that was fast

Nearly two months since my last post? They zipped by awfully quickly…

Well…

I finished Leaflet:

…Just in time to wear it to NHSW. Which was wonderfully full of fiber people.

Spring has continued–it feels more like summer now–and there are lots of things growing in the garden and at the CSA farm.

(a balloonflower in the front garden)

There has been some family and personal excitement, but things are mostly better now. Going forward, anyway. I’m continuing to look for a Real Job, but I have made some progress toward feeling more productive. I went to MAS&W (also a fantastic place to see fiber people), where Jennifer of Holiday Yarns let me use some of her booth space for my batts. That went quite well, and I have since set up an Etsy shop. Sooo… With the shop (which may soon contain things other than batts and yarn) and some freelance editing work, I at least have something to do that feels less like shouting into a void than the endless round of job applications.

(one of my favorites of the batt sets. even though it’s merino.)

 

spring!

I’m just a little excited about the lovely weather today and all the blooming and growing things outside.

Which makes it a little weird that I’m also excited about knitting a bulkyish wool sweater, but so I am.

That’s the cast-on and first two rows of Leaflet. I’m being careful to avoid aggravating my hand, but it seems to be ok with short bursts of not-too-intense activity.

 

happy new year!

My December was very full, with making stuff and going places and continuing to apply for jobs.

I identified a loom setup that works for me–sitting on a flat surface with either an upturned bin or a small cardboard box under the non-turning beam at the back of the loom–which meant that I got a good bit of weaving done:

That’s the Not Socks rectangle for Georg, though I did twist the fringe before sending it to her. I’ve been wearing the socks she knit for me a lot lately, as it’s been cold, so I’m glad to have sent her my part of our trade.

Next up was a very late birthday present for Anju:

A merino/cashmere/nylon/organic merino scarf, only about ten months after her birthday.  (The warp is MCN from Spirit Trail Fiberworks and the weft is my handspun organic merino, Natural Beauty from Southern Cross Fibre.  Plainweave with a 12-dent heddle.)  And the colors are somewhat more saturated than they appear in this photo.

I finished Anju’s scarf just before leaving town for a week and a half, so my loom sat idly in a corner for a couple of weeks, but I took advantage of having the house to myself yesterday afternoon to warp again:

This is theoretically a shawl warp for me, using the leftovers from my turquoise sweater, some teal alpaca-blend handspun that was a gift from a friend, and a few other handspun yarns that I thought would go well.  I’m a little concerned that I don’t have enough weft yarn, but I’m sure I’ll work something out.  Maybe some extra green or tan.

And I’ve continued to knit, mostly on Desdemona:

There’s a lot more border than there was last time!  It’s useful that it’s a simple pattern to knit, as the center was, because I’ve been able to knit and either talk (during family gatherings) or listen (at concerts at First Night yesterday).  The rows must be something like 500 stitches by now, but they don’t feel like they take all that long to work.

And I finally mustered the time and energy and motivation to try something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years, a felted mask.

This one was a midwinter gift for my grandmother.  The base is cormo/bamboo rayon, and it’s sewn with handspun merino/tencel.  I’m really pleased with how it came out, and I’m looking forward to trying a few more.

•

I mentioned going places as well as making stuff: these photos are from our trip south for midwinter.

I love winter forests with trees with light-colored bark (especially birches), but this beech is interesting for more than its compact and mostly-symmetric immediate footprint.  The roots downhill from its trunk are a mix of its own, with smoothish grey bark, and roots from the red pine uphill from it, which are more of a red-brown.  I like the way they intertwine.

And I’ve always liked the frilly shapes and tonal colors of lichens.  I’m not sure the tree is thrilled, but I was happy to see these.

I am hoping for a new year full of more making things and finding beauty in the world, and I wish the same for all of you.

 

shades of blue

Mostly, things are continuing in the same pattern. Applying for jobs, waiting to hear, doing fiber stuff in the meantime. Yesterday, though, it was a beautiful day (if a little chilly and blustery), and my dad and I went for a walk along the bike path.  My shoes were bothering me, so we stopped for a few minutes at the first overlook on the way north, and I’m glad we did.  The lake and the Adirondacks are always beautiful, and it’s good to get to see them for longer than a few seconds at a time, while out running errands.

 

november so far

Whee, creative post titles.  Heh.  Well, I’m still in Vermont, still looking for work, still spending most of the rest of my time on fiber stuff.

I have done a bit more travelling, including the not-so-fun (clearing out the apartment that had been my grandmother’s) and the fun (visiting yarnfriends).  I turned 30 two weeks ago and spent the following weekend back in the NYC metro area, going to museums and generally hanging out with friends (and knitting a lot).

