Everything is fine.

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Jen

Hi everyone. A friend of mine who apparently checks into Yarnings frequently enough to notice I’ve been rather quiet here lately, wrote me personally to ask if everything is alright. I am fine. Everything is fine. I’ve been actually extremely busy with lots of things, and though I fully intended to post photos ((of the wedding bridge Jeff and I made, of all the prototypes of Snowmelt Tam & tutorials of techniques for Snowmelt, of the garden I’m transforming, of the trails I’m working on….)) the blogging about them just sort of slipped by. But know that I’m fine… even better than fine!

I thought I’d post this sweet photo of Emma lounging on the front porch this morning. This time of year when it starts to warm up, but the mornings are clear and cool and just gorgeous, I often leave the door open for a few crisp morning hours. I was walking by from my busy table spread out with knitting & tutorial photographing (( I am writing the Snowmelt pattern to submit soon)) across the door to the kitchen to brew a lovely cup of coffee, and well, the cheerful glowingness of Emma & front porch was so deserving of a photo snapshot shared here.

So in a day or so, you’ll be seeing Snowmelt and all the related business to do with Snowmelt…. arrive here. Watch this space! 🙂

Walking With Wool

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Jen

I walk in the wild places each day. I walk while I knit wool into things, and I walk while beguiled by the season. I walk into the places which pluck my thoughts from my mundane worries and meaningless schedule and bring them onto a grander stage, extending in all directions and arching from the present to a sort of gelid idea of my future.

I long for my Walk with Wool, as ever-faithful dog named Emma trots along beside me with nostrils flaring, her nose seems to float along in determination to uncover something magnificent. We make great hiking partners even though our agendas are a little different. Step and stitch together bring me closer to landing grounded to life with a shape. My life which feels at most times so without shape, finds it’s shape this way, in the knitting, and in the walking.

Even at the times when stitches dropped, or yarn falls out of my knitting bag that is slung across my breasts shoulder-to-hip, and unknowingly dragged for a length behind while collecting decaying leaves and even stickery burrs, maybe even some twig-like things. But I feel humor in all of it, and these silly things as yarn tangling among the shrubs as Emma’s leash around things make my life feel rich as heathered colors in a strand of multi-fibered yarn, tweeded with specs of emotions and interrupted by occasional knots which are always discovered with nothing less than annoying inconvenience.

I love my yarns, as I love fresh baked bread, and coffee & chocolate, or a hand-written letter from an envelope. Their poetry is felt as I receive them from out of their bag brought home, and wound with delicious anticipation by hand off of the backs of two chairs or a swift. I love the process of tearing the label off of the skein and then encircling the expanding criss-crossing blades of wood from the swift and tied together until they open into the hoop of yarn. The swift, my new tool of trade, holds the yarn as I secure it, then admire it. Ties clipped, and the end found, gently brought out to meet my hands. To feel the swift move as my right takes the end and loosely winds it around index, middle & ring finger of my left in a way that the fingers ‘taste’ the yarn as one sips the first cup of rich coffee or aromatic tea.

These feelings, these sensual inner rhythms, are what a knitter like me feels about the things which make up my creative life. These paths that I wander along, seem to forgive that I am isolated from society but beckon me more passionately to come along and hunker down with nature, and so I am taking to pen so to speak. I am in the mood to begin my knitting-in-nature autobiographical ‘yarnings’ in earnest and at last, so I present to you a first glimpse of “Walking With Wool”.

A Storm On The Way

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Jen

Emma and I were out for our morning walk but it was different today, it was deliciously foggy. To end a seven-week-long warm dry spell of this winter so far, we are due to get hammered with a big storm tonight. A storm which is absolutely longed for … so I figured we’d go out and take some photos in the drizzling fog and cooling air. On the way up the ridge there was a pleasant surprise ~~ all the manzanita is peaking in blossom !

