Memorial Day

28 Monday May 2007

Posted by in Thoughts

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I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask,
“Mother, what was war?”
[Eve Merriam]

Samuel C. MarvelSammy Marvel was killed July of 1864 during the battle of Atlanta. His little brother, a drummer boy, marched on to the sea with Sherman’s army and lived to be an old man. Sammy’s uncle and cousins fought in the same battle—in the Confederate Army.

All Sammy’s mother had left of her son was this fading photo, his school books and a button off of his uniform. For the rest of her life, she sat by a window looking up the road—waiting for him to come home.

I have nothing profound to say about war except that it amazes me that people cannot see how a conflict could have been avoided until many years after it is over and the damage is done. What ever happened to the concept of learning from past mistakes?

Memories

27 Sunday May 2007

Posted by in Thoughts, Writing

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Memory is a child walking along a seashore.
You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up
and store away among its treasured things.
[Pierce Harris]

This is a very short piece I composed for a writer’s group I belong to. Sometimes the smallest thing becomes one of our most enduring memories.

Small World
by Katherine Misegades

“There’s a little red barn down on a farm in Indiana . . . .” The volume on the radio was turned very low but the tune caught my attention so I hurried toward it. I bent close to the speaker as a commercial announced a sale at the hardware store on Calhoun Street. Then familiar Hoosier voices started their early morning banter about tractors and farm prices. It was 1966 and I was a thousand miles from home working in a Navy hospital. I was so homesick that it was everything I could do not to cry.

“That song. Those are the Red Birds—a singing group in my home town,” I said to the corpsman who was charting at the desk and looking at me as though I’d departed from my senses.

“That station only comes in at night,” he said. “I like it so I always listen to it when I’m on duty.”

“It is a thousand miles away,” I marveled. “I wonder how the signal comes so far?”

I’d joined the Navy Nurse Corps, anxious to see the world that lay beyond flat corn fields and the dull routine at home. I wanted to go someplace where the winters were warmer and life was moving at a faster pace. I’d found it. The conflict in Vietnam had picked up and our hospital wards were overflowing with wounded Marines. It was almost more than our limited facilities, supplies and staff could handle. In the midst of it all, I desperately missed the place I’d been so glad to leave. After that morning, I tuned my radio to that station often. It was almost twenty years before I moved back home but I could get a signal every place I went.

“There’s a little red barn down on a farm in Indiana . . . .” I was waiting for the elevator in an office building in the center of my hometown. I turned and walked toward the sound. It was in a cubical on a desk next to a lady who gave me a jolly smile. It was 1991 and I was working as a contract artist in a corporate communications department.

“Those are the Red Birds,” I said, then I told her how they’d helped me cope with homesickness through so many years in so many places.

“I’m a Red Bird,” she said. “We have been singing together since the 1950s.” Then she stood and hugged me. I was glad to be home again.

Violets

26 Saturday May 2007

Posted by in Thoughts

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My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made
while learning to see things from the plant’s point of view.
[H. Fred Ale]

VioletsIf there was an SPCA for house plants, they would come and collect mine. This slightly blurry photo is my effort to stave off a visit if such an organization exists. Just when I thought my violet was on its last stems, it rallied and started to bloom. I am amazed. It must be very hardy.

Like most people, there are things I do well, and there are things I don’t do well. My cooking can be described as merely adequate. Although I admire beautiful yards and gardens, my efforts only produce results that keep the city from giving me a weed citation. If anyone ever heard me sing, they would pay me not to. However my hardy little violet gives me hope so I planted my window boxes with flowers and bought a new cookbook. I think I’ll keep on singing only in my heart.

Colwell Colour

16 Wednesday May 2007

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Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form,
can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
[Oscar Wilde]

Colwell Colour

We’ve launched another new website—Colwell Industries, Inc. produces exciting items that are familiar to most folks. Have you ever picked up a paint chip strip to take home and consider when you are buying paint? Colwell makes those, and many other related items. The image above is one of the subpages on their new site. In the coming weeks, the site will grow. That is one of the best features of publishing a website. Items can be added, updated, revised unlike a paper publication. A website is never cast in stone.

If you love color, you will also really enjoy Erika Woelfel’s blog, TRENDWARRIORS™—a companion site to Colwell Color. Erika travels the world for Colwell. I’d call that a dream job.

