Aloha, everyone!

This is Lisa Louie, posting from Maui, with supply list and homework for the upcoming classes. As Dez mentioned, Gauge Games during regular Knit Night is a fundraiser for the Battered Women's Shelter. Cost for Hot Stuff and Putting More Art in Your Craft is $25 each class, or $45 for both for early bird registration. Later registration is $35 each or $65 for both.

Gauge Games:

bring:

tape measure or ruler
pen/pencil
paper if desired
calculator if desired
a few straight or "lollipop" pins
about 50-100 yards of relatively smooth, medium or light colored worsted weight yarn- same as you used for your homework
appropriate sized needle ( or crochet hook if crocheter)

Homework:

Cast on 26 stitches in above yarn and needle. Work about 6 rows of garter stitch, then work 2 stitches garter, 20 stitches stockinette, 3 stitches garter. Work until piece is about 3 or 4 inches long. Leave on needle, bring to class.

Putting More Art in Your Craft

Bring:

3 or more different colors, textures, fibers of a fairly small amount of yarns. Leftover skeins work well. You will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 yards for this project.

A selection of assorted size dpns or short circular needles or if you are a crocheter, a selection of crochet hooks

stitch markers
pen/pencil
notebook/ paper
beads and other embellishments if desired

an open mind and willingness to explore

Homework:

You will be creating a small hand made bag during this class. Please create the bottom before you come. Work either a square or a circle about 3-4 inches across before you come. Bind off.


Hot Stuff:

Bring:

Bring a pattern or patterns that you would like to adapt to warm weather wearin' with you. Pen/ pencil and something to write on will also be necessary.

This is a discussion/ question and answer type of class instead of a hands on learn a new technique kind of class. Yes, you can knit in class as we won't be working on a specific project.

If you've got questions, let me know. I hope this covers everything.

Aloha and mahalo,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

Aloha, Baton Rouge!

Fiber artist, designer and knitting instructor Lisa Louie of Maui, Hawaii (who is also my dear friend and occasional guest-blogger) will be on the mainland during the last week in April with featured work in the “Art Healing Lives” art exhibition at the Minnesota Textile Center, and during the first week of May, teaching classes at the Knitting Asylum here in Baton Rouge.

When Lisa is not teaching knitting and creating fiber art, she teaches at an educational support center on Maui for kids struggling with learning disabilities and for adults working on getting their GED.

She will be making a stop in Baton Rouge for a few days to visit and teach classes at the Knitting Asylum.

Classes to be offered are:

Gauge Games: Unveiling The Mysteries of Gauge

Gauge Games will be taught informally on Thursday, May 6 at the regular Knit Night activities from 6:30 till 8:30 at the Knitting Asylum. There is no set fee for this class. Instead, Lisa requests that attendees make a donation in the most generous amount they can afford (be it $5 or $500) for the Battered Women’s Program. There will be an alternate location if too many people sign up to fit comfortably in the shop. “Gauge Games” is a fun, highly interactive class. Bring yarn and appropriate-sized needles, and a notepad and pen. Details for a small “homework” swatch to bring to the class will follow soon.

Hot Stuff: Knitwear for Steamy Climates --
10:30 - 2:30 Saturday, May 8

Ever laugh your head off (or look enviously at) the long-sleeved cotton “summer sweaters” designed for people who live in climates where it actually cools off in the evening? We Southerners all know that the only real use for a worsted cotton garment in our beastly summer climate is on the back of your desk chair in an overly refrigerated office. Lisa will teach you to substitute cotton, soy, bamboo, linen and other warm-weather fibers to their best advantage for your own spring and summer designs, and to adapt or modify existing patterns for realistic use in our beastly summers -- for example, a worsted cotton cardigan modeled on a beach in Maine can be converted to a highly wearable shell top for office or casual wear. Bring a pattern or two that you’d like to adapt for hot-weather wear, and a pen and notebook. Class fee will probably be $25. A yarn sample pack for swatching will be available for under $10.

Art Knitting: How to get Art in your Craft --
2:00 - 4:00 Saturday, May 8.

