided when I'll give the scarf away - but you can donate today!

Morgantown in November

I'm still playing blog catch-up, so today's post will be about my trip to visit Lori, back in November (if I can ignore the whining and pleading from Bonnie, who wants to Go For A Walk RIGHT NOW).

It's been two months since my trip to West Virginia, so I'm sure my recap will be limited and incomplete and (possibly) inaccurate. Hopefully, Lori will correct and clarify and amend in the comments.

My drives there and back were uneventful. I had good weather, and plenty of podcasts on my iPod, so I was well entertained.

(My most eventful trip was in November 2008, when I got a flat tire driving home, and had to wait while it was repaired. Then, as I was finally back on the road, I realized I'd forgotten my laptop at Lori's house. I headed back toward Lori's, and she met me halfway, at a Starbucks.  We shared a brief snack (hot chocolate! cake!) before I started for home again. What a long day that was!)

I love my visits with Lori - pleasant, relaxing, low-stress. We play Scrabble (Lori always wins), and eat pizza from the bakery down the hill from her. (We did have pizza this time, right?)

We always do lots of walking (and talking). This time, we walked a trail along the river on Saturday, and just around her neighborhood on Sunday. (A walk around Lori's neighborhood really is a bit of a workout, owing to the rather steep landscape.)

Before we could head out for our walk on Saturday, we had to wait for the high school marching band - they were practicing, and just happened to pass by Lori's house as we were leaving:

Here are some photos from the walk along the river. It was a beautiful day, and we didn't need much in the way of coats (my recollection is that we each wore a sweater, and ended up carrying them).

Lori!

I took this picture in Lori's neighborhood.

PumpkinMan?

Our visits also include adventures. After resting from our walk, we drove down to Bridgeport, where we visited The Nest, a yarn store that Lori had discovered. Of course I bought some souvenir yarn:

Madeline Tosh Sport

I only bought one skein, which probably was a mistake. I should never buy just one skein. But I'll find something to do with this yumminess, even so. (Perhaps a delicious hat....)

They also had some wonderful shop samples. Lori admired their Clapotis shawl, and I was attracted by a cabled scarf (I first wrote 'attacked by a scarf,' by mistake, but maybe that is an apt word when talking about yarn shops and yarn). The woman working there, however, didn't know what the pattern was, and since it was near closing time, and since they'd had an open house all day, and since she seemed to be holding the fort alone, I didn't want to make her track it down. But I did take a photo, and recently tried to email the shop to ask about it.

Alas, the email bounced back to me, and I thought all was lost. I decided to check their blog, even though my last perusal had indicated it was pretty inactive. But look! they must have a made a New Year's Resolution, because when I checked their blog, not only did they have a new entry, but it featured The Scarf, and listed both the yarn and the pattern:

http://www.thenestyarn.com/january-brings-the-snow-get-ready/

(I've since tracked down and bought the pattern, and added the Elbaite scarf to my rather lengthy to-knit list.)

Back to my visit with Lori... We had dinner at the Provence Market, right next to The Nest. As I recall, we had the special, which was a delicious salmon dinner. I think we even had dessert, though it's the salmon that sticks in my memory (so good...).

We decided, on a whim, to stop at Barnes and Nobles on the way home. It was fun to look at books together, sharing notes about what we'd read and what we wanted to read. We each bought a book, which we've since read and traded. Lori bought An Invisible Thread, by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski; I bought The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. Both were good reads. (I need to do a book review blog entry; I have a stack of books on the table in front of me, just waiting...)

Of course, with all the time sitting and chatting, knitting happened as well. I finished the shawl I'd been working on:

This is the just-finished, still-unblocked version;
there are more photos on Ravelry

I'm thinking it's about time to start planning my next visit with Lori.

But first, there's this beagle still begging for her walk...

Time for a Change

As many do at the year-end, I was thinking about resolutions. I have felt recently that while I am busy, I am busy with the wrong things. Trivial things take up my time, at the expense of things that really matter.

While walking Bonnie, and considering this things, I was listening to The Writer's Almanac on my iPod, and heard this poem.

New Year Resolve
by May Sarton

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water. 

I think May Sarton was speaking of mental clutter, of her own thoughts and self-talk. For me, her poem said "Your life is full of clutter. Get rid of stuff. Make room for silence and for thinking, for things that matter." 

With that thought motivating me, I identified just a handful of goals -- guidelines, really -- that will help improve the balance between clutter and substance in my life.

1. Get up early.  The corollary to this, of course, is to go to bed at an appropriate time. And the benefit will be having more time to devote to things of substance.

2. Declutter computer time.  Of course, if I manage to roll out of bed early, and then spend my time reading Facebook and blogs and Ravelry forums, things of substance will still go by the wayside. So I've resolved to mostly give up the Ravelry forums; to strictly limit my time spent browsing Facebook; and to reduce my blog reading (no more trying to catch up on every single blog) (except for family blogs). (You, Dear Reader, should, of course, continue to read my blog!)

