Goodbye Autumn Colors

Our autumn has been spectacular this year, with warm temperatures, dry air and plentiful sunshine.

The great weather has certainly extended our growing season; I can't believe how much is still thriving in my garden here in zone 6. Just yesterday I harvested arugula, carrots, chives and baby lettuce, with cabbages also going strong. 

It seems the good weather might be nothing but a memory now though after a rain and windstorm blew through this week, washing nearly all of the remaining color from the trees. 

It was lovely while it lasted though. 

Pattern-related knitting projects are in the works but lately I've been concentrating on top secret Christmas gift knitting. I don't always knit holiday gifts, but this year I had a couple of special ideas to work on. Maybe I'll share photos of those after the gifts have been given. 

Thanks for stopping by today, enjoy the rest of your autumn wherever you are! 

...peering from some high window; 

at the gold of November sunset

(and feeling: that if day has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

-- e.e. cummings

Apple Season

 

This week has been so beautiful - the air is dry and crisp, the skies are blue and there is just the beginning of a chill in the morning. Acorns are dropping from trees and local orchards are producing bumper crops of gorgeous apples.

As a little girl I helped my grandmother can the bounty of her garden. My mom dabbled in canning for a while also. But I hadn't done any canning for myself until this year after seeing so many beautiful, locally-grown apples.

Although I haven't yet delved into the world of pressure canning, I have achieved relative success with water bath canning tomatoes, pickles and apples (I use the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving). 

I always choose organic apples after discovering on the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen list that nearly all apples are heavily contaminated with pesticides. Even so, a thorough washing is important.

A mechanical apple peeler made quick work of the peels and after the canning process was complete I ended up with 7 quarts of chopped apples, all ready to be turned into easy holiday tarts later this year. 

I saved the peels and cores to make apple cider vinegar using this recipe. 

With the cool weather I've been knitting up a stack of accessories, some to become patterns eventually. One project I finished this past spring will be published in an Interweave book in 2016. As always, I'll give first notice here.

Thanks for stopping by today, I wish you a week of happy stitching! 

Love it or Loathe it - Knitting Ribbing

Although I often like to knit interesting and complex projects that include elaborate stitches, color changes or charts, I also enjoy a simple project that is easy to take on the road or knit in the company of others. My garter stitch-based Sothia shawl is one such pattern, and my current on-the-go project from my recent trip is another easy project, worked in simple ribbing. 

The first photo at the top of the post shows some swatches from my current project, and I've added a favorite quote from the book Knitting Without Tears, by Elizabeth Zimmerman. 

Autumn has finally begun to put on a color show around here, and the yarn colors choices for my project were inspired by our seasonal leaves. 
 

The swatches were worked in a worsted weight yarn and cast on with the German Twisted Cast On method (aka Old Norwegian method), which makes for a very elastic edge. This is the same edge I used in my Greyhaven Hat. The swatches were bound off using Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off.

While some knitters profess to loathe the boring nature of ribbing, I find the mindless rhythm of swinging the yarn from front to back meditative and soothing. Perhaps because I usually choose to knit in the Continental style ('picking' with yarn held in my left hand) rather than English style ('throwing' with yarn held in my right hand), I greatly enjoy knitting rib stitch combinations like k1p1, and k2p2.

How about you - do you love or loathe knitting ribbing or fall somewhere in between? Do you have any special tips or tricks you like to use when you knit ribbing?

A Visit To The Fair

While we're still enjoying Autumn I want to share some of the things I've been up to this season, including  a visit to the Country Living Fair, hosted every year by Country Living Magazine at the Ohio Village living history museum in Columbus. 

My pal Cheryl and I had a great time wandering through the vendors of handmade furniture, rugs, jewelry, artwork and much more, as well as antiques vendors who tempted us with vintage baskets, chairs, shoe lasts, and French flower buckets. 

Other interesting displays caught our attention, like this mountain of gourds and squash,

and a cool vintage auto.

An apple tree sagged under the weight of it's bounty of apples. 

We stayed so long admiring beautifully carved furniture, hand knit socks and artisan soaps that we were nearly the last visitors to leave! In case you were wondering, most of the artists had signs requesting that no photos be taken of their work, so it wasn't possible to share that here. But there was talent in abundance and, all in all, it was a fun day.

