ever green knits

Shelter Scarf, Part II: New Years

2012-01-15T17:41:00.001-08:00

Wow. The last two weeks have passed in the blink of an eye. I've been sitting on this post all this time, weighed down by the burden of a deadline, never having the time to work out the words.

And what an adventure to share! For New Years, we drove west, west across the desert to celebrate the turning of the year in Joshua Tree ...

to bask in the sun, work our muscles, feel fingers on rock ...

That was Mountain Man, of course. And here's me, with my handknit, scarlet Cliff Dweller chalk bag:

We had plenty of sweet, quiet downtime in camp, too.

And on New Year's morning, I finally bound off the Shelter Scarf. Ta-Da!!

Very pleased with myself. I think this scarf is so damned cool and clever.

It's knit lengthwise, from one ribbed edge to the other, using horizontal cables that form interlocking circles.

Pattern to come ... someday. I have plans. But it'll be a while, I reckon.

Anyways, one more knitting anecdote from this glorious weekend. By the end of the weekend, I was worn out of climbing and intense sunshine. So while Mountain Man and his friend climbed one last hard route (Bird on a Wire -- they're tiny specks in the middle by the dark spot):

My friend and I stayed in the cool shadows of the valley. And I taught her to knit:

Long tail cast-on. Learned lightning-fast by nimble climbers' fingers.

Shelter Scarf, Part I: Christmas

2012-01-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of a scarf story. It begins with a ball of yarn. Brooklyn Tweed 'Shelter' in Button Jar, to be exact:

Actually, truth be told, it starts much earlier. Years back, in my pre-blogging days, I knit my father a cabled scarf for Christmas in soft, tweedy, pea green wool. At the time I wasn't even sure if he'd wear a scarf! But he loved it and wore it faithfully through many cold New England winters.

All good garments run their course, though, and this year it was time for a replacement. At first I set out about carefully reconstructing the original scarf. But this turned out to be impossible. The original yarn (Queensland Collection Kathmandu) had been discontinued. I couldn't find anyone on Ravelry who was willing to sell their stashed yarn to me, and the closest substitute turned out to have also been discontinued. So, I decided to try out Shelter, which is a remarkable yarn, woolen-spun in an historic New Hampshire Mill.

And try it out I surely did. I had to swatch nearly an entire skein of yarn before I figured out what to knit with it.

See, Shelter is a woolen spun yarn, which means that the fibers are all whipped up rather than aligned. It gives the yarn an amazing, lofty, pebbled texture. It's such a tactile pleasure to knit and wear, but it also brings challenges for cables or colorwork because you lose a lot of stitch definition.

Dad's original scarf (based on what I can reconstruct from photos) was knit in horseshoe cables and seed stitch in a sportweight yarn. It was understated and gentlemanly. But those slender cables and delicate seed stitches seemed to be swallowed up in the dark sproing of Shelter.

And that's why I ended up endlessly swatching, because I was putting this yarn through its paces, getting acquainted with it and learning about what did and didn't work in it. It was a fascinating process, but it gobbled up so much time that I couldn't actually finish Dad's scarf by Christmas. All he got was a narrow strip of fabric, all bunched up on my needles. It looked more like a snake than a scarf!

I'm nearly done by now, though. I worked on the scarf all through the Christmas weekend. Here I am, knitting in the Phoenix sunshine, with Isis snoozing in the grass behind me ....

To see what I ended up with, you'll have to wait for Part II of the story ....

Green Christmas

2011-12-27T08:35:00.001-08:00

Christmas in Arizona doesn't naturally feel like Christmas to a New England native like me. The nights are chillier than you might think (down into the 30s) but the days are brilliantly sunny and warm. So I decorated the house in cool, crisp, whites and evergreens to evoke a more wintry land. I started with a handknit and felted white wool dove, nesting in the front door wreath ....

(It's my own design, which I made up after I was displeased with the other dove patterns on Ravelry. I meant to write it up and release it as a pre-Christmas pattern but ran out of time. Ay!)

When you walk inside the house, you enter into the living room. The right wall of windows look out onto a banana grove; admittedly, that's not very wintry. But we put up a Christmas tree, fragrant and piney. I decorated it in glass icicles, bells, and crocheted white wool stars.

Hung over the fireplace were the green felted stockings I made last year and white wool fabric stockings that I sewed for everyone in the family, decorated with green leather nametags and evergreen sprigs.

(Ay, again. I meant to share the pattern with you. I took photos and was going to put up a post with a pre-Christmas tutorial for the stockings, but I never found the time. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow just the same!).

On the tables were all kinds of woodland curiosities. Deer antlers. Fresh mistletoe, gathered from the mountains. And green Korknissser. A comical story: at some point during the holiday, someone in the family who was the last to bed found a half-finished bottle of wine that needed to be corked up, and they sneakily grabbed one of these for the purpose!

At the back of the room, perfuming the house were magnificent white stargazer lilies in a silver metal birch bark vase.

And towering over it all was the feathery owl tree topper that I made a few years back. It turned out to be just by the heat vent, and whenever the heat came on, the owl quivered in the airstream and looked liked it was flying. What a vision!

I hope that you all had a very merry winter holiday season! I feel like I have so many crafts and stories to share, but this has just been a terribly busy time for me. So, just a few snapshots for now and happy tidings.

crunch

2011-12-16T10:44:00.000-08:00

Crunch time. At my desk, there's been a crunch of stress.

In the backyard, a crunch of leaves.

Up in the mountains, a crunch of snow.

There's much going on in this season to keep my hands busy with writing, raking, climbing, and crafting. Will write more one of these days when the crunch clears!

2011-12-04T18:02:00.001-08:00

Ay, I'm falling behind! Late autumn is such a busy time for academics. Just catching up now on our Thanksgiving in Durham, NC. Though the highlight was undoubtedly the new kitten in the family, the rest of the visit was splendidly season.

Homemade Pie

Campus Foliage

Bare Branches

Postprandial Strolls

Recognize those shawls, by the way? They're the Lotus Shawls (lavender silk and white cormo) that I knit this past summer. We took the pattern photos in Duke Gardens ... one step closer to having the pattern on its way ...

cat & mouse

2011-11-26T06:06:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving. Traveled across the country to spend it with family, friends, and a Siamese kitten.

I knit him a mousie ...

And he loves it! He's been thundering about the house with it in his mouth, playing with it constantly, biting a hole in it that I've already mended, growling cutely when we try to take it away from him, and mewing when he's lost it under furniture.

My favorite game is to dangle the mousie by the tail and watch him jump and jump at it. He's a first-rate leaper.

And just look at those beautiful blue eyes!!

happy girl, sad doggie

2011-11-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

Late November. The desert is cooling down, with chilly nights and crisp days. I finished up my green Open Studio late last week (in Malabrigo on size 6's), and it was just the thing to wear during a cloudy day climbing in the Refuge.

Isis had a good day, basking in the beauty around her. Such a sensitive beast.

The knitting that I'd brought along was yet another Open Studio hat, in the same rich brown wool as Mountain Man's sweater. I thought I could cajole Isis into trying it on. She was a good sport as long as I was there petting and reassuring her ....

But as soon as I moved out of the frame, it was another matter. A very serious matter.

Awwww.

Well aside from a few sad moments of puppy dog eyes, it was a glorious day. And as we drove out of the climbing country on rough dirt roads, we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

Such an amazing land this is!

greens

2011-11-14T14:42:00.000-08:00

Back in Phoenix now. Had a few days of luciously cool weather.

raindrops on the citrus trees

kitty cat pondering the backyard

knitting weather

It's another Open Studio, this time in rich, green Malabrigo. It's a shorter one, a cap instead of a watchcap. I love it. And it's just screaming for a big pom-pom on top!

Open Studio (+ hat pattern)

2011-11-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

Hats. One for my friend, one for me. With cables and ribbing and a turned-up brim for a warm, winters-coming watchcap.

The hat was designed for my friend Andrew. Sometime last January, we spent an evening sitting at the Cambridge Brewing Company, sketching out the hat elements that he'd like. In February, we crossed the river to Windsor Button to pick out a yarn, and he (in good, manly taste) went for Donegal Aran Tweed. In early March, I showed him some swatches, picked out a cable arrangement, and knit the body of the hat. But I didn't manage to finish it for him before winter ended.

I kept re-charting and re-knitting the top of the hat, but I couldn't get the cables and ribbing to come together in a way I like. So, I put the hat away for several months. And this month -- November 2011, nearly a year since we started this process -- I picked it up again, knit myself one in red, and finally finished his! I mostly finished it at a dinner party, then got up early the next morning and sewed in the ends just in time for an outing Andrew and I had planned: Open Studio day at the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville.

We had a marvelous time. We wore our matching hat and I smiled ridiculously the whole time. This particular studio belongs to Robert Puig Reyes, whose paintings really captured me and who graciously chatted with us and was even willing to take our picture. See: smiling!

The red one, by the way, was my way of reinvigorating my energy in this design project. It's knit in a handspun wool/hemp yarn that I picked up in Nepal years ago, when Mountain Man and I went trekking there for our honeymoon. It's a thick and thin, DK-ish, sturdy, single-spun yarn. Very rustic, a good match for the Donegal tweed.

When I was thinking of what to name this hat, I thought about something that geographically linked it to the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville area, because it was infused with such a sense of place for me. But that day at the artists studios, I realized that working on this hat was like giving my friend a behind-the-scenes tour of my design studio, so to speak. So, "Open Studio" it is.

If you'd like to knit one, too, you can download the free pattern from Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/open-studio

High Autumn Splendor

2011-11-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

soaring elms, cool morning sun

crisp golden russet apples

late season farmer's markets

colorful squashes

scarlet maple foliage

feeds my soul

Autumn Reds

2011-11-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

My cross-country back and forth continues. I've just been back in Boston, getting my dose of foliage and crisp autumn coolness.

I spent much of the flight there swatching, swatching, swatching. Remember the cabled tweed hat that I started for a friend last winter? After knitting the top of it five times and still being unsatisfied with it, I needed to step away. But cold weather has come again, and I needed to figure out how to finish it. I reinvigorated my energy in the project by knitting myself one in red!

And now I was back at the drawing board with the top decreases, experimenting with different ways of working the shaping into the ribbing and cables. Bah! I like a challenge, but this was getting to be too much.

I had to put it down again for my first few days in Boston. And I threw myself into enjoying the beauty of the place and season. Sunset on the Charles River....

And even a snowstorm, with heavy snowflakes falling on autumn foliage ...

natural dyeing with pecans

2011-10-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I had a favorite white sweater. It was a roll-neck pullover from J.Crew in soft cotton and cashmere.

But favorite white sweaters tend to become careworn. Seams came undone. Stitches unraveled. Stains materialized.

I used my tidiest skills to make physical repairs, but the faint yellow under the arms and a stubborn dot of a coffee stain on the chest meant that the white sweater never came out of the drawer for the past two years. It made me sad everytime I spied it, because I knew it had a lot of life left in it.

