Knitting Iris

September Month Of Softies

This is my first entry for Month Of Softies.  The September theme was "Personal Challenge", and I just barely pulled this off by the end of the month!  I've made dolls before and even another similarly styled doll, but I was challenging myself to actually make these before the boys are grown and gone, and this was just the motivation that I needed.   

I made the one on the right first for R.  He chose the hair and eye colors.  The hair is boucle mohair from Magic Cabin.  The striped shirt came from one of his old ones that had a big tear in it.  The cargo pants are made from an old flannel curtain.  The sweater is made from some mustard colored wool yarn from the thrift store that I had overdyed with grape Kool Aid to make it brown.  I winged the pattern, basing it loosely on the Garter Stitch Cardigan pattern from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies, by Erika Knight.  The one on the left is for E.  He adamantly insisted that his doll have "Chur-ka-loise" colored hair and blue eyes.  What the heck.  Why not?  I found some yarn in my stash that I had dyed and handspun in a class I took about 10 years ago that fit the bill perfectly, except that it's not nearly as soft as the mohair yarn.  The striped shirt is from a thrifted t-shirt.  The cargo pants are made from an old pair of my pants.  He has demanded requested that the sweater for his doll will be yellow.  I'll probably tweak the "pattern" a bit for this one.

I had to prompt both of them to get a proper "Thank you" out of them, but maybe their reactions to first seeing them finished should have been thank you enough.  R asked, "Mom, can I sleep with my doll tonight?"  E said, "I'm going to give it a hug!" and ran across the room to where it was sitting propped up on the couch. 

Just Peachy

(Left) E's Tree.  A Burr Oak we planted after he was born. The colors are beautiful this year.

(Right) Some of the 32 half-pint jars of peach jam, sweetened with honey, thickened with arrowroot powder. Same oak tree on the left with the aspen trees turning, too.  One of our resident lawnmowers.  The blob looking thing taped on the window is a leaf, done like these hearts.  R makes the crayon shavings, I do the ironing, and then he uses a permanent  marker to draw the shapes on the wax paper, cuts them out, and tapes them on the window. 

A peach & huckleberry pie, honey sweetened and tapioca thickened, just came out of the oven.  Yum!

First Fall Socks

The socks are Regia Jacquard #5296.  Such a great colorway.  Knit in only 3 days.  The sunflower and asters are in a friend's garden and the amur maples are at the nursery where she works, the same one I used to work at before kids.

"The Grandparent Tree"

 

This was our destination last Friday afternoon.   This Ponderosa Pine is know locally as the Grandfather Tree.  I really wanted to call it the Grandmother Tree instead, but decided to be diplomatic and call it the Grandparent Tree.  For reference, the scar at the bottom of the tree is about a half a foot or so taller than I am at 5'7".

Henry, the Goose

He (She?) wandered into our lives last spring.  A neighbor had seen him running alone on the road a half mile or so away earlier in the day and then he just waddled up the driveway to the shop.  We thought he was a duck most of the day until somebody made the suggestion that maybe he was a goose.  A few minutes online confirmed that he was indeed a Canadian goose. 

R was enamored by him and followed him EVERYWHERE.  It was like puppy love, only duck love or, goose love, as it were.  He's the one who named him Henry in the early hours when we still thought he was a duck, after the one in the book, The Little Duck.  I remember how much I ached to have a duck like Henry when I read that book when I was little.

Our younger dog, Hattie, loved Henry too, just like the pictures in the book.   She followed him everywhere and layed down next to him when he slept, too.

We cared for him for a couple of days, but apparently we couldn't offer him what his own parents could have.  We wrapped him in a flowered cloth and buried him out amongst the aspens and spruce.  It was a tearful time for R, but E was just trying to figure it all out.

We finally made a headstone for our beloved Henry, the goose, and laid it over his grave last night.  I said a one sentence eulogy and R shed a few tears again, remembering how much fun he had with him. Rest in peace, Henry.

