new socks new year

I spent today on all fours elbows deep in cardboard boxes as I sorted through my collection of magazine clippings, art paper, and a decade of correspondence - letters and cards - that I'd saved. The letters were mostly from my mom and my sister.

Within the letters scraps of poems caught me by surprise. My sister, a lover of poetry, is the worst - or should I say best - culprit. What need do I have to buy poem books, when all the inspiration I could ever want I have in the stack of colorful letters that I've collected from her over the years?

I used to make my own journals and sew the bindings together with waxed thread. The tiny one above is from my honeymoon. It's filled with snippets of memory and small watercolor pictures of seashells. I've decided to keep my box of magazine clippings and scraps closer to my desk, these images are as old as some of the letters I rediscovered and I must have kept them for some reason so many years ago . . . so maybe they will serve me well again now as I follow new creative paths.

Isn't it funny how our creative life is cyclical? We think we're done with one idea or mode of creating and then we circle back to it and discover new and richer ideas mixed with the old ones?

Finished the socks in a heroic sprint to the finish this morning and coaxed Garrett into taking some pictures. An addicting and easy pattern with a beautiful and entertaining yarn. We're hoping to get some colorways in our shop soon, but if you're the adventurous type, you could purchase the natural colored yarn and dye it yourself.

Hope you all have a safe and happy new year!

teapots and poppies

Playing around here tonight at tendril & twine. Garrett's out playing with snowmobiles (trying to get one running) so I'm in the kitchen chopping up vegetables and making my first ever pot of split pea soup with leftover ham and the ham bone from the Christmas dinner. (Thank you, Jennie.)

I soaked the peas while I was at work - so for about ten hours - but as I write this they are still hard little pellets in my beautifully fragrant broth that has been simmering for about two hours. It may be a long night, I guess. The right things better get mushy here, or dinner could be a bust.

Hope you've got something simmering on the stove and you're having more luck than I am on this crisp winter night. Cheers!

sun rose

A pause this morning in the middle of all of the holiday travels, feasts and celebrations to look at the sunrise and rest. Over the past seven days Garrett and I have been up north and out west and we'll be heading back north again before the week ends for another family Christmas celebration.

In the midst of all of this hustle and bustle and frantic finishing of handmade gifts some knitting has occurred. I find I like to take a little project with me when we're visiting relatives, that way I can find myself a cozy spot, take out my knitting and still have a conversation with the people around me.

Only five days left of 2012 . . . hang in there everyone!

winter walk

We got out of the city and drove up to the farm yesterday for my mom's birthday. My mom and I went out to the woods for a long walk along the snowy trails. We took our cameras in an attempt to test them out and see what kind of photos we could get. As you can see we found a lot of scenes to snap images of.

The sheep came out of the barn and allowed me to capture their growing bellies and fleeces. Come March we'll have a flock of baby lambs and piles and piles of soft wool.

Later on that night family came over and we celebrated with a prime rib, fried fresh fish and German chocolate cake dinner. Frosted pumpkin cookies and pad thai popcorn were also on the menu. I think my favorite part of yesterday was the quiet walk in the forest with my mother.

alchemy

Guess what my Christmas present was this year? You guessed right if you said a new camera. (Thanks Mom and Jenny for the graduation money.) I can't believe how hard I was working before just to get a clear picture. My new camera, which I have a lot to learn about, takes fast, sharp pictures. I'm in love.

My mom got back some yarn she had spun from her sheep. It's an ivory sock weight yarn that I couldn't wait to get in the dye pot--though it would be beautiful in the raw too.

Ashely and I dyed it this weekend on our girls day. I ran out of regular vinegar, so I had to use a dash of apple cider vinegar to set the color. Boy oh boy was that fresh. I soaked the fiber with some mild shampoo before I spun it out to get away the odor and now it smells like "herbal essence."

It's fun to knit with, too. I think the second image of my sock-in-process shows how its starting to get a green stripe. I don't know how it will turn out (this is all an experiment, you know) but I hope the pattern continues. You can find the pattern here. I modified my sock to just twist all the way around and left out the snazzy cables up the side. I've made them that way before, but with my distracted mind I needed the easier the better.

We've been making some pretty fun winter salads around here with mandarin oranges and purple radicchio. Hope you're finding some holiday cheer and spending time with loved ones.

sharing

The boy is away, so the girls will play. This weekend my husband went to play poker so my cousin Ashley came over and we settled in for a long weekend of knitting and movies with a nice bottle of wine to share. You just can't beat a Christmas tree with twinkle lights to keep you cheerful on an icy and dreary weekend.

I finished up one of the felted clutches that I've been working on from scrap yarn. The images above show before and after shots of this work in progress. I couldn't remember if some of the yarns that I knit with were "felt-able" but I got lucky there. It shrunk up nicely.

The socks above are knit from some of our hand-dyed CVM Romeldale yarn from Crosby Hill farm. This is a product of Ashley's imagination. You can find the pattern here. It's a fun, easy knit. I think she's calling this colorway Sugar Plums Dancing. It's in its beta phase, so it will be a little while before we get some product in our shop.  Maybe we'll find some time to work over the holidays.