What's a girl to do? Well, an idea came to me recently when we had to prune a branch off of our pecan tree. I plucked all the unripe pecans off of it and put them in one of my dyeing buckets. After snapping this photo, I bashed and bruised them with a wooden post (very cathartic, must say) and covered them with water to soak for a week.

I washed the sweater to make sure that it was as clean as it could be. And then when I was finally ready to start the dyeing, I soaked it in cool water for about an hour to make sure that the fibers were fully saturated.

Meanwhile, this is what had become of the soaking pecan hulls. The water had become a thickened, slightly frothy yellow-brown. Slow, fermenting soaks like this can have an "ick" factor. But I find them very earthy and satisfying, and so much easier than hot dyeing, when I have to haul heavy pots around on the stove. This just happens in buckets in a corner of my backyard.

For cold dyeing, especially with plant fibers, you typically need a long soak. The wet sweater went into the strained dye liquor and stayed in for almost two days, with repeated airings (which I'll explain below). During the daytime, I'd move it around every few hours to try to make the dyeing more even. During the nighttime, though, it would stay in one spot for 10-12 hours, so that some spots ended up darker than others. If I'd really wanted it to be even, I would've removed it at night. But, well, I relish the wabi-sabi quality of the uneven dyeing (and in real life, the variation does seem a bit softer).

The one thing I wish is that I had taken process photos of the dyeing. There is definitely something curious going on with the oxidation and pecan hull dye. Since I haven't seen anyone else write about it, you'll get my full description.

The dye liquor was yellowish to start, and in the first couple of hours of dyeing, the sweater was taking on a light yellow-brown hue, except for the underarms, which were turning orangeish (probably due to the aluminum salts in deodorant, which were basically an inadvertent mordant!). It was hideous.

I pulled the sweater out of the dyebath to reconsider, and while it was in the air, over the course of maybe an hour or so, the color of the sweater was transformed. It darkened, deepened, and became more reddish rather than yellowish. This was really a shock.

I've dyed with dozens of natural dyes -- leaves, flowers, barks, and bugs -- and the only other one that you see this kind of real-time, color-changing oxidation process with is indigo, which is in its own category of natural dye because the chemistry is so different (basically, the pigment needs to be in a reduced and alkaline solution in order to be in a dissolved form that can adhere to the fiber. You carefully lower the fiber into the bath so that you don't introduce air, and then when you remove it, and the pigment hits the air and oxidizes, the fiber turns from greenish-yellow to blue).

The process of repeated airings not only changed the color of the sweater, but over time it introduced a lot of air into the dyebath itself, and that became a darker reddish brown as well. It was fascinating. Wild and crazy times with natural dyeing!

sat-upon

2011-10-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days, I did all the tedious finishing details on Mountain Man's situpon.

I decided I didn't like the original cast-on edge ...

So I carefully unpicked the long-tail cast-on, picked up the live stitches, and bound off again, with some k2togs along the way to tighten up the edge. Much cleaner and tidier.

Next, I cut a square of wood grain oilcloth and went around the edges with my small hole-punch. You can sew right through oilcloth with a sharp needle, but holes are necessary for either blanket-stitching with a tapestry needle or crocheting.

Finally, I crocheted the backing to the situpon using contrasting dark brown yarn (actually, the same yarn for Mountain Man's sweater). I did it in a way that looks just like blanket stitch but was much easier (since with regular sewing, I would have needed to be drawing a long length of yarn through each hole, and with crocheting it's just a tiny loop to pull through).

And now it's a sat-upon! We took both sit-upons out climbing yesterday and were very happy indeed on the rough rocks.

Isis feels a bit left out, though, can't you tell?

golden cables

2011-10-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

We were down in Cochise Stronghold, camping and climbing for the weekend, when I finished the knitting for Mountain Man's situpon. I stuck it on a barbed wire fence. It was magnificent in the morning sun, with the golden-green grass lighting up behind it!

The original situpon had an 8-stitch ribbed cable, which makes for a great fabric but is interminably slow and boring! For this one I did cables that were 6-stitches wide but twisted only every 8 rows. Still boring, but marginally faster without the ribbing. And I like the big, lush cables that result.

Here's what the camping scene looks like, by the way. This was just as I was finishing .... knitting by the morning campfire ... drinking coffee and keeping the strong, slanting morning sun out of my eyes.

And a few snapshots from the rest of the weekend: climbing up "Ewephoria" ....

Cairns, lovely little cairns, marking the trails ...

And a refreshing dip in a shady rock pool for Isis ....

back again

2011-10-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

And now it's back to the desert ...

back to climbing

back to Isis

heh heh

Isis knows what I'm knitting .... she keeps trying to steal mine!

knitting about Cambridge

2011-10-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Quick jaunt back to Cambridge for a few days. Brought along a skein of aran weight wool, naturally dyed with African Sumac leaves from my backyard to a sunny, canary yellow. As is my customary manner, I pulled it out whenever possible.

On the plane, casting on in the intense morning light

On the T, near midnight

Harvard Yard, lunchtime break

Subway again, heading home

Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint: it's a densely cabled square ...

weekend repeat

2011-10-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

Another weekend of climbing ....

Means more progress yet on the baby blanket ....

It's so big now that I broke the 16" circular needle that it was all scrunched up on before! Now on a 24", to give you a sense of scale.

It's getting too big to travel with, too cumbersome to haul around. So, it's being put away for a few days while I'm on the road again now, but when I get back there will just be a few rows to finish up! And then the big reveal :)

there and back again

2011-09-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

This baby blanket has been keeping my hands busy, keeping me steady, through my back and forth journeying.

September 10.
Pine, AZ.

September 19.
Cambridge, MA

September 23.
Pine, AZ.

Arizona to Massachusetts, rocks to grass.

wedding shawls

2011-09-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Went to a wedding in cool, drizzly Chicago last weekend. It was a college buddy's wedding, and Amy was there, too. You know her. She's the one who taught me to knit. We've held chickens together. I gave her the glorious, pink Vermont shawl. And guess what? She wore it to the wedding!

We were so pleased that the drinks matched the shawl ...

And she was such a good sport about taking copious knitting blog photos.

But enough is enough!!

Seattle

2011-09-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

I spent several days in Seattle for a conference. What a beautiful city! I saw all the sights ....

The Space Needle

Pike's Place Market

City Lights

Maritime Sunsets

Mount St. Helen's (on my flight home)

It was a grand trip. Intellectual stimulation. Catching up with old friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in a decade. Falling under the spell of Seattle in the summer.

There was no knitting, as you might gather. But my knitting life did profoundly color the trip, as I stayed with a friend who used to be in my knitting group in Phoenix. Actually, she moved to Seattle just before I moved to Phoenix, so we never overlapped. But she's a fantastic virtual member of the group on Ravelry, and she still visits from time to time, and she generously opened her place to me even though we hardly knew each other in real life. Isn't the knitting community awesome?

old, new, traded, blue

2011-09-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Last summer, after I finished the pattern for the Sagebrush Shrug, I set to knitting a second one. It was last seen during a climbing trip last August. But after finishing the body, I ran out of the yarn, and I just paused on the whole enterprise.

For a while I thought, heck, I've got gobs of yarn hanging around, why don't I knit the ribbing in something else? And so the unfinished shrug and a spare ball of black yarn were toted to my Cambridge apartment (evidence: here) where they sat untouched for an entire year. Truth be told, I didn't want to do it that way. So, I finally got myself together enough to just go on Ravelry and trade with another knitter for the right yarn.

In no time at all, I've finished the ribbing around the body opening. Looking good. Now I just have to pick up and knit the ribbing around the arms.

I'm really a terrible procrastinator, but it always does feel so delicious when I finally face the music and get things done. In that vein, there's always mowing the lawn ...

Cliff Dweller Chalk Bag

2011-08-31T07:25:00.001-07:00

I don't know how many other knitter-climbers there are in the world ... but this pattern's for you! It's a densely cabled chalk bag, inspired by the sinuously layered sandstone spires of Sedona.

It has a rigid rim, constructed by sewing in a circle of tubing underneath a turned hem.

And a fleece lining, which closes snugly with a hidden internal drawstring. You can see it pinned in here, in preparation for the hand-sewing (basic, I promise!). Makes it a great bag for carrying anything small and precious.

The hemp-blend yarn is pretty tough-wearing, especially when knit up at such a tight and sturdy gauge, though I still probably wouldn't take it into any crazy off-width granite action! :)

The pattern has both charted and written knitting directions, with a detailed tutorial (lots of photos!) to walk you through the sewing and construction.

For more details or to buy the pattern, check out its Ravelry page: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cliff-dweller-chalk-bag

collection of colors

2011-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Colors collected on a weekend trip to Northern Arizona ...

Red rocks of Sedona, reflected in Oak Creek

Cathedral Rocks at sunset, with shadow of a tree

Golden sunset over Oak Creek

The Grand Canyon.

Such a breathtaking landscape, in color and texture. Happy to be here.

white lotus shawl

2011-08-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Delicious yarn, copious knitting time, and a desire to finish a pattern (inspired largely by all your lovely comments!) meant that I was able to knit, knit like the wind, and finish the second lotus shawl.

Do you like the lace stitch that I used for the body of the shawl? I wanted to find patterns that would evoke different elements of a lotus pond. For the first one, I picked a subtle wave pattern. For this one, I was trying to create a sense of lotus pods. I played around with different eyelet arrangements until I found one that popped the way I wanted.

I tried out a different fiber and texture, too. This one is knit in the heavenly woolen-spun laceweight cormo from the Elsa Wool Company, which I picked up at the Taos Wool Festival a couple of years ago.

As much as I love the drape and luster of the silk-wool yarn, I think that this bouncy, lightweight wool shows off the lotus flowers even better. It has a lot of energy to it.

Yay!

red rocks & chalk bag

2011-08-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

I finished my secret red Sedona project. Want to see?

Ha, it's probably still a mystery to most folks!

It's a chalk bag, made to hold the chalk that rock climbers use to dust their fingers. The bag has a rigid opening so that your hand can easily find the way in and a drawstring closing the lining so that your chalk doesn't fall out when you're not using it.

I took careful notes and careful progress photos. Pattern to come someday ...

Sedona

2011-08-12T21:51:00.001-07:00

I have been in heaven. Sedona. Land of red rocks and rainbows.

Studying sandstone. Textural input.

Knitting cables. Textural output.

Lovely, lovely. A landscape to nourish the soul.

Lavender Lotus Shawl

2011-08-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my shawl. Finished it on the long drive back to Phoenix, bound off in time to photograph in the backyard in the late, low-angle setting sun.

There's always a slightly disheartening moment when you bind off , trembling with excitement, and see how sad and crumpled those stitches look before blocking. The waves look like awkward puckers. The lotus blossoms, still yet to bloom.

