Knitting the Seasons--December--Looking for Colour in Snow

The first skiff of snow was on December 7th--a nice dusting of snow in our front yard.

An Alberta spruce on the left and a blue spruce on the right.

It was nice to be working in blues for a change!

A stocking stitch swatch with alternating rows of blues and gradually changing to greens with  random single stitches of white.  Some of the white stitches were purled from the wrong side so as to appear as flecks of snow.

Extracting a repeating motif from the tip of the blue spruce branches.

Embroidered branch of blue spruce.

By the 14th of December we'd had a few dumps of snow.

The blue spruce with clumps of snow.

As the month progressed, I was depending more and more on the white yarns in my stash, and discovered that I have very few bright whites.  Most of my collection is either wool, wool blends or alpaca and so is more yellow-white than bleached white.

Tramping around the yard in mid-December I spotted our ornamental crab apple tree.

Here is a photo of one of the crabapple swatches in-situ:

I had fun with 3 and 4 stitch bobbles in this one.

And the rest of the Crabapple swatches:

The crabapple swatches photographed on the branches of the tree.

The December collection.

One of the reasons I was keen to get my "Knitting the Seasons" work posted on this blog is that I'm just about to distribute the brochure for the 15th annual Okanagan Knitting Retreat.  Yes, it will be #15 on May 23-27, 2013.  Never in our wildest dreams did we (me, Wendy and Gloria) think that this retreat would become such an institution.  

At this retreat I will be leading a workshop that I'm calling "Inspirations from Nature" which has emerged from my current explorations.  It's amazing to discover the multitude of colours that can be extracted from an object such as a rock or an apple.  And then to work with those colours in a variety of stitch patterns to create something unique yet still reminiscent of the original object. 

Knitting the Seasons--November--Apples

We live in a city surrounded by apple orchards.  At the beginning of November we were given a big bag of Ambrosia apples.  I was taken with the suble pattern of stripes in yellows, oranges and reds.

Ambrosia apples

Ambrosias in process--the garter stitch swatch on the right was knit with  short lengths pulled at random from the basket, wheras for the other swatch I spliced together random lengths of reds and yellows, and then knit with the reds to the left and the yellows to the right in stocking stitch.

Ambrosias with their swatches

We had bought a box of Gala apples at the Farmer's Market and by November there was one left.

It's quite a bit redder and with spots instead of stripes compared to the Ambrosias.

I had fun knitting a circular swatch while looking down at the apple stem.

The Gala swatches--the lower swatches are my impressions of their spots.

Next up--Fuji apples purchased at the indoor Farmer's Market in mid November.  These apples are a cool red and yellow-green.  They're also quite spotted and subtly striped.

Fuji apples

My sketch book showing the colours chosen, and the three swatches created.  The upper right swatch was  knit as though pivoting around its lower right corner using a combination of short rows, increases and decreases.  Fortunately it was knit with wool and easily blocked into a rectangle!

So ends the November exploration of apples.

Knitting the Seasons--October

I'm on a roll now...
The theme for October was the beautiful oak tree in the south-west corner of our back yard.  This tree is at least 60 years old, perhaps more.

At the beginning of October it was just starting to change colour.

By Thanksgiving, those brown leaves had dropped off, and the rest of the leaves had taken on  a yellow hue.

Swatches from the yellow period.

By October 17, the leaves were turning red.

My knitting workspace--swatches are now in the red phase.  This image shows a view of my sketch book as well as the collection of yarns I was working with.  It was also useful to have some leaves on the table!

The tree on October 31st.

The collection of swatches showing the progress from green  to yellow to red.

Knitting the Seasons--September

As promised, here is the second installment of my current project Knitting the Seasons.
In September, Lloyd and I joined a guided hike into the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies.  Lloyd has long wanted to visit this fossil quarry and entrance is only possible on a guided hike.  I was curious to see if I was fit enough for a 10 1/2 hour hike with an 800 metre elevation change--YES!  We both enjoyed the experience so much that we're bound and determined to do more hiking next year.

We met the rest of the group in the parking lot at Takakaw Falls near Field, BC.  It was so cold (just above freezing) that we were all wearing toques and mitts.  Within an hour, after some vigorous walking up switchbacks, the first layers of clothing were peeled off.  By 1 PM we were in single layers--there was hardly a cloud in the sky and it was a balmy 25 degrees Celsius.

I was entranced with the red and green foliage of the fireweed.

In the Burgess Pass above Emerald Lake

And so my knitting inspiration for September was the red and green foliage of the Canadian Rockies...

Some images from the Wolcott Quarry (the restricted area).  We were encouraged to pick up the fossils and make rubbings but of course were not allowed to take any away with us.

A trilobite--probably the most common fossil in the quarry.

