Knitting Iris

It's here.

I was starting to get a little worried, in all seriousness, that I was going to miss out all together on fall this year.  No.  Not just worried.  Downright panicky.  What was I thinking, leaving town next week for a two week trip to the balmy, hot tropics?  Right here in the midst of the best time of year??  Just when the stupor from summer heat has worn off?  Wait!  What did I sign on for??  Why was fall taking so long to start?  Because I'm betraying it and leaving during it's finest hour?

But, here it is, right now, here in my front yard, side yard, back yard, all around.  Phew.  Just in time.  Thank you, fall.

Not only has fall come, but an AMAZING package arrived this past week from Jennifer.   She asked for my address recently, under the guise of wanting to send me "a little something."  Hmmm.  Wouldn't you call this more like "A WHOLE LOT OF SOMETHING?"  Two skeins of Koigu, in the exact color of the aspen's and birch's leaves right now, and a skein of Lucy Neatby's Celestial Merino in the "Honeypot" colorway, along with some chocolate (enjoyed during the adventures in yesterday's post) and a batch of her cards with tiny knit swatches on toothpick needles.  (Whoops, sorry, no pictures of those either and I'm having trouble finding them on your site to link to, J.) 

She had even offered, awhile back, to put me up and give me a ride to Rhinebeck if I could make it this year.  C kind of questioned me on that one, about whether I thought it was safe to stay with someone I knew only by way of the internet.  As reassurance, I told him that I was pretty sure she gives away much of what she knits to charities, and so I didn't think he needed to worry.

As it happens, plans have changed and, after Panama, C and the boys and I will have a stopover in St Louis, instead of being split up across the country with me in New York, the boys in Seattle, and C back home in Montana, as was originally planned.  That all just seemed too complicated, too juggled, like we were trying to do it ALL and it was just, plain "too much."  We haven't been back to visit C's family in almost 5 years so we're well overdue and now we'll get the chance to meet our twin nephews for the first time AND, if the weather cooperates, I'll see midwest fall colors for the first time ever, something I've been wishing for for SO many years now.

(Aspen leaves, as they fell, on the steps leading up to "my room" above the shop.)

Your generosity is inspiring, Jennifer.  Thank you, again.  Usually, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what yarn to pack along with me on a trip.  This time, there's no question.  I'll be bringing fall color along with me.  Now, there's just the matter of which patterns to use.  Oh, and the packing, and bills, and fall color to enjoy and...

We found it.

Fall.  We went looking and we found it, just up the road, although the boys were far more interested in climbing and throwing rocks. 

I came home with hands and pockets full of leaves and a bouquet of the hardiest of the stragglers, a remaining few asters, daisies, and goldenrod, while they loaded the car (see it waaaay down there?) full of sticks daggers, spears, clubs, boats and lichens gnome/troll beards. 

We even came across a few raindrops trying to be snow!  Brrr!

C's Fall socks

A week gone by with no posts.  I guess we're just lethargic busy doing the usual: school, piano lessons, paperwork, visiting with friends, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, attempting to bake pie, dealing with Whirlpool, etc. 

And canning peaches, and tomatoes into salsa, bought at a local stand, although it's not local produce.  There's a couple who, each week during the summer and early fall, drive a refrigerated truck in from Eastern Washington, stopping and selling produce in three small Montana towns over three days, and then heading back home to start all over for the next week.

A good friend and I went for an overnight stay in Missoula last weekend.  We've known eachother for 6 and a half years and yet we've never been anywhere together without children, aside from one midwifery appointment several years ago.  It was short but sweet getaway, only 24 hours, 7 of which were driving, 7 of which were for sleeping, so the rest was packed full of Indian food, a couple of beers at a couple of bars with a couple of local bands, the farmer's market, a little clothes shopping, coffee at Bernice's, a quick yarn store stop, and that's about all there was time for. The perfect Fall getaway before winter sets in.  What I'd give for that farmer's market to be just a short bike ride away!

Brought home:  carrots, basil, Bitterroot macintosh apples, fresh baked bread, corduroy culottes, a stack of turtlenecks, a little yarn, and a new attitude.

