About a decade or so ago, my friend Carol and I “rescued” some hostas and daylilies from a house in the northern Virginia DC suburbs that was about to be bull-dozed for a mini-mansion. Carol, by the way, is a master at getting “free” plants….spotting places that are about to be trashed, and getting permission to salvage the plants. We split the proceeds of the day’s digging, and I planted some at my house in Arlington, and she planted some at her house in Falls Church.

Then we moved, twice (first to Friday Harbor, Wash., and then to Camden, Maine), but Carol stayed put. She recently moved to a new house, and somewhere in the process lifted and divided her hostas and daylilies…the ones we had rescued. She offered to send me some! They came lovingly wrapped, and tagged as to what was what, in damp newspaper and plastic bags, in about late November. Carol suggested planting out, except that it was already frozen outside up here in Maine. So the plants spent the winter the subjects of benign neglect in our garage.

This week, we got our FIRST lily!

And the hostas are doing well, too……small, but growing (as in not dead! hooray!)…. When my dear father-in-law passed away, he had two garden “statues.” One was a girl with an umbrella that he said always reminded him of his daughter, and the St. Francis bird bath. When we were dividing up his home after he died four years or so ago, Faire got the girl, and we got St. Francis. I was particularly thrilled because my birthday is on the feast day of St. Francis, I love his poem, and I relate to anyone who talks to animals. So I decided to create a little hosta garden around St. Francis, which is the photo at the top.

Isn’t it wonderful? Good friends, good family, quilterly plants, all in one shady spot!

Well DRAT! Had a nice post almost DONE, and there was a thunderstorm and the power went out before I could hit save…so, trying again.

Quilting Fitzy commented on the last post:
I am SO struggling to learn to knit socks! I guess I need to go to a “real” yarn shop for some instruction! (And the appropriate yarn might help!)

I did go the double pointed needle way, and am into the heel, but am suffering BIG TIME from mass confusion.

Did you find this book was basic enough for a beginner? I’ve knit for years, but only do plain ol’ knit and purl and the VERY simple stuff!

(and of course blogger put her as “no reply” so I can only reply here….hope this helps others, too)

Both books…Bush and Bordi…will assume that you know how to knit, purl, cast on a couple of ways, cast off, increase, decrease, pick up stitches, do cables and yarn-overs and read a charted pattern. If you can do those, no matter how slowly or awkwardly, you can do the patterns in these books.

Of course, a lot of folks don‘t know how to do all of those things, and picking up stitches can be a bit tricky because you just can’t see well enough in a photo…helps a lot to be sitting next to someone doing it, then do it yourself several times. Still… Because I learn well by reading, I find having a basic knitting reference book invaluable..between the words and pictures, I can teach myself. However, not everyone can do that…some folks have to listen to verbal instructions (which to me sound like blah blah blah…nothing takes via my ear-path unless there are written words or pictures to go with it) and yet others have to actually DO whatever it is. You need to figure out how *you* learn, then find someone who can show you that way.

A good local yarn store is a great thing indeed. Here in Camden, we have two. One, Unique One, is wonderful; the other is not. At Unique One, even if you didn’t buy the yarn there, they are happy to help you, love talking knitting and are friendly and welcoming. At the other, to remain nameless store, they barely say hello, and basically it is an uncomfortable atmosphere. If Unique One doesn’t have what I need, I’d rather order something and wait than go to the other store!

If you can, buy some good sock yarn from a nice local store, and ask if you could come sit there while starting to turn the corner so you can ask for help if they aren’t busy, or ask if there is a sock class. It’s worth it! I generally do very well with the written word, but did take knitting classes over a span of decades (in the early 70s took beginning knitting at the local community college one summer, in the mid 80s, took an Icelandic class to learn how to strand different colors of yarn while living in Toronto)…

OK, that’s enough blather…I promise pictures in a short while….

Well…if you can call over two years an interlude! Before we left Friday Harbor in June 2004, I bought a book called “Knitting on the Road” By Nancy Bush. I had just learned how to know socks on two circular needles, thanks to Cat Bordi (a fellow resident of San Juan Island, and author of Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles). I had never been able to manage socks before because the double-pointed needles slipped out on me…arrrrgh! But I could do it with circulars, yeah!

So I bought some wonderful burgundy sock yarn at Island Wools and decided to make the pattern named, what else, Friday Harbor! I began the socks. I got about 1 inch into the first leg, and stopped. Life intervened, along with a move across country, hubby’s heart attack, open-heart surgery and recovery, a LOT of quilting, and life in general.

Thanks to a fourteen inning minor league game at Hadlock Field, the Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox farm team) in early July, they are now FINISHED! Ta DA! Drum roll please…

Please ignore my pasty white legs (ugh….oh to be Polynesian or some other race with glorious tawny brown skin…and no, tanning doesn’t work, I burn then peel….no tanning for this Irish ancestry girl…). We will also ignore the fact that it is muggy and mid-summer and I won’t be able to actually wear these for another two months!

