White Death Hurtles Down From On High

OK, maybe that was a little overwrought, but still.... This guy's been hanging over our heads three stories up for over a week now.

We've gotten used to the regular "swish-thud" on our patio as the snowy convergence of three major pieces of the building's roof lets go, but with the combination of record breaking early snows and a day of steady rain, our private avalanche zone rather outdid itself yesterday.

What I didn't get a photo of (because a workman was already dismantling it) was the mangled balcony railing, with twisted metal protruding at rakish angles and the plywood barrier (the glass blew out weeks ago) dangling in splinters. (It appears to have ripped up a section of roof on its way down, as well). One of the end trays of our barbecue is rather more twisty than is strictly optimal, but thankfully, that appears to be the extent of the damage to personal possessions. Needless to say, we don't really use our patio in winter!

Snowy Sanquhar

I am impatiently awaiting my KP order, so as to have another go at the hat, this time in a more practical shape and a more finely detailed design. And since I am ordering the wool in advance this time, rather than making do with scraps, it will have coordinating mittens. It must be the combination of my Scottish blood and all the black and white around me - I have been obsessed with Sanquhar since reading Nanette's post. I plan to unvent a pair of fingering weight mittens before tackling laceweight gloves, though (and the former will also be more practical at present.)

Christmas Rose

With leaves melting quietly into earth in the secret places beneath the snow, branches now reveal their silky naked skins.

The hot-headed passion of red settles into mature grace when left to dance alone on the white-cold snow.

And sometimes in the depth of winter, a rose blooms.

Creeks and Cords

Once I got to elbowish level with the sleeves, I simply couldn't go on until I knew how much cuff yarn I'd have left.It went through a few iterations, but I think this complements the two colour ribbing of the waistline reasonably well, and should block out nicely. (It appears to draw in a little more than appears strictly perfect, however, this yarn is not super elastic and has the potential to sag, so I think it will be beneficial to start slightly tighter. We shall see!)

I finally had the opportunity to try out an edging I've been coveting for some time: the I-cord bind-off (aka applied I-cord).

I like how neatly it attaches at the back, too.

I decided against buttons in the end - I think I'm going to have a go at creating some nifty silver clasps.

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Today's little piece of happy:

And the display format I settled on:

Candles in the Dark

As a child, my favorite aspect of December was making things. My mother and I spent long hours together creating - not gifts, but detailed and finely crafted decorations - sewn, glued, embellished, embroidered, crocheted. It was a pure, unhurried kind of happiness, utterly unsullied by deadline and obligation - if a project wasn't complete by the end of Christmas, we simply carried on the next year. I kept it up for a while after leaving home, but somewhere during the years of my adulthood it dwindled away - or I failed to tend to it - creation for the sake of its own self-evident joy gave way to perfectionism and deadlines, and even our baking this year has all been sequestered in the freezer for gifting.

So this December, I plan to indulge (actually I started yesterday, but couldn't quite articulate the reasons at that moment) in a little piece of no-strings-attached beauty each day - sometimes created, sometimes simply photographed, because both looking and creating are kinds of Noticing, ways of intentionally participating in Being. This year I need more acutely than ever to touch the real things around me, find solid ground beneath my feet. As the winter solstice approaches, these are my candles.



I'm still finalizing the practicalities of the format (the man of the house is concerned about Holes In The Wall), but I think I will attach the photos to wide ribbons hanging on either side of the fireplace, and they can accumulate over the month. Something like a personal Advent calendar.

Just Because

Fire on the Mountain

Here's this morning's sky:



I love the way the early morning sun sets the snow on fire.

And since the sky looked like this yesterday,



and it wasn't very cold, and I was over my cold, and there was no excuse in the world left not to - the world's weeniest skier took to the slopes yesterday. I did not take pictures, because I was not at all sure a sensitive piece of electronic gadgetry would survive the experience. Actually, I wasn't at all sure I would survive the experience, but I didn't fall getting off the lift, and after a painfully snowplowish start, the muscle memory kicked in (not that there was a whole lot to remember - I was only ever an advanced beginner when I last strapped on skis 7 1/2 years ago) and by the bottom it was not so bad. Fun, even.

Christmas kicks into full swing at our house today, as the tree goes up. Technically it began the evening of Nov. 30th, when Rob and I stayed up into the wee hours wrapping tiny tidbits accumulated through the year and stuffing them into the kids' Advent calendars. Now that Liam is old enough to comprehend and compare, it's a strategic exercise in symmetry (is a wind-up penguin equivalent to a turtle, for example) but I so love the behind the scenes process of creating magic.