Thanks for stopping by today, I'll be posting soon with more knitting updates and other fun stuff. 

Welcome November

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadow less like silence, 

Listening to silence."
 

-   Thomas Hood, Ode: Autumn, 1827

Happy Fall!

Autumn has finally arrived, and very welcome it is too, after the heatwave endured by most of the country this summer. So it is with much enthusiasm that I post this greeting card to you for this lovely season! 

I took the above photo at the Country Living Fair and I'll share many more photos from this and another fun event soon.

If you haven't yet entered the drawing for a free copy of my latest pattern release, Amethiste, please do.

Even if you don't wish to enter the drawing, I'd still love to hear your thoughts. 

I wish everyone a wonderful week and a very happy fall season!

Savoring September

It seems that all year I yearn for the glory days of September and then they fly by all too quickly. As usual, there is a lot going on around the Ulrich home, including fun new knit design ventures, a guest blog post, a review and a free pattern giveaway! In anticipation of the new season I'm pulling out lots of new ideas and yarn for my next projects and I can't wait to share them with you.

I hope you enjoy the beauty of this month and savor the sweetness of lingering summer days followed by the promise of cool autumn evenings. Thanks for stopping by today, peace, blessings and happy stitching to you my friends!

"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer."
 

-   Helen Hunt Jackson, September, 1830-1885 

Pattern Inspiration and Quince & Co. Lark Yarn Review

This autumn's harvest brought a bounty of delicious fruits and vegetables - enough inspiration to fuel the imagination of any epicure for months to come. But even before they delighted my taste buds, I found these pears were a treat for the eye.

I love their silhouette, proportions, and rich tones of green and gold tinged with a subtle hint of russet.The attributes of these gorgeous pears inspired some of the ideas I had when working out the stitch pattern and carried over even to choosing yarn for a pattern design. After much consideration chose Quince & Co.'s Lark yarn. basket photo Quinceandco.com

 

Lark is a beautiful, reasonably priced, American-spun, worsted weight yarn plied with enough air to give it a slightly woolly texture and just enough cushion to soften the look and feel of the stitches (while not losing definition in a sculptural stitch pattern like the one I designed for this project).

 

Available in lovely solid colors, Quince & Co. has recently added a few heathers to Lark's range as well. Shade cards can be ordered from the Quince & Co. website.

 

I knit up several variations of the new designs, tweaking them until they captured what I had in mind, and the first pattern to be ready for test-knitting is a scarf. The scarf's texture is formed mainly by simple lace and cable stitches that look difficult but are actually easy and fairly fast to knit.

Lark stood up well to repeated frogging and re-knitting, even considering the constant manipulation of stitches required when working cables and lace, and just felt wonderful to knit with. I look forward to trying the other yarns in the Quince & Co. lineup!

That's it for now, I'm still knitting away on the next item in the set. The scarf should be ready for publication sometime in December.

Golden Autumn

 Leaves

How silently they tumble down and come to rest upon the ground

to lay a carpet, rich and rare, beneath the trees without a care,

content to sleep, their work well done, colours gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly until they nearly reach the sky.

Twisting, turning through the air till all the trees stand stark and bare.

Exhausted, drop to earth below to wait, like children, for…winter.

Elsie Brady - Scottish poet

Signs of the Season

 

All year long I look forward to autumn, an all-too-fleeting time of bright sunshine and an even brighter blaze of leaves.  Although things have only just begun to change around here, the air holds a distinct feel of the season.

 

There's something nostalgic for me in the mingled morning fragrances of brewing coffee and woodsmoke drifting on a chill breeze through an open window. And best of all, it's not too soon to pull out the woollies for wearing!  

The first day of fall seemed the perfect time to cast on for a new project using this gorgeous, Superwash Merino Worsted yarn from Kimber at Fiber Optic.

 

I love this color "Ellie," an eye-popping orange-red.  This stunner is perfect for a design that will be available soon.

It's been a busy summer around here, with several patterns being published, doing much work around the garden and house, and participating in various family activities, and I look forward to a (somewhat) slower pace this season.

