Knitting With Granny LJ

Good morning.

It has been a while since I have written on my blog.  The cause of the silence has been a gaggle of things.  Such as:  a storm blew off some of the siding of the duplex that Karen and I share which  necessitated the repair, complete with two very nice young men and their loud tools and loud music;  a family reunion; long walks on the beach with Karen and the boys during my usual writing time (you get to be my age and you really aren’t  as flexible as you used to be). 

But I have been knitting.  It is a real sanity saver.  I have been mostly working on Noro caps.  Those are the ones I do with the big, floppy bodies that accomodate long hair and have a  double deep brim so it can be folded up double to  protect the ears.  Have four of them done and ready for finish work.  One Noro cap is on double points and one is ready for double points.  Am glad to have the siding done and glad to have the Noro caps ready for finish work.

I also have been able to  have, recently,  two yarn shopping junkets at Yarn for All Seasons.  Unfortunately, the yarn shop in Lincoln City, Nestucca Bay Yarns, has closed and gone to all online selling.  And that means that here in Lincoln County we have only one yarn shop left.  At any rate, had two very enjoyable and spendy trips to Yarn for All Seasons.  Every  body now tells me that I surely have enough yarn to last a lifetime.  But as far as I am concerned, that is still open for debate. 

Well, that is about all from here for today.  I have desk work to get done and then I get to grab up the knitting needles. 

Hope you all have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Well, the spring Crafts on the Coast show is done.  It was a good weekend.  Can’t say either Karen or I got rich.  But I did sell 4 caps and traded a 5th for a wonderful tote bag to carry my portable knitting things in.  I have been  using a tote with a Van Gogh iris painting for the outside decoration. But over the years of carrying it around, it has started toting not only my knitting tools, but also bottles of water, Diet Dew, boxes of Nature Valley Oats and Honey snack bars, the mail, my drinking straws, and who knows what else is in there.  I will, however, be switching all my knitting things  to the tote that I got on Saturday. 

The big question now is, “Will all the things I toted around in Van Gogh migrate to my new tote?”  I certainly hope not.  However, you can never tell.  Sometimes things take on a life of their own.  On the plus side, though, it is larger than the Van Gogh tote.  So, if I keep it to knitting things only, my yarn purchases can go into it along with tools and WIPs.  That leaves Van Gogh to see to the other items, beverages, straws, snacks and all my essential non-knitting items. 

All in all, the show was a good one. I sold caps and Karen did a lot of PR for her work.  Most of what she would have shown last weekend was still in Canyonway.  But she brought 3 really good originals to show and she worked on a piece showing her current project in progress. 

I got several caps worth of yarn from my friend Arlene who hand spins.  Originally I got enough for 3 caps, and after a sale on  Sunday, I went back and got enough so I could make 4 caps total out of her yarn. 

And it was good to see old friends who are regulars at Crafts on the Coast,  both vendors and customers.  

I have from now until October to knit like a nutso and get the caps ready for the Saturday market here in Waldport and for the November show in Yachats. 

I hope you have a great day.  The allergies that bloomed because of the goat-milk products across the room are  much better, so I am going to get a goodly amount of knitting done today. 

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Well, tomorrow evening Karen and I set up for the show.  I have been doing the finish work on 15 caps.  I think that is some kind of a record for me.  Karen is going to collect her work from the pieces she has been showing at Canyonway this month. 

I was thinking about it this morning and I really do not like doing the finish work and the tagging and the record keeping.  I prefer to do the making and the selling. 

Though I must admit that the selling has been growing on me.  In the early shows I did, I sat very quietly in a vintage rocking chair and knit while people walked past my space on their way to another vendor.  My sales technique was more along the line of “I’m sure that you don’t want to buy one of my caps.”  Over the years, I have been improving my sales technique.  While I don’t tackle potential customers as they walk by, I do wish them a very good day and point out other vendors if they ask.  And the really odd thing about the shows is that I can sell Karen’s work than I can sell my own.  Go figure!

After this show, I will be pretty much here and knitting until the inside market at the Community Center here in Waldport starts in September.  So I have lots of time to knit and I have also marked this time as one to read up on marketing issues.  It is not an easy subject for me, for some reason.  As a shopper, I walk away from anybody who tries to hard-sell me on some item.  And I have had a potential buyer walk away because of something that I said or did.  Karen’s strong point is marketing and she and I are going to be working through a marketing book that she likes.  After the show, that is.

Well, I have seven more caps to finish.  Then comes the tagging and the record keeping.  And getting the table covers washed and my own clothing spiffed up.  I think I’d better get at it.

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning. 

This time next week, the first really big show of the year will be in the past.  Karen and I are really looking forward to it. 