I gave it a quick soak and pinned it out on a cotton rug that I'd pulled onto the grass. (The curious kitty cat needed to come and check it out. It's cat fashion to walk all over whatever it is you're paying attention to, naturally.)

And at the end of such a long journey with a project -- yarn purchased five years ago for my wedding shawl and naturally dyed when I was still living in Vermont, project sketched out over the past year when I passed time in boring meetings, knitting done on plane rides and climbing trips from one coast to another -- what a relief it is to unpin it and see that it's all come together!

I'm especially delighted by how the flowers bloomed so gloriously. The magic of blocking.

Plan is to knit up a slight variation, probably in a lightweight wool, and then to write up the pattern. Hopefully I'll have it out by the fall, though you know that probably means winter ... heh heh ...

granite and silk

2011-08-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

After my knittingless backpacking trip to the Sierra, I was briefly back in Phoenix, and then it was back to Southern California, retracing my tracks across the Mohave on I-10, this time for a very knittingful climbing trip !

Here we are, reclining in the shade -- him resting, me knitting -- after a hot and sunny climb up to the summit of Tahquitz.

Nothing as lovely and peaceful as sitting in the shade of a pine tree, muscles well worked, and getting in a few rows of lace knitting.

I love the incongruity of these textures. The roughness of the granite against the lovely, luxe softness of the silk-merino yarn ....

The yarn, by the way, is a fingering weight silk/wool from Henry's Attic (used to be called "Silk and Ivory"). I dyed it with cochineal waaay back in 2007. It was one of my early natural dyeing experiments, back when I was living in Vermont. How time flies!

Sierra Nevada Serenity

2011-07-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

I've been fleeing the Sun Valley for cooler, mountainous places. The first trip was a quick jaunt to the eastern Sierra. A friend and I hiked up the Meysan Lakes trail and found a sweet campsite to base ourselves out of for a few days of camping and climbing. The pinnacle of our trip: a long, intense, and glorious day of climbing up this ridge to Lone Pine Peak.

We got up there just before sunset and were treated to spectacular views of the mountain shadows, reaching from Mount Whitney down to the valley floor.

The weather was cool and lovely. Meysan Lake was still mostly frozen, even in mid July, and there were stubborn patches of snow tucked into shadowed areas along the trails. Isis was absolutely in heaven, digging and rolling in the snow. (And isn't she adorable in her new little backpack?)

I was in heaven, too. Physically exhausted from the long drive, the climbing, the beating sun, and the altitude. But spellbound by the beauty and serenity of the Sierra

with its soft, subtle sunsets and its deep, lovely sunrises.

So spellbound, in fact, that I didn't knit a single stitch!

out of focus

2011-07-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

I flew back to Phoenix, oh, it's some weeks ago. It was a surreal move somehow. This year has flown by so fast, it was hard to keep it in focus.

Out of focus airplane window shots are my favorite, by the way

I made good progress on a new shawl during the flights. It was late, and I was too brain dead to do anything else. The rhythmic back-and-forth, back-and-forth can be so soothing.

I got back to Phoenix just after that crazy dust storm of a few weeks ago. The whole city was left hot and gritty and strange. Suitably surreal given my mindset, I suppose. And it made for some beautiful western sunsets to welcome me home ...

If you peer closely, you can just make out Isis against the silhouette of Piestewa Peak.

So much to catch up on. But summer brains move slowly ...

bit of handspun

2011-07-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

A last wee bit of spinning to share with you from when I was still in Cambridge ...

A kind and generous friend (my brother's mother-in-law, who is also a spinner and knitter) gave me this gorgeous fleece for my birthday. It's earthy, aromatic, full of lanolin, with beautiful crimp and color variation.

As I was moving out, I would spin a bit to calm my nerves when I needed a break. I took handfuls of the fleece and combed it out with a flicker brush, keeping the fibers aligned. I then pre-drafted those handfuls of fluffy fiber.

And a-spinning I would go! I spun up one spindles-worth, then Andean plied it. This was spinning "in the grease" since I hadn't washed it yet. The fibers were sticky, but to be honest I think it made for a slower and very pleasurable (i.e. non-spindle-dropping) spinning experience.

Afterwards, I gave my yarn a bath. I heated up a pot of water, let it cool from boiling a ways, and then plunged my skein in to soak. No soap. No agitation. I was amazed at how much lanolin came off into water. So much so that that yarn lost its earthy lanolin aroma even! I think next time I might give it less of a soak.

In the end, I had a beautiful wee skein, probably about 50 yards. Lovely little reminder of those last days in my rustic Cambridge apartment.

Green Alpaca Wrap Sweater

2011-07-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a whirlwind of a couple of weeks. I moved out of my apartment in Cambridge. Headed up to Vermont for the Fourth. Moved back to Arizona in the midst of a monstrous duststorm. Fled to the Sierra for a few days of restorative backpacking. There's much to reflect and catch up on .... first, a cool dose from that Vermont weekend ....

So serene and beautiful. Wish I were still there, swimming in the silky lake water and basking in the greenness.

Speaking of greenness, I finished that alpaca wrap sweater while I was there. There was no pattern (I just made it up as I went along). But you can discern the construction when it's flat like this: top-down seamless raglan with subtle waist and shoulder shaping.

The shoulder shaping is something I made up to make the top-down raglan look more tailored. After dividing the yoke into the shoulder and body sections, I start slight decreases at the shoulder crest. It's very similar to how I decrease for the waist: I add in a {ssk, k5, k2tog} at the center of the shoulder every 6 rows. It gives a little convex curve to the shoulder and upper arm and makes for a slimmer arm overall.

After knitting, I edged the entire sweater in various crochet stitches -- single crochet around the neck and front edges to keep it from rolling, double crochet at the sleeve hems, and a bold triple crochet at the bottom.

The wrap was engineered into the sweater, enabled by a small slit in one side for a waist tie to come through.

The tie just comes around the back and ties on the other side. That was my sister's clever idea, so that the front of the sweater keeps its clean look.

I'm very happy with how it came out in the end. It's eminently wearable (although, sadly, I didn't get any good pictures of me actually wearing it). And it's just my color. Matches the moss of the forest floor splendidly!

It's been a long journey with this sweater, both geographically (started in Joshua Tree, knit on trips to Arizona and Tahquitz and DC, finished in Vermont) and knittingly (my "improvisational design" had all kinds of issues and needed to be unraveled halfway at one point).

Ah, nice to be done with that. Nice to have an accomplishment. And now on to the next adventures....

Cattail Yarn

2011-07-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

I cut an armful of Vermont cattails at the end of last summer, and they've been a centerpiece of my living room all year.

It's time to clear them out, though, as they've started to decay into wild, airy handfuls of fuzz.

In case you're wondering, yes it's possible.

But, no, you don't want to!

green sleeves

2011-06-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Up in Vermont for a weekend. Heavenly. There was a lot of activity going on around me, but all I really wanted to do was sit by the water meditatively.

With yarn and needles, naturally. I've been trying to finish up the sleeves of the green alpaca sweater, knitting them at the same time on the same magic loop from the same ball of yarn (one from inside, one from outside). This way I can use every last yard of the yarn and make sure that the sleeves are precisely the same length.

On another note, I was graced by a beautiful loon sighting during my weekend. We'd had an afternoon thunderstorm, during which time I took a little nap. When I woke up, it was twilight. There was a rainbow in the sky above, and two loons swimming in the cove below.

Such beauty, it almost hurts to be there!

a veritable mess of madder

2011-06-20T19:27:00.000-07:00

When I was back home in Phoenix the other weekend, I took my morning cup of coffee out to the garden to see how things are doing. I had a shock to my not-yet-caffeinated system to see this mess of madder!

Back in spring 2009, I'd planted a whole array of natural dye seeds, and a single madder plant was all that made it to maturity. That first year it was touch and go. Last year, it filled out the entire whiskey barrel. Now it's greenery is completely covering two barrels -- outgrowing the mint, even! -- and a few flower pots to boot.

I couldn't even penetrate the plant enough to get a photo of the reddish roots, but they must be doing well. The flowers are out, though, tiny and greenish. Maybe I can collect some seeds this year so that I have some new plants started when I harvest this one next summer.

And here's what the whorls of scratchy leaves look like. Just fifteen minutes of dealing with this plant scraped me up twice as much as the whole weekend of rock climbing! Does anyone know if you can propagate madder from cuttings, by the way? Can I cut stems and root them in water? Or do I need to layer the stems under soil without cutting?

Tahquitz!

2011-06-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

Tahquitz is a spectacular rock climbing area about an hour uphill from Palm Springs. I joined Mountain Man there for a weekend, a magnificent weekend indeed.

We reveled in the gorgeous, forested hikes leading up to the mountains ....

and in the awesome granite climbs, ranging from delicate face climbing to burly crack climbing.

In the evenings, we gathered around the campfire to rest our sore muscles, have a drink, tell a tale, and cook up some yummy dinner.

And, of course, there was knitting all along the way! At every spare moment, I'd get out what looked like a huge, tangled, unpromising mess of alpaca yarn an get in a few stitches.

It's that green sweater, now radically re-engineered. I unraveled it halfway and re-knit it to be a fitted wrap sweater with crocheted trim.

I need to finish knitting the sleeves and crocheting the trim, and then I need to add a tie at the waist (in the photo above, it was just held closed with a stick). And then it'll be finished! A happy salvaging of the project, I'd say!

Though perhaps bit reminiscent of Peter Pan ...

sweet splash

2011-06-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

I made my mommy a shawlette ...

It's little. And as light as air. When I lay it down, it floated atop the blades of grass ...

Does the color look familiar? It's the same yarn as my pink Vermont Shawl, madelinetosh Prairie in "Mulled Wine." Before I gave it as promised to my friend Amy, my mom wore it beautifully to Rhinebeck and let it be known that she quite liked it. That, in fact, she'd like the very same shawl for herself. She said this so sweetly that I couldn't resist!

But, sadly, I couldn't find another skein of the yarn. So I took the rest of that skein of yarn -- every last yard -- and knit up this shawlette for her. It's still based on the Vermont Shawl, except that I did stockinette-with-eyelets instead of the first section of lace, and I only got through a portion of the second section of lace.

I've been knitting this here and there since November. Finally bound off at the end of May. Little by little, things get done.

storm clouds

2011-06-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

Tornadoes swept through Massachusetts last night. Here in Boston we were spared the worst, but we did have an incredible thunderstorm late in the night. And before that, an evening of unsettling skies and strange weather, with wildly, wickedly roiling clouds.

You could say it was a dark and stormy night ....

I was journeying across town to see a friend and snapped the photo with my cell phone camera. I keep trying to discern Voldemort's face in it ...

Speaking of storm clouds, the Storm Cloud Shawlette made it to 1000 Ravelry projects last month. What a milestone! I can hardly believe that this little wisp of a thing that I put out into the world has reached into the lives of so many people. Thank you.

knitting about town

2011-05-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back to working on that green alpaca cardigan again. I unraveled the lower 8 inches -- thousands upon thousands of stitches -- and have been steadily re-knitting it. It was the one project I brought to DC with me, and I brought it everwhere. From a hip speakeasy bar ...

to an outdoor cafe in Alexandria ....

and rolling around town on the bus!

