rebuilding

A fresh and new year.

Published on January 4, 2021August 3, 2024 by Jen9 Comments

First, the building: Jeff has taken three vacation weeks at the last of the year to work on house-building projects, mainly to finish up the last of the window trim, and since we moved in he’s been working on this project diligently, but saving the most difficult trim for last. Living with ladders, tools, long levels, boxes of screws, pipe clamps, air compressor, and nail guns sitting about the house is really what I’m use to, now the second house-building in our lives, even over a year being back moved in, but these recent weeks it has involved scaffolding and moving around the dining table in order to get to the sky windows, and it doesn’t ruffle my feathers in the least. All the door and window trim is now finished, and I must say what a great finish carpenter he is, and how the rebuilt house seems nearly as beautiful as the original, maybe even more so in some ways. I never thought I’d say that, but the trim was Jeff’s most artful work I’ve ever seen, and so I am proud to think he’s done even a better and second time more experienced job of it. A short pause, and then the next big task will be the flooring. Here & now, transitioning from a very dark 2020 into a much brighter 2021.

And now for the knitting . . .

jenjoycedesign© A-Drawer-Full-of-Winter

Since sometime in October I had made a realization which led me to actually overhaul an older pattern; rewriting, reknitting prototypes, and just having a wonderful time enjoying the last whispers of the year while out taking short walks (while knitting them) and I hope to be sharing more glimpses of incoming finished knitteds over the remainder of winter. You see, I have been in need of a drawer full of wintery woolens , and at that point in early Autumn I decided it was time to put the chisel to the stone so to speak, and begin the work making myself a dresser drawer full of cowls, fingerless mitts, gloves, hats, in many weights of luxury & tweedy favorite yarns (oh, like Isager Irish Tweed, for one) and even my own handspun. It is really a matter of transforming a drawer full of tweed, into a drawer full of warm cozy knitted things, how fun is that!

jenjoycedesign© A-Drawer-Full-of-Winter 4

In the summer of 2017 I had become smitten with my blending board and was creating some incredibly rustic handspun, finding I needed a pattern that was adaptable to many gauges of handspun for basic hats & mitts. The end result was that I wrote my pattern Calidez Hats & Mitts . That was just before the wildfire, and so of course I don’t have any of these prototypes anymore, nor any basic warm woolens at all, and I’ve gone through two more winters since not having even a basic knitted hat, cowl, or mitts to bundle up while I go out for walks in the winter landscape. Presently I am knitting through the winter season and have managed thus far a good start. I’ve designed a couple of more to add to the collection, and knit these for myself:

A basic beret . . .

Two cowls . . .

And a pair of plain & simple socks I have been rather discrete about for a while. . .

I had made a good start with these back in “Unspun, revisited” , when I separated the plies a ball of worsted-weight Soft Donegal Tweed yarn left over from a sweater I knit for my niece. Having then two balls of fingering weight tweedy yarn, I knit this plain & simple sock prototype . Anyway, I think that a basic sock pattern which can be knit toe-up or cuff-down is a good one to have, and yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to write Plain & Simple Sock and submit it all by itself, so I decided to just add it in the Drawer Full of Winter collection, which has the usual colossal size-run , gauge substitution charts, and ideas for making a bunch of things from mini tree ornament socks to plush house socks ~~ voila, perfect fit! Most importantly I felt there is a niche for a super easy dual-directional sock, especially for those instances where, say a bit of precious handspun off the spindle, must be worked flowingly from toe to cuff, in the most efficient yarn-conserving way. This is that sock.

Rebuilding a seasonal wardrobe (along with our house) is an inspiration born of necessity, and as I slowly build my drawer full of winter woolens, I am updating the pattern A Drawer Full of Winter . The collection now includes four patterns A drawer full of Hats, A drawer full of Mitts, A drawer full of Cowls, and A drawer full of Socks, and, as I continue to develop my own Drawer Full!

Sun Into Libra

Published on September 22, 2020May 24, 2024 by Jen8 Comments

The sun has gone into Libra. I have attempted to replicate a photo I posted on the Autumn Equinox 2017, and about two weeks after that original photo was posted, our house had burned to ashes in the Nuns Wildfire. In the many months following the fire, it was that very post that I gazed at with such a heavy heart of grief and longing. But today is the day of days! As I photograph the same angle of the new rebuilt house, at same time of day, on the same day of the year, I recapture the warmth of that moment again, as the lazy equinox sun sinks low in the afternoon to the west. I feel like I’ve come full circle, having just posted it up to date, home again with everything in its place (sans ceiling fan and squiggly iron rail), not quite finished but very cozy. I am kind of collapsing into a fuzzy warm celebratory mood, a bit weary of the long journey back to my House of Light & Shadow, although I am nothing but colossally grateful. Happy Equinox everyone!

