Florida

Spanish Moss

Hibiscus

Sand and Seashells

Brioche Stitch at the Beach

Quick trip to Florida over the weekend. Basked in family, sun, and seashore. Sneaked in lots of knitting and will have a finished garment to show soon ....

so close!

Gorgeous day climbing in Isolation Canyon. I thought I'd have a finished project to show you -- that improvised top that I thought I was nearly done with a month ago -- but I still have a couple hours of finishing left to do. I did bring it along on the climbing trip today and was steadily seaming it up between climbs.


I really do mean to show more progress shots of my projects, but it's hardly worth it by now, when it's so achingly close to being finished ....

happy socks

Well, by golly, these were the fastest socks I've ever knit. It usually takes me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to finish a pair of socks. Years. Or at least a cross-country drive. But these were finished in just over a week. Happiness!


The trick was that they were the simplest socks I've ever knit. Toe up, stockinette foot, short row heels, 3x1 ribbed legs, 1x1 ribbed cuffs. I made them up as I went along and didn't even worry too much about getting both feet exactly the same.


It was a much-needed lesson in how keeping things simple means that I actually get things done. Now, if I could only apply that to my dissertation, I might get somewhere!

Now, I bought the yarn -- Mind's Eye merino/tencel in "Oceanic" - to commemorate my trip to Cambridge, the defense of my dissertation proposal, and the amazing blue skies and green leaves that marked the day and season. To me, these colors are just so east coast.

But when I got back, my friend Amy and I went peach picking down in Queen Creek, and we drove by this beautiful field. It was a good reminder that it's not all dust and rock down here. My beloved blues and greens are here, too.


And one last delightful story: Mountain Man and I had a fantastic weekend on Mt. Lemmon with thorny desert girl. I'd been reading her knitting blog for sometime before I realized that she's a geologist, as is her boyfriend, and that he also happens to know Mountain Man. We finally all connected in person, and it was a perfect coming together of worlds: knitting, rock climbing, geology, and big dogs.

Green leaves, blue sky

Green leaves, backlit against a blue sky. It's one of the most lovely and peaceful views in the world.


I snapped this photo last week on a visit to Cambridge, which was a tremendously stressful and sleep-deprived trip to defend my dissertation proposal. When it was all over, and I walked out into the perfect, sun-streaming, blue sky day, I kept thinking how I wanted to forever capture that feeling of strength and harmony with the world.


I walked up to Mind's Eye Yarns, where I found the a skein of her wool/bamboo sock yarn in luminous sky blues and grass greens. I've made good progress on a pair of simple socks. When I wear them, I'll remember the beauty of that day in Cambridge.

After Cambridge, I headed up to Vermont for the weekend, where I got a good dose of family, woodsmoke, pine sap, maple syrup, cold water, lilacs, and lily of the valley. It's heavenly. So heavenly that it makes my heart hurt when I think about it.


Anyways, it's been a whirlwind few weeks of travel, and I'm looking forward to being relatively settled for a little while.

desert blues

Well, I'm back in Arizona. Back to the big blue skies. The hundred-degree heat. The wide open spaces and the long driving distances.


Over the weekend, Mountain Man and I joined some friends in the Chiricahua National Monument, which is one of the "sky islands" southeast of Tucson. It's a gorgeous and rugged place, almost unworldly, with these wild pinnacles rising high above the desert.


We took the scenic route there and back, giving us a solid ten hours of driving over the weekend. Between that and the quiet camp mornings, I thought I'd finish my current knitting project, but it was not to be. So, here's just a snippet of a progress shot for now:


And after all that blue, wouldn't your eyes like a shock of another color? I'm happy to oblige with an Engelmann's prickly pear flower, shining in the midday sun.

spring blossoms and knitting memories

I stole a few days in DC this past week to visit my sister. It was glorious: my chance to drink in a real, honest-to-goodness East Coast springtime. The air carried the perfume of cut grass and honeysuckle. The sky was blue, except when it was raining, when it was gloriously gray and wet.

And my soul got its fill of spring flowers: catnip, azaleas, peonies, buttercups, irises, wisteria



Gorgeous!!

