Blog

• March 25, 2019 Are you open to the unexpected?
  

  Years ago I read an article in Gourmet Magazine by a woman who had planned a dining trip around Europe.  She scoped out all the top restaurants and booked hotels accordingly.  For months before the trip, she pored over the menus, deciding what she would order, focusing on the specialties of each area and each chef to ensure the optimal experience at every restaurant and throughout her trip

  After the trip, at home, writing about the experience, she realized that while more

• March 18, 2019 Community - be part of it
  

  This past weekend I came across an interesting article by Jenny Anderson.   She talked about her brother who had given up the glamour of life in New York City and settled his family in boring small town suburbia.  What was this drab life of little league and kid parties, compared with the exciting urban world of museums, galleries, and theater?  She admittedly looked down on his choices  a bit.  At least until her brother's struggle and eventual death from cancer.

  What she found was that her brother had thrived in a community that he had built for himself and his family. He had built his community literally, through his work as an architect, and figuratively, through his involvement with his more

• March 14, 2019 Knightshift Knitalong
  

  Nightshift has taken the knitting community by storm.  Designed by the uber-adorable Andrea Mowry, Nightshift is a large, asymmetrical triangular shawl that uses slip stitches to produce a fabric that plays colors against one another to wonderful effect. With a beautiful  surprise on every row, Nightshift is fun and interesting to knit without being overly challenging -- a lot of bang for your more

• March 11, 2019 6 Things to know about cotton yarn
  

  Here comes Spring, and with it the plant-based fibers so many of us love to hate.  Yesterday in the shop, Bonnie, a ten-year old new knitter, was practicing her knitting.  Her stitches were perfect, but she was struggling against her yarn. It was dishcloth cotton, which is no treat to use.  She was valiant, and persevered, but you could tell it wasn't much fun.  My goal, of course, is to create a hoard of dedicated new knitters -- I couldn't possibly sit by and watch this lovely child get frustrated and lose interest in knitting simply because she was fighting with her materials.  So I swapped her dishcloth cotton out for a soft, more loosely spun cotton.  After a couple of rows, she looked up and proclaimed it to be much easier now! 

  That's because there's cotton, and then there's cotton.  I wrote a post about cotton several years ago which helps explain what I mean. 

  Cotton yarn is different from wool, that's for sure, and cotton sometimes more