Smatterings

  • walk with me wednesday

    I knew the holiday would throw me off.  I was adding new yarn pictures to my For Sale page and wrote almost a whole post, well, if I weren’t on dial up and didn’t have to wait FOREVER for the pictures to load, it would have been the whole post, before it occurred to me that today was Wednesday.  Last night WAS Two dollar Tuesday at the local pizza place and I SHOULD remember that, they were out of Ridgerunner.

    It’s Wednesday..

    The seasons have changed, dramatically over the past week.  Something is different.

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    It’s harder to walk quietly now, the dried leaves are loud under our feet.  We are exposed, cautious. 

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    Inspite of the "No Hunting" signs we have been drawn in.  A father comes by to tell me his son wounded a deer on the adjacent property.  It ran away, escaping onto mine.  A search needs to be made.  I spend parts of the last two days searching for the blood trail, the tiny spots of blood so infrequent and now lost that finally I tell them that the deer is safe.  There will be no more searching.  There have been crows, but this time of year they are gathering.  The same man, the father, had butchered a bull the same day as the deer was lost, the entrails taken to a far corner of a nearby field.  I hope that the coyotes are kept busy there, where the smell of blood is strong.  Raucous crows, screaming hawks…  coyotes, fox… all looking for food.  The deer have it hard.

    The season has changed.  Bare bones.

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    10 responses to “walk with me wednesday”

    1. Amazing. Bare trees already, and frosty ferns! You’re further north of me than I thought you were.

    2. Beautiful beautiful writing. Evocative, spare, sere, exact.

    3. Yes…..your Wednesday post and mine speak of the change to less light and warmth. I do love bare trees against the sky.

    4. That was quick. I had to put on a jacket just to read. I felt the chill.

    5. You were good to help with the search. Looking for a wounded deer can be so frustrating for everyone but I’m glad your situation turned out good – for the deer, anyway. 😉

    6. Wow – that went quickly. So now we wait for spring? 🙂

    7. What a difference a week makes, the color that was here is now fading..and the silhouettes have changed…good to get outside and notice it…your “walking words” describe it beautifully.

    8. It doesn’t take long once the seasons start to change.
      Love the fabulous colours you got with your Alpaca/silk yarns. Wow!

    9. Wow – seasons hit so fast and then they are gone! Love the autumn colours and the crunchy leaves on the ground are one of the few things that makes the shortening days bearable. Looks like we are going to hit summer two months early here.

    10. Season of Change.. beautiful evocative autumnal post. The cat photos are wonderful… and the leaves already Gone!

  • knitting..

    There has been knitting.  A week or so ago, I got it into my head that it would be *nice* to have a new sweater for Rhinebeck.  I could have taken the easy way out, in fact, that was my plan.  I went foraging in my WIP pile and dug out the ribbed V neck sweater I started last fall.  I finished the neck and picked up the sleeve stiches.  Then, I decided that it might need a few (ahem) alterations.  That didn’t seem appealing to me.  So…. I went to my stash and pulled out some lovely Cascade Lana D’Oro and cast on Kathy Zimmerman’s Marseille Pullover.  My thought, if there was one, was that I might, just might pull it off.  Hopeful, but not terribly realistic given that it IS autumn, food and gardens need to be dealt with AND the weather has been absolutely glorious for dyeing and then there is the shop.  THE SHOP.

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    Here are the pieces of the puzzle so far.  Friday, it hit me that it might go a bit faster if I would knit the sleeves as mindless knitting at the same time as the cabled not so mindless front.  Thank goodness for extra circs.  It’s a fun project, I will wear it this year, how about that for realism.

    Now, the shop.  The workshop.  C has been busy building me workbenches, and I’ve put together a sort of dye station for the winter months when I can’t dye outdoors.  First, we went to the lumber yard.  It sits a ways from the barn where we stacked it after cutting and milling the lumber several years ago. 

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    The wood has been planed.  Progress continues..

    P1020397_1  one of four side panels

    putting them together, see the spaces for the drawers?

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    11 responses to “knitting..”