QuantumHeart Life Coaching

15 Tuesday May 2007

Posted by in Learning to Blog, Review

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The big secret in life is that there is no big secret.
Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.
[Oprah Winfrey]

QuantumHeart Life Coaching

I’ve been having such fun working. This is a new client website that will grow page by page as we get the content in place. This represents a new (to me) direction in producing websites.

When I produce websites, I usually build them from scratch—design, code, images, text, etc. That works well for large sites and ones that can be maintained by a technical person. It also gives me control over how the site plays and looks in a web browser. However, there are many people who want small websites that they can maintain themselves without knowing lots of tech stuff. The QuantumHeart Life Coaching site is my first adventure into that kind of site design and production.

Many web site providers offer an interface where their customers can build their own site online. In this instance, the provider is Web.com and their interface is called SiteBuilder. They have over 100 templates that a person can use as is, or modify to a great extent. We started with a basic template and changed all of the images and colors. My client (life coach Cheryl Gardiner) and I have worked together on this so she could learn how to use the interface as we produced the site. When we have it all finished including a matching blog, she will have the skills to keep the site updated on her own.

Patricia’s Scarf–2

05 Saturday May 2007

Posted by in Free Pattern, Knitting

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I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things…
I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
[Leo F. Buscaglia]

Scarf photo

Scarf photo 2

Here it is—finished. The first part of this project is at this LINK (two posts ago).

I was a busy bee this week trying to get this done. On Thursday, I took my friend to the hospital at 6:30 a.m. for outpatient surgery. I was working down the point by the time she was in recovery, and did the last decrease as the nurse said we could go home.

The first post for this project ended with the pattern for the neck shaping. The right tail has 4 increases that are a mirror image of the ones shown on the left-tail chart.

The first chart below starts on a right-side row—read from right to left. To create the join at the back of the neck, work in pattern across the right long tail, cast on 25 stitches, then continue on across the left tail.

On the wrong side, follow the chart from left to right, purling the stitches above the 25 cast on stitches. This row finishes the trees on the long tails.

The second chart below (also read from bottom to top) shows the shaping of the back collar. Work two decreases on each right-side row—inside the border texture stitches on each side. The trees are centered on the 13th stitch of the 25 stitches that were cast on for the back of the neck. It might help to use a stitch marker.

The third chart (read from bottom to top) continues on to show the rest of the collar. The point is formed with 3-stitch decreases once there are only border stitches left. These two collar charts are divided only because I was putting them on the internet and needed to keep the image sizes small.

Select this LINK to download a printable PDF file of this pattern.

JOIN at BACK of NECK

Scarf 5

SHAPING the BACK COLLAR

Scarf 6

FINISHING the BACK COLLAR

Scarf 7

Tech Note

05 Saturday May 2007

Posted by in Knitting

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Knitter, Will Cronk, emailed the following after he bought a copy of my new pattern book, …and a time to knit stockings on CD:

I just received your book and it says to open your browser, which for me is internet explorer. I opened it and then the directions say to click on file. Well, Windows XP Pro udated version of the browser doesn’t have a “File” in any of the drop downs. I am not sure if you are able to do this anymore.

I replied with several suggestions and he wrote back with this successful resolution to the browser challenge:

Just in case others write to you about the same problem, in Internet Explorer XP Pro that has the latest updates, you can click on tools at the right side of the screen and select menu bar. That is where File – Edit – View – Favorites – Tools – Help is listed on the menu bar. Click File and then Open and select file, “a time to knit”.

I wanted to share this in case someone else has encountered the same technical challenge.

Starting Points

04 Friday May 2007

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The healing that can grow out of the simple act of telling our stories
is often quite remarkable.
[Susan Wittig Albert]

Starting PointsAs a member of the Story Circle Network, I volunteered to do the graphic design, layout and cover for this book. I’m so excited to see it finished. This book can be ordered in two ways from www.lulu.com. One version can be downloaded as a PDF file so that you can print it out on your own printer. I like this since it can be hole punched and put into a notebook. The other version is printed with a full-color cover and is spiral bound. This company did a really nice job reproducing the cover. This book is a weekly topic guide that is described on Lulu as follows:

If you’re a woman who writes or a woman who would like to write, if you’ve ever journalled just for yourself or written family history for your descendants, if you long to tell your own story to your family and friends or to the world, this book will help you get started and keep writing each and every week for a whole year. These writing prompts, by best-selling author and founder of Story Circle Network, Susan Wittig Albert, bring you a wealth of wisdom from famous women and starting points to help you take those wise words and write your own stories and your own wisdom.