One of the attractions of this time of year in Northern California mountains is the precious heart-shaped and very fragrant blossoming Arctostaphylos, or as we know it, manzanita. There are mainly two indigenous species which thrive side-by-side up on this mountain, and the most distinct difference is seen this time of year, when they blossom. One has pink blossoms, and the other white …

Otherwise their form is very similar, but their leaves are also quite distinctive also. I just love to bury my face into a cluster of these sweet blossoms and inhale their fragrance. . .

At the top of the ridge, Emma sniffed and I knitted as we meandered along the knife-edge where to the north-east is Napa Valley, and to the south-west is Sonoma Valley. Just sniffing and knitting our way along.

And then finally we reach the summit, and breathe in the cloud .

We’re out a lot these days hiking & knitting, so we won’t mind staying indoors while enjoying the lashing rain forecast for the next few days. I’ll be posting more as the tail end of winter bursts into action in the next weeks, on the mountain and on my needles!

offerings

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Jen

A give-away of another sort. It is now the end of a knitting project and I a ritual of mine is to go around the house and pick up yarn littered about the floor, as there always is quite a lot, and it seems to just float about and mix in with dog hair . . .

It is entirely too wasteful to throw away the little piles of wool.

So I lately I’ve been thinking of ways to make use of these snippings of yarns, and can’t think of anything better than to entice the woodland birds of the forest to making use, perhaps to line their nests.

Times before I would scatter yarn trimmings on the ground, or leave in a basket hung from a handle off the brand of a tree, both cases there was very little taken of the scraps. Determined, this time I have chosen a more open basket (one that I made a while back actually) and just placed it snugly in the crotch of a dead tree.

There’s something just so magical living in the woods and in and amongst the wildlife, I am hopeful this time my offerings will be snatched up and line the nests of the woodland birds ~ of robins, woodpeckers, ravens, jays, junkos, chickadees. If I ever spot evidence of the yarn scraps being used by the wildlife I’ll be sure to tell you about it !

Knitting In The Wild

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Jen

Another glorious hike up to the ridge peak this morning. Shading the camera lens with knitting overlooking the ridge after ridge facing north-easterly.

Greeting the long shadows of morning as the sun’s rays shot through the pines on the crest of the ridge…

There was knitting the whole way, reknitting that is, of yoke of nieces’ Autumn sweater.

Capturing the sun streaming through black oak leaves soon to fall …Greeted the Sleeping Princess (Mt Tamalpais) as she lay like rolling blue ocean waves in the distance…
And Mt. Diablo as we started up, a stones throw from the house… and you can see the yellow patches in the trees where there is Autumnal color starting.

At the rocky top, another view across the ridges which frame the upper Napa Valley …

Most of all we enjoyed the contemplative early morning trek, with bright morning sun, mountain air, and knitting all going so perfectly together I think. Looking forward to another like it each day this Autumn, as we have been out nearly every single day . Turning of the season continues to be wonderful this way. Life is good.

Knitting In Nature

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Jen

It rained again, and the moss is glowing !

We’ve continued our walks nearly everyday this Autumn.

Out in the freshly rained-on moss, and romping around and smelling things.

( Emma tends to like to stick her whole head into tree caves…)

The really remarkable thing is, that while we were walking in the woods, I was knitting the very colors of the moss on oak bark, and it took me by surprise how much I reflect the colors of my surroundings.

Presently knitting the sweater for this hat , in the colorway ‘moss on oak’…

Knitting in nature is one of the things I love to do most of all.

Walking in Autumn

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Jen

First, a lovely shot from our Autumn walk the last weekend.

And now just back from a walk, out rather late we went up the ridge a little ways, by the high vineyard, (um… which is sorely lacking a vineyard for the present)…

Then we turned around , and went into the woods. Here , knitting poised on a log, and with not much progress from the last photo of it….

Then we decided to explore and left the trail, began crawling through and over all sorts of things, collecting all sorts of burrs and stuff in our hair, to scout out new places.

Oh look! Another huge mushroom growing from a dead tree!

And then….

… we ended up at a rather tall henge-like rock out-cropping I did not recognize.

(I’ll take another photo of this place another time soon, in the mist, for affect).

