Embraceable Ewe Blog
Embracing Wooly Design
Here We Go
I have been scolded by both daughters to write a new post, so here we go. (The fact that the Steelers are in the Superbowl and everywhere in Steeler Nation you hear refrains of “Here We Go Steelers, Here we Go” maybe on my mind).
I have been knitting, but many are stealth projects which must not be spoken of. Makes the blog sooo boring. And we have had mountains of snow so the garden is a little laconic and equally boring.
Christmas seems ages ago but there was a little knitting for DD#1.
The first two shots were taken by my architect daughter and her well instructed fiance. Notice the arty pose. And yes, she worked on the lighting.
These last two were taken by me Christmas morning. Let’s just say there was bed head and low lighting, but you get the idea.
I loved this one so much I made one for myself. I made mine a little longer and changed up the cable patterns. I ran a Saxony Cable down the back book-ended between symmetrical 4 st snake cables on either side. On the front I added a more complex A-symmetrical cable with the snake cables on either side of the front button bands. I would show mine, but because I lengthened it I ran out of yarn. I have ordered more. It is in MadelineTosh Vintange, Well Water. another gorgeous color of MadelineTosh.
Before Christmas I knit a pair of cashmere socks(Sorry, looks like Carol at Black Bunny Fibers is out of the Cashmere/wool blend. But there many other yummy yarns in her shop. Go ahead, have a look, I’ll wait.) for my biking buddy and a ski cap for her husband out of the new Jared Flood Shelter yarn. The socks have not had their close-up yet, but the hat saw a little camera action.
I ride all summer with Kelly and her husband George does all our bike mechanics. It is important to keep George happy and warm. He wears this hat all the time so I think it is a hit. Always warms the cockles of a knitters heart to see her woolies worn.
It is very late and I have a running date early tomorrow morning, so this will have to do for now…
Knitting through Anxiety
To paraphrase Elizabeth Zimmermen just a tad, I have been knitting like crazy and for a very good reason…
The Yarn Harlot recently posted about her daughter Sam going away for a while, where it was cold and so she, The Harlot, is knitting lots of warm woolies to wrap her loved one. Our youngest, Macy, has joined the Peace Corps and has been posted to Paraquay. Unfortunately with a climate very similar to Florida she won’t be needing any knits from mom, but that doesn’t mean I won’t knit to get ME through her service. It is a 27 month commitment, so she won’t be home until Dec. 2012. And yes, that is a very long time to be away from her family.
Here she is with everything she will need for the next 2 years!!! Now this girl knows how to pack light. She is in training in Paraquay and chomping at the bit to get posted to her final location which will happen in early December. The Peace Corps keeps them in training for three months, covering things like safety and security, working with the local culture and how to take a bucket bath, all important information. She is staying with a family outside of Ascencion, the capital city. They are very good to her and she promises me her “mom” worries that she eat enough, just like I do. Yes, mom’s are universal in their belief that the amount you are loved is directly proportional to the amount of food prepared for you.
To help me cope with her being out of phone range, I have been knitting up a storm. The two pieces featured above are mittens for a class I am teaching at Knit One in Pittsburgh. “Latvian Mittens”. The pink is Malabrigo Magenta and peach is something from my stash. The blue and coppery colors are Madelin Tosh Sock in color Afternoon and Malabrigo Sock in Primavera. Both were knit in the round on #1 and 2 DPNS. They both include Latvian braids. There are no thumbs because we are going to cut open the thumbs during class. I think it is a perfect use for those of us with too much sock yarn in our stashes. They are warm and silky and feel great on your hands. I’m also planning a pair of gloves to make out of Malbrigo Tiziano Red and some old kettle died sock yarn I found on my stash. These will be based on Selbuvotter designs and techniques.
I’ll keep you posted on the Peace Corps volunteer and the knitting I complete while she is saving the world.
The Lilies are coming, the lilies are coming…
Let the cavalcade begin…
gratuitous daylily pictures ahead. They are spectacular this summer. In fact, I didn’t even know I had so many beauties because in the past their blooming has been so, so. This year, gorgeous.
Please don’t ask the names. I would have to search and it might take all summer. Let’s just say I keep meaning to get to the garden organization but I am too busy in the actual garden. And yes, I do know this comes back to bite me occasionally.
