Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Sky in a basket, sky in a scarf


Well, here's the view from the second floor of my house. A few things might jump out at you, like the fallen tree that (sob) used to tether my beloved clotheslines. The tree was a casualty of the blizzard oddly called Nemo (Latin:  no one).  And you might also notice the dregs of snow on either side of the Wood River. What you probably haven't thought much about, though, is the sky. In the photo it's relatively flat and seems unimportant. The color is that of skim milk--kind of white with sickly blue-grey around the edges. The sky has been this color, or much greyer, for most of February. It is a February New England sky.

I've been thinking a lot about the sky because I'm making a Sky Scarf. I suppose you could call this project conceptual knitting and maybe aleatory knitting, too, since random factors come into play. (For more information about this see the charming website called Leaf Cutter Designs.) The color of the scarf depends on the color of the sky wherever you happen to be. Every day for a year the knitter looks at the sky and knits a stripe representing the sky's color.


I began knitting on 23 February, my birthday, and will conclude on the eve of my next birthday. Let's hope I get to use some of the bluer colors in the foreseeable future!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Balmy, palmy, yarn-bomby



Whilst my immediate family was huddled around the wood-stove, in an east coast house devoid of electricity and battered by the wrath of Blizzard Nemo , I was blithely communing with nature in Los Angeles, where it was, um, relatively vernal.


In fact, marching around Elysian Park with my sister and her dogs,

L-R:  Dorrie, unidentified woman belonging to Clyde, Theo, Clyde, sister.

I discovered an exotic bloom, Yarnbombia Acrylicana, adorning a tree in a small arboretum:




Most of my knitting happened aboard Southwest Air, as I traveled between the coasts. I find solitary travel to be the best way to knit lace, for obvious reasons.

Solid-color socks knit from Swans Island lovely ultra-fine merino fingering yarn.  Printed yarn is Marathon.

Here are some additional postcards:


Double rainbow over Echo Park.

Venice

Someone's garden in Venice.

A perfect camellia.

A camellia tree in Descanso Gardens


But all good things must come to an end.  I'm sorry to report that this tree destroyed my beloved clotheslines.

Meanwhile, back in Rhode Island, quod Nemo non fecit.