Seasonal Finery

I'd hold onto the daylight with teeth and fingernails if I could, but even with the shortening of the days, I've always loved fall. The cool air, the brilliant colors. On a sunny day the trees have their party clothes on, and on a cloudy one they practically glow.

Weekend before last, I went hiking on Mt. Monadnock in southern NH. The leaves were still turning:


From the top of the mountain, you can see the splashes of color running down the side of the ridge:


Then last weekend, I was out in western Massachusetts, and shot some nice foliage around the college town of Amherst:



If you'd like more foliage, there are more pictures of Monadnock and of Amherst. Leaf season is all too short, so I'm delighted that I've been able to get out and enjoy it this year.

And for the last of my recent travels with knitting, I battled traffic on Wednesday to get down to Cambridge and hear Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak. I picked up her new book at the reading, but then ducked around the corner to check out Porter Square Books, the lovely bookstore that was sponsoring the event. And found something else I'd been looking for:


I'm really hoping for a long lovely autumn, but when the nasty weather arrives, I'll be ready for it. This weekend? I may need to buy yarn.

Photo Op

And now that I've finally had a sunny day to shoot some decent photos, the Optic Waves Beaded Scarf:



It didn't grow as much in blocking as I'd hoped, but 54" isn't a bad length for something that is really an accessory. The blocking did spread out the lace and show off the scallops of the pattern beautifully. Now all it needs is to find its destined recipient. Surely there will be someone who will love it as it deserves.

In other news...the stealth project is also done. It wasn't stealthy the last time it was here, but I've since found out that more people were reading this blog than I realized. (Hint- if you've any reason to suspect I might be giving you something knitted for Christmas- don't click on the package. There are also more photos on the the Ravelry project page.)


And yes, that officially makes three completed FOs on my Christmas list. I might actually finish everything, if I can resist the urge to add more! (Not to mention the urge to get obsessed with projects that *aren't* on the Christmas list! Yes, colorwork sweater, I'm looking at you.)

A Surprising Turn of Speed

As I've been knitting around and around the first sleeve of the colorwork pullover, I've been thinking about Toni's comment on how quickly this is all going:


Yes, that really is the whole body of the sweater, ready to have the sleeves joined on, underneath the first sleeve. I cast on the ribbing in the middle of last week, and started first band of colorwork on Friday evening. So- this is going unusually quickly. Being of a scientific turn of mind, I considered several hypotheses for why this might be the case.

Hypothesis #1: I'm a really fast knitter.

I really like this one. Unfortunately, over twenty years of experience suggests that while I'm reasonably expeditious, I'm not unusually fast. To check this, I timed myself on a representative round of the body. I did stack the deck by making it one of the plain stockinette rounds in one color, which would presumably represent my maximum possible knitting speed...and, no, not really. Research shows that experienced knitters may produce anywhere from 12 to over 100 st/in (depending on the type of knitting). My 42 st/min maximum is quite respectable, but not exceptional.

Hypothesis #2: I've developed the supernatural ability to siphon progress from the projects of other crafters.

This occurred to me because of the of the many times I've heard people say on a project that they knit and knit and knit and don't seem to be getting anywhere. I had kind of mixed feelings about this. Because if this was what I was doing, I'd feel obliged to give it back. Which is a problem, because it's really cool and I don't want to if other crafters found out I was doing it, they'd come after me with many pointy implements of retribution I have no idea how. Fortunately, I could not posit any plausible mechanism by which this could occur.

Hypothesis #3 Assistance of the feline persuasion.


Okay this was a long shot. (And an excuse for gratuitous cute cat photos.) But, Woats has been taking an unusual amount of interest in this sweater. Normally she likes to knead people exclusively, but she has several times kneaded the sweater-in-progress (it wasn't even on my lap), curled up on it for a nap, and kneaded the ball of yarn. She's also helpfully sat on the sweater and pattern and talked to me while I was knitting. But none of these things obviously translate into knitting progress.


It was at about this point that I realized that I had done almost nothing at home for the past five days except knit. This had several causes- first the crappy weather, which made sitting on the couch underneath a cat with yarn in my hands pretty attractive. Not that it's hard to sap my will to do housework. Really, almost any excuse will do.

And then there was my karate practice on Monday, where I and another middle-aged student spent much of the class throwing each other on the floor and practicing techniques coming off a forward roll (somersault). Since I don't bounce quite the way I did in my twenties--or even thirties--this resulted in a certain amount of stiffness and disinclination to move off the couch except for more yarn or ibuprofen. (See notes above re sapping will to do housework.)

My conclusion? Spending a lot of time knitting results in swift progress on a project. Drat. And here I thought I was on to something new.