3. Eat wisely. This doesn't really fit my decluttering theme, but I'm keeping it anyway. I've been following Weight Watchers for a couple months now, and have consistently been dropping pounds. I still have days where I apparently believe that chocolate is a vegetable; clearly, this part of my life needs continued attention.

4. Spend 15 minutes decluttering, each day. Anyone who has visited our home knows there is plenty of decluttering to be done. I've tried this small-dose approach before; I think it's worth trying again.

5. Complete the essentials before the likes. This means that things like gospel study, exercising, and basic housekeeping need to come before knitting, blogging, and leisure reading. Sigh.

Will these guidelines survive past Groundhog Day? 

The other thing I need to do is stop obsessing over my blog posts. I wrote this Friday night, and have been tweaking it since then, trying to decide if I should hit <Publish>. Enough already!

Vogue Knitting Live!

In October, the Kalamazoo Knitting Guild chartered a bus to go to Vogue Knitting Live, in Chicago. Jess, Denise, and I joined the knitters on the bus.

We started in the dark, around 7 am. The sun rose on a beautiful fall day.

At the rest stop in Indiana

Denise & Jess on the bus

We arrived in Chicago shortly before 9, and had a splendid day. We hadn't signed up for any classes, and wandered about throughout the day, wherever our fancy took us.

There was "down time," when we sat knitting and chatting. We watched a Vogue Knitting fashion show (not that I'm really a Vogue kind of girl).

We took our time wandering through the market. We admired and touched all sorts of yarn (and tried not to drool on it). We chatted with Vicki Howell (Knitty Gritty) and Ysolda Teague (she designed Elijah the Elephant). We saw knitting in the wild that we fell in love with, such as the Bermuda Scarf. (Well, at least I fell in love with it, and I have just the yarn for it, in my stash...)

We stopped at one booth, Black Wolf Ranch, and Jess asked me if I thought, with that name, that they might be predator-friendly. The owner popped up and confirmed that to be the case, much to Jess' delight. They had an alpaca hat that was just slightly felted - I've been pondering ever since how to recreate it. (I have alpaca in my stash that could be put to that use...)

At Green Mountain Spinnery's booth, I saw a terrific little hat, the Ascutney Mountain Hat. And somewhere - no idea which booth - we saw the Waves in the Square Shawl, by Sivia Harding. It has an unusual construction, being knit as a square, rather than a rectangle. It's really quite lovely, but requires 1100 yards of light fingering weight yarn - more than the couple skeins I usually think to buy.

We saw a beautiful shawl, Ann Weaver's Lamp Shawl, along with other designs from her White Whale books. We saw jewelry, cleverly made from old metal knitting needles.

The Sophie's Toes Sock Yarn booth had magic balls, which are large skeins (525 yards) of sock yarn. They include 15 different colors of sock yarn, tied together and wound into a cake. They would be fun to knit with - but then you would have to deal with all those ends...!

Jess made her yarn purchase at Black Wolf Ranch's booth. Denise bought a book - Knit Red - and some splendid red yarn, at the Jimmy Beans Wool booth. (A portion of the sales of the book Knit Red go towards educating women about heart disease.)

I almost bought a kit to make a linen stitch shawl. The yarn colors - pastels - were beautiful, and I think it would have been a joy to knit.

But then I saw this yarn:

This is the same Swans Island yarn I'd seen (and not bought) in Wisconsin. This time, I didn't hesitate, and now it's in my stash, waiting to become the Panoramic Stole.

I was keeping an eye out for a new yarn to use for my Elijah Elephants. I stumbled across this, and thought it should work well:

I bought just one skein, and now wonder if it is a one-of-a-kind, since I've not been able to track it down online since coming home.

There was a gallery section, with works from different fiber artists. My favorites were pieces by Chris Motley. Here are two of her sculptures:

Love this guy!

We took a lunch break and walked across town to Portillo's, for Chicago-style hot dogs. Conveniently, our path also took us near a Trader Joe's store (where we used careful judgment in our purchases, since we'd have to carry them back to the show).

In October, Poetry Magazine was celebrating its 100th anniversary, which apparently included these displays.

These 'grasses' lit up as it grew dark.
And there were poems being read!

We enjoyed reading bits of poetry as we walked:

We arrived home late that night, tired but content.

In retrospect, I wished I had made the commitment to register and take one of the classes offered, and I wished I'd had time to explore some of the other features (the demo area, the meet-up lounge, etc). But, even without that, I enjoyed the chance to hang out with my knitting friends, to see so many different yarns and patterns, and to fire up my imagination. And recounting it all here has rekindled that same excitement.

So much knitting, so little time!

Scarves, Shawls, Slippers, Verse

When I started this blog, I thought I could write two blog posts a week. Now it seems that two a month is miracle enough! Perhaps 2013 will lead me to write more often; we shall see.

For now, I'll try for some catching up. I'll start with knitting (of course).

I finally finished the scarf for the Seita Scholars - and was very pleased with how it turned out. I liked using the random stripe generator, and three colors were easy to manage. In fact, Jim & I recently picked up some black, brown, and gold yarn, to make a WMU scarf and hat set (which is waiting in the wings).