Oh, and then there's been the Equinox potluck/campfire/drumming together with friends.  And quite a bit of knitting, a little sewing, trips to the library, seeing birds gather before their journeys southward, preparing ourselves for our own travels southward next week. 

The weather has turned dreary, not so inspiring in terms of taking pictures, but we're heading out in it in search of turning leaves today anyways.

The socks?  Knit for C in Austermann Step #0025 that he picked out at Twisted while we were in Portland.  The yarn isn't any softer than any other sock yarns out there, possibly even less so.  Is it the knitters hands or the wearers feet that are supposed to benefit from the added Aloe and Jojoba?  It's supposed to remain in the yarn for the first 40 washings but how much stays in over that period?   I don't know.  It seems a bit gimmicky to me, similar to the way I feel about tissues with added lotions. The colorway and patterning are nice, though. 

Follower.

Thanks so much for the well wishes the other day.  After seeing so many of these style of mugs online over the past few years, I've been keeping my eye out for them.  I somehow just knew that one day I'd walk into the local thrift store and there they'd be, and that's exactly what happened earlier this summer and I've been drinking out of them daily since then.  They're rather little, so I get to drink several cups of coffee each morning.  It's hard not to get a little lift each time I pull one of these out of the cupboard and, for me anyways, there's something so very Septembery about them.  And I feel like one of the cool kids now. Vintage Mug Flickr Group here.  These ones are so great.

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Stormy skies, light rain, brick walls.  Tempered by my family, the day-to-day, small rituals, planned quiet, and friends bearing ginger chews, apples, and raspberry pie.  That pretty well sums up the day.

Spur-of-the-moment weekend

Just how spur-of-the-moment? 

Thursday evening:  A surprise "Grand Entrance" by C's mom all the way from St. Louis, unbeknownst to any of us, at our nephew's 4th birthday Thursday evening, followed by a short and sweet visit with her.

Saturday:  The bachelor party C was giving for a friend which was supposed to be an overnight of camping and fishing quickly turned into the more typical bar-crawl when they realized that, with campfires still being prohibited, they'd just be freezing miserably in the woods.

Saturday, as well:  The frosty, below-30-degree morning turned into an 84 degree afternoon, calling for an impromptu dinner at the lake, as in, "Quick!  Let's go!  Grab your suits and a towel and hop in the car while I boil the corn, slice the watermelon...and we can have mac 'n' cheese for dinner because Papa (lactose intolerant) isn't here! This could be our last chance to swim this year!" 

And I suspect it was, as we were swimming with leaves.   Just like that and it's Fall.

Yet again, life mimics knitting mimics life mimics knitting mimics life....

There I was, once again, knitting along and all around seeing the same patterns and colors that were in the yarn in my hands.  There really wasn't much time for knitting while in Jackson and there was far too much ripping, reknitting, and repairing mistakes so, in the end, not much progress was made.  Since we were towing a big, heavy trailer full of furniture, C did all the driving, leaving plenty of time for knitting and gazing out the window.  It's the Ene's Shawl from Scarf Style, looking a little lumpy from being scrunched up in and pulled out of my bag all week, knit from Knit Picks' Lace Weight Merino Bare, dyed in the spring time with purple Cottonwood tree catkins from our place and along the river nearby, same as the trees seen growing along the river bottom in the distance in the left hand picture above, second row from the bottom.

It killed me not to stop and pick wild sunflowers and the yellow blooming rabbit brush to put in the dyepot when we returned home.  I know C would have stopped if I'd asked but the trip home was long enough as it was.  Besides, they both grow in a few spots around here, but in MUCH smaller quantities and sizes.   

Yee haw! We're home from Wyoming.

Truth be told, we didn't really get to see enough of the above sorts of views, never getting a chance to go into either Teton or Yellowstone National Parks.  Even if we had, for the first time ever, I accidentally erased almost all of the pictures on my camera in an attempt to catch one of a young bull moose on our drive into town one morning from a nearby campsite.  Whoops.

