Santa Fe Part 2

Personally I can’t see going to a conference in a wonderful place like Santa Fe and spending all the time in the hotel. So, I did a little conference time at Left Coast Crime and a lot of sightseeing time. The picture is me next to the Rio Grande River somewhere between Santa Fe and Taos.

It was almost research since Molly Pink's parents live in Santa Fe and who knows maybe in an upcoming book she'll go visit them.

But for now what sticks in my mind are the colors of the area and unfortunately photographs just don’t seem to be able to capture them.

Maybe it’s the altitude, but the sky is a particular shade that’s almost a crisp royal blue I’ve never seen anywhere else. Blue seems to be a big deal for doors. I saw doors in all different shades. Apparently, the color is supposed to protect the place from evil.

Turquoise comes in more than it’s namesake color. Some was almost a jade green and other samples had flecks of brown. I bought some hand dyed yarn in Taos in a shade of blue I’d call electric turquoise.

Most of the Pueblo style buildings seemed to be a mustardy shade of brown that matched the ground around them. Along with t the blue doors, a lot had blue painted around the windows. And just about all of them had a string of dried red chiles hanging out front.

But what surprised and delighted me the most were the pink cliff we saw in Bandalier National Monument. They are made out of something called tuff, which is from ancient volcanic eruptions. Not only was it a rosy shade of pink, but the surface had swiss cheese like holes. The holes and softenness of the material made it easy for the Native American’s to build their dwellings using the cliffs as part of them. There are only remnants of their houses, but you can see places where they carved out rooms into the cliffs.

There were lots of green chiles which are surprisingly are hotter than the red ones. The small Pinon trees dotting the hill sides and ground everywhere were a dark, water- starved shade of green. When we looked around a little town called White Rock, almost nobody had a lawn. I saw a woman doing her version of gardening as she arranged a pile of big blue rocks across the front of her pebble covered front yard.

The cottonwood trees still had some toast brown leaves hanging on their branches. There were lots of the almost naked trees along the dry Santa Fe River bed. When we took the aerial tram to Sandia Peak on our way to the Albuquerque and I looked out toward Santa Fe, the ground was a deep red in spots. I didn’t get to see it, but the tram attendant said the cliffs of Sandia Peak were feldspar, and glowed pink for ten minutes at sunset. Next time I want to see that.

What colors do you identify with where you live?

Packing It All In

I have to set aside working on the next crochet mystery to get ready for Bouchercon. I love to travel, but hate to pack. This trip is more of a challenge to pack for. Beyond the usual clothes and incidentals, I need to bring along crochet samples, bookmarks, autographed by author stickers and the pens that write on glossy bookmarks.

This year at the big mystery convention in Indianapolis named for Anthony Boucher, there is going to be something new. Since there is a whole niche of cozy mysteries that revolve around different crafts, they are having a craft room. From Thursday through Saturday, different authors will have about an hour to lead an activity. My blog sisters Joanna, Camille and Monica are all taking part along with me and a whole list of other authors.

My project is a Molly Pink Dishcloth, which is pictured at the top. It’s easy to make and hopefully can be made quickly. I sent the directions a while back so they could be copies and the woman I’ve been in contact with assured me they are getting the supplies. Good. If I had to bring 30 balls of cotton yarn, it would either be a clunky suitcase or no room for clothes. Still I want to bring samples of completed dish clothes and one made just to the point of adding the edging.

Then there’s my book. I might have set it aside tonight to get my stuff together, but I will work on it while I’m gone. That means taking along my notes. Notes that hopefully are all together. Thank heavens for laptop computers and flash drives, even though I’ve been known to carry along a hard copy.

Picking my crochet projects to work on during the trip is easy. There is the neck piece I want to finish on the plane so I can wear it at the convention, and the vampire scarf I’m working on for my next book.

Clothes are just an afterthought.

By the way, there is still room (at least last time I looked) in all the craft room activities. So, if you’re going to Bouchercon go to http//www.bouchercon2009.com/specialevents.html to sign up for any of the craft activities. There’s no extra charge.

Snowflakes in Summer

It might be 107degrees here, but in Molly Pink world it’s a few weeks before Christmas. In my mind I’m smelling the spicy scent of Swedish ginger cookies and the wonderful scent of pine wreaths as I work on the next book.

Supposedly Mel Torme wrote the classic Christmas Song on a sweltering summer day, so maybe I’m on the right track. Just as an aside, Mel went to my high school – though long before me. I have Molly crocheting snowflakes to decorate the bookstore’s window. It occurred to me that I’d probably write it better if I actually made a snowflake.

