Colorful Collar at Devil's Canyon

Mountain Man and I headed into the depths of Devil's Canyon yesterday for a day of climbing. It was gorgeous, with these amazing spires spiking up into the bluest of Southwestern skies.


That's Mountain Man rappelling off of one of the climbs, to give you a sense of scale. It was such a dramatic landscape.

My attention was definitely tuning into color yesterday. Partly it was the natural colors: deep blue of the sky, bright green of desert broom, and yellow of turning willow leaves.

And partly it was the amazingly colorful climbing gear: turquoise harness, blue shoes, yellow slings, red carabiners. I loved this image of everything tumbling out of the backpack at the start of the day ...

The insanely colorful knitted thing in the front is what I really want to talk about in this post. It's a Woodland Collar in Noro Kureyon, color 139. This was really an adventure to knit; I'd won the yarn in a contest on Knitting Nonstop (thank you!), and I had no idea what color was going to emerge next.

I had my doubts about how well all these colors would work together. But, in a fortuitous surprise, it turns out to match the wool shirt and vest that I often wear for climbing and camping. Now I can be all matchy-matchy in the great outdoors!


Of course, there's a limit to how much of this coordination I can take. I had some of the Kureyon left over after the collar (the collar took about 1.5 balls, so I had 1.5 balls of yarn left). I decided to make a hat.

It cooled down enough in the early evening that I could wear the hat and collar while we hiked out. But, I must say, I won't do that again! I'm only smiling because I hadn't yet seen the photos of myself in color overload.

Anyways, onto more fun. I was trying to figure out how to pick the winners from my Woodland Collar pattern contest - names in a hat? random number generator? - and decided that in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'd send a pattern to everyone who entered the contest. It meant the world to me that you took the time to leave me such kind comments on it. Thank you.

I'll be getting in touch today with everyone who entered. If you don't hear from me today, it means I'm having trouble figuring out how to contact you, and you can help me out by sending me an email (evergreenknits@gmail.com) or Ravelry message (evergreenknits). Thanks again to everyone who played along!