Addendum! I was putting this post together yesterday morning but didn't get around to posting it before we left the house, and then, on the way to some friends' house for dinner, we stopped at a antique/junk dealer just around the corner from us.  Out front, was a Canada Goose.  Turns out, this one showed up there at the same time as Henry showed at our house, and a couple more went to another neighbors house!  This was Henry's sibling, Ambrose.  They had raised him/her and it had survived. It sleeps in their house at night.

:)  :)  :) Meet Ambrose:

Summer Socks, Finished.

The Regia Jubilee "India" socks are finally done.  I started these in July!  I had seen so many other people knit these and couldn't wait to do them myself, but then I succumbed to second sock syndrome.  I was afraid I was losing interest in sock knitting, just as I was working my way into the fall sock yarn stash.  Actually, I think I grew tired of the magic loop.  I just wasn't motivated to work on them, so I resolved that issue by making the leg to the second one shorter and then ripping the first one back to that length, too.  Magic! Done! Magic Loop! Done!

Now, back to my #2 aluminum double pointeds.  I whipped out the entire foot of a new sock while driving the back roads looking for firewood and keeping myself and the boys out of the way, fed, and  entertained while C felled and cut up the trees.  Then, I'd set down my knitting and help load the rounds into the back. It went so quickly on dpns.

This was the summer that I discovered snapdragons.  I never really liked them much before but decided to give them a try.  Guess what? Deer don't eat them! And they've already withstood 4-5 frosts and are still blooming!  (Same with the annual dianthus and alyssum in front of them)  And the boys like picking off the blossoms and pinching the sides to make the dragons' mouths open wide and snap shut!  I'm sold.  Next spring I'll be on the lookout for the orange ones (not my pic).

More of Mor Mor's Knitting

                                                                                                                        

Exposed.

The earth mother herself tagged me, so here goes...

Ten Years Ago: We were living in a dive at 4th and Pearl in Boulder, Colorado. I was working at Starbucks on the hill.  We were saving our money to move away to Montana and look for our own place.  We were fixing up an old 1950's trailer so that we'd immediately have someplace rent-free to live when we found it.  We were vegetarians.

Five Years Ago: I was adjusting to being a Mom with a 6 month old teething baby, staying home, breastfeeding exclusively, with no income of my own.  I loved it in so many ways, but it was a difficult transition into motherhood.  We were no longer vegetarians.  Meat, cheese, eggs and bread were the few things I could stomach while pregnant.  We had lived in our house for 9 months.  We were living without electricity for the 4th year.  We used an outhouse.  We pumped water into a tank upstairs with a generator which, in turn, gravity fed down into the kitchen sink.  Water was heated on the kitchen stove or woodstove.  We used oil lanterns at night.  A few months later we bought solar panels and a system to power a few lights and a radio and installed a propane hot water heater. 

One Year Ago: Our second son had just weaned and I was adjusting again.  The hormonal changes with weaning were much harder for me than the postpartum ones.  Nursing my children was great, but weaning, however, changes the mother-child relationship and father-child relationship in many positive ways.  Things were much the same as now, only the boys were 4 and 21 months old.  We now had electricity, indoor plumbing, a television, a computer....the works.  C worked shorter hours.

Yesterday: Discovered Bloglines which, I believe, will change my computer habits considerably when I get it all set up.  Didn't knit.  Homeschooled R (andE).  Went for a drive with the boys in search of more fall color, threw rocks in the river, and collected leaves to press.  Cooked a roast for dinner from the quarter of the neighbor's cow that we picked up from the butcher last week.  Baked 2 loaves of banana bread and 2 loaves of zucchini bread.  Worked on a project for Month of Softies (first time!).  Looks like it's time to figure out Flickr, too, before the end of the month.  All in all, a good and productive day.

Tomorrow, or this weekend: Go to a potluck dinner and sauna at the house of some friends.  Get a truckload or two of firewood. 