The same fossil as in the image above but reversed.

In the Wolcott Quarry high above the Burgess Pass

"Knitting the Seasons"--an annual exploration of the colours, textures and patterns

In the summer of 2012 as I was settling in back home, I decided to inject a little discipline into my work.  I've called this project "Knitting the Seasons".  Each month, starting in August 2012 and continuing for at least a year, I have picked (or will pick) a theme and then explore the colours and texture of that theme in a variety of yarns and stitch patterns.  I've diligently kept track of these explorations in a sketch book complete with photos.  One thing I haven't been diligent about is writing about it here, so here goes...

August 2012:  The theme was blackberries because we have a beautiful patch in our backyard.

  This past year we had a bumper crop--I was picking every two or three days--eating them raw and freezing them; making vinegar, blackberry puree (for winter time sorbet) and cordial; and of course giving them away to friends and neighbours.

It was while picking them that I decided to try and knit them...

The left hand swatch is a double moss stitch with yarn-overs.  Those free form leaves were fun to do--start with one stitch and increase at the beginning of every row until wide enough and then decrease similarly.  Play around with increasing/decreasing more or less rapidly to get different shapes.

The lower swatch is two stranded garter stitch (like Fair Isle but no purling).  The central swatches are experiments with different sized bobbles.  The upper right swatch is a stripe pattern with a tuck stitch. 

I have a wonderful library of stitch pattern books that I've been trolling through, from old "Harmony" guides and Barbara Walker Treasuries to some fairly new Japanese books with 200 and 300 patterns respectively.  I love the charts and diagrams in the Japanese books--no need to be able to read Japanese!

The next post will be September.  Stay tuned!

Wrapping Up our Wet Irish Adventure

We arrived home in Vernon last night in the early evening after about 15 hours in transit.  Just as we expected--what a contrast in weather.  It was hot and dry so off came a few layers for the drive home from the airport.  I stayed up until my usual bedtime last night, but of course woke up disgustingly early this morning (4 AM) which is why I've decided to do a final blog post.

I have a few images of Belfast to share.  These were taken while sightseeing Tuesday on a double-decker bus in the rain--one of those buses where half the seats upstairs are under cover, which is where we were of course!

A sculpture on the Belfast waterfront, affectionately known as
"The doll on the ball".  Her real name is Beacon of Hope.

Belfast is sprinkled with public art and reading the comments at Beacon of Hope gives a sense of the controversy surrounding the murals still on display.  Here's one such mural:

This is the face of Bobby Sands who was elected as a local MP shortly before
he died of his hunger strike.

These murals are in Belfast's neighbourhoods, and clearly mark out sectarian territory.  Common themes of the Loyalist murals are King William on his white horse at the Battle of the Boyne, the current Queen, the "red hand of Ulster" which refers back to the Battle of the Somme in 1916 where many Ulster soldiers died, and "No Surrender!" slogans. Common images in Republican murals are of the hunger strikers and broader world political issues such as support for Palestinians.  Both sets of murals include unpleasant military images such as men dressed in balaclavas and carrying machine guns.  And both sets include a lot of graffiti which is present in any city in the world.  According to the Lonely Planet, since the peace accord, there has been an effort to replace some of the more aggressively partisan murals with those celebrating non-political subjects such as Belfast-born football star George Best (the airport is named after him) and the Harland and Wolff shipyards which is where the Titanic was built.

Moving along from Belfast now (and it's a real shame that we gave this great city such short shrift), we spent Wednesday morning at Glendalough in the Wicklow mountains.  This ancient monastic site was established in the 5th Century, was very powerful by the 9th C, but started to decay and fall into ruin in the 15th C.  Lloyd was really taken with the round tower which is in near perfect condition--just the roof was replaced in 1876 after a lightening strike.  The wooden floors and ladders inside have however disintegrated.  

The Lonely Planet says "you won't find more evocative clumps of stones anywhere" and I agree. 

Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, the largest of Glendalough's
seven churches.

One of the great things about this site is that it's nestled in forest amongst the Wicklow hills and there is an extensive network of trails.  We walked along "the Wicklow Way" for a few kilometres to the Lower and Upper Lakes and then back to the Visitor's Centre, enjoying the fresh air and misty rain...  The soft misty Irish rain that feels gentle on your face!

Still in rain jacket...

Clambering under fallen gravestones--note jacket has been shed,
the sun had come out.

This is still an "active" cemetery where people are still being buried but these particular gravestones are 200 years old.

We then drove to Tullow in Co. Carlow for lunch with new friends in their home.  Susan had written to me in June asking for advice on making liturgical stoles from neckties so after a pleasant lunch Susan and I had a great sewing session while Lloyd, Andrew and the kids went for a walk to an ancient hilltop ring fort nearby.  Unfortunately Lloyd didn't have his camera!