I’d seen the crocheted snowflakes at Christmas bazaars and in pattern books, but I’d never thought of making one before. Frankly, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. They looked so intricate, I imagined the pattern would be too complicated to follow. But for Molly I’d try anything, so I got out some thread and a tiny steel hook and found a pattern called Suzy Snowflake.

It was refreshing to do something with my hands besides fuss with the BlackBerry which refuses to go online as it is supposed to, or deal with my desktop computer that out of the blue started to ask questions about how to boot up.

It always takes me a little while to adjust to working with such a slender hook and such fine thread. The pattern had directions inside other directions, and I wasn’t sure how far I’d get. But after a few minutes of actually being able to follow the convoluted directions, I started to get excited. I knew I could do it. I was so good with organization that when I set it aside for a while, I put a stitch holder on my work, wrote down exactly where I was in the pattern and included what I was supposed to do next so there would be no chance of me losing my place. I put the whole thing, including the book with the directions and the hook, in a gallon size plastic bag. No way was I going to let the hook slide off somewhere and disappear.

My plastic bag maneuver worked pretty well except I have this bad habit of putting all my projects on the floor around the chair where I work on them and the bag got buried. But when I found it, it was nice to have everything together. There was a slight organizational error. The ball of thread was missing it’s label and I assumed it was #10, but now think it is really #3 which is probably a little heavy for a snowflake. Oh well, there’s always next time.

When I finished the snowflake, it was just a floppy thread piece. So just as I had Molly do, I starched it. It amounts to pouring some liquid starch in a plastic bag and soaking the snowflake. Then I laid it out on wax paper on top of cardboard. I pulled and shaped it and then stuck push pins in to hold it in place.

The hot weather was good for something. My snowflake dried in no time. Research can sure be fun. Here is how it turned out.

Movin on Up

It’s been electronic upgrade time for me. First I got a new laptop. My old one had gotten so slow, I ‘d turn it on and go do something for a while and hope it had booted up when I came back.

The new one has a bigger screen and a camera so I can watch myself as I write. Yikes, I don’t really look that old, do I? It has the new version of Windows. So far so good with that. The amazing part was that after the rebates, the new computer costs less than half the price of the old one.

Now I just have to move over all the files from my old laptop. I alreadt put in WordPerfect and Word. Though Word caused me to have a minor meltdown. I ended up with the 2007 version which I keep hearing is different, but not better. Those were my sentiments, too. I’m much happier now that I have Word 2003 as well – as happy as I can be with Word after my I hate Word rant a few weeks ago.

And I finally got a BlackBerry. It’s a hand-me-down from my son and still has all of his phone numbers and his calendar. So far I’ve accidentally called at least one of his friends by pushing something at the wrong time. I’m also getting prompts about a Dodger game, his dentist appointment, his trip to Las Vegas. Eventually I’ll get his stuff out and my stuff in.

I have watched my husband and son endlessly twirling the roller ball as they scroll through their emails when we’re out somewhere. I swear I won’t be doing that. I’d rather be where I am when I’m there. But after spending too much time waiting for them to finish just one more email before we leave a restaurant, I did have to laugh when I was typing an email as I followed my son around the nursery department of Lowe’s and he got annoyed because I wasn’t paying attention to some cactus he wanted to show me.

It makes no sense. It’s much easier just to call somebody, but I found myself sending emails instead. There is something about typing on the tiny keyboard that is so appealing. And I kept joking about all the abbreviations like lol and r for are, but it is so much easier and why bother with capital letters or punctuation. I will not keep the BlackBerry next to my bed like some people I know who check emails in the middle of the night. It will only be my BlackBerry, not my CrackBerry.

Before my son gave it to me, he added a new ring. Well, ring isn’t the right word. Instead of ringing, it plays some song and my son’s voice says Betty Hechtman’s phone is ringing. I’ve been know to miss a few phone calls. Hard to miss that. Also hard to pretend it’s not my phone when it rings in the middle of someplace where you’re supposed to have turned off your cell phone. Another thing I need to learn - how to turn the phone function off.

I’m in the midst of writing the fifth crochet mystery. It’s going to be a holiday book coming out next November, so for now I’m calling it Hooky Holidays. I think Molly is going to be getting a BlackBerry. Why not blend real life and fiction?

A Second Look at Yarn Shopping

Remember the experiences at yarn stores I wrote about a couple of weeks ago? I decided to give it another shot. I’m ready to start writing the fifth crochet mystery and in this one Molly Pink is going to be learning about yarn. If she’s going to learn, I have to find out about it first. I have already collected some interesting yarns at Michael’s and Joann’s, but the really good stuff is in the small stores.