Five Snacks: The kids' leftovers. A hidden stash of chocolate chips in the pantry. Homemade smoothies.  Ice cream.  Toasted english muffins with butter and honey and Earl Grey tea.

Five Songs I Know The Words To: 80's and early 90's music.  Alot of 60's and 70's, too.  Reggae: it is the soundtrack to our lives during the hours when C is home. Plus anything my mother ever sang around the house when I was growing up, mostly from musicals.

Five Things I'd Do With $100 million: Share it and invest for our future and enough money for our kids' education and several friends' kids, too.  Consider adoption again.  Travel more, internationally, with our children.  Build C's mom a house here.  Host a family moving away from Louisiana.

Five Places to Run Away To: #1: Southern France.  #2: NYC in October to see my brother, fall colors in New England, and Rhinebeck on October 15-16. (I wish). In no particular order: Alaska.  Maine.  Asia.  Colorado.  Newfoundland.  Africa. India. Norway.  Ireland.

Five Things I'd Never Wear: A business suit.  Skin-tone nylons.  High heeled shoes.  A tattoo.  100% polyester unless it's fleece.  Hmmm....for somebody who spends a lot of time making her own handknits, I don't really ever think about what I'm putting on each morning.

Five Favorite Shows: We choose not to have T.V. reception.  My all time favorite show when I watched T.V. was Northern Exposure.  A friend just gave me the whole 3rd season on DVD last week (I'm saving it for the long, dark nights to come).  We go on movie renting binges about once a month, maybe twice a month in the winter, or when any one of us is sick.  The Vinyl Cafe, Ideas, and The Roundup on CBC radio, except now during the lockout.

Five movies I love: Off the top of my head: Moonstruck. Room With a View. Love Actually. Amélie. Jean de Florette & Manon de Source. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  Just about anything with Owen Wilson in it.

Five bad habits: Scattered.  Rarely sleeps enough, thus morning impaired, with a tendancy towards crankiness and impatience.  Lollygagger. 

Five Biggest Joys: The goofy and clever things the boys say.  Time alone.  Time together.  Autumn.  Knitting.  Picking berries.

Five favorite toys:  Kaleidescopes. Bubbles. Yarn.  Magz.  Camera.

Whew.  That was long winded.

Glacier Park, part two

Famous quotes from the day:

"Hoo Hoo Hoo.  We're owls in our tree!", "Maybe a troll lives under that tree.  That looks like a big nose.", "Are we in Africa?", "Are we going to Wisconsin?", "Maybe an owl lives in that little hole.  Oh. No.  It's all stuffed up...just like E's nose."

We went to take a closer look at the Jammer Buses and ended up talking with one of the drivers for awhile.  Turns out, he used to work in the park in the early 1950's around the same time my dad did, too.  He worked in the laundry or doing dishes, while my dad was a soda jerk.  Back then, the only guys who got jobs as "Gear Jammers", the most coveted job, were either pre-law or pre-med students.  My dad told me that those were the guys who got all the girls.  Years later, this man is finally a Gear Jammer himself.  He asked me to stick around for a few minutes, that he had a surprise for the boys.  He went to the back of the bus and returned in a bear suit.  E thought it was "very, very goofy" but wasn't about to give him a bear hug.

(Bottom Pics) I can't tell you how happy it makes me when the colors of the trees match the the yellow stripes down the middle of the road!  It makes me grin so hard the tears come.  A bittersweet time, Fall is.

38 years ago, and now.

(left) My two older brothers, 38 or maybe 39 summers ago, before I was born.  Taken at The Loop with Heaven's Peak in the background during a camping trip in Glacier National Park.

(right) Our two sons today.  Taken at The Loop with Heaven's Peak in the background during a day trip in Glacier National Park.

Although many of the rocks in the stone walls have been replaced and are worn and covered in lichens,  we found the exact same rock for them to sit next to.

Now, I'm hoping to recreate this photo again, but with my two brothers as adults.  What do you think the chances are that I can talk them into wearing painters' overalls overdyed red?