When we left, they suggested we visit the largest dolmen in Europe, just outside the city of Carlow.

This is about 5000 years old.  The granite capstone is estimated to weigh  100 tonnes.

We then made our way to north towards Dublin, again in the driving rain which makes motorway driving very unpleasant.  Both of us had frayed nerves by the time we arrived in Maynooth at 6:30 PM where I had booked our accommodation at St. Patrick's College.  Unfortunately their electricity had been knocked out by a lightening strike so we couldn't check in.  Oh well, we went off for "a pint and dinner"...  Lloyd's last pint of Guinness!  My last glass of Bulmer's apple cider!

And so ends our Irish travels.  We have lots of great memories and stories to share.

Along the coast of Northern Ireland

Catching up with what is likely my last posting from Ireland...  We started off yesterday with another marvelous Irish breakfast and a big pot of tea. Well fortified we began our sightseeing at the ruins of nearby Dunluce Castle.  The first castle was built on a rocky crag above the beach in the 15th Century and added on to over the next couple hundred years before being abandoned in the mid 17th C.

In the lower mid-ground is a cavern that is open to the sea behind.

Unlike other castles we visited in the republic, this one was not built by Normans--rather it was first established by a Gaelic lord who was then ousted by one of the Scots families (the MacDonnells) who had been brought over from the Hebrides as mercenaries.

We then hustled along to the Giant's Causeway which had been one of the main reasons for travelling to this coast.  An absolutely marvelous site of basalt rocks and columns!

Lloyd sitting on the Giant's Boot

Standing in a column of basalt rocks.  These were formed by
volcanic action 60 million years ago.

It's easy to see why there are so many of these hexagonal rocks in the local walls and buildings!

We finished off our visit on the north coast with a visit to Old Bushmills Distillery where they've been making Irish whiskey since 1608.  I don't really care for spirits, however their liquor which has been made with honey was quite delish!

And then we made our way to Belfast via the coast road which was a bit gripping!  Narrow roads...agricultural tractors...tourists, including cars with German and French licence plates, meaning that they're left hand drive cars, driving on the left side of the road...scary!

Last night we stayed at the Park Inn in Belfast--a very pleasant hotel and centrally located that we booked on the website lastminute.com.  We woke up to MORE RAIN this morning but in spite of that walked over to the Titanic exhibition, only to discover that the earliest tickets we could buy were for 4:20 PM!!  Should have checked the website a few days ago!!  Anyway, back to the main part of the city we went, and in consolation we took a 90 minute sightseeing tour on a double-decker bus.  We learned a lot and were really glad we went. It included quite a bit of political history of the origins of Northern Ireland (which is 6 counties of the original province of Ulster--the rest went with the Republic of Ireland in the split of 1922.)  The guide was very good about covering both sides of the recent "Troubles" and emphasized how these feelings are still bubbling below the surface but everyone appreciates the peace they have now.  There was one particularly good example--a building on one side of the road still surrounded with baricades and thick cement wall while on the other side of the road a new office tower with glass walls--this much glass would not have been possible before.  The bus travelled the whole length of the "peace wall", which separates the Loyalist (pro United Kingdom) and Republican (pro union with Republic of Ireland) neighbourhoods.  We noticed that she very carefully did not describe people by their religions.

We have felt very safe here, and indeed have found people to be extremely friendly.  On the streets, there has been a lot of eye contact and friendly greetings.  On the roads, drivers wave and acknowledge us when we pull over to let them pass.  It has been a little surprising however to drive through villages and towns in Northern Ireland fully decked out with red, white and blue flags, Union Jacks, flags of the cross of St. George but with a red hand in the centre (aka "the red hand of Ulster, symbol of the Ulster Freedom fighters, a symbol of Ulster's loyalty to the British crown), pictures of the Queen, images of King William on his white horse (from the Battle of the Boyne)...and realize that these are "Orange" towns, i.e. Loyalist/Unionist and have just celebrated July 12th, the day that King William of Orange defeated James II in 1690.  We did hear about some incidents on the 12th--some young yahoos were arrested and other "marchers" were criticized for marching with their band in front of a Catholic church while there was a service going on.  And then there are other towns and villages where there isn't a Union Jack in sight so we assume these folks are mainly Republican or maybe they just don't observe July 12th...

We drove down the east coast of Ireland in driving rain!  Yet again!  We're now in Wicklow town at a great hostel, Captain Halpin's Bunkhouse, with very welcoming hosts.  Our fellow guests are a diverse lot and include several long-haired men with bushy beards who are either actors or extras in a Viking movie being filmed in the area.

We'll be home Thursday night.  It'll be good to have some sunshine and heat but I must say that this humid temperate climate is good for the skin.