I picked the two closest yarn stores. After my previous experience I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I went with an open mind. The first store had one woman working the counter and a bunch of women around a center table. I noticed right away they were all knitting. I ended up hanging around for awhile before I was helped. I wondered how these small stores stay in business. I found out. They are busy. She had customers calling and people who’d come in before me to tend to before she could get to me.

I was actually looking for some yarn for a project I’d found in a book. It called for nylon worsted weight yarn, which I hadn’t been able to find at Michael’s or Joann’s. The Knot Garden didn’t have any either, but I found out I could use any worsted weight yarn for the shawl. I’m kind of shy, but I finally explained I wrote a mystery series with a crochet theme. Everyone seemed interested, particularly when I explained the books took place in the area.

Everyone was very friendly and anxious to show me their projects and offer knitting advice. The clerk said if anyone bought yarn there, they were welcome to hang around and get knitting help. They were curious about crochet, but none of them were crocheters. I gave out book marks for all my books and left some on the counter. I left having bought some beautiful garnet-colored shiny yarn for my shawl project.

I’d Rather Be Knitting was only a short distance away. Again there were a group of women around a table, working on projects. The two owners were very friendly and I’d gotten over my initial shyness at the first store, so explained right away about the crochet mysteries and my desire to learn about yarn. Somehow I had expected the yarn to be similar in both stores, but it was completely different. Gorgeous at both places, but each seemed to have different brands and types. The owners told me Kate Jacobs who wrote The Friday Night Knitting Club had done an event at their store, which impressed me. That book is a super hit. They said they might be interested in doing some kind of event with me. We’re going to discuss.

I bought some yarn there, too. A beautiful skein of pale pink cashmere. It cost a fortune, but both Molly and I want to see what it is like to work with. My plan is to make swatches of all the fancy yarn I buy. Molly is going to be doing the same, so it is part crochet adventure and part book research. The owner of the second store assured me the one skein was enough to make a scarf. She showed me one she was making in blue cashmere. She was using big needles and the result was lacy and luscious. She suggested I use a big hook.

I’m sorry to say all the yarn is still in the bags. By Hook or By Crook comes out Tuesday and my editor asked me to write a Dear Reader letter for the Berkley website. I’m going to Chicago on Wednesday. Going away always means lots of stuff to take care of. For any of you in the Chicago area, I’m signing books next Saturday at the Printers Row Fair in downtown Chicago from 1-3 at the Mystery Writers of America booth. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the weather is better than last year when the tornado sirens went off during a thunder storm. But just in case, this time I’m taking my umbrella.

The C Word

In the crochet mystery I’m about to start writing, Molly Pink learns about yarn, which in turn means I need to learn about yarn. I know about the basic stuff – the reasonably priced kind you can buy at Joann’s or Michael’s. I want to see in person the kind of yarn I’ve only seen in books. For this I have to seek out small yarn shops.

I tried going into some of these small stores before, but frankly it didn’t turn out well. You would think a small shop keeper would be anxious to help a new customer. Not my experience. I thought it was just me and that I imagined their disdain when I mentioned crochet or asked where the crochet supplies were when all I saw was a wall of knitting needles. Even when I told them about my mystery series, they were weird and not very friendly.

Recently I picked up a book called Hooked for Life Adventures of a Crochet Zealot. It is made up of essay about crochet written by Mary Beth Temple. I happened to randomly pick one last night titled Crocheters, the Silent Majority. Mary Beth reiterates what I had read elsewhere – that crocheters far outnumber knitters, though nobody seems to know by how many. She also brought up hearing about people having the kind of experience I’d had in local yarn stores. To see if it was true, she went to a well known big city yarn store. When she saw that there were only three lonely looking crochet hooks among the huge supply of knitting needles, she asked the owner where the crochet supplies were. Mary Beth said the woman gave her a bemused expression and showed no interest in waiting on her.

So, maybe it wasn’t my imagination after all. Even though it seems crazy even as I’m writing this. How can these little yarn stores afford to be so snobby against crochet?

I will be finding out. Starting tomorrow I’m going give the yarn stores in my area another chance. I want to buy skeins of all different kinds of yarn and make up swatches so I can see what each kind looks like and what it’s like to work with. But before I rack up a big bill, I’m going to buy one skein of yarn and see how the shop keeper reacts to the C word. No respect and I keep moving. I’ll report on what happens.

Have you ever felt discriminated against?

Show and Tell

I realized I was the only one on the Malice panel who hadn’t been to a craft show. I was going to rectify it by going to the Knit Guild and Crochet Guild show that’s in Portland, Oregon next weekend. But buying plane tickets at the last minute is ridiculous. With two weeks advance purchase, a ticket was around $200. But with just one week in advance it was double that.