Moo

Somebody (I feel badly I can't recall who, but I'm also not inclined to search the archives of every blog in my roll) blogged these the other day. (Edited to add: thanks for the comment, Caro, now I remember!) Which is the only way I ever would have discovered them, since the link is tucked in fine print at the bottom of the Flickr page. Anyway, I've been casting about for a nifty, artsy business card idea, and this fit the bill nicely. Here's what I sent off last night:

North Wind

The cold front has brought windy temperatures well below what Whistler is used to (though still mild compared to the prairie winters we endured for the last 6 six years), but with that came the sun. The (happily abundant) snow is transformed from soft dove grey to dazzling, blinding white, last week's enormous, delicate snowflakes covered up by dry powder that wisps and swirls off the drift crests.

I am beginning to understand why Scandinavian sweaters are primarily two toned, white and blue / red / black designs. This is not weather to inspire subtlety and shading. But neither, in my experience, does this particularly blustery cold call to mind primly stylized snowflakes and rows of dancing children. It's beautiful, but it feels wilder and less orderly than that.

Race to the Wrists

The sampler pack sweater is ticking right along, and the great sleeve race is on.


Will the yarn last to the wrists, or will I have to settle for some sort of fractional look? More to the point, will I be able to make the "best" colours last? Because I have plenty of mouse gray, carrot orange and anemic lavender left, but I'm not going to use those exclusively for the last half of the sleeves. I sometimes think I should learn to love all colours equally, but I am savoring my bits of blue, and the nice dark cranberry. It's a bit like when I was a kid, hoarding the last bites of chicken to assuage the discomfort of finishing the plateful of rutabaga that we had to eat because it would be wrong to waste food even if the original veggie was the size of a small car, and woody enough to construct a house with (and why oh why did those prairie church ladies with farms never gift the economically challenged with edible produce?)

But I digress. Here's a closer look at the shoulder shaping, in which the short rows form a bit of a design feature in their own right:

Playing

I should have been knitting FIL's socks, creating motifs for DS's Christmas stocking, sewing a funky patch over the hole in DD's jeans, or preparing for the artisan market I'm showing at in three weeks time (more on that one another day). But all these deadlines and obligations have been seriously drying up the creative well, so this weekend I took time out for a little infusion of happy.

I am in love with short row shoulder shaping. It is much like turning a heel - elegant and clever, and best of all, I can line up the stripes by eyeballing as I go, rather than spending hours with the calculator extracting hypoteneuses from curvy lines.

Winter Wonderland

The daytime temperatures have dipped just low enough that it looks like Wonderland is finally here to stay for the season.

Spontaneity

OK, the thing about drawing spontaneously with needles and yarn is that it's a heck of a lot more work to erase than the flickering pixels.

Lesson learned: when stranding black yarn behind white over very long intervals, weaving it ever so sparingly is still too much because it shows. A lot. Actually I knew this, but opted for a bit of magical thinking regarding the power of blocking. Also some reverse logic about how maybe it wouldn't show so much once I stretched it over my head. Right. My deluded state extended right through weaving in all the ends, darning with white between the stitches and the black strands (not successful enough), and complete wet blocking. I'm not quite ready to tackle the frog job yet.

So I started this.

Remember a few months ago (spring? summer?) Knitpicks had a very brief half price sale on the sampler pack of Andean Silk? I succumbed. The ill fated hat above was constructed from the black and white balls, and this is most of the rest. I'm working up a little cropped cardigan along the lines of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Kangaroo Pouch sweater (so named for the steek and short row construction method, not any pouch like attributes of the finished garment.)

The thing is, I really want a blue cardigan, and I have exactly three balls of blue: navy, turquoise, and sky. The trick is to arrange them so as to pull out the blue hues in the other colours, which I am doing according to the purely intuitive method of how the mix feels as I proceed. Spontaneity (as already demonstrated) is not without risk, but I find the emotional connectedness in this form of colourwork satisfying on a whole different level than mathematical planning. The one concession to quantitative reality is the kitchen scale, which helps me ensure I save enough of a given colour for the sleeves.

Black and White

I found this week that I just couldn't bear to sit in front of the artificial flickering screen and graph more delicate shades of gray. I won't wallow in introspection, but suffice it to say that this sense of uprooted, unsettled, uncertainty will take as long as it takes - in the meantime I crave whatever bits of solidity I can find, and I elected to play with tangible yarn and needles this time around.

