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| The first sign that winter is truly on its way! |
There is nothing like waking up early, to some late for me 6:30, on a Saturday morning to sky full of stars, and crisp fall air. What? Is that ice on the puddle? I tentatively stick the toe of my Bean boot into the puddle hoping, wishing to hear the wonderful sound of ice cracking and what do I hear? Yes, ice cracking under the toe of my boot! Northern Lights dancing in the sky, plus the lights of a barge in Norton Sound heading south before things really start to freeze up for winter.
One of the many joys of living in rural Alaska are the body parts your dogs get to either find and hope to bring into the house or the parts they love to roll on/in. Tally was so thrilled with this wonderful find the other morning! Nope---we are not keeping it! It will be heading back to the beach where I am sure it came from today.
The tundra is actually fading now to just browns and muted green lichen. Fall has come and now we move into the rather dullness of browns and grays until winter arrives to blanket my world in white. This tundra plant I love! It is such a rich red and it really does look this red!
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| Tally enjoying an after school romp on the tundra in earlier September. | |
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| My girl Sadie! |
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| | A recent batch of smoked salmon. Smoked with cherry and spicy seasoning added. | | | | | |
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I have been working on my
NBW KAL with the ladies from the
Knit 'N Needle in Whitefish, Montana online through
Ravelry. This is a wonderful design and the yarn from the shoppe is great! PDS worsted yarn is just full of life, with rich robust colors which is becoming a favorite of many knitters!
Like all projects I seem to always have to start the body about 3 times until I seem to work out some issues. I have pretty much resigned myself to this knitting fact. I casted-on a sleeve and knitted that up just fine. The color is rich and deep which I really like in my yarn. I casted-on for the body using a long tail cast-on and with two colors. I decided instead of a ribbing I would do a knitted hem. This is why I like to cast-on with 2 colors as I can pick up sts. easily having a contrasting color.
That green purl like bump is where I will be picking up sts. to knit the hem which will be knit in a
PDS sport weight yarn. The lighter yarn will add less bulk and pull in the bottom just a bit. This will be done later.
I thought, I would do a bit of added color work in the lower section. I picked a design that I thought would be perfect. It would have what I thought would be snow and hearts. This would have made the statement that I love bad weather. Well . . . it make the statement that this is way to much color work and your hem will be HUGE! I decided to frog this section . . . oops forgot to mention: I had already frogged once before as I had twisted my yarn when joining the first round!
The reason for the color work is to have a nice line to sew the knitted hem to when I cast-off the hem on the inside.
Back to the drawing board. I picked a much smaller simpler design of color work which would represent hills, drifts, and snow. I knitted this color work only to realize that . . . Do you see those
2 ^%^%$%^*^* sts there . . . yes 2 red sts side by side!!!!!! Yes in the first round close to the beginning! &*)(*&%$#$%%^
I was able to get this frogged again, and knitted yet again. Now on a positive note look at how great that
PDS worsted weight yarn is holding up to 3 froggings. I will admit I wanted to toss the whole thing into the trash! However, I nicely reminded myself this is not the first time nor the last time knitting will humble me! I took a few deep breathes, swore a bit and like
E.Z. would say "Knit On!"
I have been knitting for over 20 years and yes even those who have been knitting for years (decades) still makes mistakes and still find new ways of making mistakes. To new knitters out there just try and relax it is fine to make mistakes, learn how to frog, laugh a bit at yourself and then
KNIT ON!
