Category: best photos

Out walking, and a new tune.

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Yesterday’s knitting walk was lovely. I followed Emma down in the meadow above the canyon (coyote-ville), and to our surprise, Emma spotted something very curious flapping in the breeze ahead.

Closer and closer,  curiouser and curiouser !


Ah ha ! There has been someone who has been adorning the mountain with Tibetan Prayer Flags around here lately.   The Masked Flagger has struck again !  They are admittedly quite a spectacle of artistic beauty,  even bleached by the sun and wind-whipped to shreds.

Turning

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A high mountain vineyard.

Emma and I have been walking around this morning, for several hours. She was busy sniffing & tracking while I’ve been knitting. I have knit quite a lot while on the move this morning, I’m actually quite self-satisfied.  I had a bunch of photos, but this one, with the yellow leaves turning on the vines,  just seems to want to stand alone.

Other photos of this walk stashed  here .

Knitting In The Wild

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I have been knit-walking rather obsessively lately.  Some days I go out twice, and I am elated to say that as a result I am both knitting and walking an incredible amount more than before.  In fact, I just can’t ever see myself ever again idly walking the mornings away without my fingers making silly loops, one after another.  I know, actually rather weird when you think of it. So here are some photos from this morning…Nearby,  where Emma’s absolute favorite trail takes us, we greet the nearby mountain tops on the other side of a steep and narrow canyon …

We like to hop over to the canyon precipice to take a peek down into the abyss…

((  and to sniff at what the wild coyotes have been up to ! ))

Right at the precipice.  Lichen covered volcanic rock, and grass as dry as papyrus, until it rains, which it hasn’t yet.  We’re having our Northern Californian Indian Summer, where typically in October just after you feel the cool of Autumn, we get visited by the hot clear days for another week or two.

My temporary knit-walking bag,  an old rather small hip pack I dug up this morning from the ‘gear closet’.  I have been experimenting with all kinds of methods to hold the ball of yarn while I knit and walk ~  from stuffing it into various pockets, or inside the front of my shirt, or under my arm, or in one of Emma’s treat  pouches, to wearing one of my felted knitting bags slung over my shoulder.  I have yet to design a ‘ hiking knitting bag ‘ but this seems to do fine for this morning.


A  shot from one of the high vineyards, overlooking the SanFranciscoBay to the south,  however in the bright morning light, and camera’s focus, you can’t see any details in distance.

Is that a tweed sleeve hanging on a Cabernet trellis ?

Two sleeves done & dusted, two more to go, for Two Michigan Winter sweaters.  Then I can join them to the bodies and begin the Elizabeth Zimmerman seamless hybrid ‘shirt style’ yoke I’ve been so looking forward to settling into.

Mountain Knitting

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Making really good progress with the ‘his & hers’ tweed pullovers.

 I am calling them  ” Michigan Winter “.

How could I already be nearly finished with the main body of two full-sized sweaters in one week?  I’ll tell you how, because Emma and I have been doing a lot of  walking this week, being sure to get in at least one walk a day, short or long, and well, I’ve taken my knitting along each time, and I tell you folks,  it adds up !

 Just as I’m plowing through these young homesteaders’ pullovers,  I myself am getting fit as a farmer, and Emma is delighted about all these hikes too, as we go slower, further, longer, and linger at delicious smells in the forest duff.

Autumn in Northern California brings the leaves falling late,

but the Madrones are always first to drop theirs, beginning in July !

I love the terra cotta tones of the leaves as they turn on the ground, before the first rain comes.

As we meander up the ridge, my favorite once bloomed in purple wild sweet peas look so pretty,

even as dried as parchment paper.


I sometimes have to fix a dropped stitch or untangle the yarn,

and Emma waits patiently in the golden grasses.


Here  we are up into the steep section of the climb, and if it were a clear day without foggy haze in the distance,  you’d see SanFranciscoBay, and the GoldenGateBridge beyond the hills…

Emma always finds a stick to befriend…

Approaching the top of the ridge, SonomaCountyLeft and NapaCountyRight….

Finally at the precipice of the peak, overlooking the valley below.

If you could see Emma’s right ear,  it is about touching where we came from. . .

. . . and now it’s time to go back home Emma.  We’ll come again soon… probably tomorrow.

Each Day

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Each day, in the morning light, as I go into my kitchen, I hope to see the sunrise cast its blithe shadows on the wall.

Everything so penetratingly deeply glowing as if I am peering into the mouth of a firey oven . . . but then the light changes so fast, within only one or two minutes.

I then can see the form of the trunks and foliage from the fir trees outside the window, as shadow puppets performing a merry show,  while the soft benevolent orange sun climbs up rapidly from the east.

The light which peeks in so intimately through the window early in the morning for only a few moments, so suddenly becomes aloof,  and then the wash of the light of the day floods the room, so fast !  Then everything just looks and feels … well… brightening … yet fading. 

This makes me realize how creativity works.   When conditions are right, a window through which I feel intensity of life, of inner light perhaps, and a bulls-eye to be glimpsed, and aimed toward.  But only moments later the light changes and does not show so clearly the target, and conditions wane, inspiration washes out.  Inspiration is merely a flicker, really, when I think about it, when conditions are right.  I must let my mind’s eye capture that flicker , let it be etched in, and hold it for as long as possible.

In between these flickering moments, I bide my time with the work which needs to be done.