May 31 2007
Changing Colors and New Obsession
The pinks, yellows and greens have been well-represented over the last two months. I have seen beautiful handmade creations, stunning photographs, and inspirational color-inspired projects of all shapes and sizes. It is truly amazing to see what can come out of such a simple idea.
Thank you for continuing to support Project Spectrum, and for continuing to inspire me with your beautiful work.
Blacks, reds, and metallics may be a challenge for some and a welcome home for others. The beauty of PS is expanding your thoughts on color, and stepping outside of your natural realm. I say this to myself too - I have knit many things, and taken some photographs, but have not yet challenged myself with the colors. I am looking forward to this next color group for this very reason; it is time to kick it up a notch!
Please start sharing your red, black, and metallics bright and early tomorrow! Post them on your blogs, on your forums, on the Project Spectrum Flickr group, or just simply be aware of these shades in your everyday life. Feel free to share your experiences - I would really love to hear!
… … …
Lunch time conversation with a co-worker… she shares her new obsession of Ancestry.com. She is meticulously researching her family history after some Memorial Day weekend talks with her parents. The more she talked about it, the more I wanted to learn more about my own history. She warned me that it was a massive time suck, she warned me that it would mean phone calls to many living relatives. I just couldn’t pass this by…
And within a few hours, I had quite a lineage set up!
My great grandmother’s family
The internet has completely revolutionized this field. There are digitized state, county, and city records. There are ship manifests, military pensions, and certificates galore. With a little data entry and a few clicks, you can start linking into the research of others, slowly building a ginormous web of names, dates, and family. From the research I have done, I have confirmed my “European mutt” roots: England, Wales, Germany, Austria, and even one ancestor from Sweden!
Once you put in a few generations of names, this program even allows you to check for “famous ancestors”…
Lilliputians, Victorian, inertia, Transcendentalism, baby. Right there.
…and my personal favorite…
Jane Austen and I have the same greaaaaaaaaaat grandfather!
With so many writers in the family, I hope that my little blogging career could be considered continuing the tradition 
Have you ever done any family history research?
So, you are warned… major time suck… but, it just may be worth it!
**Just a note, a disclaimer of sorts: this is a fun and engaging way to spend some time, but I know there are missing links, and possible “wrong trails”. I am not certain of more than anything past 5 or 6 generations back (as that research has been done by others in my family the “old school” way of archival visits). However, it is fun to think what could be, and if you want to lightheartedly learn more about your family, this is a good way to do it. My career as an archivist has taught me many things, and I know that documents can be forged, lost, and forgotten. But right now, this is making me smile, and not doing any harm!
My brother actually did that same search and found out that we’re ‘related’ to Sir Isaac Newton and Mae West!!
Just a word of caution……. please , please, please, do not believe what you find on the internet. Do not take it as face value. Most people that do family history as a hobby do not document everything.
Genealogists take the time to and get copies of every document that PROVE the linage. It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, and it take a lot of time….and I do not mean time on the computer.
Bu then again, most are not into Genealogy like I am. I am proud to say that I am accredited in Genealogy and can be hired as a paid researcher. I usually do local research for free since I think it’s so fun….
But please beware of the internet and it’s “trees”. You have to be sure that the research that was posted was done correctly.
how fun! my grandmother is the keeper of the “family book” with all the info in it–i should see what else i can turn up here! there’s rumors of relations to Ethan Allen, but who knows!
That is sooooo cool. I want to be related to Jane Austen too.
I’ve been lurking… I just had to say last year around this time I had a month disappear due to researching - online and by mail and in person… I documented some things and accepted others, but somehow a month (July I believe) was gone. I still dabble every so often, but now that i’ve gotten back 6 or so generations it takes a little bit more effort on some of those lines. My crafting is again the biggest time sucker in my life.
i’ve totally spent waaaay too many hours on ancestry, but it’s so fascinating! I only have three generations so far but am working my way! Love your family connections!!
Eeee! Jane Austen? How *cool*!!!
Jane Austen - lucky!!! My stepmom and aunt have done both sides of my family (only took a few years -
), but it’s still a major time suck just reading all the info they have gathered for us. So very interesting.
I found a family tree for our family that started from their departure in Rotterdam aboard the ship Two Brothers to the port of Philadelphia in 1748.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go any further back because there is so many men with the same name. We “think” our family originated somewhere in Germany, Russia or because of the spelling of our name, possibly France. We’ll never know for sure, I guess.
We have real good (and reliable) records from 1748 on. It was fun to learn little facts about the family —- we still wonder what happened to one of the cows. John had 2 cows one year, but only 1 the next year. Bad year? Had to eat the cow?
How interesting! Thanks for sharing!
Do you work with a woman named Donna? Because I read the blog of a Donna A. who started searching for her family recently, and she lives in the same area you do, and that would be FUNNY. And now you make me want to search for my family…
That is amazing!
Yeeeah, I did just a little poking around in my family history and found that while the ancestors I met were all quite nice, there’s very little “interesting” and “celebrity” to be found. I’m related to the founder of Connecticut, Thomas Hooker. Yeehaw. I have a Hooker in my ancestry. A Puritan Hooker.
And that’s about it. Yep.
Lolly, you know what they say about archivists who get involved with genealogy don’t you? No, I don’t know either, but I think “they” say something… You make it seem easy, maybe I will look into it again. Hey, happy red, black and metallic months!