I found out The National Needlecraft Association has a show in the fall which ought to give me plenty of time to get a good deal on a plane ticket.

One of the reasons I wanted to go was that was to see all the specialty yarns. You can read about them in magazines and see photos online, but it isn’t the same as seeing them in person and being able to touch them. In the crochet mystery I’m about to begin both Molly Pink and I are going to upgrade our yarn experience. So far, I’ve stuck to craft super store kinds of offerings. Now I want to try cashmere and high end blends. I want to see how different it is to work with expensive yarn.

The same information will help with the knitting story I’m working on. Working with two pointy things still feels much more awkward than just using a hook, but I’m getting the hang of knitting. I picked up some knitting books and seem to be able to understand the patterns - at least in my head anyway.

I am looking forward to finishing the little coin purse I started, though I still don’t get what the big deal is about knitting. Crocheting feels more natural, is easier and faster. And it’s easy to rip out your mistakes. The hooks are shorter than needles and easier to carry.

But I like having a craft challenge. I like the idea of learning something new.

How about the rest of you? Have you learned anything new lately and how do you feel about it?

Me and Martha

Even though I was tired from my Chicago trip and had a ton of things to do, I couldn’t resist when I saw the listing in the Sunday paper. Martha Stewart was doing a book signing for her craft encyclopedia at the Borders in Northridge.

I figured it was research since Molly Pink handles bookstore events in the crochet mysteries. I was curious to see what a real celebrity event was like. I was curious about Martha Stewart, too.

The newspaper said the event started at 3 and that’s when I arrived. There were tons of people there already. I heard a rumor that some people had gotten there at 6 a.m.. I found out the hard way that you couldn’t just get in line for the signing. There was a whole protocol set up. First you had to buy the book, then you stepped over to someone who checked your receipt and gave you a colored wrist band. I got a blue one and was told to hang around where I could hear the loudspeaker for an announcement for my group. I was also given a list of rules. The cut off number for wrist bands was 350. There would be no personalizing of books, and while we could take photos from the line, there would be no posing with Martha.

I found that the yellow wrist bands were already lined up, and the greens who followed them were hanging around waiting to be moved to the staging area. The blues were beginning to congregate behind the greens, so I joined them. Everybody was holding at least one heavy book.

I think it must have been an hour before the blues were moved into the staging area, but the time flew by. Most of the people in line were crafters and we all started talking. The woman behind me was a fellow crocheter and we talked granny squares. I handed out bookmarks for Dead Men Don’t Crochet.

At last we moved up and snaked around the bookshelves close to the signing table. Cameras came out and a bookstore employee checked that our books were all flapped with the front page tucked under the book cover to ensure the book would open right to the signing page.

A bookstore employee greeted each person in the line just as we got within sight of Martha, while a bunch of publicists and assistants hung around the table.

At last my moment was there. Martha looked just like she does on television. She said hello in a friendly voice. She noticed my crocheted flower pin and said I was obviously a crafter. I seized the moment and said I wrote a crochet themed mystery series. She countered by mentioning that they had a needlework encyclopedia coming out next year. She signed my book in green ink that perfecting matched the green in the book. Even after signing countless books, her handwriting was beautiful.

In retrospect, I realize I should have offered her a bookmark, but before I could think about it, my book was back in my hand and I was moving on to the next station where a man with big scissors was clipping off wrist bands and I heard an announcement that the purples were moving into the staging area.

The next day there was an article in the newspaper about the signing. Apparently it was the first time Martha had come to the San Fernando Valley in twenty years and the crowd came from all over, as far as fifty miles away. She was on the Tonight show that night and talked about the book signing and all the people who had showed up. It was neat to hear her referring to something I’d been to.

All in all it was a fun afternoon and I got a lot of ideas for my fictional bookstore events. The craft encyclopedia is great, filled with all kinds of things I’d like to make. And the perfect green ink signature makes it extra special.

I just hope that someday my blog sisters and I have book signings so popular we have to use color coded wrist bands to manage the crowd.

Blooming Crochet

I got the copy edit of my third book, By Hook or Crook. So all work on book four stopped since I get too confused trying to juggle stories. Actually, it was just the writing part I discontinued. I did still keep working on the crochet items for the fourth book.

I have been playing with different yarn and pattern ideas and came up with a clue based on glow in the dark yarn. It’s made by Bernat and yes, it does really glow in the dark. The wrapper says that if you leave in the light for five minutes, it will glow for five minutes. I assume if you leave it longer, it will glow longer. In any case, in book four it glows longer.