I also finished my Pie Wedge Shawl. The above picture is not the best, but it gives a sense of the size and drape of the shawl. It is so lightweight, and yet cozy warm. I am delighted! I am eager to show it off! (I am keeping it!)

Another Pie Shawl shot

I finally finished this striped scarf. I used a Kauni yarn that ran through shades of red, along with a charcoal yarn, and was pleased with the result.

But knitting a scarf with that yarn weight (sport) just about drove me over the edge. I worked on this, off and on, for seven months, and bound off the instant it seemed to have reached a decent length. I think it looks good on Mr. Owl here, although it did seem a bit short on the recipient (I think he was happy to get it, even so).

I did two bits of Christmas knitting (not counting the Kauni scarf; although it was delivered at Christmas, it wasn't actually knit as a Christmas gift).

These are slippers that I knit for Jim. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I used Shepherd's Wool yarn, which is a delight to knit with, and - as you can see - they felted nicely. Jim says they are a tad big, so I need to felt them again (carefully!), and then I may add a sole - both to prevent wear, and to prevent their being slippery (it's bad form when knitted gifts lead to broken bones).

I knit the slippers holding two strands of yarn, so progress was much faster than with that Kauni project!

This is a shawl that I knit for a friend. The pattern is for a prayer shawl, but I think of it more as a "hug shawl." The yarn was from my stash (one of Jim's contributions). It was an absolute delight to knit with, and created a cozy fabric. We included an owl charm, which you can just barely see in the above photo (near the corner of the shawl). (The charm was made by a local artist, Amy Culp.)

This, by the way, may be one of my quickest knitting efforts. I started this on December 4, but then had to frog, and started again on December 11. I finished the shawl just two weeks later, on Christmas Eve. Lightning fast for me! (Thanks to Jim for helping me find extra knitting time.)

This rather blurry photo shows the owl charm, and also the lovely wale of the shawl.

I also want to share a bit from a poetry book I picked up, Susan Blackwell Ramsey's A Mind Like This. (I was Christmas shopping in our local bookstore, and succumbed to temptation.)

I first heard of Susan Ramsey (aka Rams) when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee visited Kalamazoo; she blogged about it here.

(If you go to that link, and look at the first audience picture, you can see my friend Jess and me, in the third row. We went there to celebrate Jess' birthday. It was not long after that visit, that I fell down the knitting rabbit hole...)

Anyway, the poems in this volume are delightful, full of humor and wit and insight. Here is a snippet from Mariah Educates the Sensitive, in which Ramsey asserts that no one is really allergic to wool, and sings its praises. The poem ends,

Wool is proof of a benign, personal God,
is grace, divine intervention at its best.
It's why sheep are mentioned in the Bible
more than any other animal.
I made that up,
but you believed me, proving
you've had your own suspicions
all along.

When mercury freezes,
hang your quilts on the wall.
Curl under wool.
Wool knows you're a mammal.
It's sympathetic, doesn't just conserve
body heat - it radiates it,
melting your bunched muscles
into something capable of sleep,
making sure your dreams
fill with green fields.

Other poems that I particularly enjoyed are  Mount St. Helen's, May 18, 1980, and The Kalamazoo Mastodon:

. . . we may contain,
just beneath our asphalt, below our brick,
something big and buried, something wild.

Find yourself a copy, and enjoy!

Musings on Sandy Hook

On Friday, 20 children and 6 adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut. I keep trying to make sense of it - but there can be no sense to such a tragedy.

How could anyone snuff out so many lives, so many innocent children?

And what are those parents going to do? What will they do with the Christmas presents they've been hiding, the stockings that won't need to be hung, the vacant place at the table, the empty car seat?

* * * * *

I don't want to ever forget.

Friday, December 14, 2012.
20 children and 6 adults, dead.

6- and 7-year old children:
Benjamin, Caroline,
Catherine, Charlotte, Chase
Daniel, Dylan, Emilie, Grace
Jack, James, Jesse,
Jessica, Josephine,
Madeleine, Noah,
Olivia.

The adults who tried to protect them:.
Anne Marie, Dawn,
Lauren, Mary,
Rachel, Victoria. 

* * * * * 

Friday afternoon, I took Bonnie for a walk, carrying my camera. It was a clear day, the sky brilliant blue. I thought I would look for something beautiful, to balance the day's tragedy.

This is what caught my eye - a tree, leafless and stark, with a child's baseball and football caught in its branches.

Childhood games, interrupted

* * * * *

This image has been circulating on Facebook, a reminder that the victims of Friday's violence are safe now.

"Security," by David Bowman

* * * * *

As I learned of the deaths at Sandy Hook, this poem came again to my mind. The first time I heard it, I recognized the grief of a parent whose child has died at birth. Now, it seems equally appropriate as I ponder the future for the bereft parents of Newtown. 

Majority
by Dana Gioia

Now you'd be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you'd be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

Now you are twenty-one.
Finally, it makes sense
that you have moved away
into your own afterlife. 

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