My sister and I were laughing about putting together a Dr. Seuss green-eggs-and-ham post about knitting a cardigan ... I will knit it in a bar. I will knit it in a car. I will knit it on the bus. I will knit it in a fuss! And so forth.

But we weren't consistent about taking photos everywhere I was knitting, and then I had to hop on the plane back to Boston.

Now I'm back. And suddenly it's hot and muggy, and I don't feel like knitting. I feel like sitting outside with a cold drink and a picnic, which is exactly what I did with a friend last night. We sat on a dock by the river, laid out watermelon and potato salad and cold chicken and a bottle of spiked iced tea, and watched the sun set over MIT .

green ramble in our nation's capitol

2011-05-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

May has been the month of travel for me. Here I am on yet another quick trip to DC! This was a serious work trip -- with a workshop, research in the Library of Congress, and interviews for my dissertation research - but I did sneak in a happy ramble one afternoon.

I strolled by the Capitol building, then through the U.S. Botanic Garden. I was dazzled by the orchids, the passionflowers, the bromeliads. But what drew my eye most was the simple, stunning beauty of the ferns.

I love ferns. We had a fern motif on our wedding invitations. And when I briefly had a line of naturally-dyed yarn, I letterpressed my own tags with a fern stamp, made from a scanned fern from my backyard.

I'd love to draw ferns into my knitting. Maybe I'll have to play around to make a fern-evoking lace pattern. Wouldn't you love this draped across your back like a shawl?

After the Botanic Gardens, I wandered down the mall to the Natural History museum. It was oppressively hot and humid. So I ended up taking a break in the shade of a soaring elm tree

I put up my hair, let the faint breeze cool my neck, and pulled out my knitting for a bit of a dreamy green spell.

dark & jagged

2011-05-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

It's hard to look dark and jagged when the sun has come out for the first time in weeks.

Ha! If you remember, this is the scarf that I started in February, back when it was icy and bleak. I'd wanted to knit a big, spiky thing to wrap around my neck and be angry in.

I knit this -- which is an improvised crescent with a knitted-on border in black Cascade Eco Wool -- and was immediately disappointed. Even after blocking, it rolled so viciously that it turned into a snake (a snake with spikes, a stegosaurus snake) rather than then a voluminous wrap. I'd tossed it into a corner and vowed to frog it. That's why you didn't see it on the blog all these months.

I still had about half the ball of Eco Wool left. When I fetched it last week to make my curious cardigan, the dark & jagged scarf fell off the shelf. And I was shocked to find that it was more fun than I'd remembered. I finally sewed in the ends, and ta-da! wore it around town on Saturday.

Saturday, by the way, was predicted to be dark and stormy. Perfect for photographing my scarf, perfect for wandering about town and searching for other dark and jagged things like moss (above) and sweet shrub (below).

The sky was still threatening thunderstorms when I left my house. But by the time I reached my friend's place in Jamaica Plain, the sun had burst through the clouds, and we had the first glorious day we've had in weeks.

So, in sky and in scarf, I ended up with sunshine despite my best efforts!

little black shrug

2011-05-19T09:56:00.001-07:00

I was back in DC last weekend for a luscious spring wedding.

I whipped up a curious little cardi-shrug in time for the ceremony. I'd only started it a few days earlier and never really thought I'd finish it to wear over the weekend. But I got so much knitting in during the Friday rehearsal that I said, hmmm, maybe it's possible ... let me look up on my iPhone to see if there's a shop nearby where I can get a button.

And lo and behold, it turned out that the rehearsal was literally around the corner from Looped!

What a lovely, lovely shop. Beautiful yarns. Inspiring space. Gorgeous light. And super friendly people. I can't wait to go back when I have more time.

And they had just the button I needed. On Saturday, I bound off the sweater while my sister was helping me properly blow dry my hair, and I sewed on the button on the way to the ceremony.

A little strange ... needs a little adjustment so it doesn't scallop up in the front ... but for an improvised eleventh-hour knit, it's kind of quirkily fun!

purple blossoms

2011-05-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

I had the loveliest Mother's Day this year. My sister and I took a little road trip down to Durham, North Carolina with our beautiful mom. Here are the girls, reveling in the gorgeous Duke Gardens. It was amazingly lush and purple!

As it happened -- unplanned -- I was working on a purple, flowery lace project that coordinated perfectly with the gardens. This is just a swatch. The rest of the project shall remain secret for a while.

But tell me, what kind of flower does it look like to you? I'm thinking maybe a crocus ...

yarn aesthetics

2011-05-09T21:21:00.001-07:00

I did a bit of spring cleaning in my apartment recently. Swept out the ghosts of winter. Took stock. Rearranged. And in doing so, I was struck by how much my yarn and fiber and lace knitting has become a part of my home aesthetic here.

There's the still life on the bookshelf. Bones, antlers, sagebrush, photos of the West. But also balls of yarn and a darning egg.

On another shelf, there's a stack of antique books. Mostly gardening and naturalist books, with a charming 1923 Nature journal in there that I should show you some time. And at the top is my 19th century account book with the lace knitting patterns.

Then there's my white alpaca wedding shawl, draped softly over the kitchen doorway.

And all the rest of my shawls - four Storm Cloud Shawlettes, two Vermont shawls, an Aeolian shawl, my Cactus Wren Shawl, a Cedar Leaf Shawlette, and a couple of scarves -- draped on the coat rack on the front door.

The biggest discovery came from rearranging my stash by color. I brought this yarn and fiber in dribs and drabs from Phoenix over the year, and most of the time it's been a jumble on my bookshelf. But when rearranged, I suddenly realized that I was looking at a perfect representation of my color palette: earth tones, blue-greens, and a splash of crimson. When I look at my Ravelry projects, that pattern is striking, too. A real self-realization!

There's more ... the Shetland sheepskin rug from Charlotte's farm, and the lace blanket draped over a chair in the corner, and the photos of sheep from Rhinebeck framed on my wall ... but this is what was catching my eye this morning.

19th Century Knitting Book

2011-05-02T05:16:00.000-07:00

I was back in Connecticut for a few days recently. It was beautifully "silver" weather -- steely skies, drizzling rain, misty and foggy. Lovely weather for knitting. Lovely for walking through the park and looking at the magnolias.

And lovely weather for antiquing. An old friend and I spent an afternoon doing just that, and I found a treasure. Buried on a shelf of 19th century poetry books was a little notebook. Its covered was tattered, its leather binding mended with a scrap of brown plaid fabric.

It was some kind of account book, with carefully hand-written records from 1848 to 1855 of goods (barrels of flour, gallons of molasses, yards of calico, bushels of poughtatoes, half pint of turnip seeds) and services (sawing, oxen, a "horse and wagon to gow to Poughkiepsie"). The book was already delightfully charming on its own. But what made it a treasure was this: pasted over the earliest records were a dozen or so knitting and crochet patterns.

I love to think of a 19th century woman carefully snipping these patterns out of a magazine and pasting them into the accounts book. I love to think of her trying out the different laces -- fluted lace, oak-leaf lace, torchon lace, German lace, and more -- or casting on for the knitted shoulder cape or the clover leaf bedspread. I love to think of all the things that had to line up in this universe for her book to have found its way to me.

Once I have a chance to try out some of the stitch patterns, I'll definitely be sharing this find in more detail. But for now, I'll leave you with my mom's kitty cat. She was on the bed while I was taking photographs of the book, and she was getting tired of my movement and provocations ...

ugh!

2011-04-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

I knit all week.

Through three days of a conference. Through the weekend climbing excursion to the Refuge.

but. UGH. Did not drape prettily as it had in my head. (Speaking of my head, I had to chop it out of the picture because I kept making horrid faces. UGH.)

Tolerable when wrapped and tied, which was how I primarily intended to wear it. But. Still.

I'm going to need some distance from this pond scum before I figure out what to do with it!

Joshua Tree

2011-04-22T06:51:00.001-07:00

Friday night, end of a tiring week. Six hour flight to Phoenix. Then a four hour drive, barreling through the desert to midnight, towards a big moon on the horizon. All to wake up in the magic of Joshua Tree ...

There were two things about this weekend that were especially remarkable. The first was the mercurial weather. It was by turns blazing with sunshine, swept by wind, and even chilled by snow. Snow in Joshua Tree is a beautiful thing to behold.

The second mind-blowing thing was that an adaptive climbing clinic was going on literally right in the backyard of our campsite. We had so much fun hanging out with them, watching the climbing, and learning about this awesome community. We also spent a morning climbing with Jeff Erenstone, who runs an orthotics and prosthetics clinic in Lake Placid, and got to learn a little about the technology and rehab that goes into this. Way cool.

As for me, when my fingers weren't scraping against granite, they were working bamboo needles and alpaca yarn. I started a cardigan on the trip there ... I don't know how it'll turn out, but it's meant to be a seamless, rolled-edge, raglan cardigan. No pattern. Just futzing around. By the end of the weekend I was done with the yoke -- now it's downwards for the rest of the body and then I need to pick up the stitches for the sleeves.

Love this place. the intensity of the desert. the haunting Joshua Trees. the strangeness of the rock outcroppings. the beauty.

coffee & cables

2011-04-06T06:12:00.001-07:00

Sunny morning. Steam rising from coffee.

Trying to get in a few rows on a cabled hat I've been making for a friend. I've already knit the top of the hat three times. This is the fourth go.

I've been trying to figure out how to work the decreases into the cable pattern. I've sketched out new ideas on plain paper, in notebooks during lectures, on cocktail napkins. But each time I knit it up, there's something I don't like about the flow of stitches.

Sometimes my perfectionistic tendencies are too much! So I'm slowing down, giving it a last try, sipping my coffee and trying to be mindful about the process.

March and the desert bloom

2011-03-31T20:03:00.000-07:00

It's the last night of March. I'm sitting, curled up in my Cambridge apartment with a low fire in the woodstove, knitting a hat, while a wet spring snow falls softly outside.

I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy, despite the chill. Mountain Man reports sweetly from Arizona that he LOVES his sweater and wants to wear it all the time, even though it's 80 degrees there! Here's what it was like last weekend ... how lovely ...

It was actually an unusually long and cold winter in Arizona, too. We had a great deal of frost damage in the garden, losing a fig tree, bougainvillea, and some of the more tender jasmines. But with the winter rains and the warming temperatures, it's greening up now, and the desert is starting to bloom. The brittlebrush has exploded into insane yellows

The ocotillo are covered with green leaves and tipped with their brilliant orange flowers

The first of the cacti -- a strawberry hedgehog, which actually has a fresh, fruity fragrance -- have flowered.

And back in the garden, we were awash in sweet grapefuit and even sweeter grapefruit blossoms, all buzzing with bees.