Patricia’s Scarf

28 Saturday Apr 2007

Posted by in Knitting

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Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
[Oliver Wendell Holmes]

Scarf 1Patricia sat across the table from me at the Dayton Knitting Guild retreat last week. As we worked on our knitted quilt blocks she said, “I saw a scarf that I’d like to knit. Do you think you could work it into a pattern?” She described it to me adding that she liked the fact that she could wear it to keep her shoulders warm. This image fits her description. The pointed part hangs down the back.

Over the past week, I’ve been working out a pattern for her and decided I’d share it with everyone as it was a work in progress. I’m using a light DK/heavy sport-weight yarn and US size 3 needles (I’m using circular so I have room to knit the two long tails side by side).

GENERAL CONSTRUCTION—The scarf starts at the bottom front. The two long tails are worked up to the neck ending with 4 mirrored increases on each side to shape the neck slightly. Then back-of-neck stitches are cast on and the two tails are joined to form the basis of the back collar. Decreases on each side shape the back.

Actually, this is a blank canvas for a knitter’s creativity. The back could be squared off like a sailor’s collar. The long pieces can be any width or length a person desires. The pattern could be a cable, lace, texture or multicolored. I chose a simple texture pattern to test the idea, and will include the charts I’m using as I knit. Right now, I have the long pieces about half done. I’ll post photos and a printable PDF pattern of it when it is finished. Meanwhile, the following will get you started if you’d like to knit along.

BOTTOM of LONG TAIL

Scarf 2

READING the CHART:

  • Start at lower, right and read back and forth as you knit back and forth.
  • The half-circles are cast-on stitches. Cast on 35 sts.
  • The empty squares are knit sts on the right side and purl sts on the wrong side. Purl 35 sts on the first row.
  • The edge stitch is slipped at the beginning of each row to form a tidy chain edge.
  • The squares with the dots are purl sts on the right side and knit sts on the wrong side. This version creates a two-row seed stitch.

PATTERN REPEAT for LONG TAIL

Scarf 3

READING the CHART:

  • This chart is repeated lengthwise until the long tail is about 3 inches short of the desired length.
  • Continue knitting back and forth, reading the chart the same as the first chart.
  • The right side of the knitting will look similar to the chart.

PATTERN for NECK SHAPING

Scarf 4

READING the CHART:

  • This chart shows the shaping for the left long tail. The shaping for the right long tail is a mirror image of this set of increases.
  • Continue knitting back and forth, reading the chart the same as the first chart.
  • The little symbol shows that the increase is worked in the first stitch in from the border.
  • Ignore (skip over) the blank space between the border and the rest of the chart. It just allows a place to show the increases but still keeps the border in pattern.

As soon as I start working on the back collar and see how the decreases look, I’ll post the rest of the pattern.

Ohio Star

25 Wednesday Apr 2007

Posted by in Thoughts

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If I knit fast enough, does it count as aerobic exercise?
[Author Unknown]

Ohio StarMy friend Jane from Austin, Texas says that Suzanne Atkinson from Ontario is North America’s best kept knitting secret. Suzanne led us through knitting a quilt block (photo, left), then inserting it into Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Surprise Jacket pattern. That was Friday evening and all day Saturday at the Dayton Knitting Guild retreat. On Sunday morning, Suzanne taught a cable pattern on a seaman’s scarf. Suzanne has all of the traits of a good teacher that bring out the best in her students. She is gracious, knowledgable, patient, positive, encouraging….

In my mind, the retreat was a success on so many levels. Member shops offered a delicious supply of goodies at the yarn market. I always go thinking I’ll not spend my money. I always cave in. The Bergamo Center’s buffet was also delicious. The weather was so perfect that it atoned for the past six months of winter. Best of all, the fellowship of knitters wrapped each other in warm sisterhood. I drove home feeling strengthened, enlightened, encouraged, and loved.