There still was time enough to catch a few pics of fiber related things:

From the nosebleed section where we sat at the fashion show: Navajo-style, naturally dyed silk/wool shawls, and, if you can consider leather a fiber, well, then there was plenty of it: cow hides, beaver cowboy hats, and just about any other kind of furs, as well.  We had a secret contest going amongst the two of us on the lookout for the gaudiest pair of cowboy boots but as it was, they turned out to be serious and beautiful works of art, while most folks didn't wear cowboy boots of course and, if they did, then they were subdued ones. 

There was a bit of gallery  hopping in our spare time, an hors d'ouevres night for the conference/show's contributing artists at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the fashion show, and more.  Mostly though, our mornings through evenings were filled with this sort of view, inside the Western Design Conference itself:

Off to the upper right, is the the mortise and tenon timber-framed bed that C put into the show, made of reclaimed timbers and metal with aluminum accents.  A terrible shot, I know but I'll get a better pic of it soon.  Our families just wanted some pictures from the show and this was the best of them. 

There was a fair share of turquoise, silver, antlers, and woodworking, of course, with a handful of rhinestones thrown in there.  One thing for certain, though, is that EACH and EVERY thing in that room was a piece of fine craftsmanship.  It was incredibly inspiring and exhausting all at the same time, being there all day and trying to take it all in.  The more traditional western kind of design isn't necessarily my thing, but I was truly won over by the quality of what I saw there, leaving me with a very new appreciation for it all.  Just thinking about the energy that each person put into being there, that went into their work itself, into their ideas and expectations and hopes, into getting there, into setting up, into being there day after day, into breaking it all down, into packing it all up, into returning home, I'd find myself, at the end of some of the days, having a hard time settling into sleep, all wound up in all that crazy, amazing energy...and that's just the people within those four walls.  Going beyond that, it would get unbearably overwhelming, impossible to grasp.  That's when I'd force myself off to sleep, only to get up and do it all over again the next day.

Fortunately, we had a dry and snug truck with futon, featherbed, down comforter and pillows to collapse into each night.  We're not much for hotels and motels, only when absolutely necessary.  In the midst of a town where the median house price is well over 1,000,000 dollars, somehow living out of our car and cleansing ourselves in the river helped to keep it all a little more real, and rather than paying $125+ per night for a room, we payed a grand total of $7.50 for the one night we stayed in a campsite with a fee.  Can't beat it, anyway you look at it.   

All in all, the best parts were the extraordinarily talented and terribly nice people we met, the camping together, and the catching up with a few friends we hadn't seen in much too long.  Oh, and the fresh bagels and coffee each morning in Jackson or nearby Wilson.

And the winners are...

...Jill H. in Washington who chose the Rowan All Season's Cotton, and Jennifer V. in Pennsylvania who gets the sock yarn both chosen with an online random number generator. 

Holey moley, there were 107 correct answers and another 4 people who had the right answer but one name only.  Other guesses were various forms of: Pyracanthus (14), Sumac (4), Bittersweet (4), Elderberry (3), Juniper bush (1), Red Chokeberry (1), Holly (1), Highbush Cranberry (1), Honeysuckle (1), Chokecherry (1).  4 people thought it might be a coffee tree.  What I would give to harvest my own coffee in the mountains out the back door!

On to some of the other correct answers, of which, I learned, there are MANY possibilities.  The most common ones, the ones I mostly had in mind as well, Mountain Ash (the most common North American name), Rowan, (the common British name), and the genus Sorbus (with many variations as to which species).  The ones pictured in the previous post are most likely either Sorbus stitchensis or Sorbus scopulina and they're more shrubby than tree-like.  There are many other varieties, including a white-berried one, and I think the most common one planted in yards around here is Sorbus aucuparia.

