favorite things present – Page 2

Just flew off the needles!

Published on August 27, 2018September 25, 2024 by Jen11 Comments

jenjoycedesign© double-cappuccino-cowl2

Lace + ribbing = a beautiful springy cowl! I just finished my project in a cowl-along I’ve been knitting in recent week. I intentionally didn’t block it, being very pleased with the three dimensional waffled surface the merino lace yarn creates with the ribbed pattern & yarn-overs.

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It is a very easy modification of Double Cappuccino Legwarmers , and I chose to work the ribbed lace with really big 6mm needles for a frothy open look, so it grew in length fast, therefore naturally the patterning was easy enough that I knit it entirely while walking up on the ridge over the last week! So downy soft, yet athletic from the ribbing, that I plan to eventually give it to a certain dancer, hoping it won’t fly off in the middle of her leaping across the stage, I planned this to go with her mostly black dance wardrobe of course!

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This is the first of my start on gift knitting, for the holiday swiftly on its way. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the ridge for a hike while casting on for another !

Pattern: Modification from Double Cappuccino

Details: on Ravelry here

A tint of wild rose.

Published on May 28, 2018April 27, 2025 by Jen21 Comments

jenjoycedesign© over-dye 2.JPG — Along my knitting trail, explosions of new growth in the charcoal forest, and an occasional over-dyed skein drying from the branches.

A few weeks back, only a couple of days after we moved into our new Tiny House, I dyed this sock yarn with food coloring. My favorite shade of rose inspired by the old-fashioned roses in my garden …

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But perhaps mostly, the dusty rose of my tea pot .

Jens tea pot

I was going to make this whole experiment into a dying tutorial, and had taken down the steps, but thought to wait how it turned out. At the dying stage, the experiment was working beautifully, having gone from two balls of Patons Kroy in color Linen ( in this post recently) , to what I was trying for ; a dusty grey rose tinted slightly variegated overdyed yarn.

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The yarn came out exquisitely. So I decided to knit the socks. It took a few weeks, and now here are the results, of um, their good side …

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Unfortunately , I am not impressed with this dye, not at all. Because although the yarn may have been dyed to near perfection, and even though I used vinegar to fix, as I suspected the food coloring would not last… which it did not… in the first wash, there are blotchy patches of fade, showing the tan shade of linen beneath, after drying in the sun, on the faded side …

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So its back to my favorite Jacquard Acid Dye if I am ever to dye again at all. Dying is such a hazardous hobby, and I really was hoping I could rely on food coloring, but that was wishful thinking.

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A lot of work to put into knitting these beautiful Fishermen Socks only to have the dye leech out. But with very little yarn left over, I am really happy of the knitting itself, which was very enjoyable, and I fear I am thoroughly addicted to knitting these St Andrews Harbour socks , piles of them, and may just keep on knitting them for the forthcoming winter holiday gift season.

jenjoycedesign© over-dye

This pair will not be worthy of gift giving next winter holiday, but they will be most excellent hard wearing boot socks for my LLBean gardening boots, and what I was thinking of back in this post , of roses captured in socks!

Pattern: St Andrews Harbour

Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock, color ” Linen “, overdyed with food coloring, five parts red to one part blue.

Ravelry details here.

Our Tiny House

Published on May 17, 2018April 12, 2025 by Jen47 Comments

Greetings from our Tiny House in the Charcoal Forest!

Our Tiny House arrived here at the beginning of May, and now we have fully nested back in our charcoal forest. It was a major ordeal hauling it up the mountain with low branches over the roads, and a colossal stress, but things have calmed down now and we are getting use to two people and one large dog in a place that is very small. Our tiny house has frightfully few drawers, or closets, but very nice walls, surfaces, fixtures, and huge windows. It is tidy, efficient, artful, and crazy cozy! I even have plenty of blithe sunny angles to contemplate …

We’ve managed to get the bare essentials in as best as we could. Jeff made a counter extension into the stair landing so that there is a tiny bit more kitchen counter and a couple shelves for necessaries (ahem, those “drawers” in front of the sink, they’re fake, a tease, just for looks, but no complaints about the deep sink!) , and we still need to put up some shelves and cup hooks and such. There are two lofts, one with stairs going up to a platform with a just-shy-of 5 foot overhead, it is our bedroom & has room enough only for our mattress ( restorative naps like from a nest in the trees !) and the other loft has a steep ladder going up, over the bathroom, with about 4 feet overhead and which serves as an attic. The saving grace is that Jeff built a shed, which is about 25 feet from the Tiny House, and where we have the luxury of temporary storage, all of our clothes, chairs & dressers I collected in last 6 months, and boxes etc… and… a washer & dryer which will be moved to the house when it is built one day. So that’s me trotting back and forth countless times a day, and with my knitting trail right at the doorstep, and all the wildness I am in need of ~~ ho hum, I tell you, this is “glamping” !

