Selkie Hill

Jan 2, 2015 By Sarah in Island 2 Comments

The first of the year was as soft and shining a winter’s day as you could wish. The children went a-horseback, perched on two kind-hearted little Arabs all plush and patient in their winter coats. Today the clouds have called a gathering of the clans. Rain is freckling the windows. Indoors there is Hide and Seek in the double-depth coat closet, packing up for the journey home, winnowing of desk contents from my childhood in the house my parents will sell in the spring.

The compensation for bidding my childhood home farewell is this view from the new dining room, which is lovely even through the murk. And I have the knowledge that my roots are in this land-and-seascape, not in the house that grew the year I was born. It’s the time of year for looking forward. This is the view my children will remember, the view from Selkie Hill. When the clouds lift you can see Mt. Rainier across the straits. The Olympics rise dusky blue in the south—my grandmother once insisted they must be clouds themselves.

Between sweeps of the house for errant train cars and finger puppets to tuck into our bags, I pour another cup of tea and sneak in a few rows of knitting. Tonight I’ll finish sewing the zipper into another small sweater, having saved the fiddly bits for the very end of vacation. (By the by, zipper sewing is the perfect complement for stressful movies like “Captain Phillips.” It’s hard to get too anxious about desperate men waving guns when you’re trying to make your backstitch follow a course of stockinet without meandering.) I made the incredible blunder of forgetting the rest of the yarn I needed for the sweater I most wanted to finish, so I may suffer the agony of having not enough car knitting for the ride home. All I’ve got is two wee button bands to finish on a little sweater I cast on Christmas Day. I may have to… I don’t know… offer to do the driving?

Oh wait! I bought yarn! How could I have forgotten about the two skeins of dusty blue DK merino/cashmere for a nephew sweater and the sweet little hank of fiery handspun Ada chose for a cowl? Whew. All shall be well. I’ll have to leave this beautiful knoll and madrona grove in the morning, but all shall be well.

Imagine

Dec 27, 2014 By Sarah in Imagine When 2 Comments

Pattern: Imagine When, by Joji Locatelli

Yarn: Swans Island Merino Fingering in Indigo (note mine is a far lighter batch than their example online)

A Christmas gift for my mum, cast on en route to Bristol, England in August. Let’s blame jet lag for the fact that I misread the instructions and my shawl has twice as many holes in the first segment as the designer intended. Mum won’t mind. And how many lace shawls have ever been knit on the touring bus of the Gloucester rugby team? (It isn’t smelly at all. It has comfortable seats and wi-fi. I would ride that bus anywhere, anytime.)

User error aside, I loved this pattern. The knitting was just the right blend of motoring along and doing something interesting. I used yarnover short rows instead of the given method and it came out fine. I’d love to knit another for myself, maybe in Bristol blue.

The yarn is fabulous, too. I’d hesitate to use it for garments that will see a lot of friction, but this light fingering is divine for airy shawls and the generous put-up covers you for practically any small shawl pattern. (Good thing I have leftovers, because during this photo shoot I managed to get a drop of pitch on the poor lovely thing. I did my best to remove it with dish soap, but I stopped rubbing at it when the yarn started to look a little distressed and there’s still a wee stiff spot. I think I’ll snip a thread and reknit the couple of stitches that were affected.) The indigo dye does turn your fingers blue when you’re knitting, but I didn’t see any color in the bath water and there was no transfer to the towel I used for blocking, so have no fear.

(Yes, I tossed it casually atop the Usnea beard lichens just because I liked the lofty textures and the colors together.) This marine blue is perfect for my blue-eyed mother and I hope she’ll enjoy wrapping it around her neck when she’s up too late typing endless minutes for school board meetings or dressing it up with a nice pin when she goes to the theater.

A winter’s walk

Dec 25, 2014 By Sarah in Island, Jolyon, Outside 1 Comment

Dark comes early. No one wished to rush the children through opening gifts when they preferred to head immediately for the art table and draw with the “water pencils” or add those twelve new sections of track to the train set, but that meant the beautiful day was closing up shop by the time we got out in it. The littlest asked to go on the walk with the farm animals, so down to the valley we went. Usually there are some sheep on offer, complete with guard llama, but this time we saw only a handful of wary cows munching hay in the twilight. At least there was the still, cool peace of a mild December, with a sunset sky and a wooden bridge over the swampy section of the path.

Once again I regretted not having brought the real camera, as the phone just can’t capture the depth of the winter palette in this landscape — the burgundy and deep greens of the blackberry vines, the cardinal flash of Oregon grape, the cheer of the rosehips and snowberries suspended like ornaments in the hedgerows, the plump rose-lit clouds billowing up behind the disheveled firs.

“I take a picture?” my boy demanded after I made a few more lackluster attempts to catch the golden light above an old barn. Here’s his work:

Mostly he nestled against my back, against the old down coat my mother used to wear when I was little, cementing his two and a half years’ wisdom about the world: Millions of trees makes a wood. The lightness is all done and the clouds is going down. Dere tiny moon swimming frough the sky. Then he broke into “This Little Light of Mine.” And that’s a pretty good way to close out a year, carrying our little lights through the gloaming. And this is a welcome sight at the end of any walk:

Wishing you all a snug harbor among those who “love you to peace,” as my four-year-old wrote on a card to her grandparents this afternoon. And see you soon. I have some new knitting to show off at last!

Whistling Girl Knits

whether or not the laundry is folded

Selkie Hill

Imagine

A winter’s walk