the silver hours

There are summer days when Vermont sparkles with sunshine and clear, bright colors. Sky blue. Grass green. Buttercup yellow.

But even those days begin with chilly, mist-shrouded mornings, and I love the silvery hours just as fiercely as the golden ones. I'd like to bottle up this grayness and take it back to the desert...

Green acorn, stone wall

Antique silver

Lichen on beech bark

Knitting needles, yarn, stone, moss

I've finished the shawl, by the way. Good thing, too, since I probably won't be able to move my arms for days after waterskiing this morning. Pictures to come soon!

knitting in Vermont

I'm back in the Green Mountain state for a spell. Appropriately enough, I brought along my green yarn and am plowing through a leaf-patterned shawl that I've designed for it.


It is so glorious here! We've been kayaking


and considering the waterlilies

and catching painted turtles


Truly a place to nourish one's soul (and inspire some serious knitting!)

magnificence

Mountain Man returned home yesterday from two weeks of fieldwork in the Atacama desert, and he brought me back a magnificent jewel: a ball of handspun, naturally dyed alpaca yarn in a luminous grass green. He found it in an artisan's shop in San Pedro de Atacama and carefully transported it home amongst the rock samples and dusty boots.

Now that's love.

flaxen

I finished the second lingering project -- a silk and linen camisole -- just before leaving Taos. Larky snapped this photo of my moments before I climbed into the truck and started the long drive home.

Yarn: Hand Maiden Flaxen, 2 skeins in Peridot
Needles: Size 3 circular

This top was a long time in coming. Originally I envisioned something like my blue hemp cami from a couple of years ago, only with a narrow cable down the center of the front and back. Then I hit a snag in the top shaping and put it down in frustration for an entire year.


This summer, I thought I'd salvage it by turning it into a simple tube top. But I hit another snag: I'd miscounted when placing the cables, such that when the front cable was centered, the back cable was off by 6 stitches. In the end, I ran with the asymmetry and turned the tube around me so that the cables were well off-center and could lead into cabled straps. Thank goodness I hadn't done any waist shaping.


The only thing I'd like to change is to have it a bit looser. I'd made it so small because I wasn't sure that 2 skeins would give me enough yardage for a roomier top (also, when I started it last summer, I was a wee bit smaller myself!).

But all things considered, I'm happy with how it turned out. The gray-green colors are soft and subtle, and the silk/linen blend drapes beautifully without losing its crisp stitches. It's one of the loveliest yarns I've ever knit.

last days in Taos

My time in Taos is drawing to a close. Before I leave, though, I wanted to share a few of the more colorful experiences of the last few days. First up: a visit to Phi Beta Paca, a lovely alpaca farm on Taos's high sagebrush plains. I love, love, love alpacas, and this was a particularly spirited and friendly bunch.

Sociable little beasts

comical faces

Larky's fuzzy ears

On Sunday morning we helped out on a barn razing, which is to say that we took down a small barn (a chicken coop, actually) to move to another property. Manual labor can feel damn good sometimes. And my eyes were drawn to the contrasting textures of the day ...

Tin roof

Weathered planks and leather

And on Sunday afternoon, I finally made it out to the Taos Pueblo. The thunder clouds had moved in, and we were struck with a dust storm in the late afternoon, and it made for an eerie but very cool atmosphere.

Taos Pueblo

Adobe Window

Chili peppers after a dust storm

Taos is such a captivating place, and I wish I could stay longer. Maybe even forever ....

One shoulder tunic

I finished the first of my stagnating projects. This one-shouldered tunic is splendidly simple, which, of course, means that it was very complicated to figure out.


Here are the basic details: knit from the bottom up, with a turned hem, straight middle, and angled, mirrored front and back. It's knit in just over 2 skeins of Farmhouse Yarn's kettle-dyed bamboo on size 5 needles. The angled top is made by binding off 2 stitches at the beginning of each row, finished off with 2 rows of double crochet.

It grew nearly 2 inches in length and an inch in width with blocking, unexpectedly transforming it from a tight top into a flowing tunic. It's lovely and very easy to wear. I wore it today, in fact, when we went to visit the amazing Earthships just outside of Taos. And, awesomely, I wasn't the strangest-looking person there.


So, that pattern synopsis sounds simple enough, but it took me a long time to get it all figured out. I finished the main body by April or May. I knit up the front top with what I thought would be a clever, self-finishing method: turning the outer 3 stitches into I-cord and doing the decreases as K2tog next to I-cord. But this made for a tight and inelastic edge that pulled the fabric weirdly. I was so frustrated that I just put the project down for a month or two.

When I picked the project last week, I quickly figured out that I needed to decrease by binding off stitches at the edge. But it took me 8 painful tries before I got it all done with the right angle, needle size, gauge, and dyelot (unfortunately, my third skein was drastically different from the first two, so I needed to knit every last inch of those before adding in the third skein). I was so relieved to have it finished. And I'm so pleased with the (ultimately) simple formula that I plan to make another one soon and then write up the pattern for the blog.

On another note, I've gotten requests for "more Isis." Here she is, looking regal and serious against a backdrop of sage and mountains. It's ridiculous how much I love this beast.

Welcome to Taos

As you may have guessed from the sagebrush and clear light of the last post, I'm not in Arizona anymore. Mountain Man and I are in Taos, New Mexico. And how I love this place, with its rugged, high desert beauty, its summer thunderstorms crashing through the big sky, its perfume of sage and pinon pine!

It's a landscape that really resonates with me (or should that be the other way around?), and I feel so blessed to be able to escape the heat and house-sit for friends here for a couple of weeks.

The knitting projects that I brought with me are all fittingly in blues and silvery sage greens. I didn't plan it that way. It just happened that I wanted to bring along some projects that had been stalled for a while, and the colors were serendipitous.


From left to right: first, a simple tank top in Hand Maiden Flaxen, which has been lying unfinished for over a year; second, that dreadful cotton smock that I'm going to frog and re-knit; third, a slinky one-shouldered top in Farmhouse Bamboo.

I'd love to have these all finished by the time we descend back to Phoenix.

lovely blue

After the debacle of my improvised smock top, it's good to watch something pretty roll off my needles.


This little beaut is Flower Trim Tank, knit up in Jo Sharp Desert Garden Aran Cotton. I modified the pattern to a smaller needle, larger gauge, and circular construction, which made for easier knitting but, unfortunately, trickier finishing and mistake-fixing.

It's basically a brioche stitch tube with a higher front. The smocking comes from stitching together the brioche ribs after knitting, which means you can very easily tailor it to your own proportions. My favorite part are the crocheted straps:


In other blue-hued news, I had a wonderful visit to Liesel Orend's Earth Arts dye garden and studio. She's lovely, friendly, and inspiringly talented. I brought home two skeins of indigo-dyed yarn: a wool single, to be made into a purse-sized Contemplation Pouch, and a merino/silk blend, for a lace kerchief.


She also sent me on my way with a handful of woad seeds from her garden. She has a veritable forest of these plants, dripping with lustrous purple-black seeds!


I'd love to get these to grow in my own modest garden, to make some of my own natural blue hues

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!