I enjoyed this quote from Northern Farm by Henry Beston: 

The leaves fall, the wind blows,  

and the farm country slowly changes  

from the summer cottons into its winter wools.

I wish all my readers a beautiful first day of fall, much peace, many blessings and happy knitting!

Seasons of Knitting

Can it possibly be September already?  Wasn't it just New Year's Day?

I can't say I have kept up with my 2011 New Year's goals of monthly crocheting and weekly spinning (although I have done both more or less regularly this year).    

One New Year's goal, that I have accomplished, however, was to adapt and create a few knitting stitch patterns, in the sense that I have not seen these stitches published in this precise fashion anywhere yet. Of course as EZ said (sort of), is there really anything new in knitting?  I like her notion of "unventing."

The photo at the top of this post shows some of my work in a favorite swatching wool, Cascade 220.  The photo below, from my last post, shows a stack of swatches.

Of course, that's all I can show for now, the details are under wraps until the patterns are ready to be test knit and published.

This inspired some of my swatching. 

 
As did this.

Today, September 1st, marks the first day of meteorological autumn, and the signs of the season are already making an appearance.  

If you're in the Midwest, mark your calendars for a fun fall experience - A Wool Gathering, Sept. 17-18, in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

With the coming of fall I turn my thoughts to what to gift knit this year.  I plan to do a few knit/ crochet/ handspun items for deserving people (those that comprehend the amount of time and love a handmade gift requires), including home decor projects made from squares based on my Northwoods Coasters pattern for Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2011 issue.  More details on that pattern in an upcoming post.

I also have in mind some new designs that would make ideal gifts, so those'll be put together for publication soon I think.  It will be the holidays - and New Year's - before we know it!

FO - Fall Shawl

My Fall Shawl is finished just in time to wear for our Thanksgiving festivities!  I love how a colorful scarf dresses up the simplest of outfits.

This project was inspired by a photo of colorful autumn leaves and berries I took out in the woods this month,

using this Noro Kureyon Sock yarn,

 

as well as a skein of Isager Spinni (Wool 1) in a deep charcoal heather for an edging to ground the multi-color striping effect a bit.

The colors are rich, autumnal and more subtle than usual for many Noro yarns.

I used every scrap of the Noro and only had about 5 yards of the Isager left over.

The rustic, slightly rough feeling of both of these yarns has great appeal for me, although a few spots in the Noro yarn were a bit too slubby for my taste so I cut those out.  

These are not yarns for someone in love with soft, soft, soft, rather they are alive with texture and color in a way a smooth yarn cannot be.  However, I still cannot imagine wearing socks knit with the Kureyon Sock - too rough even for me!

Last week we attended another spin-in at Temptations in Dublin.  It was a small group but it made for interesting conversations.

One gal in the group owns Himalayan cats and is in the process of spinning up their fur into yarn to knit mittens.  For the kittens. Seriously.

ACHOO!!!!!!!!!

 

I am still slogging away on some boring Louet Coopworth roving that came with my wheel.  I'm planning a 3-ply and since I have 2 pounds of the stuff, probably something like a chunky cable sweater.  That's going to be a ways down the road though.

 

As I reflected on the many blessings I have to be thankful for - love, freedom, knitting! - it occurred to me that there are also some things that can go unappreciated.

These things can sometimes even be annoying or difficult to deal with, but viewed through a different lens, they can sometimes also represent good things.  I bring you my new Thanksgiving list of things I am grateful for:

1. A tangled mess of yarn - because this means I have the physical ability to knit and the yarn to do it with.

2. A mountain of laundry to wash - because this represents the fact that I have not only enough clothing to wear, but enough multiples of things like socks and shirts that I'm able to let them stay dirty (a few days at least) until I find time to wash them.

3. My husband's dirty underthings - (ugh!!) but really, it means I have someone this close enough to me in my life and still love him, and him me.

4. A dirty bathtub and toilet - because this means I have a home with clean, hot, running water with which to bathe and with which I am able to clean these things - something so many people in this world do not have. 

5. A sink full of dirty dishes - because they are evidence that I have had not just enough to eat to keep me alive, but abundant choices as well.

Wishing you a peaceful week of great cooking and knitting, safe journeys and lots of Thanksgiving goodies!