Other names given were Reyniber (Icelandic), Rönn (Swedish), Røgn, Røgnebær or Asal (Norway), Røn or Roennebær (Danish), Pihjala (Finland), Sorbier des Oiseax or Sorbier des Oiseleurs (French),  Wildelijsterbes (Holland), Vogelbeer or Eberesche (Germany), Uvez Agaci (?), Serbal Silvestre (?), Missey-mossey, Indian Moosey-missy, Indian Mozemize, Wild Ash, Tree-of-Life, Life-Of-Man, Witchbane, Witchwood, Witchen, Thor's Salvation, Dogbane, Dogberry, Hen Drunk, Cock Drunk, Fowler's Service, American Service, White Beam, Quick Beam, Round Wood, Wine Tree.

I'm sure this list is by no means exhaustive. There is much legend and folklore surrounding this plant.  Thank you for sharing what you know of, and links to information about this plant, and for sharing your stories, which range from having one in your yard, either now or when you were young, having made jelly from the berries and either loving it or despising it, having named your children after this tree, and having a tattoo of it on your body, and more.

Our eldest son is named after the tree (not the yarn, although that's where I first heard the name about 20 years ago, later associating it with the tree.)  There. Now you know what R stands for but I'll continue to refer to him by his first initial here.  It was pretty funny taking him into yarns stores as a toddler and constantly having to call his name and ask him to put that ball of yarn back where he'd found it.
While pregnant, I was really picturing a brown-haired girl with that name.  We ended up with a blond haired boy and somehow the name still fit.  We planted the tree in our yard after he was born.  Other tree names we considered were Birch for a boy or girl and Maple for a girl.  E, by the way, is not named for a tree but we planted a burr oak for him the spring after he was born.

The picture above is from a matching carved set, vanity table and mirror, that was shown by another exhibitor last week at the design conference we attended in Jackson Hole.

Many of the names for this tree, in several languages, refer to it's appeal to birds: In this area, the cedar waxwings tend to flock to the trees sometimes gettting drunk off fermenting berries in the fall.  At our house, however, grouse come in and eat them.  The tree has also long been considered a magical tree that keeps witches and fairies away, but hopefully just the bad ones!  I've hung a bunch of of berried branches by the front door.

Thank you all for playing along.  I learned so much from this, too, and now have more to share with R about the origins of his name.  I'd love to hear anything more you might know. 

Contest! Prizes! Yarn! But with a catch.

C and I will be out of town through this week and possibly in to early next week.

WE'RE BACK AND WINNERS HAVE BEEN PICKED WITH AN ONLINE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR SO THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. I'LL POST THE WINNERS SOMETIME TODAY (9/11) OR TOMORROW (9/12).  THE FIRST CHOSEN HAS BEEN NOTIFIED AND I'M WAITING TO HEAR BACK FROM HER WITH HER CHOICE OF PRIZE YARN BEFORE NOTIFYING THE SECOND CHOSEN.  THANK YOU TO ALL 145 OF YOU WHO PLAYED ALONG!

So, while I'm away, I have a little contest:   What is the above plant?  Here's the catch.  I'm going to make you work for it .  I need TWO possible names for this plant, not just one.  They can be any combination of either of its' common names and/or it's taxonomic name.  This plant is by no means exclusive to this area or even this continent.  Neither is the contest.  I'll ship to anyone, anywhere.  The comments have been closed for this post but you can email me your answers with the word "CONTEST" in the subject line and I'll randomly pick from the correct responders upon returning.  My email address can be found on my "About" page in the right side bar.

Here's another picture.  Sorry, they're not as clear as I would have liked but you can click for a closer look.

First picked from the hat gets first choice of the following two prizes, and second picked gets the other:

10 balls of Rowan ASC in Copper  (taken off of Julia's hands a couple of years ago, swatched once or twice and, since I still can't figure out what to do with it, it's time to pass it on.)  The real color isn't quite as bright as in the picture above, and apparently near impossible to capture quite correctly.

100 gram skein of 3 ply Blue Faced Leicester, mordanted with alum and dyed in an iron pot with the leaves of the above plant, picked last week growing wild up in the mountains past our place.

There may or may not be blogging from on the road.  It depends entirely on mood, time, wi- fi accessibility, and weather.  If the weather is poor, I'll likely be reading, knitting, napping, possibly blogging.  If the weather is nice, I'll likely be out in it.