The outside paneling is torched & sealed wood , a method called shou sugi ban , which apparently has excellent preserving qualities, as well as fits right in with the charcoal forest ! Hunkering down for the long haul now, until our former house is rebuilt.

Knitting as usual…

And napping…

I’m so grateful that our Tiny House has super efficient heating & cooling, and will especially when it warms up to scorching temperatures this summer. I can close all the windows up and it becomes nearly sound proof, which is helping me cope with the loud noise of chain saws and bulldozers from the loggers at work – very closely -nearby, and eventually the construction of the house. Eventually. Once in a while a huge tree lands with a thud and shakes the Tiny House, but here inside we are safe and far enough away not to be bothered too awfully much, just rattled. Still trying to find my former manic wave, while adapting to the big changes going on, but I wanted to post this for our friends and family who have been wondering how our new living situation is since the wildfire, now almost six months ago. We’re moved back up on the mountain now, that’s us. Here. Now.

Everything in its place, and life is good.

♣ ♣ ♣

In closing, I just wanted to say that I’d love to hear more from you. I want to encourage some chattiness (plenty of space in the WordPress comments)…so please don’t be shy, and tell me about you!

Finding

Published on February 17, 2018October 20, 2024 by Jen17 Comments

jenjoycedesign© sunrise

After losing most of my things in the wildfire, I am scouting again.

Earlier this week I found this retro beauty in a local consignment shop of antique & vintage objects, and we picked it up this morning.

A bathtub is not a delicate or graceful object, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find one while out scouting in the thrift & antique shops, but the utmost in useful things in my opinion, something of daily life, and lifestyle. I can’t express just how gratified it makes me feel to begin to find pieces of a home again, which is in so many ways my identity.

This goes especially for used things, sturdy and elegant old-fashioned things that have already endured decades of use. I love, love, love old things, and am ready and eager to bring them into our new house, which likely won’t be any sooner than a year, but I can begin finding now. We will have at least saved a fortune snatching up this one, and not waiting until later to buy new.

I suppose I am like so many other Nesters, completely taken in by the beauty of a utilitarian thing like an old bath tub.

My new finding does have me feeling pleased with myself, even though for now it will have to stand patiently next to a big window in our holding place, and I think it will come in handy as a giant yarn bowl, or laundry basket, until eventually the new house is built.

Frustrations over painfully slow rebuilding aside, and nature’s cruel black hand is far from getting use to, but admittedly life is seeming to feel good again as this particular finding brings my focus forward to what might be. My time is filled with mostly looking for things, awkwardly filling a foreign house with new things I only have faith will feel good in my future home rebuilt . . . and some things I found from the ashes too.

Energy and essence.

Published on December 27, 2017October 20, 2024 by Jen8 Comments

This Christmas Emma got a new squeaking squirrel, since her old squirrel and all of her other toys were all left behind in the fire. Now with a new squirrel love, everything is in it’s right place. The calendar is racing to a close, and I am fairly excited about what is around the corner now. I go up to the mountain every day if I can to walk a little while, and to go into the garden which is for the most part is still there, to sit and write, sketch ideas, and wonder about the best that might yet be to come. Pondering colors, palette & writing blending recipes, and thinking about the landscape, and how our lives will resume there in a different house in the future.

Recently I have been posting from the archives Knitting In The Wild , as I look to find the origin of colors for my Tweed Chronicles, but I am also finding in there one of my biggest passions of life ~~ being out in nature. There in the wild I am finding the tap root of it all. It is the landscape that is my true sense of energy and essence , who I was and who I strive to become. From the wild comes a pure sense of myself, and I realize I must continue going there as if I never left … to find new growth & new meaning in the contours, flora and fauna of the mountain, and to feel as a shepherd of something necessary while in it.

Yesterday while re-establishing my knitting trail I observed gopher holes bursting through what seems a cracked brittle thin shell of burned top soil, pushing up through it beautiful creamy soil from beneath, so like life bursting out of an egg shell. I feel what is beneath the surface, what is still there wanting to shake off the soot of the fire and resume living. I watched a black raven surveying the territory, having come back from wherever it fled, I don’t know, and I heard a woodpecker too, tapping through the charcoal bark to find food. The wildlife is showing up now, on time, finding its way back to beckon me to return. So I am showing up too.