Can't wait to be back there!

Mountain Man's Sweater

2011-03-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

At long last, I have knit my man a sweater and made him happy.

It's a simple, seamless, stockinette sweater, knit just the way he wanted it, with raglan sleeves

and rustic rolled edges at the neck, waist, and wrists.

The yarn is a soft, lofty, naturally colored, chocolate brown wool (Fibranatura Shepherd's Own). Quite appropriately, I knit much of it on our climbing trips over the past couple of months - see here here and here. It was always a pleasure to pull my knitting out of my climbing bag and feel this soft yarn in my rock-roughened fingers.

Isis, too, is delighted by it.

The backstory, by the way, is that for years Mountain Man has been wearing these rough wool sweaters that he picked up during field work in Nepal. They're huge, coarse, drop-shouldered beasts that keep getting holes worn in them that I have to darn up. See for yourself.

He loves those sweaters, so I can't disparage them too much, but I must say that I think this new one is a great improvement :)

St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's Day was my birthday. It was a fine day indeed: sunny, mild for the season, full of good spirits. Mountain Man was visiting, and we spent the afternoon strolling around the neighborhoods of Boston. Here's a pause in the North End after savoring a cannoli from Mike's Pastry.

The new hat is yet another Rivendell, but instead of a snug cap in DK wool, it's a lush, soft, slouchy hat in worsted, single-spun alpaca. The yarn is Cascade's Eco-Alpaca, which is undyed and minimally processed. The cables are delicious in this yarn!

I plan on eventually re-releasing this pattern with instructions for both the DK wool cap and the worsted alpaca sloucher. But ... sigh .... I've kind of lost my steam with the pattern making since I've come back to Cambridge and re-focused on my real work. It's a simple enough pattern that it would probably only take one Saturday to photograph/type/chart/etc. and finish the pattern, but ... sigh ...

What I have had more energy and appetite for is photographing this place. I'll be headed back to Arizona after this academic year, and I'm trying to appreciate all the textures and experiences while I'm still East. Like these antique radiators, packed into an outside lot at a salvage company in Union Square.

They're so beautiful and sculptural. Every time I bike past, I think, "I should really come back here with a camera."

Or take this monstrous pothole in my neighborhood, which reveals a glimpse of paved-over cobblestone streets. I took this photo about a week ago. When I biked past the spot again yesterday, it was patched up and back to plain-old asphalt. It's amazing to think of these layers of hidden history.

And while I'm thinking about my own sense of place, here are two other posts, from two of my favorite blogs, that transported me so thoroughly to other magical places this week: Knitting Iris's St. Patrick's day in Montana and The Times We Are Living In's elk-research adventures in Wyoming. Enjoy!

little bit of lushness

2011-03-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Early spring has finally arrived. It's earthy, dreary, chilly, damp, but altogether lush-feeling to us winter-weary creatures. The ducks have patches of open water to swim through ...

We humans can be out and about with lighter jackets and a playful spring in our step ... hee hee

(Although hats are still welcome! Just in time for the brisk March weather, I whipped up some semi-matching hats for Mountain Man and me. The yarn is the yummy woolen-spun sportweight Cormo from Elsa Wool. His hat is a Cambridge Watchcap. Mine is a Rivendell.)

Best of all, the earliest flowers are beginning to grow out of the thawing earth and tentatively stretch out their petals. Witch hazel. Crocus. Snowdrops.

We went for a walk around Elizabeth Park yesterday and were delighted to come across the spring flower show. I remember this every year -- the excitement of stepping out of a cold, drizzly March landscape and into the warmth, color, and fragrance of the greenhouse.

Talk about lush! I was in rapture: daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, pansies, petunias ...

and will definitely be trying to carry this color through the week!

Saturday at the crag

2011-02-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

weathered feathers

weathered fingers

wet nose

Yep, back in Arizona for the weekend. Finished a hat on the flight but, alas, forgot to take a photo! That brown sleeve -- it's for Mountain Man's sweater -- is what I worked on the rest of the weekend. I'm just about ready to join the sleeves and the body, so it's getting exciting ...

bit of brightness

2011-02-26T07:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a dreary, rainy day. damp chill. cold light. I searched for a bit of brightness in my apartment.

I wanted to capture this gray, densely cabled hat before I mail it off to my sister.

Does it look familiar? I made one exactly like this for her two years ago. It was time to replace it. I'm always happy to knit things that I know will be loved to death!

The yarn is the yummy, soft, sproingy, woolen-spun cormo wool from Elsa Wool. I double-stranded the sportweight and knit it on 10.5 needles. The pattern is the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret, which turns out more like a cloche in this yarn. It's wonderfully warm and cushy.

It was a delicious hat to knit. But on a sad note, see that light spot in the center of the picture above? I scratched the lens of my new camera :( It was in my messenger bag with a few heavier things, and the mother of pearl button on the crocheted camera case shattered, forced open the lens, and gave it a huge scratch.

Sigh. Nice hat, though!

solitary sunset

2011-02-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

stark. beautiful.

puts me in the mood to knit something dark and jagged.

dose of the desert

2011-02-06T21:54:00.001-08:00

Desert weekend.

Means: knitting between climbs.

We were out in a secret area that Mountain Man and his friend are developing for rock climbing. I love these tough, sweet guys out on the rocks. I was so happy to get to see their first ascent of this beautiful 10d.

I swear, I was smiling the whole day (aside from a brief pout at not being able to get through the crux of that climb myself). I was certainly smiling when I got out of the truck in the morning and realized it was still chilly enough for a hat.

Goofy knitter, goes to Arizona and is happy for a cold snap.

Oh, it was heaven! And had me so happy again. It's been a cold stretch in Cambridge. I needed this dose of the desert.

winter grays

2011-02-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

It's a bleak midwinter day. Cold, cold air. Gray light. Snow falling steadily all day, again. I've started to feel the chill and weariness of the season settling into me. I feel like this goose I saw on the riverbank this morning.

Sigh. Anyways, the upshot is that I've been getting a lot of knitting done, curled up by the woodstove in the evening with a glass of whiskey. I finally did finish those mittens I started in November, in gray wind-spun wool from Hope Spinnery.

All that I had left to finish was the thumbs, so I don't know it took me so darned long!

They're a simple mitten that I made up as I went along. I cast on enough stitches to fit around my wrist and knit a few inches in twisted 1x1 ribbing, which has such a lovely texture in a rustic yarn like this.

I made a simple gusseted thumb and did side-decreases at the top. In retrospect I wish I'd decreased evenly around in a circle; when I wear them, the mittens pull around my hand a bit so that the decreases don't lay against the edges of my fingers. But whatever.

I was going to embroider them with green leaves so that they'd match the hat I made in the same gray yarn. I fussed around with it the other night and couldn't get it to work how I wanted, though, so I'm keeping them plain. They reflect the season better this way.

Rivendell III

2011-01-29T09:49:00.000-08:00

I finished my Rivendell hat last weekend, nestled in the comfort of home in Connecticut. It's just so satisfying to see the way it comes together at the end.

I used two skeins of Lorna's Laces Green Line DK in "Growth," which is a soft organic wool in a subtle semi-solid green. I've got one more I want to work up in Elsa's gray cormo wool, and then I can write up the pattern.

It's a really pretty hat in person, and I wish to heck I'd remembered to have my mom take a photo when I there. I've been toting my camera around the past week but always felt too shy to ask my friends to take photos of me in my hat.

I need to find a knitting friend here that I could ask without blushing. I don't know why I feel shy like this; all friends are well aware of how knitting is part of my identity. They see the yarn tumbling across my bookshelves, the shawls constantly wrapped around my shoulders, the small projects I pull out of my bag when I'm over for dinner. But somehow asking them to participate --especially the very intimate act of taking photos -- is a deeper step.

So, unmodeled photos it is for now.

Revisiting Rivendell

2011-01-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I designed a hat I called "Rivendell." It was a cloche of sorts, tightly knit in DK weight wool, with a flared seed-stitch brim and lush staghorn cables that cleverly came together at the top. It was my first design, and it came out in Magknits in May 2007.

the original Rivendell hat, 2007

When Magknits was abruptly taken down in 2008, I thought it was a good chance to revisit and re-release the pattern. Since it was my first pattern, there were definitely some improvements needed! I really hopped on that (ha!) and a year later, in late 2009, I finished a softer, larger gauge, ribbed-brim version in white alpaca.

Then I started re-working the wool, seed-stitch brim version. I got stuck. I knit a few versions of the brim -- trying to perfect the size and the shape of the flare -- until I got frustrated and just gave up. A year and a half later, I tried again, in yet another green wool. Stuck again.

And finally, I admitted that the ribbed brim made for a more wearable hat anyways. So I cast on and have been happily knitting onwards. With any luck, I'll actually finish the new pattern this winter!

This time around, I'll probably release it as a for-sale pattern on Ravelry, rather than having it be a free pattern, as it originally was on Magknits. I remember Marnie Maclean talking about this when she re-released her Crime of Fashion pattern post-Magknits. I'm only making modest changes in the end, but there's a lot of my time that goes into re-knitting, re-photographing, re-charting, re-writing, and re-formatting the pattern. Can't wait to have this hat out of my system!

Vermont Shawl

2011-01-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

The "Vermont Shawl" is a leafy half-circle shawl, inspired by the verdant, maple-forested hills of Vermont.

I've had a long journey with this shawl. It's been a labor of love for me, and I hope that you love it too.

It's knit from the center neck outwards in three leaf-inspired lace patterns. The construction is similar to a pi-shawl, except that the stitch doublings are spread over a few rows in lace patterning rather than in one row of yarnovers.

The shawl takes 625 yards of heavy laceweight or light-fingering yarn. The pink version uses one skein of madelinetosh Prairie in "Mulled Wine." This single-spun merino blooms into a light and lofty shawl with an incredible depth of color.

The green version uses two skeins of Miss Babs Yet in "Verdigris." The merino/tussah silk blend has a lovely, soft drape and a subtle luster. The color is a gorgeous, deep forest green.

The pattern includes both written and charted directions. The lace patterns are definitely challenging, but they capture a little bit of the forest to wrap around your shoulders.

If you'd like to knit your own Vermont Shawl, the pattern is available for $7 on Ravelry (click here for the Ravelry pattern page).

And thank you again to Nina for the beautiful winter photography ...

stillness

2011-01-13T05:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the most glorious, snowstormy, winter day.

whiteout, overlooking the Charles River to Boston

The universities were shut down for the blizzard, and I spent the morning out in the cold beauty, blissfully walking for hours down the center of silent, snow-blanket streets, hurdling over snowbanks in my big Sorel boots.

And when I came home, I nestled into the wingbacked chair by the woodstove and worked solidly on finishing my Vermont Shawl pattern. It's done now, at long last. I feel such peace and stillness. One small change to make when I get home tonight, and then it'll be up on Ravelry ....