OK, I will step out of the way so you can see the pretty.
I know I bought this one at Schramm Farms a few years ago. It is huge now and needs to be separated. It’s on the list.
These are somewhat diminutive and probably too far back in this garden, but, oh the color.
A token Asiatic Lily, no scent, but great beauty in a time when my garden doesn’t have much blooming.
Heather and lavender and yarrow in the gravel bed.
The hydrangeas just put on their show and suddenly I am drowning in big blousy blooms. I was so busy with other things that I barely noticed and boom, they are showstopping.
An astilbe among the anemones and gooseneck loosestrife. (Don’t plant this loosestrife, I think it is more invasive than the purple loosestrife, by a mile. I hack it back, pull up as much as I can every spring and still it keeps popping up in this bed. I am grateful I didn’t plant it in any of the other gardens. A real thug.)
A wonderful rex begonia that gets pride of place on the front porch. It never fails to illicit comments.
And look who came to play this weekend.
He is a teenager now, all floppy and gangly, but he put Duncan through his paces. Duncan is planning on sleeping for the next three days until Finn returns for the 4th. It will take him that long to recover from this weekend. He was a champ and let the little guy bite him and chase him and generally be a nuisance. Duncan never growled or seemed to mind, although there were a few moments of “Will Finn be leaving soon?” A perfect role model and babysitter to the little goober.
And Finn discovered blueberries…he crawled under the bushes to lie in the cool mulch and suddenly he was surrounded by all the low hanging branches and immediately began stripping the berries off the lower branches, grandpa was not pleased.
There has been knitting but it is of the secret sort and I won’t be able to share for a while. When this little flurry is finished I hope to have some lace to share.
Another one to check off the list
Last weekend was a very big weekend for our family. Our baby, Macy, graduated from Swarthmore College. Not only did she graduate she also was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She doesn’t realize what an accomplishment this is, but I am inordinately proud of all the hard work and effort she put in to her education. She also received her certification in Biology, so she achieved quite a bit with this graduation.
Macy was fortunate to meet some fantastic young women as a freshman and they are still her best friends, supporting and loving each others as sisters. The girls traveled to the far reaches of the world their junior year and brought back all their amazing experiences to share. They will now be flung out in to the world, Maria to Korea, Apolline to NYC, Aurora to Philadelphia, and Caitlin to Vermont, and Macy to the Peace Corps(in south America, she hopes). Their futures are bright and fresh and so full of promise. It was a joy to spend time with them and their families. I was bursting with love and pride for all of them.
There was also time for pictures in the Big Chair, a Swarthmore icon. It sits on Parrish Beach in front of the original building and every senior takes time for photos in the Big Chair.
Another tradition at Swat is that the seniors choose a rose from the Rose Garden to wear on their gown the morning of graduation. Normally no one is allowed to pick the roses in the rose garden but the morning of graduation the volunteer staff cut mountains of roses and the seniors pick their favorite. We made a point of checking out the options the night before.
One of my favorite things about Swarthmore is that the whole campus is an arboretum so the gardener in me was always happy to make a run out to pick up the little one. I loved arriving early and just wandering the campus and learning new cultivars. The Scott Arboretum staff gives all incoming freshmen a bulb and asks them to plant it anywhere on campus and to look for it in the spring. When they graduate they are all handed a small potted shrub, Itea, along with their diplomas. Obviously, this is my kind of college.
This is part of the small Scott Arboritum garden near their offices.
Graduation is always held in the amphitheater, rain or shine. We were very fortunate to have beautiful weather.
Before Graduation…
During…
Amazing, right?
Macy is leaving Swarthmore with a well earned degree, an incomparable education, a lifetime of memories, the best of friends and the confidence to go into the world to make her mark. Her journey has just begun.
Happy Mother’s Day
We had a lovely afternoon. Unfortunately, my little ones were away living life large, but we did the best we could. There were pretty flowers from my garden, steaks, mashed new potatoes, asparagus, beans and broccoli with shallots and a salad made with lettuce also from the garden.
The grande finale was this yummy glazed chocolate tart with graham cracker crust. I also made homemade strawberry ice cream which was a wonderful side dish to the very chocolatey tart. No pictures of the ice cream as it disappeared before documentation.