I took a fair number of pictures in the newly-reopened Islamic art galleries at the Met, where we spent a good chunk of that Saturday.  These are a few of my favorites (objects more than photos):

And I mentioned knitting! It looks as though I haven’t posted earlier progress pics of this shawl, but I started a Desdemona just before I left for my trip to Europe. After a few months of feeling like I was close to finishing the center square, I finally did, and I picked up the 400+ stitches for the border. I also learned that picking up stitches is hard when there’s only one stitch between the edge and the first YO–I was a few stitches off count for the other three sides (-2, +5, -2), but I had such trouble figuring out where to pick up stitches for a scant two stitches per three rows that I had 15 stitches too many on that last side. Next time, I’ll make sure I have an extra selvedge stitch.

Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s scrunched up because it’s too small for the needle (I’m doing Magic Loop for now), but it should be plenty big by the time I’m done.

I’ve also started a really simple shawl with some spindle-spun singles. I’d tried this yarn in the Prairie Rose Lace Shawl last spring and thought it was too busy, so the new project is a stockinette shawl with probably a feather-and-fan border. (If not that, some other lace pattern that works well with stripes.) I am quite fond of the way the striping is working so far:

 

And I’m nearly done spinning my Spring Mix combo lot, so I’ll try to get a group photo of that by this time next week.

 

october summary

October has been a pretty decent month.  I’m still unemployed and feeling antsy about it, but I’ve gotten to spend some time admiring the fall color and hanging out with awesome people.

Two weeks ago, I drove over to Manchester, NH to visit people at SOAR.  Once I got there, I spent the rest of the day inside the hotel, but the drive was utterly beautiful.  I’m not really a fan of getting up early, but it was lovely to be off in time to see the sunlight on the morning valley fog.  SOAR itself (okay, the marketplace and the collection of people, since the only activity I observed was the fashion show) was great.  I ran into friends as soon as I walked through the door, and I got to spend hours and hours with people I don’t get to see enough.  The one problem, really, was that I only had ~13 hours of interaction.  Internettily, though, I suppose it didn’t happen, since I took no photos.

Oh!  But I do have a photo of a bit of yarn I spun on Friday morning, when Rosemary let me play with her milk-cap spindle (made by JimBob):

That was quite an interesting spindle. I usually spin on medium-sized spindles that start off weighing about an ounce and weigh at least twice that by the time I’m finished. So a spindle that can’t possibly have weighed more than ~10g…it wanted to spin very, very fine yarn. The sample above is from singles I wrapped around my fingers and then allowed to coil up, so it’s effectively something like a 2×6 cabled yarn.

And then, this past weekend, I drove down to Rhinebeck. I camped at Lake Taghkanic State Park again, in a cottage this year (rather than a cabin), and it was almost perfect. The setting was lovely, and the rain politely allowed me to unload and then reload the car in the dry (even if the ground was squelchy).

Again, I didn’t take any pictures of people (though I know I’m in a few), but I did take some of sheep and goats:

It was a weird Rhinebeck for me–for the last few years, I’ve made a thorough circuit of all the booths and spent most of my time looking at things, even when I didn’t buy much. This year, though, I prioritized finding people. So I started with booths where I knew people, and then flitted (a bit) from one set of friends to another, wishing I had at least three times as much time with each group.

Except for Sunday morning, when I wasn’t wandering about with people because I was in a class: Getting More Done With Spindles, taught by Abby Franquemont. It was a lot of fun, and it’s gotten me thinking about actual productivity versus perceived productivity, and I’ve learned at least two new techniques.

I learned something else last Sunday, in a much less enjoyable situation: if I’m going to attempt a 4+-hour drive on back roads on a Sunday evening (or, really, any evening), it is wise to acquire plenty of caffeine when it is there, whether I need it immediately or not. Since I miscalculated (and the restaurant where I’d intended to stop must’ve been closed and unlit, since I totally missed it), what had been a 4.5hr trip on Friday turned into a 7-hr trip on Sunday night.  (On the trip down, I spent much of the drive looking at the gorgeous foliage and plotting how best to get those colors into fiber/yarn/garments.  More about that later.)

I’m back now, though, much to Mel’s satisfaction.

It is definitely lapcat season around here.

 

general update

 

Well.  I’m still in Burlington, still looking for work, still enjoying some aspects of living in semi-suburbia.  Like this:

I haven’t seen the orioles in a while, but the hummingbirds seem happy.  We’ve got at least three, probably four, near enough that they use our feeder regularly.  And now that we’ve brought out the other birdfeeder for fall, the woodpeckers are more visible, too.