Now, I usually have a contest to randomly give away copies of a fresh pattern. But this time, I'm going to reward the readers who have been with me on this long journey. I'm going to send a copy of the pattern to everyone (that I can readily track down, at least) who left me a blog comment about these shawls over the past two years. If you know you've commented, and you don't get an email from me by tomorrow, drop me a line! (evergreenknits@gmail.com)

woolness

2011-01-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

Back east again. Light snow cover, and a windy chill. I headed back to Connecticut for the weekend to visit my family, though, and that warmed me right up.

On Saturday we went out for a peaceful stroll around the reservoir, all bundled up against the cold.

My sister wore her new Ashwyn beret in Fleece Artist Lanica, a soft, naturally-dyed merino. I love this green on her! And always feel so happy to give her soft things to keep her warm.

When I started the hat in October, I just went with the recommended needle size because that's what I had in my apartment, and I was too lazy to check gauge. It turned out quite a bit larger than intended. Shame on me for not checking gauge. The saving grace is that my sister is fabulous enough to pull off such a slouch. I never could.

Instead, I had my curious elfin hat, which made a brief appearance on the blog when I first finished it in November. It's in a windspun (literally) wool yarn from Hope Spinnery, a wind-powered spinnery in Maine. I love it. It was the one yarn that I bought at Rhinebeck this year.

I started with several stitches at the top, increased until it fit my head, then knit straight downwards. When I ran out of the gray yarn (most of the yarn was taken up by a pair of mittens that's been waiting since November for some thumbs), I added in some green yarn for the ribbing.

hee hee

I miss my life in Arizona tremendously, but I'm loving being back in winter again! And being close to family. Nothing like it.

New Year's in Sedona

2011-01-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

Sedona. Fresh snow, sparkling blue skies, rich red rocks.

Mountain Man and I drove up there to celebrate New Years with wintry weather and good energy. And you know what cold weather means: wool-wearing!

On the first day up there, which was New Year's Eve, we took a long ramble around Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock. I wore my Eco-Wool Manzanita Cowl and my Manos Wild Rose Hat.

On New Year's Day, we took a longer, snowier hike up Bear Mountain for breathtaking vistas and high mountain air. It just so happened that both Mountain Man and I were wearing our Cambridge Watchcaps! He likes his shorter, I like mine longer.

(It was bittersweet to track down the old blog posts for those hats, by the way. I knit them four years ago, back when we were in Vermont, and the posts were full of memories for me.)

Anyways, as for Isis, she was in her element. This dog is built for snow! No wool needed.

It was stunningly beautiful to see all the shapes and textures of a desert snowfall. The soft snowdrifts ....

Against the spiky agaves ...

And spiny prickly-pear cacti ...

As for the trip's crafting, I mostly worked on my circular stockinette project, which isn't much to see at the moment. On the way up, though, I also whipped up a little case for my new camera:

It's improvised crochet, in a naturally-dyed churro yarn that I picked up at the Flagstaff farmer's market a while back. Rabbit brush and indigo, I think. And a mother-of-pearl button, glinting in the sun.

day in the desert

2010-12-30T12:57:00.000-08:00

Climbing day! Woo-hoo! So, so good to be out in the desert again, to be gearing up and getting out on the rocks.

And of course, knitting between climbs. Hands constantly in motion

stitching miles of stockinette in soft, chocolate-brown wool

*Yawn* says Isis ....

And I have to agree, although there is always something appreciably meditative about stockinette in the round.

Anyways, late in the day, time for the last climb. We left Isis at the bottom, perched on a rock, sphinx-like.

And headed up a gorgeous 300' spire, arriving at the top with the last glow of sunset. I tell you, I just want to drink in this view, have it infuse every cell of mine. I could stay up there forever.

But the sun was dropping fast, so no time to tarry. Mountain Man signed our names in to the summit register

Smile. Breathe. Remember this moment.

a Christmas miracle

2010-12-27T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've been back in sunny Arizona for the holidays, where winter means fresh grapefruits and meyer lemon margaritas (yum).

On the flight here, I was thinking about that 85% stretch concept again. It was really bothering me to think of my history of project abandonment! So, I set about finishing one such unfinished project: a pair of felted Christmas stockings, started exactly a year ago. Honestly, it only took an hour or so of knitting to finish them. I hand-felted them and let them dry all Christmas Day....

So, the before, when I dug them out of the stash on Christmas Eve ...

And the after, felted and ready for next year ...

Honestly, I can't believe I abandoned these with so little left to go!

If you'd like to make your own, the pattern is Christmas Stockings, from Leigh Radford's AlterKNITS felt. I knit a version without a cuff, though I might add one later (I'm thinking of an aran style in cabled white wool).

photoshoot

2010-12-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, with snowflakes swirling through the cold December air ...

Nina and I ventured out among the trees and barns for a photoshoot of the Vermont shawls...

I've been reading her sweet blog, Naturally Nina, for some time, and I immediately thought of her when I decided I wanted someone to photograph the shawls here in Boston, in the snow and dark greenery and cold light.

I always feel strange contacting people out of the blue. But I'm glad I did, and I'm thankful that she made the time for this project. It was a delight to spend a few wintry hours with her! And her photography is so luminous and beautiful ...

And this means I'm one step closer to the pattern being finished!

patterning

2010-12-19T13:07:00.000-08:00

Chilly, gray Sunday here in Cambridge. I might venture out for a bracing run before the light fades, but mostly I've been holed up in my apartment, nestled into a wingback chair by the woodstove, drinking endless cups of tea, trying to write up my shawl pattern.

I carefully drafted the first version of the pattern back in October of last year. But I made a lot of changes with the two recent versions, and my notes -- usually scribbled on the fly and hastily charted out by hand -- are at times indecipherable. I've had to pin out the shawl and painstakingly trace out the rows in a few places to double check the lace patterning.

I'm sorting through papers, sorting through stitches, and sorting through computers too. My new laptop doesn't have the font I need, and my old one is cumbersome to do the charts on because the arrow keys are broken (thanks to a long-ago spilled cup of tea). So it's back and forth, back and forth.

So, it's a quiet, plodding, but productive enough day here. The only thing missing is a little snowfall outside my window ... and that's in the weather report for tomorrow!

foreshadowing

2010-12-13T20:12:00.001-08:00

It's finished! The shawl, that is. Back in Arizona this past weekend, I knit the last stitch, sewed in the ends, and blocked it out with lovely, crisp points.

Only guess what? I didn't get any good pictures of it. I did take the usual pre- and post-blocking shots, but the photos were really dreadful. The shawl is too dark to photograph in the shade and, thanks to the silk, too reflective to photograph in the sun. And I wasn't around long enough to time it right for early morning.

Ah, well. You can get a teaser from its shadow ...

I'm back in Cambridge now. I'll be working on editing the pattern over the next few evenings. And maybe if I can get a friend to photograph me with the shawl in this gentle, cool, winter light, I'll have the pattern out before Christmas ...

the 85% stretch

2010-12-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

I'm in the long home stretch now for my shawl. It's coming out beautifully, and I'm very happy with it, but this point, when I'm about 85% done or so, is always the hardest part of a project for me.

The excitement has dissipated. The rows are interminably long. Progress is hard to see, with so many stitches crammed onto the needle. This is when I usually abandon projects for something new, never to come back to them to finish. Honestly, I can't tell you how many 85% projects I have hanging around in my stash! Just last month, I stalled on an 85% pair of mittens (probably only 2 hours to finishing, and boy could I use them now!), and I paused on another 85% shawl in order to start this green beauty.

Come to think of it, this is probably a broader pattern in my life. Actually, in writing this, I'm procrastinating on an 85% paper I'm struggling to revise. And I just got distracted from this 85% blog post and went to check email for a while ... ha!

Texas Thanksgiving

2010-11-29T05:17:00.000-08:00

I spent a marvelous Thanksgiving down in the hill country of Texas. It was beautiful, with such a distinctive color and texture palette, and it kicked me into inspired crafting mode!

Soaring live oaks

Darling old farmhouse (where we stayed)

Dovecote

Cow face

Rusty barbed wire

Corrugated metal

Rusting out old cars

When I flew into Austin, I made time to swing by Hill Country Weavers, which is probably the most incredible yarn store I've ever been to. I was particularly impressed by their organic and eco-friendly yarn selection. If my bag hadn't been so full, I would've definitely come home with several projects worth of yarn! But I did treat myself to a pair of Addi Lace needles and from then on, knitted like the wind!

And just what was it that I was knitting? I finally picked a yarn for my final Vermont shawl -- Miss Babs "Yet" in Verdigris -- and by the end of the trip had finished about half of the shawl. It's so hard to see cramped up on a needle like this, especially washed out by the bright Texas sunshine, but you'll have to trust me: it's gorgeous!

gray & green

2010-11-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

Snapshots from my apartment on a quiet Saturday morning ....

Shetland sheepskin (from Charlotte's farm)

vintage miniature muffin tin

rustic wool on an old milking stool

odd little hat being blocked

sunlight across my 1920s stove

The hat is a top-down cap that I whipped up over the last few nights, using a gray yarn from Hope Spinnery and (when the gray yarn ran out) a naturally-dyed wool that my friend brought me from Paraguay. I feel like a little wood elf when I wear it.

on the move

2010-11-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

Things are moving again! It all started this past weekend, with another sweet visit to Claybrook Farm. Patches, a roly-poly Shetland sheep, was certainly on the move, running to dinner as fast as his little legs could carry him ....

The chickens were on the move, too, darting and scratching around the barnyard ...

I did manage to catch one, having learned how on the last visit. I tried to take a self-portrait-with-chicken, but it kept moving too much! Ha ha!

Anyways, it was a splendid afternoon. We played with animals. Drank hot chocolate. Admired Charlotte's incredible quilts.

And this time, we finally took a trip to the Iron Horse yarn shop. What a gem! I think I petted every skein of yarn in there ... it was definitely a much-needed infusion of fiber and color energy, and it's kicked me out of my crafting malaise!

sigh

2010-11-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

Has it really been three weeks since I last posted? I don't know what's going on. A series of little disappointments, I guess.

rain on the window, uninspiring light

endless swatching

a too big hat that I need to unravel

*sigh* And the biggest disappointment that kicked off this craft/blog malaise was that my Rhinebeck yarn quest failed. I did not find yarn for my final Vermont shawl. It may be time for a local yarn crawl this weekend ...

Rhinebeck

2010-10-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

yarn, resplendent

smiles, shawls

goats

sheep

wabbits

Ravelry fanatics

autumn memories

narrative of the pink shawl

2010-10-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Saturday afternoon. Outer Spectacle Island, Sebago Lake, Maine. Sitting on a rock, working on my shawl in the late afternoon sunshine, surrounded by good friends and crisp autumn air.

