Staff of Life

As I mentioned a few posts ago that I find the backbone of every good yarn shop I've visited is the staff - and that's SO true of Loops!

This is a LOVELY shop - it has such a great selection, lots of good price points, a great variety of yarn and LOTS of wonderful patterns! If you're anywhere near Tulsa, make a beeline to this shop (but please, drive carefully on the icy roads...) and partake of some amazing yarn! Shelley is tremendous - and last night after picking me up and dropping our stuff at the hotel, we went on to the LOOPS Holiday Party where I drank too much wine, had not enough food (I just wasn't hungry, but that was a mistake as the waiter kept filling my glass...) and got a ride home with a nice stranger in a pickup. All around great evening. Thanks to EVERYONE for the amazingly kind reception - and especially thanks to the boyfriend-of-the-woman-whose-name-I-can't-remember who gave me a ride home. I told you I had too much wine...

My flight in was uneventful - not much happened except sitting on my bottom for 3+ hours on that tailbone that I threw myself on a few weeks ago was a very painful experience. It was a fabulous move.

I think just staying in one place for so long is hard, but my sad little (?) bruised coccyx did not enjoy the flight. Oh, how I'm NOT looking forward to the flight on Mon and the really LONG flight on Friday.

The clouds were very pretty, though - the bonus of flying out on an overcast day! And I got a LOT of knitting done on the Malabrigo jacket. Folks were a little concerned about the woman with the flying knitting needles who kept taking pictures out the window, though...

Acting Class
Today I taught the cabling class to an eager and enthusiastic class - what a bunch of gems, just terrific students! I was totally wowed by Kimberly, 13 and a truly magnificent knitter - what a kid! It was a joy to teach this class!

There was no break for lunch - a scheduling glitch (it happens!) - so I found myself chewing partway through the knitting with wire class, and that's NOT a pleasant thing for a class to have to see...

As always with the wire class, I have to run roughshod over the students for the first part of the class to get them to embrace the concept that they will actually be knitting UGLY stuff for the first few rows. I need to devise a better way to get this idea across, I feel like such a meanie.

The beautiful part is that as the class goes on I can see the students 'getting' it, one by one, and embracing the oddness of the wire because they're liking the results. The project I use for my classes now is a pretty fail-safe project a rhinestone button version is shown at right

It's a forgiving bangle bracelet that allows folks to mess up a bit here and there and STILL get a nice, giftable item. I also try to put enough wire in the kit so that if they want to go home and practice or make more bracelets, they'll have enough material to do some serious damage. Everyone left with bracelets that they made - looking quite spiffy. And in a pinch they can use them for traction when they get stuck in snow...

Head 'em up, Move 'em out!
I like to travel by car - that's my favorite way to get from one gig to another. But when I must fly, I have SO much stuff to lug around (especially with multiple teaching engagements) that this is my little way around that problem. I follow the whole thing up with a chuck wagon.

I get some nice comments in the airports. Rollin, rollin, rollin...