On the down side of things, she closed Shorebirds 2 months ago.  On the upside, she is working for the Aquarium in Newport in the gift shop.  And we both hope that she will be able to do more of her art work.  This month, she has a show at Canyonway.  It is a bookstore, gift shop, and cafe in Newport.  Her work will be there until June 1.  

 Crafts on the Coast in Yachats is next weekend.  We both get the nervous jitters before a show like this one.  Neither of us has enough work to show or if we do, it is not good enough, or the set up is not good or is too filled with items and is confusing. 

Actually all that is pre-show jitters. Once we get to setting up (Friday night) and rushing around and seeing friends we have not seen since November, the jitters go away and we have a good time. 

I have been parked in my chair knitting diligently.  I usually do about 4 caps a month.  However, For this show, I have 15 caps ready for finish work and one more that is on double points being topped off.  I think that is a record for me.  Especially since I started and put aside 5 others that simply did not work the way I thought they would. 

For instance, I tried to get 2 worsted weight yarns to work together in a multi-colored cap.  But the 2 worsted weight yarns were just too heavy to work together well.  I tried 4 different ways to make a cap out of them  — the colors were so perfect together — but quit after a slip stitch pattern failed too.  And I know better:  if you put two yarns  together, one of the yarns has to be lighter weight, DK or lace weight.  Otherwise the carries make the cap body look like an over-boiled egg with a split shell.  Not very enticing. 

Well, I better get to it.  Karen is working all week at the Aquarium and so getting all the things assembled and the table  covers washed and ready will be pretty much my week — in addition to 16 caps finished, tagged and ready to go.

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

I see that I have not written anything for a long time.  One whole month.  Why? 

A combination of things, actually.  Part of it was relief that March had done so well, with the two shows, so I curled up and knit to catch my breath and try to get ready for the show on Memorial Day weekend in Yachats.

About the time I began to unwind, we had a storm blow through and it took off the siding on Karen’s end of the duplex.  And my end sustained a bit of damage, too.  So we contacted the owner  and told him what had happened.  I wrote a letter and Karen sent photos.  (Digital cameras are really magic — but more of that in another entry.) 

It took a while, but last week the team doing the repairs showed up with tools and created a lot of noise by tearing off the siding.  And what did they, and we, find?  A far worse repair job than any of us expected.  Instead of the 4 days they thought it would take, it will take probably 2 weeks, and maybe more.  I think it was a lot like opening an attic to look for the Christmas ornaments and have 17 boxes of who-knows-what fall on your head before you can find what you were looking for.

But our landlord hired a very good team.  They are here at 8 a.m. and work until 4 p.m. with a half hour for lunch.  Then they are done for the day. 

I hunker down and knit like crazy while they are working.  The more noise they make with saws and hammers and other tools, the faster I knit.  So instead of the 10 caps I thought I would have ready for the show, I will probably have 15 and maybe even 18 or 19.  Maybe I should try to keep them around for the summer, too.  (Joke)

So there is an upside to all the disruption and disturbance a remodel job can have.  I will have a very good collection to show this month. 

Well, the guys are off today, but I am going to see if I can keep up the pace and knit my little fingers to their respective bones. 

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Well, Karen and I did the back-to-back shows and survived.  The one we did last weekend was the Yachats Annual Art show.  It has been in existence for over 40 years and so the crowds are good sized.  That is good because part of doing the show is to get people familiarized with your work and doing a lot of PR for yourself. 

Like all shows and markets it had its good things and the not-so-good things.  The big not-so-good thing about this show was that we were in a small room with 7 other vendors.  That was not so bad in and of itself.  But atmosphere in the room was den of negativity.  Out of the 8 spaces only 3 of us tried to maintain a upbeat atmosphere.  The negativity got to me so badly by the second day, Karen told me to go walk around The Commons until I felt better.  So I did.  And it did help.  It is hard to see all the wonderful work that people do and talk to them about their work be grumpy about anything. 

We met a lot of nice people — both vendors and potential customers.  One vendor, a lady, from the far end of The Commons came on a walkabout and stopped at our booth.  In the course of talking with her, we discovered that we know a lot of the same people in the knitting world of Oregon.  So we had lots to talk about.  She and her husband sell herbal teas and other herbal products and her husband is a beginning knitter.  So  we, all three, talked knitting and yarns. 

The only other knitting artisan in the show was in our room and she was one of the mega-grumpy ones. So we did not talk much about our work.  I think she saw me as competition and that is unfortunate.  We might have been able to be knitting/yarn friends. 

We had good crowds coming through.  They  looked and talked and admired all the beauty of the crafts and art works that were there.  Both Karen and I would  have loved to have had more sales, but, again, part of the job of doing the shows is getting yourself and your work out and in front of folks.  After all, the person who walks by at this show may stop and buy at the next show. 