Seriously though, with different angles to the familiar places, I thought there for a few minutes we were lost. (not really that would be rather impossible) A glance easterly and I see Mt Diablo in the distance, a good bearing.

Then I knew where we were exactly and that there’d be close by the old dilapidated bench from one of the abandoned old shacks nearby….

Sure enough, after scrambling through a few bushes, there it was !

A great little secret picnic & knitting spot, wouldn’t you say?

Have you been out on any walks this Autumn yet?

Each Day In Autumn

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Jen

Emma and I have been out walking (and I knitting while walking) everyday this Autumn so far, and plan to walk everyday for the remainder of Autumn, bringing camera and sharing photos often here and celebrate the best time of year ! Harvest is in process, finished in this particular vineyard a stone’s throw from where we live. We passed it along our forest paths near by. Then Emma spied a big yellow fungus !!!

On through hilly & hollow lands we walk….

And with fragrances abound, Emma follows her nose rapturously…

And just around this bend (from the opposite direction of last hike posted) we end up back home …

First Morning of Autumn

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Jen

knitting at the peak

I know two posts in one day. Its just that I wanted to share with you all my first walk of Autumn. We were out in the early hourse on this first morning of Autumn, knitting while hiking about the woods a bit, then hauling on up the ridge to the peak of the mountain (at 2600′ elevation.) There were beautiful views of the distant ridges along the way up. Mt. Diablo in the distance, rather southerly (to the right behind the trees)…
Then higher up, looking more westerly, a grand shot of Mt. Tamalpais, named by the indigenous Native Americans meaning “Sleeping Princess” (did you know Mt Tam is where mountain-biking was invented?) …
Then at the peak, overlooking Napa Valley, easterly, and the sun was already high …
We went down our favorite well-trodden paths on the way home…
and our favorite short-cut deer trails…

Then across the last oak wooded section before landing back home. It was a glorious walk this morning, and I have made progress on a little knitting too !

I hope your start of Autumn (or Spring) is equally as happy as mine.

What are you up to?

A Kiss Goodbye to Summer…

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Jen

Emma and I went out walking in the hot noon sun, and thought to capture the last day of summer, with the tall crisp dry grasses and pale blue sky in a photo. Tonight the equinox occurs at 7:29 pm here, and we are so ready for Autumn !

We didn’t walk far. We’ll go out again with regenerated spirit first thing in the morning to capture the first morning of Autumn.

Hey… it’s raining !

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Jen

Emma and I spent a few moments greeting the first wet morning of the season.

(it really is wet … just look at it !!!)

The damp forest drinks in and the dust is washed off,

while whispering drops patter their way down from the trees to the ground.

Then a brief break, and the fog pours in over the ridge from the ocean out west…

Now as I’m uploading these photos to post, the rain is coming down again, off and on big fat drops on the roof…a sound that is pure poetry to the parched dry landscape of Northern California. I’ve been posting a lot lately and I must say, it feels good after what seemed a long summer of practically nothing to comment about, bearing down and surviving the summer. I really am thirsting for a good old-fashioned rainy Autumn, with lots of cooking & baking and squirreling away of knitted things for the holidays ahead. It just doesn’t get any better than that. Well, lets hope the rain holds out !

Lazy Hazy Dog Days Of Summer

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Jen

Well folks, we’re in the dog days of summer. Such a funny expression…. ‘dog days’ … let me look it up.

dog days

noun

the hottest period of the year (reckoned in antiquity from the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star).
a period of inactivity or sluggishness.

“in August the baseball races are in the dog days”

I can bet that Emma is as tired of them as I am. Everything dry as parchment outside, and no rain in sight for another month. Another month or longer !

This early morning we are pacing ourselves …

At the very ~~least~~… er…most… there’s lots of knitting going on.

How is your summer going? ( Or winter, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere).

What are you up to?

Camp Socks

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Jen

Its already been almost three weeks since we were at 9000 ft elevation and I was knitting-in-the-wild beneath a lovely brewing storm on a huge granite rock. I had so thoroughly enjoyed the quick packing trek to Granite Lake, the sitting cross-legged on the granite in complete stitching meditation, one with the darkening sky and gathering storm, the quiet of everything before the outbreak, even the fish hunkering down. Yet I remember yet distinct intermittent sounds ~~ the wind whipping the tent about and water boiling to make trail coffee. And it just doesn’t get any better than that ( High Sierra trip posted here ).

