New things

Spring has sprung, and there are new things all over the place around here.  Last Wednesday, Tilly and I went for a walk at one of our local spots.  It's not a huge wilderness; in fact, it's what I might call an urban wilderness, if I lived in the urbs.  But I live in the 'burbs, and maybe I should therefore call it a 'burban wilderness?

You can see there on the horizon - houses.  And there are power lines, and more houses.  But it's a place with its own wholeness, its own integrity.  I have seen blue herons there, and coyotes, and there's a kestrel pair every spring, and I even saw a black-faced weasel there once. 

It has a hill to climb (from which I can see the ocean).

And a body of water to attract coots and ducks and herons.  (I hesitate to call it a lake - because to anyone outside California, it is not - but it feels a bit big to call it a pond in California, even though if I were from Michigan, I'm pretty sure it would be a pond.)

But most importantly, it changes with the changing of the seasons.  And I can get my feet on the dirt, and see those little intimate changes that mean that the year is turning.

Those are purple wild sweet peas there, with the lemonade berries, a mixing of winter and spring that makes me happy.  The monkeyflowers are out, too.

And the willows are starting to leaf out.

I love going on this walk, week after week, year after year, watching the small changes.  It reminds me of some of the essays in The Wild Places, one of the most beautiful books I've ever read (and I say that as a person who doesn't like beautiful books just because the writer can turn a phrase; they also need to say something).  Macfarlane goes looking for the untouched places of Britain, only to find that the most remote places he can get to show the unmistakable marks of the millenia of human habitation of that small island (which in itself I find awesome - in the original meaning of the word); but instead of despairing of ever finding his wild places, he instead describes in loving terms that feeling of deep connection that comes from having one's own small place to be in, season in and season out, as the years turn, whether it's a backcountry preserve, or something like my small 'burban wilderness.

As I walk, I find myself composing little internal paeans to what I could perhaps call grace (I will not subject you to them, I promise); little hymns to that feeling of weighty warmth that is thankfulness - not the weight of burden, but the weight of a supportive hand on the shoulder, or a heavy comforter on a cold night.  And last Wednesday, my little internal songs of praise were for the durability of fragile things.  They go, but they do come back - they really do.

And sometimes they come back brand-new.  Like this little fragile thing - long may she endure.

Isn't she stunning?  I haven't met her yet, but she's our cousin's new baby, and I bet she, too, is a weighty warmth in her parents' arms.  I knitted her a blanket (which is really a much prettier dusty rose color than it looks here, I promise):

But all of those stitches, even the 1200-stitch cast-off row (it had to have ruffles, didn't it?)

can't even come close to encompassing the love I feel for that little girl and her parents and big brother.

I tried, though - in that way that knitters do.  And I even finished it (more or less) in time (I knitted madly for seven days) to be waiting for her at home when she got back from the hospital (thank goodness she was willing to be a little late)(even though I'm pretty darned sure - speaking from experience - that her mother wasn't feeling thankful for her lateness at all, at all - that's a whole different kind of weightiness! and waityness, come to think of it).

I'm a day or so early, but I guess this is all by way of saying, Happy Equinox, everyone - spring is here at last.

This and that

I can't believe I'm actually managing to write a quick post on a Wednesday!  I have this theory that twice-weekly posting (Sundays and Wednesdays) would be nice, and keep me on track.  But lately (as I'm sure you've noticed) it's been a miracle to make my Sunday post.  However, I have gotten past three big deadlines this week (just hit "submit" on the third), not to mention scads of grading (including one of those twelve-hour piles - as in, it takes at least twelve actual hours of grading to get through it; I have to spread those out or I find myself getting bitter and failing people just because my butt hurts from sitting too long).  So I figure I can reward myself by thinking about fiber for a few minutes. 

I still don't have any shots of me actually wearing Poplar and Elm (although people have seen me wearing it, so it does exist).  With luck, that will happen this weekend, when Rick is around to take actual pictures.  Having Rick around is also a prerequisite to getting a picture of the first Blunnie Sock, which I have finished (no-one else's feet are even close to big enough to model his socks)(I should also say that I immediately cast on for the second sock in order to ward off the dreaded SSS).  Nevertheless, there are other interesting things to show off. 

I have been spinning, off and on.  Spinning makes me happy.  I got through this:

That is four ounces of Polwarth top, in the Misty Water colorway, handpainted by Erica (whose fiber I adore - every one I've tried has spun up like a dream, and the colors make me very happy).  I'm trying a little experiment here.  I spun that up woollen, fairly fine - Polwarth seems to cry out for woollen spinning, and this turned out light and lofty.

The experiment part comes next.  On her blog, Erica has occasionally shown braids of some of her colorways wound together (that temptress); she made the mistake of showing Misty Water with a braid of BFL in SeaGreen, and I snapped them both up.

The plan is to ply them together, which isn't so experimental.  But the plan is also to spin the BFL worsted, which is the kind of spinning that BFL seems to me to cry out for (all that lovely shine just gets maximized that way).  So the hope is that I'll end up with something that blends the traits of that warm, light, fuzzy Polwarth with the long, strong, shiny BFL.  Stay tuned.

The more I get to try different fibers, the more I'm intrigued by immense range of texture and function that the fiber world offers.  So when I saw that Ellen and Jan had each gotten a sampler of fiber from Woolgatherings, I jumped on the bandwagon (they are kind enough to not seem to mind).

And that's not the half of it!  There's a whole other layer in there - 24 total.

I made Rick stand and feel each one while I told him their names (he, too, is a patient person who humors me).  The names make me so unutterably happy I can't tell you - how can one not be excited about fiber like Shetland Humbug?  I mean, really.  The plan is to choose a couple of these each month to research and spin up, and to compare notes with Jan and Ellen.  I am really looking forward to it.  I'm teaching a class at my LYS on the 17th on getting to know one's fiber, both for making good yarn/project pairings (for knitters) and for spinners who want to think about the range of fiber possibilities available to them.  As an inspiration for me, Erica sent me a huge bag of all kinds of wonderful fibers I'd never seen or touched before, and I'll be showing those off to students (I need to get a picture of that, too).  So while I'm hoping I might inspire some local folks to take an interest in playing with me, I don't have a study group like that yet - I love that I have a long-distance one, with people who are as nuts weird interested in learning new things as I.

And speaking of ranges of possibilities and fabulous names, look at what I'm knitting right now.

That is Rams and Yowes, a lap blanket pattern by Kate Davies, she of the famous Sheepheid (which I also now have yarn to knit).  I love that she wrote both patterns to celebrate the immense diversity of colors of Shetland wool - the blanket has nine different colors.  And oh, the names!  We've got gaulmogot, and mooskit, shaela, and yuglet.  I (naturally) started poking around, looking for etymologies of the names, but only have been able to find information for two: sholmit and moorit (if anyone knows about any of the others, please, please let me know!).  Sholmit comes from a Gaelic word meaning "Having a white face, as of ox or cow"; and moorit comes from a root morand-r, meaning "brown mingled with black and red" - it is cognate with English murrey, and French moree, and comes from an older root mor-.

Wool and language all mixed together.  It just doesn't get much better than that.