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

I have been asked about taking out stitches that are on circular needles.  Taking out stitches in a knitted work is tricky.  When I first started knitting I would discover a mistake and say a few rude things to the project I was working on and tear the whole thing out and start again.  I really do not like starting things over.  But I was still tearing out projects that I discovered a mistake in when I started shopping at Yarn for All Seasons.

Dodie, my friend and mentor, taught me how to tink.  It is as important as learning to knit and purl.  It is easy and a skill that every knitter, in my opinion, should have.

Tinking:

Examine the piece you are working on and find the problem.  The problem is, of course, what needs to be taken out and reknit.  I usually mark the problem with a stitch marker.  If the candidate for thinking is in the same row you may want to skip the marker.  If it is several rows back, trust me, mark the place.

Put the point of the left hand needle in the stitch below the row you had been working on.  Pull the stitch onto the left hand needle and slip the upper stitch (the one on the right hand needle) off and pull the yarn so that the upper stitch is gone.  

Because the word  “purl”  comes out “lrup”  I use  the word tinking for taking out both knitting and purling. 

The one thing to remember is to get those lower row stitches back onto the left needle in the same direction they were knit or purled onto the right needle.  Otherwise, when you get to replacing the stitches, they are difficult to re-knit or re-purl.   And those re-knit/re-purled stitches  are visible in the finished work.  I have done that frequently in my early knitting days and have ended up taking  out work that I wanted to avoid taking out by the tinking.  Some of my more frustrating knitting moments. 

So that is tinking.  I work on circular needles, as I have said before, and switch to double point needles for topping off.  I have tinked on the double points, too.  And the method is the same as on the circular. 

Until I learned to tink, I was seriously considering crocheting my caps because crochet is so easy to pull out and redo.  But thanks to Dodie, I can now tink my projects, if necessary, as well as I can knit  or purl them in the first place. 

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

English is a great language.  It takes a little bit from here or from there and makes new words.  Rather like moss growing on a stone.  For instance the word alcoholic is, as everyone knows, the word for a person who drinks too much alcohol.  Well, our English took that word and incorporated the end “-holic” into the language.  And now we can have all sorts of -holics.  I have known people who were sugarholics, gismoholics and on and on.  I have a cousin who is a toolholic.  My father was an odds-and-endsholic.  I swear the man never threw a thing away.   My younger brother says he does not have a -holic problem, but I think he may be kidding himself.  You should see his garage. 

Me?  I’d like to say that I don’t have any -holics, but I can’t and continue to consider myself an honorable person. 

I am a bookaholic and a yarnaholic.  (I’m sure I have more -holics, but will not discuss any now, thank you very much.)

When I was a kid I was at least a year younger than the other kids in the neighborhood.  They all went to school and learned to read.  I was the only one I knew who could not read.  My mother got me a Dick and Jane book and I learned to read “Run, Dick, run.”  “See funny Jane.”  “Come, Spot, come.”   It really wasn’t  all that much, but I could read.  The next step was to get a library card and I was reading everything I could find — in the way of horse stories and dog stories. Later I advanced to Sue Barton, Student Nurse, and followed her career until she got into administration stories. 

The yarnaholic time of my life started many, many years later.  When I started knitting caps, I got yarn from BiMart and some plastic (and bent) knitting needles from my mother.  I would make one cap at a time and even do the finish work before I cast on a new cap. 

Then I went into the yarn store that was in the Mission-Mill Museum complex and discovered the book on knitted tams.  I got it.  And I got yarn for a simple cap for a good friend of mine.  It was almost her  birthday. While I was there, I found some really gorgeous yarn in a rusty colored brown.  I had no idea what to do with it, but like the book, it called out to me.  So I took it home too.  The next trip to the yarn store at the Mission-Mill  netted me some metal straight needles, size 8, and enough yarn to make caps for several family members for Christmas. 

Thus  a yarnaholic was born.  What I did not realize at the time I gave into my yarnaholism was that it also gave me a great opportunity to feed my bookaholism.  You would not believe the number of books that are out there to teach you the ultimate in knitting techniques.  I was on cloud-9.  I could go into one store and feed both my -holics at once. 

What I think is that everybody has a -holic or two.  I am delighted with mine.  I hope you are with yours, too.

Happy knitting.   Granny LJ

Good morning.

I have not lost much weight at Weight Watchers since I started.  But I have found a new friend.  She came to the meeting one Thursday in a hand knit cap.  I am always interested in caps when I see them, so I took myself by the hand and walked across the room and asked if she had made the cap.  She had not made it, but was learning to knit. 

