POPOS

I recently returned from vacation in California. It was an honest to goodness vacation without work and the quasi-work that we all find ourselves doing these days. I went places that my cell phone wouldn't work and my ipod couldn't connect. It was dreamy.

The trip started with a visit with friends in San Francisco. Just before we left, I learned about an organization called City Guides . They do free walking tours in SF. We checked out the schedule and decided on one called City Scapes and Public Places.

The tour was really interesting. It turns out that the city has a law that says in order for a building to add more square footage, the owner has to create a certain amount of publicly available space. They are called Privately Owned Public Open Spaces or POPOS.















We probably saw a dozen of them during the course of the afternoon. Some of them are rooftop gardens.
















Others are sculptures.
















One was even a little redwood forest right in the heart of the city.
















What a spectacular idea! More cities should follow San Francisco's lead. Can you imagine how different the world would look if every time a 10 story building was transformed into a 40 story building, a park was created?

We Have a Winner

It's been a nutty week around here. There was a big thunderstorm on Monday morning and it wiped out power to close to 900,000 homes and businesses in the Chicago area. Lorna's Laces was one of the ones that got hit. We were out of power for two days.

We treated Monday like a snow day and took advantage of the pretty summer weather, but by Tuesday it was just inconvenient. From what I've heard there are some folks that are still without electricity. Whew, that's a long time.

So, the winner of our VK Live contest from last week is Bonney. Please get in touch at yarn@lornaslaces.net. We'll set you right up.

VK Live Giveaway

Welcome to day three of our VK Live blogtour. That's right, I'm going out on the road to teach at VK Live in September!

I'm pretty excited about the prospect of getting dye all over a classroom. Anybody wanna make crazy with me? I mean really, how often will you get a chance to sling dye and get dirty with someone else doing all the clean-up work?

As an added bonus, you'll walk away from the day with a skein of Lorna's Laces yarn that you dyed yourself. That's a one-of-a-kind like no other!

The nice folks at Vogue have offered to give away a free class at the event. Enter to win by commenting on this post by July 9th and we'll pick via the random number generator. And just for fun, I'll bring a skein of our new Solemate yarn and hand deliver it to the lucky winner at VK Live.

Check out the rest of the touristas too!

4 July-- Go Knit in Your Hat Carol Sulkowski
5 July -- Knitgrrl Shannon Okey
6 July -- Lorna's Laces Moi
7 July -- Knittyblog Amy Singer
8 July -- Indigirl Amy Swenson
9 July -- Bricoleur Knits Cirilia Rose

Voila!

Rock Island is finally off my needles and firmly established as an FO! This project took a little longer than I'd imagined it would. But given that it was my first project using lace weight yarn, I'm pleased as punch.

















One of the more complicated features of this pattern is that it is true lace or knitted lace. That means every row is lace stitches. If you get a little breather and have every other row be plain knit or purl, that is called lace knitting.(I'm pretty sure I got this distinction right. Feel free to correct me.) I feel even more accomplished because this was knitted lace.
















This shawl is already wrapped up and waiting to go to its new home. Brenda works across the hall from Lorna's Laces and one afternoon a couple of months ago, she came over and saw Jared's picture of Rock Island open on my computer. She was so enchanted by it that she said she wanted to learn to knit and that this was where she wanted to start. It broke my heart to have to tell her no. But this isn't the project for a newbie.

















She's been helping me muddle through a few things in Quickbooks lately. I think she'll be happy with her "payment".