Is it pricey? I mean Ancestry.com. I realize any hobby could be an obsession. For example, I’ve always thought I would like to learn to read Welsh and then go live in Wales for a year or so to track down my ancestors from the patronymic period, since that’s where the current family research ends.
i come from a long line of french peasants most of whom didn’t even read and write until my mother’s generation. but hey, we were spinners and knitters though!
how neat! my dad started researching my family history a while back, so I’m going to forward him this site to see if it will help!
How cool! My Aunt and Uncle spent a lot of time doing this and ended up visiting some long lost relatives in Germany.
Wow! I’m not sure if Ancestry.com could help me
All my family came from the Oil Feilds….. but maybe? Is there a fee along with it?
I will do the black a red this month… Those are colors I don’t use very often in knitting so months ago I decided I was going to participate and make “The Wave hat” from http://www.theislandofmisfitpatterns.com with black and red! I will notify you when I post
Mormons are very big in genealogy and, in fact, ancestry.com is owned by a Mormon. My background is LDS (Mormon) and my family has done extensive research. One of my lines goes back the the Mayflower, John Alden and John Townsend…it is fun to have a bit of history in your back ground;-)
Huge. Time. Sucker. I got into it a couple winters ago and it was interesting for a while but I “got over it”. Since my ancestors came from Germany in the 1800s I hit a dead end pretty quickly despite all of the fantastic internet tools.
What FANTASTIC relatives you have!
Although my family has done a great deal of exploration, my own work on Ancestry.com is all related instead to other people’s families for academic work of mine. But what an incredible site!
That sounds like an awesome website! I’ll have to carve out some time to explore it.
I’m finishing up my Frida Kahlo tank which shows off nice reds and blacks. I’ll have to upload it when it’s finished.
Wow! I’ve always wanted to try to research my family tree. I may have to look into this - thanks for posting!
Ooh, it’s fun. What’s irking me though, right now as I attept spellings of relatives I’ve never met, is how they don’t seem to make allowance for divorce (my stepdad doesn’t exist at the moment - !) and assume that everybody’s married.
After reading your post, I decided to have a little fun with this last night. I have extensive family trees already (several members of my family have put a lot of time and energy into research, the “old school” way) so I put it in to see what I could find. It came up with Jane Austen for me too (and Joan of Arc, of all people)! Guess that makes us “cousins”, eh?
Hee! I have been obsessed too–and I am also related to Henry David Thoreau and Jonathan Swift. Perhaps I am related to you too!
I also go Laura Ingalls Wilder, Bette Davis, and a handful of Presidents. Personally, I was waaay more impressed by Laura Ingalls than the Presidents.
I went home over Memorial Day weekend and spent a lot of time going through old family items (including a few very old quilts). She told me stories about my grandmother then on back to my great-great grandmother. So it was already on my mind to do some more research. Then I read your post. Looks like I’ll be spending some time on ancestry.com this weekend!
My aunt got really into our geneology a few years ago and found out some really interesting stuff about our family! Unfortunately, one of our ancestors was adopted and there is no information on his birth family, so our line stopped there. Oh, well. The past is interesting, but so is the idea of the future!
Thanks for the time suck! I got totally roped in last night, and input what I know about my relatives and watched as, like magic, it connected back for me with information others had entered. True or not, it certainly is fun, and I was really impressed with my “famous relatives” (I too am related to Jane Austen, so we must be cousins somehow!), and, like Steph, I was far more excited about my relationship to Laura Ingalls Wilder than to any of the Presidents I am related to!
how fun, lolly! I was really into genealogy a few years back and found so much info on the internet. It was really quite amazing, considering the work that my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother had to do without the help of a computer! I’m going to go play around with ancestry.com for awhile
So cool! Being related to Jane Austin would be awesome. Sadly, our family is Scottish (my father’s parents and my mother’s mother) and Norwegian (my mother’s father). Apparently we are a rather exclusive bunch and we tend to stick to non-famous people.
I took a look at my current projects and shockingly enough, most of them are red.
oh, me too! i’m related to Laura Bush, Jane Austen, Audrey Hepburn, Elvis Presley, John Milton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Eugene Delacroix, Louisa May Alcott, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, T.S. Eloit, Agatha Cristie, Elizabeth Browning, Johannes Vermeer, and Cary Grant. This was a very amusing diversion/waste of time. have been interested in genealogy for a dozen years or so, but this is a great blast to find out who the famous relatives are!
Jane Austen….too cool
I too have experienced time suckage through geneology. I personally don’t have anyone famous, but I can trace my family back to a small island off the coast of Norway. My husband, however, can trace his roots all the way back to the founder of Detroit, Antoine De La Motte Cadillac. I just find it interesting to see where names were changed and from where people came.
so awesome! Jane Austen!
My Great-Grandmother did quite a bit of genealogy work and managed to trace one line back 33 generations to a signer of the ‘Domesday Book’. I’ve inherited her books and her love of history and have done quite a bit of my own research to ‘double-check’ what she did now that there are clearer records more readily available. I totally agree that it is a time-suck however, it’s an important one (at least, I like to think so) ;o)
p.s. I think I’m related to Margene! John Alden is my 11th Great-Grandfather ;o) Small world…
i have a lot invested in family tree stuff. it IS so fun to trace your family back and find some possible famous branches. one branch of my family has really good records b/c my ancestors helped settle the first colonies in the New England area and they formed a society to keep track of everything. it is very fun, but very time consuming too!
Don’t get me started on genealogy! Okay, you just did! I even wrote about it last month: http://marysvirginwool.blogspot.com/2007/05/cuzzin-liz-comes-to-town.html
Crazy stuff, I tell ya!