Upcoming Classes and Knitting Sanity

First off - I'll be at Webs teaching two classes this Saturday - February 28th. Would love to see some of you. There are spots available in both the Edgings Class and the Creative Embroidery Class. I'm not sure how you register but a phone call is what I would do. You can find a link on my sidebar for Webs.

I'm getting down to the wire on my new book which is coming out in November 2009. I've got to spend this week making more swatches for photography, reading copy and doing whatever else turns up - there's always a surprise in my in-box. I am really excted about this book and I hope to preview it to all of you the closer it gets to publication. If you are at Webs this weekend in one of my classes, I promise a few sneak peeks into what my new book is all about!


Podcasts help me out during these knitting crunches. I've been to my local library to download a mess of them. I especially enjoy Jennifer's interveiws at Craft Sanity and Guido's at It's a Purl Man. Have you checked them out yet? I'd like to hear if there are other podcasts out there that you enjoy..... Leave me a note in the comments if you can or send an e-mail.

Frankly, the podcast thing is rather frustrating for me. I know it is out there - along with t.v. shows you can get over the internet and the entire world of YouTube. I spent some days at my sister's house in eastern Mass earlier last week and a friend of my niece's was totally stunned that we didn't have high speed internet service. She thought everyone in the USA did.... She couldn't fathom how we could live without it. She wondered how Julia would get through school reports without it as she gets older.

Verizon (our phone company) did come through western Massachusetts and with government money upgraded the small hilltowns to DSL service. The really frustrating part of it was they didn't get to many homes. They made such a big deal about it - that they were helping all the communities out here. Truth be told, very little of the population has been served. We are too far from their box (we are 1.9 miles) and I am giving up hope of ever getting high speed internet service unless I go for satellite and my neighbors have nothing but trouble with it. It is frustrating and challenging. I'm even thinking of writing my State Senator. Never done that before - always a first time for everything.

Thank goodness the library I visit has DSL and I have a laptop now. Honestly, this dial-up is the reason I don't answer comments or comment on anyone else's blog, much less read many of them. It's sad but true - I know there is so much out there on the web but I just don't have the patience to sit and wait for pages to load nor do I have the time to. I could be sitting at a screen all day and night and I really don't want to do that. I do have a life that needs to be lived. Does anyone else share this frustration or are my hilltown neighbors and I the only ones?

A postcard of my swatch board shown above is available in the Shop on my website. Oh - and thanks to all of you who have been ordering from me recently - my family and I appreciate it.