I've taken to walking in the mornings lately, while the temperature is still low enough to transform the precipitation into a soft white wonderland. Contrast is the dominant theme now.

I did a whole bunch of swatching and fiddling yesterday, and finally settled down to begin this:

With any luck I should be able to photograph the FO later today. (Hint: it's for me, and just in time for opening day on Blackcomb.)

Mother-in-law Bed Socks

Requested for Christmas: one pair of fine gauge, very warm, snug fitting, ankle-length bed socks, made to measure.

Pattern: my own (sort of - these are basic ribbed socks, top down heel flap construction. I took the opportunity to experiment with using the heel flap as a miniature colourwork canvas - this is a traditional Shetland FI motif.)

Yarn: Knitpicks Essentials sock yarn - superwash wool with a dash of nylon.

Gauge: knitted at 8 stitches per inch on 2 mm (US 0) dpns.

Notes: from my perspective, this was a successful project (although I still don't really enjoy doing stranded colourwork flat.) Christmas morning will reveal whether they are quite up to snuff.

Scraps of Sunshine

It's getting harder and harder to feel creatively motivated in the dim gray light, so I went for a little walk yesterday to soak up the few rays of natural illumination filtering through the interminable deluge. And received this gift with great delight:

There's not much gold at the end of our rainbow, but a good bit of silver to play with:

And a flawless droplet of citrine soothes the soul like condensed sunshine.

Opening Day

Despite a week of pouring rain, Whistler mountain is opening today (a week early) and DH is off to fulfill his lifelong dream of attempting to ski every single day of the season. I on the other hand, being a far less experienced skier, plan to wait until Blackcomb (the mountain on whose slopes we live and with whose runs I am at least moderately familiar) opens next weekend.
It's been seven years since I last strapped on skis and now that we have kids, DH and I will be skiing solo until their lessons start in mid December, so I think I'll stick to familiar terrain for starters.

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Thanks to everyone for the lovely compliments on Turkish Delight - it was a very satisfying project (and hopefully will be a welcome gift, too). Speaking of projects, I have finally reformatted the first two String Bag patterns into PDFs, and added some decent pictures to boot - the links in the sidebar now take you to their location in QuickShare. (I really must check with the webmistress to see how hard it would be to host them on my jewellery site.)

Turkish Delight

The scarf is complete, and I am tremendously pleased with the result:



Pattern: my own, composed of a variety of traditional Turkish knitting motifs. These were adapted from charted motifs documented in Anna Zilboorg's Simply Socks, as well as authentic Turkish socks in my own collection.

Yarn: fingering weight. Red: Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester in Sangria Green/gold: Red Bird's Romney lambswool in Lichen

Construction: knitted in the round from either end, grafted in the middle (note the half stitch misalignment on the right - an unavoidable result of the graft, but scarcely noticeable):


A row of single crochet provides a lovely crisp border:


Gauge: 7 stitches and 6 rows to the inch on 3.25 mm (US 3) 16 inch Addi circulars.

Length: Almost exactly six feet, including the tassels.

Notes: I would choose a tighter gauge for a sweater, but this worked very nicely for a scarf - the pattern definition is still crisp, and the scarf drapes fluidly despite the double thickness. Overall, I couldn't be happier with the end result.

Bear Knitted

Someone made midnight rounds of the patio and garden last weekend:



I figured initially on basic gray and white, but if you look closely:



The highlights and shadows of the snow refract the light into a cloudy day spectrum:



Just right for creating the differential shading of the pawprint's weight distribution:



For a brighter effect, you could interpret the snowy background as strictly white:



Or go with gray after all:

Forty Knitting Days Left 'Til Christmas

And the gift production centre is ticking right along, with several scarves in the final stages of completion:



First, The Magnificent Turkish Scarf, blocking by the fireside.


The blocking board consists of packing box cardboard cut to size, taped together and covered in saran wrap. Not especially elegant, but it seems to be doing the trick, and there was a dearth of six inch by six foot strips of polished hardwood lying about the house. (Anyone who has a better idea, please sing out - I have a feeling this won't be the last of its kind....)

Second, more KP Panache - this time in mistake stitch rib:

And the final KP Panache scarf, in the Little Pyramid stitch pattern:

I do like the Panache - it knits up quickly, and the cashmere blend is soft enough to please the most die-hard "wool is too scratchy" recipient. (I hope).

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I was tremendously gratified by the number of folks who downloaded the PDF for the third string bag pattern (and special thanks to Vicki for the mention in her blog!) - I hope to have the first two bags done up in nicely formatted (and rephotographed) PDFs by the end of the week.