Today, the last day of January 2010, is another snowy day. Quite beautiful really when the snow falls lightly and softens all the hard edges of the landscape. I love days like today. It is especially bright outside surrounded by white. This Christmas I received this wonderful book by Vivian Swift.

The inside jacket states, “A charming, illustrated celebration of puttering, doodling, daydreaming, and settling down after years on the road,” and this is indeed what it is. This book celebrates the simplicity of all that surrounds us from suit cases to the night sky. I love Swift’s recognition of beauty in the day-to-day.

Our recent visitor, Mary Scott Huff

shared her design notebook with us, a moleskin journal where all her designs, thoughts and bits of inspiration are stored. I happened to run to the book store for a gift this week and spotted an entire section of Moleskin journals near the check out counter. Too tempting to pass up, I grabbed two… one is a traditional unlined journal and the other has graph paper, which is perfect for designing stranded knitting patterns.
Inspiration began during lunch Friday, with journal opened, pencil at the ready and a book of Turkish patterns to knit that I’ve had for years. The fun began when I opened the book and realized that it was (oops) upside down. The “Hook” pattern suddenly turned into the wave and the “Kilim” when turned sideways became a mountain. Suddenly, my husband’s hat design took on a new life.

Inspiration takes form when small bits of preparation are in place. Find your inspiration wherever you will and enjoy the process.

 

Miss Mary Scott Huff arrived mid-day Friday during a ferocious blizzard.

The shop and class attendees appreciated the blizzard-like activities Mary brought our way with her energy and wit. She had an uncanny ability to make everyone a bit wacky all weekend.

She also made us hug and stretch and ENJOY our knitting!

And now we stretch. Oh, that feels so good!

And we hug some more…

A more dedicated group of Mad Hatters and Selbuvotters would be hard to find, even in the outer Selbu region of Norway.
We designed and knit.

We laughed and knit and worked really hard.

There was always time for a smile, especially from new friends.

We stomped our feet (some to keep from freezing during the storm) but none of that phased our new best friend from Portland, Miss Mary Scott Huff. In fact, she was game to put on my hundred year old boots so as not to get lost in the drifts. And the best part, she liked the snow and all the Wild Purls knitters and WE LOVED HER!

If you missed the festivities, don’t worry, we can’t live without her and we will invite her back soon. And now that we can design, we may never look at a snowflake quite the same. They really are beautiful, even when we have to go shovel our way to the mailbox.

 

We are all looking forward to the arrival of Mary Scott Huff this Friday and Saturday, January 22nd and 23rd. Anyone who juggles yarn,

eats yarn

or writes beautiful books,

piques the interest of every knitter.

I don’t know about you but I have always had a secret thought that if we could only eat yarn, we wouldn’t have to stop knitting to fix dinner. I am so excited to meet Mary!

 

A colonnade is a characteristic in the buildings of Classical architecture, and consists of a row of vertical columns joined horizontally by an entablature, or a series of bands and moldings that sat above it, resting upon the column capitals. These bands can be highly decorated with relief sculpture.

Often, a classical building consisted of several colonnades, several rows deep. In Classical architecture, the front row or rows is known as the portico, and the surrounding colonnades (around the sides and back) are known as the peristyle.

I always wonder the purpose or thought behind titles. After discovering the true meaning of “colonnade”, it’s obvious why the designer, Stephen West of Westknits, chose this word to title his popular fall shawl/scarf on knitty.com. The series of columns create a colonnade but there is a horizontal joining each of the columns. These horizontals helped me “see” the pattern more easily, allowing mistakes to be seen and fixed more easily.

This is an easy pattern, but tricky at the same time. The knitter must keep careful track of the yo2 for they come at different places on each row, including before and after the k2tog. I suppose this is just everyday stuff for the average lace knitter, but since I am just a regular knitter, these tricky instructions are new to me.

I decided to offer this class at Wild Purls (in March), 1) because the pattern intrigued me in the different manners it could be worn,(not a granny shawl) 2) I liked that it only used 3 skeins of my favorite yarn, Manos del Uraguay (I could buy my fave without blowing my Christmas gift cards) and 3) that it introduced lace knitting in a way that could be easily knit by an adventurous knitter. And since that’s kind of how I feel about my knitting most of the time, I thought there might be others (like in Lost) like me out there, waiting to discover another world on the same knitting island. Wow, I really digressed.