Lisa will guide students through creative exercises designed to infuse your own designs with your unique style. Class description details and fee will follow. Fee will probably be $25.
Expanded class description and materials description will follow soon.

Please sign up by replying to this post with your name and the name of the class that you are interested in.

This post will be edited periodically to provide additional details as soon as they are known.

I hope you all consider participating in this unique opportunity!

Still Here; No Pictures.

I say it every year:

I do not mind paying our taxes. Everybody needs to pay their fair share; I think we can all agree on that. And I am not the least bit interested in all the grossly misinformed anti-tax politics flapping around out there on Faux News these days. The simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of regular people in America simply do not pay excessive taxes, and we all need things like roads, schools, courts, law enforcement, public universities, scientific research, a military to defend us, health care, social security, and other things that help keep us civilized ... although perhaps not quite as civilized as Canada, France, or Amsterdam...which is another topic altogether. There may be hope for us yet.

But what I do mind is doing tax. It's like still having to do math homework after all these decades. Even though I am forty-eleven years old, working on tax makes me feel like Mrs. Hernandez is still leaning over my shoulder with her beehive hairdo and her little black reading glasses pushed down on her nose, admonishing me for "not showing my work," even when I get the right answer. Forty years after fifth grade, math homework still gives me a stomachache.

Because my husband and I are both self-employed, it's not like we can just staple our W-2s and the receipts for our doctors' appointments and our annual donations to National Public Radio, the local humane society and Doctors Without Borders to our 1040 and wave bye-bye to it. We have to hire somebody to do it for us, mainly so I don't try to do it all myself and end up stealing a barrel full of Valium from our neighborhood pharmacy and hiding out in a climate-controlled self-storage unit until October.

This "somebody to do it for us" is St. Peter of the Paperwork, who goes by the street name "Peter Barrios, APAC, CPA" and if you live in the Baton Rouge-y neighborhood and you need a super-nice man with a briefcase, a superhero cape and superhero hair to keep you from losing your mind and eating your solar calculator, I strongly recommend that you look him up in the Yellow Pages, or Google the Innerwebs, or just call him (225-924-3031) and get him to do what he's good at, so you can you do something that you're good at instead.

In order to spare Peter the annual ordeal of rummaging through our Volkswagen-sized Rubbermaid tub full of receipts, bank statements pennies, paperclips and a few slightly dusty breath mints, I put everything in supersized expanding files, with the addition of professional, businessy labels: "Stuff I Am Pretty Sure Is Deductible," "Crap From The Bank," "Stuff That Might Be Deductible," "Way Too Many Pharmacy and Doctor Bills," "Stuff That Looks Important," "Bills and Invoices From The Shop," "Sales Receipts From The Shop" and a really fat file labeled, "Lots of Itty Bitty Receipts: Do These Things Count As Business Expenses?"

I didn't go to business school. I can count, and add things up, and get people to buy stuff if I am lucky, but really? That's about it as far as my seat-of-the-pants MBA goes. My head is full of biology, humane laws, wildlife management skills, dog training, cat psychology, snake handling, writing, knitting, spinning, weaving and dyeing. There is also a little room left over for reading, ghost hunting, history and hiking. I am just not a businessy sort of person. I even look weird in a suit.

So today is my last day of highlighting items on our credit card bills and putting big red marks by them so Peter will see that they are deductions for things like business and medical travel ... my last day of stapling tiny, crumpled receipts for tape and notepads to a bigger piece of paper listing what they are for ... my last day of putting bank statements in piles and cussing at the stapler and the calculator ... and then I can bring the box with all seventeen pounds of this crap over to Peter's office, knock on his door, and run like hell.

Then I can come back to the shop and play with yarn. This month, I am rearranging the shop and checking in new spring and summer yarn, especially lots of Tahki bamboo and cotton and Tofutsies and other fun stuff. While I am doing this, Tahki Loop-d-Loop Quartz, Tahki Ceylon Silk, Brown Sheep Cotton Fine and Cotton Fleece, and all plant-based spinning fibers and plant blends are 20% off for the duration of April.

And?

I hear tell that Koigu has roving. I am trying to get some.