A week or so later, she was wearing a beautiful off-white cap in a simple lace pattern.  I asked her again, and she said, yes she had made the cap.  After the meeting we talked a little more about knitting.  She is a new knitter and like a lot of new knitters has several projects going.  She told me that she wanted to do a cap like the off-white but a bit smaller for her daughter.  I suggested she cast on 92 stitches instead of the more than 100 stitches the pattern called for.  We talked for a little bit longer about knitting. 

Then, I found out about the Spin-In.  At the next meeting I asked if she would like to go.  She said she would. 

So, last Saturday, off we went to  Newport and the Spin-In. My plan was to introduce my new friend to some old friends and give her a chance to see another side of things.  I was NOT going to get any yarn.  I was going to look and  see if  next year’s Spin-In might be a venue for selling my caps.  And I was NOT going to get any yarn. 

We got to the Spin-In about 1 p.m. and there were 2 or 3 big circles of  with 10 to 20 spinners per circle.  Around the edge of the room were the vendors.  The first person I saw was Elsie, a spinner I know from a couple of summers ago when Karen and I did the Saturday Market in Newport.  I introduced Elise to my new friend and we looked briefly at the rovings she had in her space.  A couple spaces to the left were Arlene and Lyle, my friends from Crafts on the Coast.  I introduced her to them.  Arlene was spinning and Lyle was selling his small area rugs.   

My friend and I visited a bit with Lyle and Arlene and then wandered off to look at the other spaces.  About that time, the Spin-In organizers drew a number for a door prize.  Arlene won a beautiful skein of handspun, undyed Shetland.  The color is hard to define.  Sort of a white with strands of gray and brown through it.  It is gorgeous.  I promised Arlene I would have it done up by Crafts On the Coast in May. 

As my friend and I wandered around the edge of the room, I found a space with some of the most wonderful, incredible varigated lavender, purple, red and blue yarn.  It was so soft that I wanted to sped the rest of the day rubbing it against my cheek. But I bought some instead.   We managed to get through the rest of the vendor area without finding any more things that I could not live without. 

We saw Kristy at the sign-in table and I introduced her to my friend and we talked a minute.  Kristy is going to be at Winterfest next weekend.  Told her that I had one skein of the yarn I got from her in January done up and would be showing it in the February show. 

My friend and I started toward the door then.  I think she was a little overwhelmed by it all.  I know I was.  And then I got hooked in again.  By the door to the parking lot was a booth that displayed the most incredible lavender/burgundy colored yarn.  It is just about 20 yards shy of the 200 yards needed to make a cap. I tried to talk myself out of getting it, and lost the argument.  So when I left the Spin-In I was possessed with the makings for 3 great caps. 

My friend was a bit more provident than I was and when we left the parking lot I suggested that we stop at Yarn for All Seasons on our way home.  I had spent all my cash, but I wanted to introduce my friend to that shop  ….    Well, more about that stop tomorrow.

Good morning.

I love doing the shows and markets.  Besides the obvious perk of being able to show my work and earn some money for new yarn, I get to meet people and can talk knitting with lots of them.

I met a lady at the show this month.  She is from Portland.  She is a beginning knitter.  She has made some socks and is starting to learn how to do a cap.  We swapped knitting histories.  She is taking classes and I, of course, started by looking at pictures in a Seventeen magazine.  I have taken a class and made a tiny sock for a person with only 1 toe.  Not very successful, obviously.

In her cap making class, the instructor was having her work on double point needles on about 72 stitches and she could not see how a cap on 72 stitches would fit an adult head.  I told her how I make caps, and the stitch counts and the needle size and switching to double points for top off. 

I did not want to say crappy things about a knitting teacher I did not know and had no idea what her goals for the students were.  So I launched my little monolog  about the several ways there are to knit:  Continental, English, Near East, Elizabeth Zimmerman, and all the rest of us. 

With the exception of my  German-Swiss aunt shrieking at me over my first project and some quiet and good instruction and encouragement from my friend Dodie, I am really pretty much self taught.  And what that means is  that this way IS my way.  And I told this very nice beginner to do it her way.  I told her about the pattern I saw that started by casting on 1 stitch on one double pointed needle and then increasing until the  top was on 4 double points and then working down to the ribbing at  the brim.

I have no idea why some patterns are written in this complicated way.    I know that I have seen some cap pictures that made the cap look like it was on steroids.  I have seen cap patterns where you start on straight needles and work back and forth with the ribbing on one end of the needle and the top off at the other end of the needle.  In addition, this format leaves that seam up the back of the cap. 

However, I told the woman at the show that there is no wrong way to make a cap.  You simply find the way that works for you and knit and enjoy.  

Now, if any one out there reading this knows how to do an SSK, I would love some instruction …

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