Surprise….   I joined Project Spectrum.  Of course I did. Everything I am knitting, everything I have been knitting, and certainly it follows that everything I will be knitting this month is one shade or another of red.  Some things, such as the lace scarf, are in many shades of red and pink.  At least for this month, I’ve got a shoe in.  Over the weekend I dyed more red / pink yarn.  This time, Peony, the same color that Margene used for her lovely Hanging Vines Stole.  I had run out of it, sort of gotten behind.  I shouldn’t let myself do that with this color.  It’s lovely.  If only I wasn’t marooned on sleeve island.

I probably shouldn’t admit to swimming ashore, abandoning the sleeves to the island.  Thing is, C’s birthday is Thursday and he wants a soft hat.  I found the softest baby alpaca I’ve ever felt for 50% off last week.  I bought one skein in a light beige, with the idea that if it over-dyed well I’d go back and get the remaining couple skeins. I let some of the light yarn peek through the navy dye to give it a tweedy look and give it some texture.  The yarn is amazing to handle, a bit like a dream, the stuff you could really have a relationship with, that is IF I had bought more than the one skein.  When I went back… gone.  Of course it was.

My Dad, who says he’s right ALL of the time, IS right enough of the time to make me listen.  He reads my blog.  Although he doesn’t comment publicly, he sometimes emails me with his footnotes.  I know his feelings on selective cutting.  Keyword: SELECTIVE.  (I’m not in disagreement.  I just want to leave more of the big ones, we need them for our souls.)  Thanks, Dad.  This was his message to me this morning..

Re your recent blog. The world we live in is a dynamic entity. Some
things change with a frequency so fast that we miss their motion. Some
things change with a frequency so slow that we are unaware of any
change. Others have a frequency we are aware of. An old forest has a
frequency of its own. It’s slow and we come to love its grandeur and
stability but it’s moving in its cycle. The grand old trees will die and
will be replaced. It is sad to see them go but wise lumbering just
eliminates that part of the cycle that leaves dead standing trees. Man
should recognize the need for more forests, not only for the atmosphere
and storm water retention but for our souls and to crowd out houses.

The school wood lot here (..) is sad to see. The old trees just
die and stand bare until they fall. The woods at York County (reference to some cutting done on our farm) have
recovered and look great.

Thanks to Margene, for the help she gave me in getting that wonderful animated button onto my sidebar.

Warning.. this is NOT about fiber,  that’s for tomorrow.

It could have been any number of things that made me anxious today as I started out on my hike through the woods.  On my way to the trail, I’d passed a pile of huge, straight pine logs, at their landing, waiting to be loaded onto a truck.  It made me sick, there are few enough of these tall old pines.  I know about harvesting.  I know.  It did not matter.  I found myself hurrying along along the trail to one of my favorites, a big old pine that reaches all the way up, and rested my forehead against it’s trunk.  It occurred to me then, that I probably *am* a tree hugger.  (And I just might be granola, too.)  Then again, that might not have been the cause for my distress. There was that man that watched me get out of my car, hung around, and asked, ‘goin’ for a hike?‘ instead of getting in his own truck and driving away.  Even after I took off, I could feel his eyes on my back.   Instead of turning on my ipod, I left the ear plugs in my pocket and listened for a long while.  At what is generally my half way point, I just quit.  That’s when I knew what my problem was.  It was the sound of the chainsaws.   More to the point, it was the sound of the trees falling, and hitting the ground in the distance that was grinding into me.  I’d been thinking about this entry for a long time,  "E" is for the Ents.  The subject is so close to me, that I haven’t been able to post all week thinking about it.  And today, with each scream of the chainsaw, it came to a head. 

The Ents are leaving middle earth.  It’s true.  The first time I walked *my* woods was magic.  It was summer and everywhere the undergrowth was fern, green, lush, and nearly waist high.  My giants were the biggest I’d ever seen.  There were so many of them together in so few acres.  C and I tried to wrap our arms around them.  We couldn’t begin to touch each others fingertips, they were that grand.  They were that old.   For the past ten years, I’ve been watching them die.  In the Northeast,  the biologists give many reasons: acid rain, beetles, drought, …whatever.  The truth is in there somewhere.   The Ents are leaving. 

Congrats to all the finishers in the Knitting Olympics.  You are all medalists in my book.  The outside world, although it does show it’s existence on the box that is television, has little effect on the productive climate of Sleeve Island.  Sitting in a remote corner of an unknown world in our imaginations, it remains far, far away from outside influence.  The knitting continues.  I can’t blame my sluggishness on the warm temps, it is freezing out there.  It is just the nature of the island.  I’ve taken to whipping up strong lattes before sitting down.  No use, perhaps some knitting calisthenics?

The temps are keeping Sammy in more than usual.  He’s been bringing me his rope to throw.  We call it Go Get It,  a cat version of fetch.   I throw the rope, he races after it, skidding and rumpling up any rugs he can in the process, then he grabs whatever he can of the rope and runs back to me, placing it back at my feet.  Occasionally he’ll try to draw C into the game, a rope fetch triangle.  His game, we play by his rules.   He looks pretty serious about this, doesn’t he?  Such a sweetie.

Saturday was the monthly spin-in at RI Handspun.  For those of you who have spun with me in the past several months, you’ll recognize this.  It’s on the Joy.  That means I’ve only spun it when I’ve been out and about.  After filling a few bobbins, I decided to spend my time Saturday plying some up.  So far, I have about 400 yards of the bubble gum, Barbie pink, sparkly, alpaca, silk, angelina blend.  Very yummy, VERY pink, very not me.   I know that it has to be the sparkle that has grabbed my inner magpie.  What else?  After weighing it on the OHaus, I figure I’ll end up with nearly 800 yds, about 100 yds. per ounce.  After trying several shots of this, I’ve decided that sparkle is directly related to movement.  Focus vs. sparkle.  Use your imagination.