I worked until my fingers were aching that night, and I bound off the next morning. I plunged the shawl into the cold lake water ...

gave it a good, hearty shake ...

and pinned it out on the forest floor to dry in the dappled sun. It was a much earthier blocking than my shawls usually get (usually it's a pampering in lavender wool wash and a careful pinning on the bed) ....

but it did the trick nonetheless! Here's a close-up of the outer leaf lace before blocking:

And after blocking, with the leaves fully opened up. The magic of lace blocking never fails to amaze me!

And with that, the shawl is done. And I'm in love with it.

It's taken nearly a year to get to this point (many, many months of procrastination and vague planning + one month of actually knitting), but I think it was worth all the effort it took to re-engineer the pattern. It makes for a much softer, organic flow to the lace.

And I even fell in love with the color by the end! I'd been struggling with the girliness of the yarn -- Madeline Tosh Prairie in "Mulled Wine" - but I have to say it was beautiful in that afternoon light.

And in a poetic twist, that little island was a treasure trove of honest-to-goodness pink leaves: oak, maple, Virginia Creeper, highbush blueberry.

I've decided to give this shawl to my friend Amy, who taught me to knit and whose family house was on this tiny island with pink leaves. If my Rhinebeck quest works out, I should have the yarn for the final shawl by next weekend. It'll still be a while to knit the shawl again, polish the pattern, and release it ... but I am so looking forward to have this pattern out there in the world!

PINK

2010-10-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

It's high time for an update on my overly pink shawl. It's getting voluminous enough that most of the time it looks like a big blob, all scrunched up on the needle.

But spread it out, and it blossoms into foliage!

I'm really happy with how it's turning out. I've spent a ton of time re-engineering the increases: rather than the stark doubling rows of a traditional pi-shawl (which you can see in the original version), I've worked the increases into transitional lace sections.

The only thing that I'm not thrilled with is my yarn choice, or more precisely, my colorway choice. The yarn -- Madeline Tosh Prairie in "Mulled Wine" -- was an impulsive buy in my local yarn store, whose soft indoor light made the yarn look decidedly less pink. The yarn is nice and springy, but the color is just way too girly to look autumnal. And every time I pull it out, I find myself singing a campy rendition of the song "Strawberry Wine," which is terribly annoying. So ... we'll see ... I think it's a beautiful color, just not for this shawl, and maybe not for me.

Once the pattern is all finished, I may dye the whole shawl a deep, warm, earthy brown with black-walnut hulls, which are ripening in this season.

Oh!! And I almost forgot: I've decided to go to Rhinebeck on a quest for the ultimate yarn for this shawl. Let me know if you'll be there too!

weekend

2010-10-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

fly

climb

knit

fly

harvest season

2010-09-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Late September is an exquisite time to be back in New England. It's so rich with earthy aromas, deep colors, heartier food and drink, and soft air. It triggers all kinds of memory and nostalgia for me. Yet I'm happy to be discovering new experiences here too -- like the grape harvest.

I went back to Connecticut to visit family and friends last weekend, and one of our adventures was a jaunt out to the splendid Jerram Winery to help with their harvest. It was an overcast day, but really so lovely. The foliage is already beginning to turn, but the air was still warm enough to have bare arms.

It was a wonderfully fun and casual affair. We each grabbed a pair of orange-handled clippers from the bucket on the porch

and walked out to the grapevines, heavy with fruit. We'd set up on either side of a vine, place the cartons below, clip off the grape clusters there, and then move along down the row.

The hours went by quickly, with laughter and conversation and sticky fingers. And before long, the end of the afternoon was upon us. The grapes went into the crusher ...

and we retired to the front porch for a celebratory tasting!

The wine was delicious, and the Jerram family was super warm, welcoming, and just plain fun. Who ever knew that the Connecticut grape harvest could be so amazing?

Industrial Revolution

2010-09-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

I had a secret this summer, a secret project that I can exuberantly share with you at long last! It's a circular shawl, designed to look like a fanciful, fantastical, brass gear.

The pattern -- "Industrial Revolution" -- is part of The Sanguine Gryphon's brilliant Steampunk pattern line for Fall 2010. It's knit in her Sappho II yarn in "Gold Crowned Aphrodite," which is a gorgeously soft fingering-weight merino yarn in a deep, brassy color.

My favorite way to wear the shawl is slightly folded, wrapped around my shoulders, and fastened with a vintage kilt pin.

You can also fold it in half and wear it draped over your shoulders ....

or as more of a shrug, with the ends secured in back (I was able to tie it in back, but you could also secure it with a length of ribbon or that kilt pin again) ...

Doesn't it positively glow in the sun?

In terms of construction, it's cast on at the center and increased like a pi-shawl, with a variety of simple lace and bobble stitches. The turreted garter stitch edging is knit around the edge of the shawl at the end (the garter stitch makes it a good introduction to knitted-on edgings, I think).

You can get the pattern, which has both charted and written-out directions, from The Sanguine Gryphon. And even if you're not interested in this particular pattern, you should check out their Steampunk line -- the cool styling and photography definitely makes it worth a visit.

quick cali jaunt

2010-09-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I made a quick jaunt out to California for a fabulous family wedding. The setting was gorgeous: overlooking the Pacific ocean on a high bluff, with a lighthouse in the backdrop and the late afternoon sun setting everything aglow. I brought my own wedding shawl out for the occasion:

And naturally, I had a new knitting project tucked into my purse so that I could get in a few rows while the post-wedding pictures were being taken. Can you guess what it is?

It's mighty hard to believe, but I am FINALLY getting myself around to knitting another Vermont shawl. I tried to go for warm, autumnal colors, since the first one was in cool greens. I chose the color poorly, though, so I am afraid that I will have to knit yet another one after this to really get it right. If this shawl pattern ever gets written and released, it will be a miracle!

back east

2010-09-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks disappeared in the blink on an eye. I moved back east, set up my own apartment, started a fellowship, and dove back into the urban, scholarly life.

Then I went back to my beloved Vermont, where I dove back into something decidedly more refreshing.

My energy had been sapped by all this life-transitioning, but I think it's coming back now. I did just cast on for a new shawl, after all.

Cactus Wren

2010-08-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

On my last night in Phoenix, Mountain Man and I took a sunset walk in the desert. And out came the alpaca shawl, finished at last. It was beautiful in that dry desert wind!

The yarn - a soft, light-as-air, 3-ply alpaca -- has had a long journey to this place. I bought a full bag of this yarn from a small, cramped shop in Cusco, Peru some 7 years ago. It traveled with me to Massachusetts, Vermont, Arizona, waiting for the moment to be plucked out of my stash and knit up into something momentous.

I'd had an idea brewing for a shawl with an unusual deep-crescent, almost winglike shape ... started in the center with just a few stitches, increased initially in six sections (8 make a full circle) that are split on either side of a center line, and with a couple more sections added towards the end to make a very dramatic swoop.

The first test that I did with this increase pattern was the ill-fated blue shawlette from last April. I couldn't figure out the edging for that one, but I kept on with the idea. And as I was playing around with motifs and natural representations, I kept coming back to the winged shaping.

I thought of the humble cactus wren, sometimes called the "voice of the desert," and the beautiful nests that it builds within tangles of cholla cacti. That image led me to an adaptation of the intricate Mexican lace edging.

I couldn't be happier with how it came out in the end. And I do feel like I have a bit of the desert wrapped around me when I wear it.

llama beauty

2010-08-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

What knitter could fail to appreciate the beauty of a llama at sunset?

Llama at sunset, Lake Titicaca

This magnificent photo was taken by a friend of mine, Rebecca Meyer, who is an immensely talented San Francisco photographer. It was taken on a South American sojourn. I fell in love with it the minute I saw it.

If you like it too, would you take a second and vote for it here, in the National Geographic Traveler photo competition? We knitters should do all we can to encourage the appreciation of fiber animals :)

unravel/reknit

2010-08-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

We made it back to Phoenix about a week ago, and as soon as it got to the weekend we were outta there again! Mountain Man and I headed north to Isolation Canyon to escape the heat. It was a splendid weekend of climbing and carousing, with a bit of knitting thrown in.

On the drive northwards I started another Sagebrush shrug, this time in deep, saturated blues.

You may recognize this yarn as the Cash Iroha that I'd knit up into a cursed shawlette last spring. I'm unraveling it now and re-knitting it into a shrug, and I'm happy to get this yarn off my back (figuratively) and onto my back (literally).

knitting and the iphone

2010-08-18T12:41:00.001-07:00

The other afternoon, I spent a lovely half hour sitting under a tree with my cat, my knitting, and my new iphone. I turned my attention to the phone at one point, and when I turned back around, this is what I saw ...

Apparently kitty wanted to make a statement about my knitting, or perhaps about the attention I was paying to my knitting but not to her. I snapped a photo with my iphone and gingerly removed my knitting from her talons.

And just what was it that I was knitting? A case for my iphone, of course!

Knit up with the leftover silk/wool yarn from my Sagebrush Shrug. Very simple patternless pouch. I see many more of these in my future ...

Wheeler Peak sheep adventure

2010-08-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

Wheeler Peak (13,161 ft/4011 m) is the highest mountain in New Mexico. Mountain Man and I picked a gloriously beautiful and blustery day yesterday to hike it. I don't have a good photo of the peak itself, but I do have a photo of myself knitting there!

The most exciting part of our 16-mile hike was my encounter with a bighorn sheep. Last year, we saw nearly a dozen sheep and even found tufts of their fiber in a high mountain meadow. This year, I just saw this one sweet young sheep ...

But it let me get incredibly close. Here's Mountain Man's view of me walking up to the sheep. It was one of those animal encounters that leaves you breathless and in love with the natural world.

As for Isis, it was the fat, furry, squeaking marmots that made her day.

Sagebrush Shrug

2010-08-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Sagebrush pattern is up!

Pattern is available as a free downloadable pdf on its Ravelry page.

I'll post more about it in the next couple days ... but I'm running out the door and just wanted to let you know that the pattern is ready!

Taos magic

2010-08-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Back to Taos ... magical land of rainbows

and alpacas

and knitting and rock climbing

and heavenliness all around.

I was working intensively on another secret shawl project for a while (revealed soon!) so I still haven't finished the sagebrush shrug. But I picked it up again on yesterday's climbing trip to Tres Piedras, and I expect to finish it up this very evening!

steamed and seamed

2010-07-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

I blocked out the sagebrush lace and seamed it for an inch or two on either side, and this is the state of things now:

Looks a lot different, doesn't it? Blocking is truly magic for lace.

I could stop now if I wanted to keep the scalloped edging, but I think a couple inches of ribbing around the edges will make it more wearable for me (longer and less granny-like). I'm going back to Taos next week, so it'll be the perfect place to celebrate its finishing.

progress

2010-07-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'm almost done knitting the main part of my sagebrush shrug. It's in a stitch pattern that I half made up, combining the increase/decrease patterns of Crest of the Wave with the staggered, half-drop repeats of Fir Cone.

It looks so strange and misshapen now that it's hard to imagine what it will become. But the lace pattern will bloom once it's blocked. Then the rectangle will be folded into a cylinder and seamed for an inch or so at either end to make armholes. The last step will be to add ribbing the openings.

