After yesterday’s rant delivered here, if any of you are
willing to read further, remembering that the ground is still thawing, the rain
stopped, but NO SNOW… not a flake even, then maybe you should read the Harlots
post of yesterday. Take it as a warning. Her weather yesterday, becomes mine today (most
weather is still coming from the west. But,a Nor’easter, which does not come from the west, is speculated for
this evening, I can hope). Now, that
said, if you read it, you know… it’s very grey.. get under your skin, niggle
with your brain, get back in bed and pull the covers up kind of GREY. I had started a bobbin of dark charcoal GREY
llama on the Dixon yesterday morning.

As intrigued as I am with it,
today just may be a day to work with color, maybe the blue on the Schacht. I actually was checking through my projects
this morning looking for something cheerful: Light GREY socks, two shades of
GREY Ingeborg (poor thing, still waiting), GREY kid mohair Clapotis, and then
the very cheerful Dark Olive MH sleeve.

I stopped there, more could be hiding. C did point out some very orange roving hanging on the wall. Hmmmm..

I may take a last slosh through the woods today before the
Nor’easter (see, I am optimistic) hits tonight. And, I certainly will open the windows and air the house before the
temps start to fall.

 

Here’s a pic of the first skein of dark brown llama

And a shot from the woods.. Mother Nature wins again.

 

As a knitting day, or any kind of fiber related day,
yesterday was a bust. Just as Sunday was
a day to settle in, take in the outdoors, shift into low gear… Monday was all about business. Not the money making real kind of business,
but work none the less. It was going to
town, getting the mail that had accumulated for the last two months, a sorting
through, cleaning up, finishing the (not so big) dig, and finally taking
another walk. I’m reconnecting, after a
long disconnect. The trip into town was a
muddy slip sliding affair. The mud is
slippery as ice, mixed with what’s left of the slush pushing the wheels this
way and that. Grab the steering wheel
and hold on. It was another record
breaking day, temps into the low fifties. The local jerk radio dog trainer ( they teach the dogs to chase down the
bears, tree them, and then by using the radio frequency broadcast from the dog
collars triangulate their positions, walk in.. or drive over to, and shoot the
bear) was parked at the bottom of my drive when I returned from town. Figuring that maybe he thought, as I had the
day before, that the bear just might have started to wake in the warm weather,
I went out to check for tracks. These F*#k’g
JERKS! You know, I don’t blame the dogs,
but I won’t let their owners onto the property to retrieve them. If they are so willing to put the dogs at
risk, well then, so be it. They’ll have
to wait until the dogs leave the property, bear willing. The bear isn’t chasing after the dogs, but
tree it and maybe it’ll attack if it can. If that happens, I’ll root for the bear. I know there are lots of you that are hard core dog lovers; don’t get
mad, I’m not hard hearted. But what kind
of idiot pits animals against one another? It’s the only way I can give the bear a chance. He doesn’t have a radio man to protect
him. Okay, enough said… (my rant of the
day)… Luckily, I did not see any
evidence of the bears being out yet. Sleep soundly. The warm weather
continues. It’s raining in the woods.

Sunday was a day as I remember them to be as a child. It went on and on. The sky was brilliant; the temps were close
to 50F and the snow in the woods only inches deep. Not snow shoe conditions, but perfect for a
trek in the woods. I grabbed my canvas
barn jacket, laced up my hiking boots  (NOT Sorels..  it’s really warm and the
hiking will be easy), grabbed my camera, a walkie talkie (it’s a rule here that
if we work, walk, or do whatever in the winter woods, that we take a radio
‘just in case’) and a baseball cap to keep the glare out of my eyes and headed
into the woods. Tracking, checking to
see who’s out and about, is my absolute favorite winter activity. The snow was soft on top, granular in the
middle and days old. The single foot
prints had softened and left only the repeating patterns of each animals
stride. I checked the obvious and
easiest places first; my paths and under the hemlocks and balsams. The porcupines love the hemlocks, the fishers
love the porcupines and the deer and red squirrel have been foraging the pine
cones under them. The clear water spots,
where the streams meet the pond, have watering hole activity, always a great
place to stop and check.. sometimes an
otter will winter there and a pile of fish scales will mark it’s ‘bathroom’
area. No luck this year. The coy dog, fox and deer have traveled
across the frozen pond during the night. Not together, I hope. I pick up their tracks at the far end of the
pond, no apparent conflict. Good. My coat is open, it’s warm enough that the
only purpose it serves me is to provide pocket space for my gloves and lens
cap. In the deep shade I can turn my cap
backwards and have the sky in my face. After a while, I start to see the tracks as rhythmic patterns; turning,
twisting, not unlike the cables I knit.

As
I cross the dam I see the brown stem of the pussy willow has turned to a
beautiful orangey red and the pussys are peaking out.

Unbelievable! It’s so early for the plants to wake up and SO dangerous for them to do
so. At the edge of my driveway the
unplowed road (class 4 roads aren’t kept up by the town and they remain unmowed
and unplowed, dirt tracks through the woods) has boot prints I recognize from a
past winter. C joins me and we walk the
road; a neighbor has been out for a walk, the tracks show poles and ski trails
from an earlier outing. It’s a perfect
afternoon.

I knew that the Super bowl would provide hours of perfect
knitting time, so I popped a chicken pie into the oven and settled in to finish
plying the dark brown llama I’d been spinning on the Dixon. It’s very soft. It had a bit of VM that fell out as I skeined
it and threw it into a bath. Wood stoves
dry yarn in no time at all. Then it was
time for the game and many more rows of the MH sweater. I’m making a size large and am still
wondering if it’s going to be a tight fit. I’ll block it of course, and the merino will stretch, but it’s a snug
little pattern, hardly a large. The last
sweater I knit a size small.