Hi All,
For some reason, I always like to create a separate blog for my trips, rather than letting the entries get buried inside my main blog. So for the next few weeks, check out our Europe Travel Blog for news of what's going on.
That's all I have time to write now because I would like to clean my house before I leave. I just hate coming home to a mess.
Donna
Archives
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Well, after confessing to being bored with knitting yesterday, today I'm feeling pretty excited about two fiber festivals.
This weekend is the Estes Park Wool Market in Estes Park, Coloardo, just a 30 minute drive from my house. I was not planning to go this year, but a few weeks ago I got an email from Catherine Hollingsworth from the Alaska State Yarn Council, saying that she was planning to be in Colorado for the Wool Market and asking if I'd like to get together. I met Catherine last year when she invited me to teach at the annual YarnExpo even in Anchorage for the launch of Arctic Lace. We haven't seen each other since, and haven't been able to talk much either, so it will be fun to see Catherine here and catch up. My editor from Nomad Press, Deb Robson, will also be meeting up with us for some browsing and then we'll be heading out to an Italian restaurant for dinner.
Deb also told me that Joanne Seiff will be at Estes Park, working on her book, Fiber Gathering, that will be published by Potter Craft in Spring 2009. I'll be tech editing that book, so it'll be fun to meet Joanne while she's working on it. Joanne's husband is taking the photos for the book, so I'm trying to talk Dom into coming up to Estes for the day so they can swap notes, since Dom took most of the photos for Arctic Lace.
At the end of June, I'll be teaching an Arctic Lace knitting class at Woolfest in the UK. I am going to try to not buy anything at Estes Park so I can save up for spending money at Woolfest. But with the pound being over two dollars at the moment, I'll have to pinch my pennies while I'm in England. I don't want to run out of food money! After Woolfest, I'll be heading down to London for a few days of sight seeing, and then to Lithuania where I'll be doing some preliminary research for one of the books I mentioned yesterday, the one that is farthest from being complete, the one that is just an outline and an idea at this point.
So, I hope for my love of knitting to be rekindled at these two festivals. But if it's not, I'll still work on my books-in-progress. I've been itching to do some spinning, dyeing, and crocheting lately, so I still have plenty of fiber interests to keep me going. I usually run out of steam on my obsessions after five or ten years, so maybe it's time to take a break from knitting and spend some time with some other fiber arts techniques....
This weekend is the Estes Park Wool Market in Estes Park, Coloardo, just a 30 minute drive from my house. I was not planning to go this year, but a few weeks ago I got an email from Catherine Hollingsworth from the Alaska State Yarn Council, saying that she was planning to be in Colorado for the Wool Market and asking if I'd like to get together. I met Catherine last year when she invited me to teach at the annual YarnExpo even in Anchorage for the launch of Arctic Lace. We haven't seen each other since, and haven't been able to talk much either, so it will be fun to see Catherine here and catch up. My editor from Nomad Press, Deb Robson, will also be meeting up with us for some browsing and then we'll be heading out to an Italian restaurant for dinner.
Deb also told me that Joanne Seiff will be at Estes Park, working on her book, Fiber Gathering, that will be published by Potter Craft in Spring 2009. I'll be tech editing that book, so it'll be fun to meet Joanne while she's working on it. Joanne's husband is taking the photos for the book, so I'm trying to talk Dom into coming up to Estes for the day so they can swap notes, since Dom took most of the photos for Arctic Lace.
At the end of June, I'll be teaching an Arctic Lace knitting class at Woolfest in the UK. I am going to try to not buy anything at Estes Park so I can save up for spending money at Woolfest. But with the pound being over two dollars at the moment, I'll have to pinch my pennies while I'm in England. I don't want to run out of food money! After Woolfest, I'll be heading down to London for a few days of sight seeing, and then to Lithuania where I'll be doing some preliminary research for one of the books I mentioned yesterday, the one that is farthest from being complete, the one that is just an outline and an idea at this point.
So, I hope for my love of knitting to be rekindled at these two festivals. But if it's not, I'll still work on my books-in-progress. I've been itching to do some spinning, dyeing, and crocheting lately, so I still have plenty of fiber interests to keep me going. I usually run out of steam on my obsessions after five or ten years, so maybe it's time to take a break from knitting and spend some time with some other fiber arts techniques....
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
I hate to admit this, but I am bored with knitting.
I hope it's just a temporary glitch, because I have six knitting books in various stages of completeness, at least twice that many personal UFOs all over my house, and a knitting 'zine to produce after my trip to Europe, and I have to keep my Knitting for Change blog updated every two months (I am working on a project for June that I hope I can get done before the trip).
I think I'm just overloaded from knitting-related work, which makes knitting for fun something that does not fit into my schedule much any more. I don't even have time to make most of the projects for my own books, and then when the books come back to me for editing and proof reading from my publishers, I'm not really in the mood to look at them and I get all stressed out instead of enjoying the process. Sigh.
