Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Blockage

Front and back of dark Fassett stripe sweater are done and blocking:



I never get tired of looking at how well the colors in this thing blend and shift. And even more so on the purl side, as the piece on the right shows. Hmmm...maybe I need to find a reverse stockinette stitch pattern for this stuff....? And before you ask, both pieces are the same size. The camera lens has distorted the one on the right. Compare the grid sizes.

I'm proceeding on both sleeves at the same time in order to avoid Second Sleeve Syndrome (Like Second Sock, only bigger) and to have the best chance of 2 sleeves that are the same size, shape, and length.



And notice how I slyly managed to show off the bumper tomato harvest? Every year, the unheated Alaska tomato grower has to pick a cutoff date for literally cutting all the tomatoes off the vines, ripe or not. Daylight is shrinking (only a week to equinox), the weather is rainy and cool, and we come to face the fact (reminded by yellowing leaves) that those babies are never going to blush on the vine. But tomatoes have a secret. Everything they need to be red tomatoes is sealed up inside green tomatoes, so all they need is to come inside the house and hang out in a shallow basket for a while until they get around to reaching their carmine potential. They even are kind enough not to ripen all at once, so we may be eating fresh homegrown tomatoes for over a month! Let's have another look and revel in the delights of salads to come:



One more thing--the most prolific plant was not any of those I nurtured from seeds and planted in big deck containers. The winner was an afterthought nursery start called Tumbler plopped in a hanging pot. On a per-yard-of-vine basis it whupped the Sunchocola, Scotia, Beaverlodge, and Fourth of July all to pieces! And their flavor is incomparable!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

A Day in the Life

What a difference a day makes to a mushroom. Remember this little beauty?

 A day later it was this:


Mushrooms--you just can't help lichen 'em!


Monday, August 26, 2013

Plain Sailing

Just plain stockinette on the Sixareen Cape from here on out. All the fair isle is done, and it looks pretty good even in its unblocked state. The moss stitch border looks a bit frilly and flip-uppy, but I'll have to wait for the blocking magic to see if it's really going to be a problem.


And I think I promised you a look at the dark Fassett stripe sweater.

This was the best approximation of the color that I could get with the light available. The pattern is this one, in the prescribed yarns, but with less contrast than you see in the woman's model. I used Regia Hand Dye Effect Night Tones and Random Stripe 2903. The yarns look very much alike at first, but they have slightly different textures and one has long gradual color changes, while the other has shorter color shifts. It makes for fascinating if subtle color play that you really have to appreciate up close and in person. Maybe before I'm done I'll find the right light and setting. And no, that's not the shape. It's not blocked, so the sides are curled up. In places you can see the light through it, so you see what a light layer it will be, and a good friend of many of my turtlenecks this winter.

And just for fun, here's what's happening all over the Alaska woods right now--mushrooms!


There are many others, but the most numerous and photogenic are the amanita/fly agaric/fairy toadstools/call-them-what-you-will cartoon 'shrooms. They're the most colorful, bright red when they're young, and covered in mad white dots. They're also poisonous, so nothing eats them. Once in a while a bird or a squirrel will take one up in a tree and then leave it there when it figures out it's no good.


Almost cool enough to make you believe in gnomes, isn't it?

Monday, September 24, 2012

Easy Bein' Cheesy

Sometimes it seems like there's more than one reason it's called fireweed.


And there's more than one way for a rose plant to be rosy.

It's autumn all over the place, and bootie knitting continues apace. Remember the Cheat-toes booties? Well, we now have a new flavor of cheese. Once I got these guys knitted up, I couldn't help noticing the similarity to blue cheese. See what I mean?

(Actual blue cheese added for comparison.) It's Fortissima sock yarn in #104 blau tweed colorway.

And here's another pair in a fun color. A cheese-free color.
(Actual comics and Pollock added for comparison.) The yarn was supposed to be for a Knit Purl sock club creation in a colorway inspired by the Jackson Pollock painting Image Number 8. But I wasn't especially excited by the pattern intended for it, and totally tickled to death by the way it looks in booties. And the more I looked at the yarn, the less I thought of Jackson Pollock and the more I thought of the way papier mache looks when made out of the comics section of the Sunday paper. What do you think?