I should have just enough yarn (I hope!) to get it where I want it. It's always kind of an adventure that way.

muslin & lace

2010-07-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Phoenix now, back in the land of staggering heat and sun.

All I want is to retreat to the interior of the house, pull the shades, and wear something so light and loose that it barely touches my skin. So, I pulled out my sewing machine and made a mid-thigh muslin muumuu.

It's totally unflattering but just the thing to wear when it's 114 degrees out there in the desert.

If I'd had a finer fabric, I might have used it. But I had yards and yards of this muslin and didn't feel like venturing out. Anyways, I like it. It's crisp, clean, old-fashioned.

The construction was simple, although it did take some time to figure out the sizing. The body is just two trapezoids - a slimmer one for my back and a wider one to be gathered for the front - with a wide band and crocheted cotton trim for the straps. I do especially like the straps.

In other cool white cotton crafting news .... I finished a project that I'd been secretly working on for some months. It's an organic cotton blanket, circular, with a dramatic lace edging.

I'm writing up the pattern and will release it, oh, I don't know, in the next couple of months. It's definitely a summery pattern, although it could be a wintry pattern in a fine white wool.

swatching for sagebrush

2010-07-16T19:20:00.001-07:00

When I talk about being inspired by sagebrush, this is exactly the blue-gray-green palette and undulating texture that I want to capture:

I've been thinking a lot about how to turn this into a knit fabric. Remember, this is the yarn I'm starting with: a tussah silk and wool blend from La Lana in subtle hues of sky blue and celadon green. (The colors change dramatically with the light, so it's rather hard to photograph.)

You might be surprised that for a "sagebrush" inspired project, I haven't picked something more intensely green. Truth is, there's rather little green in the Taos sagebrush, at least to my eye. It's often more of a soft, milky blue-gray, depending on the light and the particular plant. Put a few sprigs of sagebrush next to the true greens of cedar and yarrow, and you can really see that ...

(And admittedly, I would've picked something with a little less blue and a little more gray, but this was the best yarn color in the shop that I found at the time.)

So now I've been swatching, swatching, swatching. Crest O' The Wave, Ostrich Plumes, Fir Cone, and several variations. Trying to find something that speaks of coarse, woody shrubs that at a distance blend into a soft, rippling sea.

After two feet of swatching, I think I've finally figured it out ...

Taos fibers

2010-07-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

I can't stand having my hands idle. After prematurely running out of yarn, I skipped off to the yarn shop, thrilled to have an excuse to treat myself to La Lana's luscious naturally-dyed Taos yarns. I bought a tussah silk and wool blend yarn (Tussah Phat Silk Fine) to make a sagebrush-inspired shrug:

And a few skeins of their wool-mohair DK yarn (Dos Mujeres), along with a skein of Lupine-dyed silk-wool, to make an artistic colorwork hat and mittens set for the winter. (Have I mentioned that I'm moving back to Boston for a year, starting in September? I'm not excited about it, but it does give a reason to knit mittens.)

I haven't cast on for anything yet -- still in the dreaming, sketching, and planning stages -- but I had one more fiber-related activity to fit in last night. My friend and I sat out in the evening, watching the thunder clouds over Taos Mountain, drinking wine and carding alpaca fiber.

It's no wonder that whenever I come to Taos, I never want to leave!

the end of the yarn

2010-07-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

This is the unfortunate reality that I came up against this evening.

I have run out of yarn, at least for the time being. I am tantalizingly close to being finished with this shawl -- only four "cactus" motifs left in the edging! -- but I'm afraid that it will have to wait a while yet until I get home to the spare yarn.

I typically waaay overpack yarn when I'm traveling, because running out of yarn is one of my least favorite things in the world. But this time I dashed out the door with a very conservative estimate of how much yarn I'd need to finish the project. I hate it when I miscalculate!

Anyways, I suppose I should look on the bright side. The shawl is turning out just as I'd imagined. And now I have something to look forward to in Phoenix (not usually the case during the summer)!

Colorado bits and pieces

2010-07-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Summer is already flying by at a whirlwind speed. I've been in Colorado for nearly a week now, first for a wedding, then to do dissertation research in the CU archives in Boulder. Along the way, here and there, I've been pulling out my shawl and making progress on the lace border, now 2/3 finished ...

This is the shawl that I cast on during the Grand Canyon roadtrip. It's in fawn alpaca, with a deep crescent shape and a filagree border that is knitted on at the end. It's hard to see now in its unfinished, unblocked state, but it's meant to be my homage to the cactus wren. (I'll tell you the whole story when it's finished.)

Here in Colorado, though, what it really evokes is teasel, which grows with weedy abandon in roadsides and meadows.

By the way, did you know that teasel has a history in fiber processing? Apparently the dried flower heads were used as primitive carders.

One last comical story before I sign off and start my drive back to Taos. Mountain Man and I went for a hike in the mountains above Boulder the other evening, and look what curiosity greeted us on the trail:

Yes, that is a man hiking with his pet goat, who, by the way, is outfitted with custom leather saddlebags. We chatted with him about it for a few minutes, took photos of the goat, and smiled all the rest of the hike.

2010-06-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a disaster of a week for my crafting, but a good week for adventures. I thought I'd share with you a handful of photos from our hot air balloon ride this early morning in Taos ...

It's the most peaceful thing in the world to float through in the air in a hot air balloon.

Summer Solstice Dress

2010-06-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the solstice, I sewed myself a fiery sundress in "Pompeian Red" linen.

I was just winging it: I traced out an A-line skirt, adjusted the back darts, added a bodice panel, sewed in a zipper down the back seam, and then fashioned triangles for the top.

The triangles turned out a little more risque than I intended. Also, the back darts are uneven. And it's unlined. And the zipper's a bit off. But I'm going to wear it anyways.

I'm trying to think about my sewn garments as learning pieces at this point rather than stress about their imperfections. It's hard, though. I'm used to being a perfectionist with my knitting, and it's tough learning to be a beginner again.

But I do genuinely want to get good at this, so I am working on keeping my perfectionist mind at bay. And in this case, I'm pretty damn pleased with what I worked out!

growing madder

2010-06-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today was a gardening day. I thought I'd share with you the full extent of my dye garden: one rambling madder plant

Last spring, I had exceedingly ambitious plans for a dye garden. I planted woad, lady's bedstraw, madder, kota, and dyer's coreopsis. Between the arid air, the harsh sun, and the insects, only a single madder plant made it to maturity.

But that one plant is thriving. It survived last summer and stayed green through the winter freezes, and it's been growing like mad (ha!) this spring and summer.

It's completely filled the whiskey barrel and is overflowing with spindly stalks and scratchy leaves. I must say, it's not a very appealing plant. But it makes my heart swell when I peek underneath the plant and see those ruddy roots, knowing that they'll one day be simmered up into a earthy brew of orange dye:

Madder plants need to be at least three years old before you can harvest them for the roots, so this plant has one more year to go. I'm trying to encourage the stems to set more roots by layering them under the soil here and there where they flop on the ground. With luck, I'll have madder for years to come!

roadtrip

2010-06-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

Mountain Man and I took ourselves on a wee roadtrip adventure last week: climbing in Southern California, drinking lattes in L.A., camping in the desert northeast of Las Vegas, taking in the beauty of Zion and the Grand Canyon, hiking in Flagstaff, and finally descending home into the heat of the low desert.

Joshua Trees at dawn

As you can imagine, with that much driving, there was much knitting. I finished a secret and substantial project on the drive to L.A., and after that I worked on an experimental shawl in fawn alpaca.

Knitting at the Grand Canyon

During the trip, I felt like I was bursting with scenes and stories to share, but now that I'm back, those thoughts have quieted down. What I'm really left with is a strong impression of the desert color palette - blue sky, pink rocks, green vegetation - and a sense of peacefulness. I'd like to be better at "unplugging" like that even when I'm home.

Colorado River from the Navajo Bridge

Sea Urchin - Pattern

2010-06-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

[Note: you can download this pattern as a PDF by clicking here]

Whimsical, bobbled sea urchin, knit in soft wool and felted into a sturdy and intriguing ovoid, about the size of the palm of your hand. Use it as a pincushion, toy, or displayable curiosity.

Materials
Yarn: 15-20 yards of Cascade Ecological Wool (100% wool, 250g/478yds), color 8010 (note: both worsted and bulky weight yarn will work in this pattern)
Needles: US 10.5 (6.5 mm) double pointed needles
Notions: tapestry needle; stuffing (wool roving, fabric scraps, synthetic filling, etc.)

Size
Gauge: 14 stitches and 18 rows = 4" (gauge measured before felting)
Size: Finished, stuffed sea urchin is approximately 3.5" across and 2.25" high

Abbreviations
B3 = 3-stitch bobble: K1,P1,K1 into next stitch; turn and K3; turn and Sl1-K2tog-PSSO
B4 = 4-stitch bobble: K1,P1,K1,P1 into next stitch; turn and K4; turn and Sl1-K2tog-PSSO
K = knit
K2tog = knit two together
Kfb = knit into the front and back of the next stitch
P = purl
PSSO = pass slipped stitch(es) over the knit stitch
Sl = slip knitwise

Pattern

Cast on 14 stitches. Divide stitches among 3 double-pointed needles and join in a circle.Round 1: Knit

Round 2: [K1, Kfb] 7 times (21 stitches)

Round 3: Knit

Round 4: [K2, Kfb] 7 times (28 stitches)

Round 5: Knit

Round 6: [K3, Kfb] 7 times (35 stitches)

Rounds 7, 9, 11: K3, [B4, K6] 4 times, B4, K3

Rounds 8, 10, 12: Knit

Round 13: K3, [B3, K6] 4 times, B3, K3

Round 14: K2, [Sl1, K2tog, PSSO, K4] 4 times, Sl1, K2tog, PSSO, K2 (25 stitches)

Round 15: K2, [B3, K4] 4 times, B3, K2

Round 16: Knit

Round 17: K2, [B3, K4] 4 times, B3, K2

Round 18: K1, [Sl1, K2tog, PSSO, K2] 4 times, Sl1, K2tog, PSSO, K1 (15 stitches)

Round 19: K1, [B3, K2] 4 times, B3, K1

Round 20: [Sl1, K2tog, PSSO] 5 times (5 stitches)

Break yarn, leaving a 6" tail. Thread yarn tail on a tapestry needle and draw through remaining stitches. Sew in ends.

Felt the sea urchin by machine (toss into a hot or warm wash) or by hand (soak in hot water with a dash of soap and gently rub with your hands). When it's felted to your desired dimensions, rinse and let dry.

Stuff the sea urchin. To close the opening at the bottom, thread about 8" of yarn onto your tapestry needle and take small running stitches around the opening. Pull tightly to close the hole. Tie the ends of the yarn in a knot and hide them inside the sea urchin.

Enjoy!