I’ve also continued to work on Bernhardt:

And I’ve been spinning, and carding, and doing some dyeing to have more stuff to card:

That’s most of yesterday’s dyeing, drying in the sun.  Maybe I’ll go out and join it for a little while.

 

eye candy friday

Last week, my dad and I went on a walk along the forest-lined bike path near my grandma’s house. There weren’t a lot of flowers right along the path, but there were at least a dozen or so really impressive spiderwebs, several of them funnels. This one was particularly well lit.

This butterfly joined us in the blackberry patch at that orchard:

…and then someone on Rav pointed out that my most recent batch of batts looked a lot like it.

I wasn’t aiming for a particular color with them, just thinking that I had some bits and pieces that would look good together, but it is remarkably similar. I’m pleased with them.

Oh, and it’s not really an eye-candy shot, but I promised a sweater update:

I’m now a few rows further along, but I haven’t hit the any-time-now color shift. Well, okay, it should be in about three more rows, since it’s in the yarn that’s on break right now. I’m knitting two rows with one yarn, then two rows with another, carrying the yarn up the side, but also switching balls of yarn every couple of inches. Current plan is to knit up to the bottom of the armscyes and then get the sleeves to the same point, so any major mods to the sleeve cap shaping will match the armscyes. (And so I can put off deciding exactly how I want to deal with that, and also so I can have the sleeves use some of the yarns I’ve been using for the bottom of the body.)

In other knitting-y news, I’m working on (choosing and pricing) a batch of stuff (some yarn, some fiber) for a destash.  When it’s ready, I’ll mention it here.

 

home is good, too

Not a travel post!  Whee!  There’s still a fair amount going on, though rather different stuffs.  First, as many of you know, there’s a spinners’ event called the Tour de Fleece in which much yarn is made during the Tour de France.  (Some people watch the TV coverage of the bicycling, but lots of us don’t.)  I got a fair bit of spinning done this year.  Less than I’d hoped, I’ll admit, but I’m happy with my pile of fresh yarns.

These are Shetland, Wensleydale, Polwarth, Merino/silk/camel, and Merino/Corriedale, with a couple of partly-spun batts (not my carding) in the back.  I also finished spinning a couple of other yarns that didn’t make it into this photo.  (The ones on the left side here have been washed; the ones on the right have not.)

One of the things that’s been distracting me from spinning and job-hunting has been raspberry-picking.  It’s taking even longer these days, as it’s the peak of the first crop of red raspberries (there’re fewer black raspberries, so they’re faster to pick).  This is what I picked on Thursday:

Yes, there are some not-raspberries in there.  That bowl holds about two quarts, though, and it was totally full yesterday and overflowingly full today.  Which is why there’s also a (second) tray of raspberries in the freezer, plus two batches of raspberry jam on the counter.

The garden is full of lovely inedible things, too:

That’s a black-eyed Susan and a buttonbush in bloom.

 

Europe trip, part 6: near Cambridge

I spent the last few days of my vacation staying with Sarah and wandering near Cambridge.  Sarah is a fantastic tour guide, happily sharing some of her vast knowledge of the area, its history, and its flora and fauna.  Our first stop (after an excellent lunch) was Hayley Wood.  Beautiful, and fascinating to see the different stages of coppiced trees.
The coppices weren’t the most photogenic things, though:

Such an interesting-looking tree!

And then, with a discussion of Roman versus Enclosure period roads, we headed to an extinct medieval village called Clopton.

I saw these kinds of patterns in lots of English fields.  They’re called tram lines, and they’re where the tractors go through for crop maintenance stuff.  This field is just downhill from Clopton.

Clopton itself was where this hillside is, with the manor under that clump of trees.  The photos don’t really show it, but in person, we (Sarah, Alison, and I) could get a sense of how the village might have been laid out and a bit of how life might’ve worked.

On Saturday, Alison couldn’t join us, but Sarah, Andy, and I went walking in what used to be the Fens, along the Ouse wash.  It was amazing to think of the canal on one side of the bank we were walking along having been used to drain the entire surrounding area.

But kinda more amazing to see a seal!

(Yeah, I know, the photo doesn’t look like much.)

But after that walk, and an amazing lunch, we went to Ely Cathedral, on one of the fen islands.  (Um, what used to look more like an island and now just looks like a hill.)  Very different style of cathedral from the ones I’d visited the previous week!  Both because it was a few hundred years older and because it was in England rather than Italy–I quite liked the Celtic influences in the ornamentation.