“The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightining bolt of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone. … Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That’s it in a nutshell.” –Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit p. 10

WOW! When I picked this book up at the bookstore, I intended only to see if I wanted to order this book up via inter-library loan to read. Less than five minutes later, I knew I’d be buying it on that visit. I hesitate to tell you how many pages (most of them, by a long shot) have highlighter on them…..

The book is Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit,: Learn it and Use it for Life; click this link to see it on amazon. For those who don’t know her, Twyla Tharp is one of North America’s (and world’s) preeminent choreographers. She has created dances with the Joffrey, NYCity Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, London’s Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre (ABT)–talk about a Pantheon of modern ballet! She worked on Amadeus, won two Emmy’s for a TV program called Baryshnikov by Tharp… the list goes on and on, and includes an on-Broadway musical she developed to the music of Billy Joel. Wow…

Her book is riveting for me, not least because it echoes so much of what I believe about creativity. My bottom line is that ANYone can be and IS creative. Anyone can make art…and good art at that. You just have to devote the time it takes to learn the skills, then develop them.

I was going to do an all-in-one review here, but as I took notes of my highlightings last night, I realized I’m going to do a short review here, then periodically post quotes of things I find wonderful…..

The book covers how Twyla Tharp works, from walking into an empty dance studio (the equivalent would be a blank page for a writer or an empty design wall for textile artists), to rituals of preparation, your innate design sense, using your memories, organizing your ideas and inspirations, learning the necessary skills, learning how to encourage the muse to visit (she calls it scratching for ideas), recognizing an idea when you see it, fleshing out the idea into a piece, refining your skills, differentiating between being stuck in a rut and zoning in a good groove, learning from your failures.

She also includes exercises at the end of each chapter to help spur you on, exercises that she uses to get her doing during dry spells (and yes, we all have them).

I know I’ll be coming back to this book time and again…there are many words of wisdom here. I’ll leave with with what may be my favorite quote from the entire book (and which I think I posted on the blog a while back, or was it on an e-list?), and promise to post more good quotes every so often:

p. 173:

“Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.”

Some of you may know that I work with Janome-America. They have graciously lent me a Janome 6600 (and before it, a 6500) sewing machine. In return, I have done a pattern for them and let them use my Bijagos Warrior in their ads (thank you Janome!!!!)–does it get any better? A loaner machine AND published! Thank you!

Now it is time to do another pattern, and with luck my Totebag with Mix-n-Match Pockets will be in an upcoming issue of the Janome International Digest (available from Janome-America and most Janome dealers—I’ll let you know what happens when it happens).

In the pattern, you get to make a totebag with NO exposed raw edges…everything beautifully finished inside and out, AND you get to pick a selection of pockets that suits your needs, from flat ones with pen slots to sunglasses to a water bottle (or folding umbrella) holster. But, the pattern got really long, so I did not include my “invisible pocket” that goes on the outside…. I’m going to offer this lesson to Janome as a web extra, but thought I’d share it here first just for you!

As you can see from the photo here,

it appears there is no pocket at all on the outside of the bag…but there is! See:

To make this pocket, you’ll need a totebag body that has a seam near the top, OR you could make a slash/buttonhole pocket like on a tailored jacket. It’s a lot easier with a seam! To try my way, follow these steps:

Cut a long skinny rectangle to make your pocket. Six inches wide is enough to slide your hand in nicely but not droop or sag. Length is personal preference; I like mine fairly deep so stuff doesn’t fall out (ahem!), so I cut my fabric 6 x 19 inches.

Fold cloth in half, right sides together.

Beginning 1/4″ BELOW the open end, stitch 1/4″ seams down the sides.

Iron seams as stitched to “set the seam.” Then iron one of the top edge seam allowances down. Then pin that folded edge down to keep it out of the way for stitching.

Turn the pocket over and pin to the seam two inches or so down from the top edge of your totebag.

When flipped up and over, there will be an opening at the top (it’s a good idea to place pins parallel to the edge, flip and double-check…sometimes it is easy to get this part backwards!).

Stitch with 1/4″ seam allowance. You may wish to use very short stitch length at the start and end of the seam.

Clip at a right angle to the stitching to within 2-3 threads of the end of the seam. If desired, reinforce with No-Fray, Fray-Check or some other anti-fray product.

Turn pocket, so that it looks like the picture below. The brown “accent” strip is stitched on the horizontal seam, but has a raw edge on the vertical (which is, of course, a scant 1/4″).

Next, you’ll sew on the top strip of fabric.

To prepare, pin the top edge of the pocket down and out of the way like this:

In this next photo, you can see that I like to put the new strip (which is at the top of the bag) underneath so that I can see what is going on with the pocket.