So here my friends, are another pair of Penny Candy Socks. Just a simple, wild & maybe even frivolous (and very blue) pair of socks, made on that High Sierra excursion but I hadn’t gotten around to washing & blocking them until just now.

And they are added to the slowly growing pile of knitted socks designated for xmas gifts. . .

Back From The High Sierra.

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Jen

We three ~ Jeff, Emma, & me ~ went for a short & sweet trip to High Sierras over the weekend for our anniversary. There was a little hiking, cooking, tea & coffee drinking, fishing & knitting, sniffing around….

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Restorative in many ways, as always, the alpine scenery soothed a yearning that only it can do. What is it about pitching a tent in the wilderness at high altitude to claim some spot in nature as our home for a few days?
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Something about the fragile alpine flowers …
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and gnarled trees.
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fast and furious rain storms …

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The granite everywhere and deep crystal clear blue lakes …

Granite Lake

wide horizon of jagged ridges and expressive skies.

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A storm is brewing!
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Windy thunder & rain storms which suddenly take hold for a couple of hours in the afternoon,

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sending us for cover in our cozy tent to wait it out.
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Granite Lake in Mokelumne Wilderness was just what I craved. Bundled up quite puffy in down and wool layers, knitting in the cold & windy pause between storms …

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Abandoned my knitting to go fire up the camp stove and make hot coffee!
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Jeff got to fish a couple of times, though he didn’t get even one bite, too stormy.

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Then it was time for trail coffee & tea !!!

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We found that Emma was perfectly able to handle carrying a doggie pack and hike as she did once before, and it was as if her little arthritic limp of late almost disappeared completely. 072 007

She is in top form !

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Most importantly, this trip to the Sierras was to celebrate a very important mark in our partnership,

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We were so lucky to have Granite Lake all to ourselves, at near 9000′ elevation & less than three miles from the trail-head. It is my theory that the forecast dramatic thunderstorms cleared the lake for us. We were prepared to hike cross-country (off-trail) to another lake for privacy, but had no need, it was a total stroke of luck.

With only a little over 3 hour drive, we can be in the High Sierra, fishing & knitting at a granite bowl. It just doesn’t get any better than that ! Off we go back home, but we’ll be back . . .
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Off to the Sierras !

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Jen

The High Sierras beckon us this year on our anniversary. Last time we went, Jeff, Emma & I had a great time , it was in the Inyo National Forest of the High Sierras, on the McGee Pass trail, hovering around 10,000 – 12,000′ elevation. This (slightly blurry) photo was taken while walking along a meadow on the trail, and it was in fact the last backpack trip I was on. Emma was a two-year-old packing puppy and that was seven years ago. Ages !

I can’t believe how long it’s been, and astonished at the pace life just races by. Here is Emma waiting for me as we climbed over the pass, the rock in the trail so sharp she had to wear her boots.

And just beneath the pass, resting a poor exhausted puppy Emma in the snow with Jeff looking a little impatient . . .

That trip was a stunning one, a beauty for sure, but I’m not feeling very confident in my packing abilities at all now. Though Jeff has promised me that we will go slowly and not far, for if I am going to want to backpack regularly ~ again ~ it is important that Emma and I do not get whipped by the trek. Emma is already a little bit limpy with onset arthritis, and I’m not much better, worried about carrying a pack for any distance.

But hey , the altitude & elements I can handle ! How can I not crave to sit and knit for hours with camp coffee by high mountain lakes such as these . . .

So interesting that being in the really high mountains has been such a part of me for as long as I can remember. Jeff and I are making a vow of sorts, to go regularly again, and this is a bit of a kick-start trek. Well folks, its time for me to go pull out all of my packing gear and assemble things ~ knitting included ~ see you all on the flip-side. Sierra Nevada mountains, here we come.