And here I shall end my travel-blogging with a photo from Sarah’s garden:

Maybe I’ll actually post some fibery content (other than Malham sheep and llamas) next week!)

 

Europe trip, part 5: Yorkshire

When I got off the train in London, I did a bit of shopping in the train station and then crossed the street to the other train station, to catch another set of trains to Skipton, in Yorkshire. (For what it’s worth: I had a few sets of options planned out, from checking the routing function on britrail.com, but there are enough trains along those various routes that there were extra trains, and I got in about an hour earlier than I’d anticipated, by making quick connections. Also, especially after the veeeeery basic facilities on the Trenitalia trains, the train from London to Leeds had an astonishingly nice loo.)

When I got to Skipton, I was met by the proprietors of the B&B where I was headed, since the buses don’t run that late and I hadn’t wanted to rent a car. Bob and Sheila, who run Tudor House, were extremely helpful the whole time I was there, and I would wholeheartedly recommend Tudor House if you want to go hiking/walking near Malham. (If I go back, I think I’d try to arrange a rental car in Skipton, but there was plenty of walking to do for the three full days I had.)

(This photo is from my third day there, when there was better light, but Tudor House is in a lovely setting.)

So. The first full day I spent in Yorkshire, Sheila gave me a lift to Malham. From thence, I walked up to the Malham Cove trail. Malham Cove is quite an impressive extinct waterfall and one of the major Things To See Near Malham.

There are some nice flowers halfway up the stairs by the Cove.

I love the black-kneed frolicking lambs.

From the top of the stairs by Malham Cove, I walked up to Malham Tarn, but it was raining as well as windy by the time I got there, so these next photos are from most of the way back to town.

This is the top of Malham Cove, with Malham in the background.

More cute sheep.

Bob and Sheila had recommended a pub in Kirkby Malham as a dinner stop, both because of its excellent fish & chips and because it’s a straightforward walk back to Tudor House.  On the way there from Malham, I passed a farm with llamas instead of sheep:

Yay, llamas!

Aaand, when I got to Kirkby Malham (a little too early for the pub to be serving dinner), I took pictures of the lovely gardens until my camera batteries wore out again.  So I gave up and sought refreshment: Thatcher’s Gold cider and some of the best fish & chips I’ve ever had.  The mushy peas were pretty tasty, too, though they’re better with some of the tartar sauce and malt vinegar mixed in.

The next day, I caught the bus up to Malham and walked over to Janet’s Foss.  On the way, I passed these lambs playing King of the Hill:

Along the trail, within the area marked off as the Janet’s Foss scenic area, there’s this log:

People have been hammering coins into it for years and years, kind of like a solid fountain or wishing well.

The other side of the path was full of wild garlic in bloom, enough for the area to smell of onion.

The waterfall itself (Janet’s Foss, ‘foss’ being a word for waterfall) is quite pretty, but the area was too full of school-group for me to stay long.  Instead, I headed up toward Gordale Scar.

There’s a trail marked on the maps that goes up through the gorge, but I was Not Interested.  It’s an impressive place (note the reddish dot just below and to the right of the main waterfall: that’s a person in a red jacket), and windy enough to be substantially colder than elsewhere nearby, but I wanted easier hiking.  So I walked back out (just in time to avoid another school group!) and headed around the side of the hill.

One example of the kinds of signs I was following.

It was very, very windy.  I had my hair in two braids, but the wind blew enough out of the braids to create that extra shadow over my head.  Where you can see that it was blown sideways.

Then, since I hadn’t been able to take decent pictures at Malham Tarn the day before (because of the rain), I decided to hike back up that way, my only other real plan being to stay far, far away from the stairs by Malham Cove.

Malham Tarn is absolutely lovely.  That’s the lake (tarn) in the background, with the stream that drains it in the middle of the photo.

My plan to avoid the Cove steps may not have been the best idea.  My main goal was to try to spare my knees, which had been initially displeased by all those steps at Il Duomo, but the road wasn’t really much kinder.  On the other hand, I got some different lovely views, including this one:

And then my camera batteries died again, and I bought yet more batteries (better ones, this time) when I got back to Malham.  I was a little early for the bus to Gargrave, so I ate an apple and spun for a bit, enjoying the sunny bench by the stream.

Gargrave is a cute little town (genuinely a town rather than a village).

Alas, the pub where I ate dinner that night had nothing more appealing to drink than Strongbow (which, yes, is quite nice, but I’d been hoping for something I can’t find here), and their fish & chips weren’t as good as the previous night’s.  And they left out the mushy peas, perhaps because I was obviously a foreign tourist.  (Even the other pub had made sure to ask if I really wanted them, and this place was a lot busier.)  But it was still good food, and the busy room allowed for more interesting eavesdropping.

