Events

Winter. Time to be cozy, knit, design, knit.

For product review or news items, send to the attention of the editor; editorccb@gmail.com.

Meantime, as we rest and restore, events will appear here when the holiday season ebbs.

Read or Listen: The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani, ed-tech entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Mindvalley, an education technology company specialising in learning experience design. It’s got an app to go along with the book – photos, ideas, videos.

Image from The Mathematics of Design, a course by Jay Kapraff, Rutgers Computer Science.

One geometric design is also a beloved pieced quilt known by various names. Likely few quilters stop to think they are quite adept at visual math while doing patterns and solving how to make a design turn corners – or when determining yardage. Pure pleasure.

Classic beauty, Audrey Hepburn, knitting.

Classic beauty, Audrey Hepburn, knitting.

Harvesting color, with inspiration from Rowan Magazine 10 - included in the book - the glorious Kaffe Fassett plays with color, yarn and design.

Harvesting color, with inspiration from Rowan Magazine 10 – included in the book – the glorious Kaffe Fassett plays with color, yarn and design.

Life moves forward like knitting does – one step, one stitch at a time. It’s engineering with an idea plus materials. A linear length of string (yarn, stainless steel, materials) can be shaped into a three-dimensional object. Add sensors and/or IoT capability.

In Vermont, farmhouse for reading, knitting, design.

“The origin of knitting how long it has existed in its present form or nearly so would be a difficult matter to trace. It is supposed by many that the oldest and simplest form was that done by shepherds. They gathered the wool torn off their sheep by the thorns; washed. carded. and spun it. They then wound it into balls and converted it by means of one wooden pin which they cut for themselves into gloves with only a thumb and mittens. After awhile a second pin was added a third and then a fourth. Few English knitters use more than four pins to knit with, but in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, five short needles and even six are commonly used. Wales has always been a great knitting country. The women may be seen riding on their sure-footed, rough ponies to market sitting between their panniers of butter and eggs, and as they jerk along from side to side with the uneasy jog trot of their beasts, knitting with the greatest rapidity. … The Welsh never use the stiff steel pins common in England, a much cheaper and very inferior iron pin which bends so easily that one often sees it almost doubled in the hands of a vigorous knitter. They knit with the right hand needle inserted in a steel sheath which is fastened to their wrists. The wool of the natural of the sheep and spun beautifully soft is greatly valued in Wales and would be more generally adopted everywhere but for its dirty appearance. It is just the colour of a very dirty sheep, but is unsurpassed for softness and durability. The Yorkshire dales may be almost called the home of knitting.”

Household Words: A Weekly Journal, Volume 3, edited by Charles Dickens, 1882.

Horses to knit or cross stitch pattern.

Charted horses to knit or cross stitch. Source: Pinterest

The Northeast Border Collie Association (NEBCA) is a non-profit club supporting the breeding, training, farm use and trialing of working border collies. The NEBCA region consists of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada; www.nebca.net.