Missed you girls!!!!
A Few of My Favorite Things
I just returned from a two day getaway with a friend to the Virginia Historic Garden Week. If you love gardens and can get away the third week in April you should make the time. The whole state opens their gardens and homes to welcome one and all. It is put on by the Virginia Garden Club as the largest fundraiser of the year. They in turn use the funds to restore historic gardens around Virginia. I have been going since 2001 and it is one if my favorite rites of Spring. So one with the tour…
The house pictured above was near Middleburg,VA. Jackie O was known to jump a fence or two in this part of the world. (OK, that didn’t come out the way I intended. It is horse country and she lived here for a time.)
This is the back of the same house, crazy dormer, anyone?
and this is the porch.
I loved these espaliered pear trees in one of my favorite gardens. Must copy this at home, although I wonder if our snow loads would destroy a free standing espalier.
Beautiful container gardens…and the floral displays inside were gorgeous. The women of the various garden clubs create the floral arrangements and they are stunning, but no one is allowed to photograph the interiors.
Wouldn’t you just love to spend an afternoon under this pergola?
A glorious tree peony near Charlottesville.
And because there has been knitting…my new Print of the Wave shawl. Eunny Jang’s pattern made out of Jade Sapphire Cashmere Silk and yes, it is that soft!!! (although the color is a little off here. It is called Wasabi and that’s exactly the color.)
Creativity
Apparently I will do anything to avoid sketching. Knitting swatches for design submissions I am all over that, the sketches to accompany the swatches, not so much. So this is what I am pondering this morning. In our old house I always had this bulletin board above my work space. I considered it an inspiration board. I would cover it with postcards from museums, photos of gardens, tear pages from magazines, as well as the swatches I was contemplating.
When we moved into our new house, 10 years ago, I thought the inspiration board was too messy and hung it over my sewing table. I hung a favorite Jamie Wyeth print of the coast of Maine over my desk. Now here is the rub. My back is to that inspiration board 90 % of the time I am in my office. I love the Wyeth print with a deep abiding passion, the ocean, the colors, the solitude, they all speak to me.
But without my inspiration board I don’t think I feel the push to create at the same level. My swatches are OK. The ideas are being published. But I think I need to stir things up a bit. So rather than get to the sketching I spent thirty minutes changing up the board and print. We will see if this changes the quality of my work. Can’t hurt.
Now I feel a little overwhelmed with all the visual clutter in my line of sight. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.
The other ideas I have to increase creativity around here involve moving my office up two flights of stairs and avoiding Facebook. The move needs to happen. I am going quite squirrelly in my basement office without windows. Facebook will have to happen, I just have to wean myself.
As proof of the sock knitting I talked about earlier I am on my second pair of simple socks. They are pretty boring but oh so warm and cuddily.
And I have been working on a new design for a stole for the DD#2 to replace a very pretty shawl I knit for her a few years ago which was unceremoniously stolen in college. It is a delight to knit. The yarn is from Creatively Dyed Yarn, her cashmere and merino, yummy. If it turns out well I will publish the pattern. I am very happy with the design and the yarn so can’t wait to finish.
Stay tuned…
2010 Ravelympics
I finished my own personal Ravelympics project on Sunday night while watching the hockey game. I love to knit the Norwegian Ski Team’s Olympic sweaters for the games or as close to the games as I can. I am not being unpatriotic. I would knit the American Ski teams sweater and probably will now that I have seen a glimpse. It is just that the Norwegian Ski Team sweater is usually a real knitting challenge.
See, I did Nagano…
I also did Lillehammer, but gave it away to the American Red Cross for a fund raiser that year. So I don’t have a picture.
I didn’t join any of the official Ravlympic teams because I started my project before the Olympics began. My intention was to have this sweater finished in time to wear it while I cheered on the athletes, from my living room.
I took the Norwegian Ski Team sweater and did my own thing. I wanted a cardigan because I am a woman of a certain age and find cardigans more flexible for my lifestyle. I also changed the wool. Now before the big reveal I want to prove that I can knit with the yarn I chose and the garments have turned out lovely in the past.
For example
EEEEwwwwww!!!!!!!!
This is what greeted me this morning when I went to feed the chickens…
Ravelry
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