Knitting Iris

Full

     

What a Thanksgiving day!  The house was brimming with family, friends, food, and fun.  When R woke up he went straight to it with the construction paper, markers, and the scotch tape.  He's in a big crafty phase right now.  Cooking and baking started early morning and continuted until early evening, but in a relaxed, enjoyable, and social way, everyone pitching in with their parts.  The boys had picked what they'd each like to make earlier in the week, so chocolate chip cookies and a fruit crisp were made and baked the day prior in order to minimize the madness.  

Feasting began in the afternoon with cupcakes and a celebration of our nephew's 2nd birthday party.  Which was soon followed by a table full of appetizers and every inch of kitchen counter space covered with two turkeys and countless side dishes, pies, and crisps.   14 kids, 15 adults.  (Phew, we outnumbered them by a scant one!)  There just isn't room for a sit down meal for that many (thank goodness) so everyone sits where ever they can find room, at the table, on the couch, on the floor, on the stairs.  The kids had a blast as did the adults as the evening wore on, maybe a little too much fun. 

At least, I know this one did.  Oy.

Is it possible to ever grow tired of these?

       

1. In any season, that slowly rotting away building and the pond down the road, that we drive by nearly everytime we leave the house.  2. Blue grey skies of fall and winter, especially with low lying sun alighting on the trees in the foreground. 3. Golden fall grasses.  4.  Swans on the little lake along the highway on the way to town.  5.  Knitting socks. 

No, it's unimaginable growing tired of any of them.  Sock knitting would be the most likely, although I doubt it.

The socks are for a friend who is a potter, and from whom the boys are taking a clay class this month, with other homeschooling friends.  She's charging next to nothing for the class.

She homeschooled her two boys most of their school years and now they're grown. During some of the earlier, tougher moments after the boys were born and when we started homeschooing, I often would find myself wondering "What would she have done in this situation?"  I guess that's because I like who her boys are, who they've grown up to be:  independent, friendly, brothers and still friends, and yet so different from  one another.  Sure, I know it's likely I'm idealizing their lives from the outside.  I know she looks at us now and reminisces back to the days when her boys were younger, too.  So, apparently we're both doing a little idealizing.

 The socks are Lana Grossa 100 Meilenweit Colortweed #1008.  When I asked her recently about what color socks she'd like were I to knit her a pair, she replied that lately she was enjoying the golden fall colors of the larch against the grey skies.  Well, this just happened to be the ball of yarn I had picked out to knit next, so apparently these were meant for her.  The golden tones are a bit muted, but earthy colors are very her, in the colors she wears, the house they live in, and in her artwork.  

The heels and toes are knit in doubled solid yarns.  They were both supposed to be that blue-grey but when I came to the heel of the first sock, the ball of yarn had gone missing.  Thus the brown heels.  Just in time for the second sock, the blue-grey one was retrieved from under the front seat of the car.

Rosebud Cardigan #19

 

Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4 ply #0701, a nice dusky dark purple, a purple I might even consider wearing.  Sadly, this yarn was discontinued, and this is the last of my stash, aside from leftovers.

This one is knit for the new baby of a friend who is a nurse midwife and homeschooling mama of now 5 children.  I've been fortunate enough to be present at two births that she attended and have seen her react with knowledge, strength, calm, caution, speed, grace, and wit through both routine and extremely intense homebirthing circumstances, both of which brought two baby boys safely into this world. 

She and her husband have one girl and now their fourth son.  ALL babies deserves special things, but fourth, fifth, and beyond babies especially do.  I really was hoping to get to embellish this little sweater with some lighter purple and yellow fall asters around the neckline, as the baby was due in late September and born in early October.  Apparently that was not meant to be.

Rosebud Cardigan #18 was a naturally dyed, light greenish colored one knit for my cousin in Norway but which I forgot to get a picture of before giving it away.

 

This cabbage was a gift from a good friend at the end of the harvest season, along with some beets, parsley, leeks, tomatoes, and more from her garden.  She was the recipient of the Socktoberfest Mystery Socks of a few posts ago.  So, it looks like we're having cole slaw or Norwegian red cabbage at Thanksgiving!

A few thoughts on gift giving:  As someone who crafts and knits all year round, and often for others, I tend to give gifts as they're finished, and sometimes I even mangage to get things done in time for people's birthdays, others times not.   There actually was one Christmas in the early 1990s when everyone in the family received handknit socks on Christmas morning, ends woven in and wrapped.   I guess I find the pressure too great at this time of year, and prefer to give handmade gifts as the inspiration strikes.  Something for each of the boys today and a small gift for my mom did get underway this weekend, however.

This year what are you working on, or plan to make, as gifts?

still : body : pages

  

A little late for the still : body week on Flickr.

The Wild Places, by Robert Mcfarlane.

Turns out this is just the book I was looking for after finishing Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, and subsequently having been unable to get into a rereading of Gary Snyder's Practice of the Wild.  This has been a good alternative.  I'm savoring his thoughts and writings, and so far resisting the temptation to pop onto Flickr and search for pics of the places he visits, preferring his own descriptions, my own imaginings.

There are things he writes of that I would pass over unnoticed if it weren't for having learned about them recently with the boys in their history lessons.  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Scottish monks, and the likes, certainly things I never learned about in school. 

Enjoying the connections in my reading lately.  Sure its good to read and learn things outside your comfort zone but it's also nice to read on things you already agree with, things that reinforce choices you've made.  Either way, it takes you to new places and gets you thinking in new directions, informs. 

Rarely are things as still as in this picture in this busy little house.  Only after everyone else is asleep, the radio has been turned off, the computers shut down, most of the lights off.  It's been a long time since I've chosen to spend those late evening hours with books rather than yarn or the computer. 

Reading has been stilling me, the mind and the body like nothing else, lately.  The hands, too, so that they can't be knitting, cleaning, folding laundry, driving, cooking, doing dishes, typing, or clicking.

My absolute favorite part about the internet?  others' book recommendations and access to library card catalogs.  When you or someone mentions a book of possible interest, I no longer go straight to Amazon to learn more.  Instead the library's site is opened in another window, the book is put on hold if it's available, and within a week there's an email telling me it's waiting at the closest library (usually an hour's drive away as the local library isn't yet interconnected with the state library).  Online renewals.  E-mail notification the day before a book is due.  All so good.

Macfarlane's book was mentioned recently, I believe, by Shari on her blog, The Glass Doorknob.  It's a quiet, thoughtful, well written book, reminiscent of her own writings and photography.

Thinking about rereading some books that have been on the shelf for years.  That is, unless you have any recommendations.

If tables could talk...

 

...ours would rarely get to speak of a scene like the one here above.  

As a homeschooling family with a home-based business and no real office to speak of, our dining table and kitchen counters, floors, or any other horizontal surface don't often look so spare and clean.  Let's just say that we live HARD in our little house.  Typically this table is covered, at least in part, in an assortment of meals, glasses, mugs, stacks of homeschooling books and projects, toys, markers, pencils, paper, books, knitting, and who knows what else. 

 

 

 

 

Lately, rather than let the messes drive me crazy EVERY single hour of the day, instead I've been trying to take another look at them, not just live with them, but appreciate them, and document some of them.  Still, today I nearly lost it over the mayhem.

Some of what, in the past couple of weeks alone, our dinner table (and kitchen counter) has seen: 

Breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, as well as coffee, tea, ice cream, pie, beer, and wine shared with both family and friends.  Quilt squares traced and cut out.  Science experiments.  Pictures drawn and painted with markers, pens, pencils, crayons, paints, and even home-made walnut hull ink with feather quills.  Piggy bank money counted.  Knitting.  Books read.  13 bean soup sorted.  Sewing projects.  Birthday cards made.  School work.  Tears shed over math problems (twice).  Card games.  Board games.  Bread mixed and kneaded.  Meals cooked.  Yarn wound and weighed.  Skyping with grandma.  Bills paid.   Maps studied.  Knives sharpened.  Lists made.  Various craft projects started and sometimes completed.  And more.

And, possibly most unusual of all, two whitetail deer have been butchered, cut, weighed, and wrapped right here on our dining table.  A friend who had been a local butcher for eight years gave us a lesson in exchange for a chili dinner and beer.  I've spared posting a picture of it directly here in the post.  Instead, the picture is hidden, so if you're squeamish or just don't care to see or think about these kinds of things, DON'T CLICK HERE.  Shocking for many, I'd guess, but for us, it's been educational, fascinating, and deeply connecting us to our food source.  We've eaten all sorts of incredibly delicious meals already:  liver dumplings, heart sandwiches, neck soup, and venison burgers on homemade buns.  Truly of-the-earth foods. 

And the bonus is that there is a lot of butcher paper leftover for future freezer paper stenciling!  Maybe a cute bambi-ish deer stencil?  ; )  None of this is taken so seriously that I don't get a perverse satisfaction from labelling all the packages of meat with a bright pink Sharpie pen.

Back to the topic:  Sure, the picture-perfect ideals seen in magazines and online are pretty and inspiring to look at as long as I don't expect to really ever live quite like them.  Even the pictures posted here are styled, cropping out the real messes. 

The other day, the boys and I spent a couple of hours staightening things up before friends came over, and it felt so nice with the sun shining in the windows, and with a relatively presentable house.  By that evening it looked again as if we'd never cleaned.

Sometimes I'll daydream of a life wherethe breakfast dishes are put in the dishwasher in the morning and then we all leave for the day to our respective jobs and school days, returning to eachother in the late afternoon, to a house where nothing has moved, not even an inch, all day long, where no new messes have been made in all those hours we were away. 

Mostly, though, I just shake my head (and often cringe) and try to remember that "Houses are for living in, not for looking at."  Does anybody happen to know where I might have gotten that from?  I've been googling trying to figure it out.  I'd thought it was a Frank Lloyd Wright quote.  It could be that it's something I read one time, ironically, in a magazine article with pretty pictures of someone else's clean and styled home?

(The table runner, by the way, is something I'm trying out in hopes of it inspiring me to clear off the table completely, at least once every day or so.  Tablecloths just don't work in our world.    The runner was originally a scarf  knit from heather grey and plant dyed Lamb's Pride Worsted, far back in the pre-blogging years.  It was too short, wide, and scratchy as a scarf and so was eventually felted and only recently put into service on the table.) 

Noro Kneehighs

 

One skein each Noro Kureyon sock yarn in #236 and #149.  Crazy how these don't even look like siblings, let alone fraternal twins.  Leftover Knitpicks Gloss in Cocoa held double for the heels and toes, in hopes that these single-ply socks will hold up better than I suspect they might, although I thought the Noro yarn was all wool until now.  Apparently it does have 30% nylon content. 

Knit toe up over 64 stitches in knit 3, purl 1 ribbing, with no shaping whatsoever which is why I love this ribbing so much, both snug and stretchy where ever it needs to be.  A row of eyelets was knit into the last few rows at the top in case a length of single crochet is necessary to tie in to keep them up. 

I only futzed with the way it was striping once, breaking and taking out a section of the green yarn where the striping was getting a little muddy around about the ankle of the first one that I knit, although it probably wasn't necessary.  Anyways, I'm loving wearing them with brown corduroy knickers.

Even after that, there still is a full 100 grams of yarn remaining!   Although not equal amounts of each colorway.

 

Note to self:  must remember to wind that garden hose up and put it away! 

Horse chest-nuttiness

 

Chestnutties.

 

Hedgies.

 

Pufferfish.

Autumn treasures

 

Far more aspens turned orange (rather than their typical bright yellow) and held their color far longer than in other years.  Still, only a handful of the many did this.  It seemed as if we were getting the smallest taste, here and there, of what it might be like during fall in the midwest and on the east coast.  The bright attire that day, above, was purely coiincidental, and a bit obnoxious.

 

Leaves dipped in beeswax, like we saw others doing all over Flickr this year (the red maples are non-native, from a tree planted in front of the library):

 

Pressed first in the big Webster's dictionary, given to my brothers and I when we were young by our grandma:        

 

It's been retired, for the most part due to its fragility, except for in the fall when it's put to work pressing handfuls of leaves under the weight of a heavy rock:

 

As the leaves fell this year, I came across this bird's nest in a clump of river birch growing a few yards outside the back door, built partly with some of the piles and piles of hair I brushed off the dogs this past spring and summer when they were shedding:

 

The Hattie update:  she's still improving even as she's being weaned off her medications.  Hooray!  Still, the vet is concerned about keeping an eye on her so that she doesn't relapse.  But her energy level is about back to normal, and she's gotten rather spoiled by all the attention she's been getting, deservedly so.  : ) : )

Which path?

 

How many times in the past 12 years have I driven by on the highway past the entrance to this forest service road? 

And how many times have I thought of stopping and taking a walk down it to see where it leads, especially in the fall when its carpeting of golden larch needles beckons even more so?  Several hundred times, I'd bet.

 

Well, we finally did it the other day and, sure, the roadway was fun enough, but if we'd returned the same way, rather than cutting back through the woods, intermittently following deer paths along the way,

we certainly wouldn't have seen nearly as much, including a couple of snags now officially designated as "Wildlife trees"

 

with their peckings, nesting holes, and labels with such an awesome graphic!

 

And at our feet, more fungi, mosses, lichens,

   

and so much more.

Nice to get out and about.  Again. 

And finally find our way down that path.

Socktoberfest Mystery Socks

          

Most of this fall color is faded now, but the leaves and larch needles clung to the trees for an incredibly long time this year, with little pockets here and there holding out even longer, a few remaining still.  We had a solid two months or more of color before settling into the more subtle colors around us now.  Such a treat it's been!

Socktoberfest Mystery Socks.  Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn in the "Strange Harvest" colorway.  I'd cast on with this yarn way back in September while in Wyoming, originally planning on winging a pattern with leaves reminiscent of cottonwood and aspen leaves.  Well, it didn't quite go as planned so when the Mystery Sock clues started coming out, it was ripped and reknit.  Colors are more accurate here: 

It's a pretty and well designed pattern, although something I never would have chosen to knit if I'd seen them finished in advance, a little too fancy for my tastes.  Regardless, it was fun to knit and play along.  It's been a loooong time since turning a heel this way!  And, this was my first eye-of-partridge heel which makes a pretty and dense fabric, is easy to do, and appears to be hard wearing.  The toe was knit doubled with a strand of Wildfoote sock yarn in Goldenrod.  Also, I put an extra repeat of the leg pattern in as they seemed a little short.  They're much too small for a modeled shot on me as these were knit-t0-fit the feet of a friend who is an autumnal "girl" all the way.