FiberTribe

Mama Nature Calls Our Bluff

Well, so much for posting snow pictures from a week ago. Mama Nature came down with rain, sleet, and snow not necessarily in that order and alternating pretty much at random today.  We did go back up the mountain for more firewood (twice) and came back with the motherlode, oak. O my small woodling gods, I had almost forgotten the perfume that is slowly burning, dense oak. Now if I could get that aroma into all my yarn and get it to stay there...what fresh heaven would that be?

No pictures, the camera stayed home given the lowering sky and the filthy job that is humping cut aspen logs and uncut and heavy oak trunks into an ancient but trusty Suburban. It's a fine night for freshly made red lentil soup with orzo, crusty bread and a glass or three of decent wine. 

Knitting, you say?  yah, yah...in front of the woodstove, maybe.  I love me some 80 degree (F.) living room powered by the sweat (and, ok, the chainsaw) of my brow. 

We may be small and we may be remote out here, but by goddess, we are wealthy tonight in all the ways that matter. Love and warmth to ya'll.

First Snow of the Season

Ok, I'm cheating. The first snow was a week ago yesterday and totally NOT in any of the many and varied weather forecasts available online or otherwise. Huh. So much for precision, eh? It was the proverbial warning shot across the bow even though there was no trace of snow by mid-afternoon.
About 3 days before this snow the temps dropped to -1 degree F. breaking the record of 0 F. set in 1979. Weird. Then it popped back up into the 60s during the day and then snowed a day or two later. 
The weather, she is riveting, yes?  Hey, you try living in a town of 200 souls. Sometimes you WANT the  weather to be the most interesting thing going.
Here's another shot looking due west out the same dining room window.

Don't you love that slickrock just past the tree and field?  That's actually the road out of town heading toward Escalante. 
We've been running the woodstove now for several weeks and the thought has dawned that what we thought was a huge mountain of firewood is really woefully inadequate for the months ahead.  Here's a wee bit of warmth.  What's keeping you warm these days?

Little Baby Punkinhead

Yes, O Patient Ones, that is a pumpkin modeling pumpkin cozies, er, baby hats.  The correct size of hat for a newborn was a matter for loud debate Chez Hell's Backbone Grill (where I work from time to time).  In an attempt to get the right size, I commandeered a selection of baby pumpkins from the Hell's Farm pumpkin harvest and then ran around pestering all the mothers/grandmothers on staff to tell me which pumpkin was about the size of a newborn's head. 

For the record, I'd have picked a smaller one, but what do I know?  (And that mug supporting the pumpkin is a ginormous one holding about 20 oz. of coffee.) The universal selection was the one you see above.  And the universal comment from the under 30-something, childless women on staff was "Ouch!". Accompanied by a newly appraising eye cast at their beloveds' heads, heheh.

So, clutching my pumpkin, off I ran.  Both hats are Sandi Wiseheart's Vine Lace Baby Hat, a freebie on Knitting Daily.  I am not so much with the traditional baby colors, as you can see. Specs are:

Blue Hat:    Colinette Jitterbug, color Jewel, much much less than one skein. Destination: Madison, WI

Harvest Hat:  KnitPicks sock yarn, discontinued color Daffodil, much less than one skein.  Destination: ....................Lander ,  Wyoming

Both were knit on a combination of size 0 and 1 DPNs.  I also knitted a matching pair of baby socks from the same skein of Jitterbug but those, alas, ran off to Madison, Wisconsin with the mother to be before their closeup chez FiberTribe.

Review of Sandi's pattern?  Beautiful result but a fairly fiddly if easy pattern. Bear in mind that I rilly, trooly don't like knitting lace.  If I'd been knitting with solid color yarn I'd have shot myself before finishing. Out of boredom.

Review of the yarn?  Jitterbug sock yarn will ruin you for anything else except maybe Koigu or STR or handspun/hand-dyed stuff. Dude. Get thee hence and pet some. The KnitPicks stuff felt like badly spun arse after the Jitterbug.
Here's one more shot of the lovely star-like pattern on the top of the hat.

Gawd, It's Some Beautiful Out Here Today...

so where were we?  ah, the first pair of socks. 
C*linette's Jitterbug sock yarn, one skein in Jewel.  One skein was enough to complete these and a pair of baby socks.

I know. Be still your beating heart, eh.  Hey, it's my first pair of socks, already. The color is true on my laptop unlike the color snippets borrowed from C*linette's site and posted here a while ago.  One of my local victims fans under whose nose these were waved repeatedly, requested a pair. I'm midway through the first sock, same yarn, purchased at the same store at the same time and the socks look completely different. The striping pattern is nowhere near as felicitous as these. Pictures next time.

However what DOES look even better than socks in Jitterbug? Sandi Wiseheart's Lace Vine baby hat in Jitterbug. You can find the free pattern over on Kn*tting Da*ly.  No links, dahlings, am feeling lazy.  Maybe a picture of that hat tomorrow, too?  and another hat, same pattern different yarn. Btw, do you find that socks and baby caps beget one another?  My feeling is, why don't we leave the yarn overnight with the pattern and maybe they'll knit their own damn fiddly selves....