Booked

It’s been so darned cold lately – and you may or may not know that my office is the former breakfast nook of our home, un-insulated – that I can’t really stand to be in my office for more than a few hours. My hands freeze, I get all hot and cold and I pile on more cardigans than Fred Rogers.

This puts a crick in my calendar work, which is 99% computer related. Hence, I haven’t really been posting on my blog so much, either! Maxie’s been home with a bad croupy cough and fever, but the doc says he doesn’t have strep (yay!) and that it’s just a bad cold he has to get through. I love our doc, she’s so non-medication if it’s not warranted. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time playing games with Maxie in the past 3 days, but that’s an amazing blessing. And today work will be cut short with the Brownie meeting. Life is full, that’s for sure!

I’m not terribly worried about my calendar deadline, but I am feeling under pressure. Oddly, too, there have been SO MANY submissions for the calendar in the past few days. This is great – I can use a lot of them for 2007 – but everyone has to be answered. If you’ve submitted and I haven’t been back to you right away, I apologize! I’ll be with you as soon as I can!

This influx of submissions also means that mail is bounced from my server when I get loads of images all sent at the same time. If this happens to you, I’m sorry – please resend!

So I’ve booked my flight to LA for April! I’m flying out 4/4 and will be returning 4/12. While there I’m teaching a series of workshops and classes for the North Coast Knitters in San Diego as well as at Black Sheep in Hollywood, CA in the morning and afternoon on 4/8 and at Unwind in Burbank on 4/8-10 for a very full weekend of classes. If you’re in the LA area and you’re interested in any of these classes, you can either email me directly, or contact the yarn shops:

Black Sheep, 6324 Yucca St (near Vine), Hollywood, 90028 CA 323-464-2253

Unwind, 818 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank, CA 91505 – 818-840-0800

I still have some time open on Monday 4/9 in case anyone wants to set up an impromptu group class. If not, I’ll be driving to the beach…

I actually rented a CONVERTIBLE this time – wahooo! I threatened to do it on my last visit to LA, but didn’t because I just couldn’t see spending the extra $$$. However, this time I have a discount coupon from Enterprise and that brought the price up $50 for the week over a regular rental. How could I say no? My mother used to say that owning a convertible was something everyone had to do at least once (until they got tired of having their hair blown around…)

Speaking of hair, I got mine chopped. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a severe haircut that I thought less about! I got it cut a week ago, from my shoulder length bob to boy-length (Republican boy no less…) and last night as I was showering I was stunned again that hey! my hair is missing! I also got the color touched up so I’m a redhead again, not a sugar-and-cinnamon as I am quickly becoming!

I’m also about to go to press with the book once again. This makes 6 times, and I’m just stunned. I have 40 copies left out of my last print order of 1,000 and I’m selling very well at Amazon. I’ve also had a big boost lately in my own personal sales, which I sort of chalk up to some buzz about the calendar on certain boards and the fact that the book is being passed around to knitting folks who generally aren’t internet surfers. It’s nice, though, that it’s a sort of slow and consistent growth. It makes me feel like parts of the book may be entering the general knitting psyche in some way (I am flattering myself here).

Recently an editor commented to me in some corrections on a pattern, “We tend to only reflect the Western method in our instructions, not Eastern or Combination.” – but instead of making me feel bad, I felt so elated that Combination is actually getting into the dialogue! I cannot for a moment pretend that this is because of me alone, I’m late to the whole thing when one considers Mary Walker Phillips, Anna Zilboorg and Priscilla Gibson Roberts, but I’m happy to be part of the process!