I’ve been just rolling through the days, trying my hardest to not put pressure on myself when it comes to the designing, but to ease up and have a more relaxed pace, with perspective.  I leave the endless knitting, figuring, redrawing, recalculating to rest aside, and get the important things attended to, like life!  And I feel a dull panic as the world is socially merging again, perhaps haphazardly , and we’re only partway through this pandemic. I may be over-reacting but I do not want myself or those close to me to be a part of any statistic, so I am taking serious the sheltering at home, like I was born for it, doing my best work now.  New practices of “back to basics” of home-made wholesome goodness,  living the good life.  I am knee deep in sprouting wheat berries for a healthy rustic “California” loaf ,  perfecting my Italian focaccia, and with daily soakings & simmerings of garbanzo beans, my main staple suddenly. Also keeping up on my freezer supply of shortbread, and working on my own chocolate recipe; a barely sweet homemade concoction with coconut oil (recipe forthcoming)… etcetera.

The garden has been blessed by angels, if I can say so myself, as there not only have I a full lettuce crop now harvesting , from transplants a month ago of baby red leaf lettuces that popped up everywhere , there are also tomatoes and squashes of mysterious varieties popping up through last years’ plantings which had gone to seed. I realize the importance of at least letting the tail end of a seasonal bed go to seed without yanking it up out of the soil, for next spring surely there will be new plants.

So then, what about the knitting I guess. Above is a short stack of yokes, minus one which would be four but its a repeat of one of these, before I changed the colorwork chart, and these three are what I have to show for myself, as well as a pattern that is mostly written but in continual edit, but nearing completion! I am learning top-down sweater knitting, and what a better way to fully understand it than to design and work a bunch of sweaters for practice ~~ so that’s me, test knitting the size-run of yokes by myself, why not.  Crazy knitting.  Walks too.  A happy thought is that in pacing myself I feel a great deal on the way to being recovered from my two somewhat “catatonic” years of waiting, between wildfire Oct 2017 and moving back to a mostly rebuilt home in Oct 2019, but as I am finally feeling gradually more strength and stamina I am starting to sleuth out and groom up my lost woods trails in addition to the colossal amount of labor involved in the defensible space work. I am tired a lot of the time, but I allow myself a couple  recharging mini naps in a day, most days.

I couldn’t be happier, but even so I find myself caught up in a cry frequently.  I ponder this, and wonder how losses which seem to go beyond the obvious of profoundly grieving the loss of my Emma, into a realm of intangible feeling of tragedy. Just my usual existential angst I guess, but so many people are dying from this pandemic that I think its beginning to cause me great stress.  I worry a lot, and probably shouldn’t watch the numbers, but I do, and feel things going on are very important and I just can’t downplay. But, I know the best medicine for feeling sorrowful is hard work, so while bread is on the rise, I am off for a walk now, with umbrella, slogging along damp rained upon grasses which will surely put me in a good mood, while mingling with the wildlife.

When I return, I’ll be starting a new yoke, hmm, I think the next one in greens and greys.

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. 

Oh but maybe this….

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.  

More in the weeks to come!

4:28 pm.

Drama in the sky!

4:38 pm.

Everything in the world is like the rolling churning weather,

clouds swiftly moving and reshaping.

4:48 pm.

We’re “sheltering in” at the hermitage in a war against corona virus,

surreal times,   I don’t have words.

4:58 pm.

I am worried for everybody, and feeling fidgety and nervous. Even knitting is difficult.  I had hoped to launch into something ultra designerly,  but instead I’ve spent two days patching threadbare clothes, hand-stitching, reinforcing shredded edges, and being ridiculously old-fashioned, and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t.  This too shall pass.

♥    ♥    ♥

Thank you everybody who left comment in the previous post Emma Was,

it really held me through a rough patch ~~ xx

It takes every bit of bravery I can manage to post this, and take a break from tears. She seemed to want to live forever, and we were so ready to let her, but she died peacefully last weekend, her daddy and me with her.  For nearly fifteen years her fur has lined the nests of generations of birds in this part of the mountain, and her memory does not escape the places we walked, they are forever etched along the landscape. Forever.

You can see  All Posts Emma  archived from the beginning of this blog.