Colorado Spring 2005

I am the wild woman who is floating in the air;
swept in for rare visits,
scattered and lofty
and swirling around
trying to come down
but the freedom sings to me
the melody of rapture.

Finding my Passion

It's fun to work at the library, and then find yourself teaching sock knitting for two hours every Wednesday. My sock knitting class ended last week and I am taking a break, but I miss it. One of the sock knitters showed up today, she had been in Florida for a few weeks. She was turning the heel on her first sock. I came over to offer a little help, and then I had to go to lunch. When I came back I wanted to check out her progress. Well, the heel wasn’t centered. I offered to help fix it because she knew she went wrong somewhere. As I ripped it out, I said, "I bet you hate me for ripping out all your work," and she said, "No, I didn't want to get all done and have a crooked heel." I have learned how to fix mistakes in knitting and I owe that to Sally Melville's excellent book in her series, The Knitting Experience: Book one: the Knit Stitch. When I was teaching my sock knitting class I would have my handy crochet hook with me and I would be pulling up dropped stitches all the time, ripping out rows of mistakes, and turning the twisted stitches on the needles back into the right direction. I recommend this book for the basics that need to be mastered to work quality knitting. My friend said, "You must have hated working with all of our problems," and I felt just the opposite. I loved helping teach this complicated knitting experience, but one that really makes you feel you have accomplished something as old as knitting a sock, with all its shaping and various skills. Because the ladies in the group all wanted to learn hand-pieced quilting, I will be doing that over the summer months. I will be using Jinny Beyer's book, Quiltmaking by hand : simple stitches, exquisite quilts / Jinny Beyer.

 This is the week of St. Patrick's Day, and I found this card at Mom and Dad's house and it reminded me when Mom and I would exchange Saint Patrick Day's card, one, because I always wanted to to go to Ireland, two because I had become Catholic, and three because it was like our special holiday that just the two of us understood why. I think I started this when I was in high school and in love with Irish poetry. Mom shared her love of poetry with me and thus it grew. Lucky me. I am wishing everyone the Luck of the Irish this week.

This card is from the 70's by Holly Hobbie