For my last day in Yorkshire, I decided I deserved a relaxed morning.  When I had yet to leave the B&B by 11 or so, I decided to stick around to see the steam engine that was supposed to be coming past at 12:30–I’m not especially enthusiastic about the history of trains, but considering that the B&B used to be the local train station, it seemed appropriate.

We all hung around on the patio for a while, waiting for the train to appear.  I made good use of the time–photographing the flowers and spinning more silk–and Bob informed me that the local village, Bell Busk, had once been home to a silk-spinning industry.  After a while, the train did show up, and it was fun to watch and hear (albeit with my hands over my ears once I took a couple of pictures).  Then I headed off to Haw Crag, an interesting local geological feature that could also be part of a route to Gargrave.

This sheep watched me walk past.

This is Haw Crag, with the disused quarry and a lot of sheep.

Ridgeline sheep.

Very sleepy lambs–must be tired out from too much frolicking.  (Don’t worry, the one that kinda looks dead got up and ran around a minute later.)

A quintessential Malham-adjacent view.  That was a lovely, lovely day.

After getting to Gargrave, eating lunch, and running a couple of errands, I went for a walk along the canal.  It was pretty, and an easy, smooth walk.  I knew I’d have to get up early the next morning, though, so I bought food for dinner and headed back to the inn to eat in my room.

Lots of wildlife!  Okay, okay, the horses aren’t wild.  But the pheasants and rabbit are.  (And, yeah, I know, I’ve lived in places where rabbits are not unusual sights, but I hadn’t seen pheasants before that week.  Not counting stuffed ones in exhibits, anyway.)

I ended up eating my pies on the trail, but I saved the beer until I returned to my room.  That was a tasty, tasty beer, with a fun name.  (And, having had to provide one photo ID and one non-photo ID in order to buy beer this afternoon, I miss the simplicity of buying alcohol in Europe.  Of course, I’m also not exactly upset that I look like I’m under 35, seeing that I’m still not quite 30.)

And, then, the next morning, I got up extra-super-early to take what turned out to be three trains to get to Cambridge.

This was the view from my room, at sunrise.  I do not usually see sunrise except at midwinter, but it’s not bad on occasion.

Next post: Cambridge-adjacent stuff.  There’ll be many fewer pictures of that, as I had People to talk to and point things out to, so I simply took many fewer photos.

 

Europe trip, part 4: Florence, part 3

So! After I went to the Duomo, I thought I’d wander away from the super-touristy areas, toward a couple of gardens.

On the way, I walked through the Piazza della Libertà:

And crossed the Torrente Mugnone, which has some lovely little pedestrian bridges:

I wandered through a gardeny thing that was basically a public park, then sat for a while on a bench by the canal and spun:

Then, I looked around the Florence botanical garden, which was nice, but a leeetle expensive for what it was.

I especially loved these roses, for the way they’ve got pink and cream buds but they look white when they’re open.

 

Then, on Sunday, I escaped most of the rain and went to the Palazzo Pitti.  Alas, again, no photos allowed inside, and it’s fairly full of impressive stuff.  (A word of warning, though: the definition of “modern art” they use for the Palatine gallery?  Means 1800s.  I’ll grant that it’s more modern than a lot of the works there, but it’s still not what I think of as modern.)  I would, however, highly recommend the costume gallery.

It looked like the rain had stopped, so I went out into the Boboli Gardens, at which point it resumed raining.  I didn’t stay long, but I did get a couple of photos.  Definitely not my style of garden, but imagining fancy parties in it was kinda fun.

And that was my last touristy excursion in Italy, not counting a very nice dinner (including a chocolate cake with flaming sugar), before I got on a train to go back to England via Paris.  (Man, that was a nice train ride!  And I got to see the Alps!)  Next up: Yorkshire.

 

wildlife interlude

Two major things contributed to this post: First, being friends with someone who knows a lot about dragonflies has made me notice them more, and second, my dad is ridiculously hard to find gifts for. So part of his Fathers’ Day present this year was an afternoon of walking in the woods. (Not hiking, really, but two pleasant walks.)  (Okay, okay, that isn’t gift-y, ’cause I don’t take much persuasion to go out in the woods, but the more-than-cursory gardening help was.)

So! First, the giant dragonfly I saw in the iris garden in Florence:

And a frog in Colchester Bog:

And a variety of insects in East Woods: