Skip to main content

Carpe Diem

Just in case you forgot, I live in the Pacific Northwest and our idea of Fall is cloudy with rain and Winter is cloudier, rainier and cooler.  We are now experiencing the Fall to Winter transition meaning there are long stretches of little to no sun for days.  We have just experienced several days of lack of sun; but today, today it is bright and sunny.  I must seize this opportunity.

Such a lovely view from my office.  I know, I am very lucky 
First I took a longer than average walk this morning because it was so delightfully bright and the air was an appropriate degree of crisp.  I will also get out of the house to do fun things like wash my car and get a flu shot.   (Pam, Tena that reference is for you two!  For the rest of you, trust me it is a funny inside joke.)

I have been using the cloudy days to seize the opportunity to spin as much as possible for my days of using the spinning wheel are numbered.  (Say if any of you reading this know of an upright, double drive (double tredal) portable, not necessarily one that collapses, spinning wheel on sale for a reasonable price, I am in the market.  It can be U.S. or Canadian in location.)  I spun up some very lanolin laden, long stapled roving.  I thought it might be easier to spin because of all that sticky lanolin.  Alas I was wrong, it was harder to control.  My consistency was off a bit, but it was good enough to be used single ply (this means it won´t be falling apart because my spinning has improved that much).   My handspun was knit with some variegated yarn to create these cute little booties.

Ok, it is not quite a pair yet.  BTW, manipulating the variegated yarn means cutting it and adding the new colour.  That causes the mess of string you see on the unfinished bootie.  The first one looked equally as rough before I finished it.
The colour scheme was driven by the natural colour of my homespun and the rather dark burnt orange colour of the buttons I wanted to use.  The variegated yarn was manipulated because the colourways were too long.  The dark brown had to run into the olive green, then into the orange and tan (which matched my handspun) to give the whole thing an earth tone effect.   I seized what I had in the house and managed to come up with a combination of colours I rather like.  Tomorrow in our class we will be talking about colour and how to combine it successfully.  I hope to improve my skills in that realm.

Now I am off to carpe the heck out of the rest of this lovely diem.  It is just too nice to remain inside.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
2 comments
Read more

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more

Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common. How about trying to knit with these SPNs?? Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space.  Or how about the longest piece of finger knitting that measured 4,321.4 m
Post a Comment
Read more