I’m guessing everyone isn’t as excited about this yarn as I am since Joann’s doesn’t carry it, and Michael’s had it on closeout. The wrapper had a pattern for a kid’s hat. I’m using it for embellishments.

I used glow in the dark pink to made a rose. Even without the glow in the dark aspect, the yarn is satiny and the flower turned out quite pretty. In book four, flowers in the special yarn are going to be decoration on a pouch purse which Molly Pink finds because the flowers show up in the dark.

All my flower making wasn’t confined to clues. I was to take part in a book fair put on by my chapter of Romance Writers of America at the Encino Barnes & Noble. I wanted to wear something crocheted, but it was too warm for a scarf. So, the night before I made a nice big burnt orange flower. I attached a pin back to it and had a perfect visual reminder of my craft.

Crocheted flowers are really fun to make and cool to wear.I got the copy edit of my third book, By Hook or Crook. So all work on book four stopped since I get too confused trying to juggle stories. Actually, it was just the writing part I discontinued. I did still keep working on the crochet items for the fourth book.

I have been playing with different yarn and pattern ideas and came up with a clue based on glow in the dark yarn. It’s made by Bernat and yes, it does really glow in the dark. The wrapper says that if you leave in the light for five minutes, it will glow for five minutes. I assume if you leave it longer, it will glow longer. In any case, in book four it glows longer.

I’m guessing everyone isn’t as excited about this yarn as I am since Joann’s doesn’t carry it, and Michael’s had it on closeout. The wrapper had a pattern for a kid’s hat. I’m using it for embellishments.

I used glow in the dark pink to made a rose. Even without the glow in the dark aspect, the yarn is satiny and the flower turned out quite pretty. In book four, flowers in the special yarn are going to be decoration on a pouch purse which Molly Pink finds because the flowers show up in the dark.

All my flower making wasn’t confined to clues. I was to take part in a book fair put on by my chapter of Romance Writers of America at the Encino Barnes & Noble. I wanted to wear something crocheted, but it was too warm for a scarf. So, the night before I made a nice big burnt orange flower. I attached a pin back to it and had a perfect visual reminder of my craft.

Crocheted flowers are really fun to make and cool to wear.

In My Own Backyard

The other morning I had an experience that with a few changes could have easily been in HOOKED ON MURDER. Somehow the action always seems to show up where ever Molly is - even in her own backyard.

There I was in my night gown, drinking my morning coffee when I heard this loud noise. At first I thought it was the replacement instant hot water thing we recently had put in. When it goes through whatever it goes through it sounds kind of like a plane overhead. But this noise sounded different and definitely like it was coming from outside. When I went out into the yard and looked up, a helicopter was hovering directly above me. I mean if they had dropped something out of it, it would have hit me on the head. I think the helicopter situation in Southern California is different than other places. They are all over the place here. The police use them, all the news stations have them. Big Army ones fly over occasionally. When there’s a forest fire, large red ones ferry huge containers of water.

The one above me wasn’t a police helicopter. They always seem to circle and make a thwacking sound. This one was staying in one place and making a loud constant drone. The way it was hovering made me pretty sure it was a TV news one. I’ve seen them before, hanging like dragon flies when there was the end of a police car chase or a bank robbery in the area.

So there was obviously some news story happening nearby. I rushed inside and looked out the front window, expecting to see maybe a SWAT team moving down the street or at least a bunch of police cruisers. The street was quiet. Even the landscape workers across the street weren’t there.

I tried going back to my coffee, but the noise made it impossible to ignore the helicopter and I went back outside and stared up at it again. It was in the exact same spot. With a thought that whatever was going on might be live on TV, I turned on the small kitchen set and started flipping through the stations. That TV isn’t connected to anything and relies on an old rabbit ears antenna for reception so the lower channels were all fuzz, but I could tell by the sound it wasn’t any breaking news. I kept moving up through the channels and then suddenly when I got to the Fox station, there in the corner was a notation saying something like live from Sky Fox.

There was a shot of a backyard and some woman in a red dress talking on the phone. Who knew Jillian Reynolds, the co host of Good Day L.A., apparently is one of my neighbors and that she had just come back from a vacation in Cabo and the show decided to make a surprise visit via the camera on the helicopter.

So there I was listening to the helicopter over my head and watching what it was seeing on my TV. Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed kind of interesting strange. It seemed like the kind of thing that would happen to Molly, only if it had happened to her there would be more to the story.

Molly would put down her crocheting and figured out which house it was and probably showed up there in time to find a body floating in the pool or at least ended up on camera.

Me? I just finished my coffee and thought I have something to put in my blog.