    1. That is gonna be a workshop to live in (which I guess is ultimately the plan, eh?)!! Nice that you have the space there to add all that fun stuff for your fiber needs.

    2. Rachel H

      Can I come live in that woodshop please? I don’t take up much room.
      I just bought myself a planer on the weekend. Have to wait till the stupid chest cold abates a wee bit before it’s really a good idea to play with my new toy though. Sigh.

    3. Drooooool! I’m trying to figure how to turn my downstairs “workshop” into a dye studio, but the lack of running water and a stove are kind of putting a crimp in my plans. I do have room for about fifteen crockpots and a microwave, though! Now if I can only figure out what to do with the 20,000 rubber stamps…

    4. Lovely. Now I want to come over for a shop party. Wish I was going to be at Rhinebeck but you know what’s on my plate. I e-mailed you but it bounced…

    5. Wow, I can’t wait to see the workshop “grow” in your pics.

    6. That is going to be a super deluxe indoor dying studio. Beautiful tables AND I love your lumber yard…

    7. Oh, what great plans,looking forward to the next phase of the shop. Beautifull pictures as always!

    8. Whomever stacked your lumber yard did a great job of placing the stickers…and if my hubby built me a work room like that– I would spend entirely too much time in it! Your sweater looks great, what a good idea to mix the mindless with the not so mindless…

    9. It’s so cool seeing your workshop develop! Hope you have fun at Rhinebech. I keep telling everyone that. One year, I’m actually going to go.

    10. I love the cabling on your newest sweater.
      Your workshop looks like such a nice place to be. I always like the see the beginnings of a project.

    11. The workshop – how exciting!

  • still the weekend.. ha!

    Do you know what he’s telling you?  The longer black end is the front of the Woolly Bear.  So, get ready…

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    Here in New England it is still a holiday.  My Mom reminded me that it is not a three day weekend everywhere.  But here, Columbus is celebrated, maybe the Italian and Portuguese influence, whatever.  I can’t remember a more glorious Columbus weekend.   We have had a full harvest moon, with clear and as starry a sky as a full moon allows. There have been crisp cold hard frosty mornings with fires in the stove and bright sunny blue skied days.  Perfect.   The smell of wood smoke is in the air.

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    There has been knitting and dyeing and working in the shop.  Spinning, too.  The raspberries have been thinned out, this years canes cut away and ready to be burned.  Nearly all of the apples are put up as sauce or pared for pies.  I’ve been busy.  The dye pot is hot, so I’m off.  Pictures of the knitting, tomorrow.  I promise.

    9 responses to “still the weekend.. ha!”

    1. You saved those pictures from last year right? 🙂
      Sara
      in warm sunny CA

    2. Still no frost here yet.

    3. No frost yet down “south”, in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut. Later this week, for sure! Great pictures.

    4. Your pictures make frost look inviting.

    5. I have no idea what that wooly worm is trying to tell me… you’ll have to translate. We’ve had a beautiful Columbus day weekend as well, though warmer I think than yours.

    6. Yay! Fall! Your pics are great. I hope Mr. Woolly Bear moves fast 😉 We’re getting some of that cold front by week’s end. It’s going way down to 70 degrees…joy Can’t wait to see what you’re working on. Food pics are appreciated too!

    7. Paula

      We found a woolly bear yesterday at Corgifest in Spencer, MA. Just one. Not like the year I took Roisin for a walk by the canal in Uxbridge and we found 26 of them in 1-1/4 miles. 26!!!!!! Needless to say, that was a bit of a rough winter. Hubby says that’s a load of hooey, about winter and those caterpillars, but I would disagree. So, are you guys heading south before you get snowed in or what? I’ll miss you at Su’s tomorrow night due to a choir practice, but should be there the following week and hope to see you then. And looks like this year I am actually going to be able to visit Rhinebeck! It’s been a few years, so I’m really looking forward to it, this time with an eye to fibers and drop spindles…

    8. Love the pics and especially seeing that wooly bear. I haven’t seen one in awhile.

    9. Frost already!

Our lives are dyed the colors of our imagination.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

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