There was a bit of knitting content snuck in during the week, too. We stopped at Knit Happens in Alexandria, which is one of the sweetest knitting stores I've ever visited, with an impressive array of organic yarns. And, of course, I was knitting on planes, trains, and automobiles.

I'm thinking very fondly of the drive back to the airport this afternoon. My sister was driving. I was riding shotgun and knitting. We sang and sang the whole way, me singing the melody and my sister singing harmony. It was a beautiful moment.

Contemplation

The Contemplation Pouches pattern is finished! Here's how I describe them in the pattern: "I knit these bags to carry the essentials on my meditative morning walks. They’re seamlessly knit in eco-conscious yarns and embroidered with symbols of mindfulness, nature, and flow "


I made a conscious effort to use environmentally-friendly yarns for both the main color and embroidery:
Green: Fleece Artist Lanica and Ever Green Yarns Organic Worsted (both are organic merino, naturally-dyed)
Brown: Cascade Eco-Wool (minimally processed, undyed wool) and Earth Arts (naturally dyed wool)
White: Pakucho (organic, colorgrown cotton) and Be Sweet Bambino (organic cotton blend, from an awesome women-owned South African company)

The pattern is available for purchase (at a very reasonable $3!) over at Ravelry. Alternatively, you can email me at evergreenknits@gmail.com to buy it directly from me.


The winners of the free patterns from my contest (thank you for your patience!) are:
todayandeveryday, Eve, TheRaven, Vickie, and AmIAKnitterYet. I'll be sending you all out a pattern pdf today! And thank you to everyone who took the time to leave me an Earth Day message.

lessons from a pheasant

This pheasant showed up in my backyard this morning. He strutted about, pecking in the grass, dashing for cover under the orange tree and oleanders, and finally hunkering down in dry pecan leaves.



I have no idea what a ring-necked pheasant is doing in Phoenix. I can only imagine that it's an inauspicious start to his week. Poor fellow.

I'm just coming out of a bad week myself, one of those weeks where everything I do comes out stupid. So, I didn't finish the pattern for those little zen pouches. But soon. Soon it'll be finished, and I can draw winners for the contest and pat myself on the back for the accomplishment.

Come to think of it, this pheasant seems curiously at ease in our backyard. He's good at strutting through difficult situations. Maybe I could take a lesson from him!

spinning wheel

Look at this beauty: a 1984 Ashford Scholar, in perfect, ship-shape condition.


Finding her was a lovely bit of serendipity. I'd embarked on the process of buying a wheel in a methodical but exhausting way, obsessively researching different makes and models and planning to test-drive wheels at stores all around the valley. It was overwhelming.

And then a woman in my knitting group pointed me towards an ad in the Arizona Desert Weavers and Spinners Guild newsletter. The clouds parted. The mind-numbing minutiae of the search disappeared in a poof of smoke. And in no time at all, I had myself a lovely spinning wheel.


I had such a splendid visit with the woman who sold me this wheel. She was a very accomplished weaver, spinner, and knitter, and it was really a pleasure to see her work and talk to her about her crafting life. This was her very first wheel, and it was clear that it was much beloved and well cared for.

When she'd originally bought the wheel, twenty-five years ago, she had the foresight to put an engraved label on the side with her name and the year. Now I'll add my name and year. I love having this sense of history in an artifact, and I like to think about the names and dates that will be added to it throughout its life.

It's taking a bit of adjustment to move from a drop spindle to a spinning wheel, but I've been practicing over the weekend, and I think I'm getting the hang of it. You can expect to see plenty of spinning on this blog in the future!

Earth Day and a contest

I hope that wherever you are on this planet, you have time today for a moment of natural beauty: fresh air, oceans, mountains, gardens, forests, spring blossoms, green leaves, sky, stone


I think of this day as a time for connection and reflection, a day for thinking about possibilities rather than berating ourselves for not being green enough. As for the connection between Earth Day and my knitting ... I have two thoughts to share.

First, Earth Day marks the anniversary of my Green Knitter website, which I began a year ago exactly. If you haven't checked it out yet, today might be a good day for it! I just updated the yarn chart, with additional improvements on the way. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Second, I wanted to share with you the next pattern that I'm working on. These pouches are knit in eco-friendly wool yarns and embroidered with symbols of peace and nature.


