Handspun catchup, part 1

In the first of what promises to be several catch-up posts about what I've been up to, fiberwise, I give you a spontaneous cowl knit out of merino handspun. For some reason, the yarn didn't come out very even; I think I was too excited by the pretty colors to think too much about the spinning; plus, I'm still getting used to merino. I love knitting with it, but it's a bit slippery in the spinning. 

I spun this out of approximately 2 oz. of variegated merino and 1.7 oz. of teal-blue fiber, and then plied them together. With the extra 0.3 ounce, I navajo-plied that and used it at the top and bottom of the cowl.

You can see the more solid colors at the top on the left; on the right, you can see how the variegations in the handspun from the multicolored fiber created a striped effect despite the tweedy barberpoling. 

This weekend, my FIL was in town, and we took him up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to go hiking, where the temperatures would be cooler (high fifties to low sixties, farenheit) and the fall colors further along.  We were not disappointed in our quest! I got to wear my new cowl and get it photographed for the blog, and I also had a chance to take many pictures of North Carolina's finest fall showing.  

It's funny, now that I've been here a year, I've started to really notice the differences between fall foliage here in Western North Carolina, and  the foliage in New England and the northeast, which will always be for me the quintessential autumn tapestry.  Last year, I was still determined to like it here, and wanted to see the best in the WNC's mountain display.  This year, though, as I've come to realize that this place is yet another temporary place to live, I find myself really wanting to move back north, to somewhere with real winter, with autumns of maple and oak covering the hillsides, and a real crisp chill to the air, a chill that hasn't quite hit where I live now.  Certainly, the mountains do often provide this idealized setting, making it a very pleasant reality, as this photo shows:

Despite glimpses like this, other scenes remind me that I'm not quite where I want to be.  Fall is my all-around favorite season, so it's not surprising that I'm picky.  When the mountains reveal scenes like this -- 

-- scenes that are admittedly very, very gorgeous--I can't help but also see how the shrubs and the land are just somehow different from the pictures in my mind.   I am probably being overly picky in my fall foliage desires, and should try harder to be happy with the fall I have, not the nostalgic fall of my memories or my imagination. At least I have a fall to enjoy! But still - but still. As I go through the academic job search this year, I find myself checking out the potential for fall in the places to which I've applied, and I haven't limited myself to places where that idealized fall could be a reality again.  Whether I ever get back to that kind of a place again, such as I enjoyed in relatively-rural New Jersey, in Boston, and in Western Massachusetts, I don't know, but I do know that I'd like that very, very much. 

Happy Valentine's Day

May yours be as warm as, well, a handknit sock resting uneasily close to the jaws of a kitty:

Coffeeboy thought that Juniper would make an ideal background for the sock. Juniper thought the sock - and my handspun yarn nicely wound into a yarn cake - would make an ideal lunchtime plaything.

Luckily, as the camera indicates, she had plenty of supervision, and no yarn, WIP-socks, or cats were harmed in the making of said photograph.

I've been a bit of an MIA-blogger lately. Last week, I visited my academic home back in New Jersey, taking along the handspun sock yarn and turning it into what you see above. I met with friends, advisors, and lots of library books. My trunk was noticeably heavier on the long, 10-hours-plus drive home. I even made it into New York City to visit an archive, always fun after spending a while in the small-town mountains!

I find it interesting how the sock's colors are spinning up. I would never have guessed that it would have a large chunk of red like that, and be so mutedly tweedy elsewhere. The yarn is a pleasure to knit with, though, not only because it feels nice but because I made it all by myself! I decided to reinforce the heels with some mohair, or rather, with some Kidsilk Haze, to be precise. Believe you me, my heels cannot wait to slip into that softness!

Well, regardless of whether or not you celebrate this commercially-induced festival of sugary-sweetness, I do hope you get to feel a bit of the fiber-love either way!