I guess I am just trying to do way too much at once, something I remember warning another author about a while back when I was tech editing two books for her in one year. The problem is, we all need to make a living so I have to decide whether I'd like to spend a lot of time working on knitting books (both my own and those I tech edit) or less time on computer tech writing (which I hate, especially when it requires sitting in a cubicle) to make money. I haven't had to do any computer tech writing in tow years and I hate to think of going back to it.
I don't want to quit knitting, but the projects I find that I want to work on more artisan projects, and do my own spinning and dyeing, rather than working on projects for publication using commercial yarns, so they're not really money-making projects.
So there you have it. I'm burned out, I guess. Sunday, when I should have been working because I have some huge deadlines looming.... I took the day off and made strawberry-rhubarb jam. It was completely relaxing, just like knitting used to be fore me. I'm so burned out on knitting, that I don't even think I'm going to take a project with me on that long flight to England, even though I have a couple of sweaters on the needles that could use the attention.
OK readers, any advice for this burned-out knitter?
I hope it's just a temporary glitch, because I have six knitting books in various stages of completeness, at least twice that many personal UFOs all over my house, and a knitting 'zine to produce after my trip to Europe, and I have to keep my Knitting for Change blog updated every two months (I am working on a project for June that I hope I can get done before the trip).
I think I'm just overloaded from knitting-related work, which makes knitting for fun something that does not fit into my schedule much any more. I don't even have time to make most of the projects for my own books, and then when the books come back to me for editing and proof reading from my publishers, I'm not really in the mood to look at them and I get all stressed out instead of enjoying the process. Sigh.
I guess I am just trying to do way too much at once, something I remember warning another author about a while back when I was tech editing two books for her in one year. The problem is, we all need to make a living so I have to decide whether I'd like to spend a lot of time working on knitting books (both my own and those I tech edit) or less time on computer tech writing (which I hate, especially when it requires sitting in a cubicle) to make money. I haven't had to do any computer tech writing in tow years and I hate to think of going back to it.
I don't want to quit knitting, but the projects I find that I want to work on more artisan projects, and do my own spinning and dyeing, rather than working on projects for publication using commercial yarns, so they're not really money-making projects.
So there you have it. I'm burned out, I guess. Sunday, when I should have been working because I have some huge deadlines looming.... I took the day off and made strawberry-rhubarb jam. It was completely relaxing, just like knitting used to be fore me. I'm so burned out on knitting, that I don't even think I'm going to take a project with me on that long flight to England, even though I have a couple of sweaters on the needles that could use the attention.
OK readers, any advice for this burned-out knitter?
Thursday, June 07, 2007
I am having insomnia again lately, I hope just because I'm really busy right now and sort of anxious about my upcoming trip to Europe and not because I'm getting depressed again, so I decided to google myself because I ran out of other things to do.... and I found this lovely version of the Arctic Diamonds Stole from the Interweave Knits Winter 2006 issue, which is a variation of the Parka Trim Stole from Arctic Lace.
This stole was knitted by blogger Sigga Sif in Iceland from rndnrnd we knit. Sigga made it in March during a trip, when she needed a travel project.
Here are a few pictures from her blog, that show the process of blocking: before, during, and after.
Here's what Sigga wrote about blocking the stole, "Well, yesterday evening I unpinned my new stole and I had an almost religious experience. It's so freaking beautiful I can't believe it! ... it's one of the very few patterns that I can imagine myself knitting more than once."
Wow, what a reaction! Thanks, Sigga, for sharing these pictures and the story on your blog; your stole is beautiful. Seeing how people interpret and enjoy my designs is even more rewarding than winning awards!
Read more about Sigga's experience knitting the stole here.
This stole was knitted by blogger Sigga Sif in Iceland from rndnrnd we knit. Sigga made it in March during a trip, when she needed a travel project.
Here are a few pictures from her blog, that show the process of blocking: before, during, and after.
Here's what Sigga wrote about blocking the stole, "Well, yesterday evening I unpinned my new stole and I had an almost religious experience. It's so freaking beautiful I can't believe it! ... it's one of the very few patterns that I can imagine myself knitting more than once."
Wow, what a reaction! Thanks, Sigga, for sharing these pictures and the story on your blog; your stole is beautiful. Seeing how people interpret and enjoy my designs is even more rewarding than winning awards!
Read more about Sigga's experience knitting the stole here.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Arctic Lace has won the ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Silver Award in the crafts & hobbies category and it's the only knitting book that received an award this year! The Bronze award in this category went to Spinning in the Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, also published by Nomad Press, so my publisher won for 2 out of the 4 books that recieved awards in the crafts & hobbies category. Congratulaions Deb!
I want to say thank you to Sigrun Robertson and all of the Oomingmak Co-op knitters I met in Alaska, especially Fran, Joyce, and Eliza, who took so much time to talk to me during my research trip. I dedicated the book to all of the co-op's knitters and I am so glad that they so many people appreciate their work and are learning about their unique contribution to the knitting universe as well as the ways they are using knitting to maintain their subsistence lifestyle.