My idea was to have small bags to carry just the necessities -- and to represent our intentions -- as we go about our days. I use mine for my morning walks with Isis. The small pouch holds my ipod, phone and house keys. The larger pouch can fit a camera, too. They have a clever seamless construction, if I do say so myself.

I hope to have the pattern finished over the weekend. If you'd like to win a copy of the pattern before they go on sale, just leave me a comment!! I'll draw several winners on April 30. You can just say hello, or, if you're feeling the Earth Day spirit, I'd love to hear how you see the connection between knitting and greenness in your life ....

thinking pink

I've been wanting to knit something with my plant-dyed Ever Green Yarns. I kicked off the process by dyeing myself a special skein of the Organic Merino Fingering in prickly pear juice, which I'd extracted from wildcrafted prickly pear and frozen last autumn. After a week of soaking in the juice, the yarn emerged an incredibly saturated magenta.

And what to knit with a single 50g skein of yarn? A Storm Cloud Shawlette, of course!

Mostly to be worn tied around my neck as free-form cowl, but also can be pinned around the shoulders. This one doesn't have a full ruffle; instead, I only did half the increases on that last increase row, so that I could get in a little more length without the frill.


I knit this on my trip back to Cambridge last week (that's where I dyed those eggs) and I intended to photograph it there, too.

I have to say, though, that I think it's better off photographed in Arizona. The intense, downright riotous pink of the shawl is a perfect fit for the flowers that have been bursting into bloom: bougainvillea, oleander, roses.




The prickly-pear yarn fits right in! And take note: these pictures are straight out of the camera. We live in technicolor here.

easter eggs

I arrived at my friend's house on Sunday night bearing gifts of beets and marigolds and dessicated bugs. We were egg dyeing, of course! And I wanted to experiment with natural dyes.


It took a very long soak indeed for the eggs to take up the color, but they came out well in the end. The light purple is from cochineal, the deep blues are from red cabbage, the light yellow is from marigold flowers, and the splotchy tan in the back is from beets.


They're so beautiful and painterly in this clear morning light.

the beast cycle

Yes, I made a mouse toy for my cat out of the fur of my dog.

What more is there to explain?

Aeolian-Albatross

What does it feel like to have wings and to feel the air beneath you as substantial as the earth?
-Verlyn Klinkenborg

How I wish I'd really grown wings! But, alas, all I did was knit myself an Aeolian shawl.

Aeolian. Aeolian meaning "wind-borne." I appropriately cast on for this shawl as our airplane took off from Bhutan, winging its way across the Himlayas. I took the romance of the name to heart, speeding through the first lace section and imagining myself knitting with the wind at my back.


But silly me, I forgot that the wind can switch on you, and I fought a headwind for the rest of the project. My wind-borne wings became an infuriating albatross. I started to have a hard time keeping track of the pattern. I misread the charts. I miscounted stitches. I made the nupps too tight. I spent countless hours tinking back and fixing mistakes. I swore my way through interminable rows and thought it would never end.

But then, in the blink of an eye, it was blocked and beautiful and bringing a smile to my face. Lace is magic like that.


For those of you who have not had the pleasure of blocking your lace, I thought I'd illustrate the process. Here is the lace before the bind off, when it's all awkwardly bunched up on the needle. This is why the knitting part of the process can be so ungratifying -- it's impossible to see what you're actually making!


After the bind off is complete, you can get a sense of shawl's size and shape, but it still looks sad and misshapen.


Finally, after being plunged into cool water and pinned out until it's as taut as a drum, the shawl stretches its way into lacy beauty. (The curved wingtips are still there, by the way. They just grew so much that they wouldn't fit on the picnic table.)


Here's a close-up of one of the "nupp" sections before blocking:


And after blocking, with the eyelets all opened up:


And now for the technical details: I followed the pattern reasonably true, although I switched to larger needles (size 6), added an extra repeat of the agave pattern, and left out the beads.

The yarn that I used is a fingering weight alpaca with no name. I bought a huge cone of this yarn in Peru about five years ago. This shawl, as voluminous as it is, hardly made a dent in the yarn.


What a happy relief to be finished with this shawl! Next up: something with instant gratification