May Days

Published on May 4, 2020February 17, 2021 by Jen10 Comments

jenjoycedesign© trim

Its been a while since I posted any photos of the house-in-progress.

A year ago in May we were in the middle of a long haul of building; contractors everywhere, loud power tools, roofers, drywallers, plasterers, and I ached with all my being for it to be quiet and to work again in my loft. Now I must say, seven months to the day after having moved from the tiny house 500 feet up to the unfinished-but-signed-off house, amidst still tools and piles of lumber in the living room (which are still there)… I am feeling everything once again in its place, and throughout the house I hardly notice the lack of some trim and finish flooring. Especially in the loft, my workspace, a room that in the first days of last Autumn I was so eager to kit out, everything was just waiting for the sign-off with the county. Now a bit more relaxed and seven months later I am quite charmed at the trim, a knotted board for the doorway into the loft, a real polishing touch of finish work and what a nice surprise from Jeff knowing I love the knotted boards the most.

Last May I was knitting a pile of socks for a new pattern dedicated to Emma for she just had her fourteenth birthday and in celebration I had mowed a whole lane where I could “walk” with my old girl Emma, who wasn’t really able to walk much anymore. Well its May again, and I’m mowing a lot of wild grass again, and as the rain is most likely on its way out so am I watering like a maniac too. Working outside now is my big big focus. Less time for indoor things.

I am making slow progress on my Fishwives lace stole I started up again in March. Its been a difficult and rough couple of months with Emma gone and the whole pandemic thing , but I’ve been throwing myself into the yoke, figuratively and literally, as I’ve learned that hard work is the best medicine through sorrowful times and uncertain times.

And this, a sweater yoke ….

I guess its about time I mention that I’ve been working on a new design that in subject relates to all that I have been posting about in the series in recent posts “Gifts From The Sun“. For a few years now, I really do enjoy researching something as a mark of inspiration connected to a new upcoming design, while spending the hours knitting myself to exhaustion, with plenty of ripping out and starting over that goes a long with it. I have been thinking about a few things; the wool/yarn industry in Peru and its relationship with the people of the Andes, of tempering my yarn snobbery and trying to have an open mind about a yarn that frankly I never paid that much attention to. A yarn that I have used to make felted satchels for many years, and that as why I had quite a lot of it around, because a couple of months ago, I was knitting many sturdy basket tote bags and felting them for my new pattern Maiya’kma.

Now, again, the same yarn is on my needles for something entirely different. Words that come to mind ~~ moderately soft, quality, plies, strong, classic, and with a colossal selection of rich colors ~~ I must say its rather blowing my mind that this all-purpose and inexpensive one-hundred percent Peruvian wool yarn has made it to my top favorites as a colorwork sweater yarn, and very unexpectedly. I just never thought about it in this way.

settling in

Published on September 30, 2019May 24, 2024 by Jen21 Comments

jenjoycedesign© autumn things
I have begun collecting little treasures from Autumn ; a leaf from a Black Oak turning gold, a curl of Madrone bark, and a freshly fallen Douglas Fir cone. It was almost a year ago in Autumn that I found this novelty . . .

jenjoycedesign© settling-in
Now the vintage Four Posts are finally kitted out with a mattress and bedding, and so I’m going to fling off my shoes and curl up on it with some strong coffee made in a cezve (my thing lately) with fresh shortbread just out of the oven, and contemplate which small quilt I will attempt to make first from “Civil War Legacies” by Carol Hopkins.

The loft room (still without a door as you can see), the kitchen, and upstairs bathroom are the only rooms in the house able to be used thus far, while the main part of the house remains a mess of building, tile dust, and tools. But there is rumor ringing through the rafters, that we may move in this coming weekend, or should I say move out of the tiny house . . . fingers crossed!

home

Published on September 20, 2019May 24, 2024 by Jen16 Comments

The phoenix has landed. I sit peacefully at my laptop parked on the large pastry board in the kitchen, while Emma naps near me, claiming her floor space in the kitchen as she had always done before. As I mentioned last post, we passed the final building & fire inspections, and now we can slowly move in over the next few weeks. I have spent the morning consolidating the construction area to one end of the downstairs floor, and vacuumed, so it feels so much more like home now. All in good time the finish work will get done; doors will be hung, furniture will fill in, although much more sparsely, and things will be again clean, complete, and calm.

Emma is comfortable in the kitchen, most surely she knows she has come home? This of course, is reaching the other side of the bridge to us, having Emma bring us home.

I will be posting more of the usual knitterly & spinnerly things against the backdrop of the rebuilt house as it takes shape, the floor plan nearly identical to what it was before, but with changes that are almost insignificant now. We are all three worn, bedraggled, and *very* tired, but we are home.