We spent a much extended holiday weekend (turned week and a half) in the White Mountains last week. N is hiking all of the “4,000 Footers” and I am choosing a few as well, but preferring to collect mountain ponds and the smaller lesser-trod peaks and loops. On the few days when he’s up at an ungodly hour to hit the trail solo, I’m groggily but happily thinking about my chunk of knitting time free of any electronic, human, or stuff distractions. We usually rent cabins when we go to the woods and hunker in among the trees, only going out to hike or get ice cream and this time was no different, though we encountered extreme plan-changing weather and were greatly distracted by plagues of bloodthirsty mosquitoes.
The only times when I’m truly and massively productive is when I have the ability to only work on a handful of things and I’m in a quiet place, save for bird yells and other nature song. So spinning wheels, sewing machines, computers, phones (I don’t even have a “smart” one to begin with) and boxes of neat sh*t stay at home and I just bring along some balls and needles. Good times. I’ve been sweating over a shawl that I’ve been trying to design (more in a future post) and have been trumped several times over by reversing the pattern and some simple math for increasing and decreasing. I just can’t get my brain to have an ‘aha’ on this one, but I finally worked out the left and right main portions and just need to figure out the ends and center now, but I might need yet another week in a sylvan sequester to finally conquer it.
Here is a shadow tease of some sample bits in worsted. It isn’t earth shatteringly different or unique, but I haven’t found anything quite like it yet out there, so I’d like to offer the pattern for sale at some point, or at least get the whole damn thing worked out so I can knit it in the special yarn for which I’m itching to work.
Part of the time we were there was downright frigid so I took my favorite old cardigan. I patched the elbow hole with a mini-skein of Pigeonroof Studios handspun. I love the colorway but don’t know what it is. The patch is a little heavy for the thin sweater and looks a little bit like an eyeball, but it is a comfy cup for my elbow.
I also finished a test knit that I love from a designer who makes fabulously fun patterns but it will not be released until next year. I used Quince & Co. yarn for the first time which I’ll go into further in next the post. N and I had a fun photo shoot with it utilizing the river and the the cellar’s stone wall. In addition, I brought part of the cotton blanket and my latest Lacy Baktus along, but didn’t work much on either one. The power went out on our last night there, so I was able to do a couple of feet of a blanket strip in the dimness since it was white. While making the test knit, I learned to do applied/attached icord, so now it is a consideration for trimming the blanket – it will depend if I end up wanting a couple more inches of border or not.
But most of the time was spent on the trail. We had to cancel our hut reservations for the first two days due to total white-out of freezing fog and snow. When we finally got out, it was a slippery sloshy wet cold mess and made for some hiking misery on my soggy-ass part since I lacked good/newer waterproof gear (N thankfully hooked me up with a new jacket later on). The first hike was up Mt. Hale and luckily the sun had returned, but you don’t see the bitter winds (or my bad attitude from having clumps of wet snow eggs plomping down from the trees and onto my head, down my neck, and penetrating my duds – I was wearing wool of course, so hypothermia was kept at bay despite the soaking).
But in just a day or so the weather turned gorgeous and we had a lovely time on Hedgehog Mountain, but then the next day the weather became stranglingly humid and sweltering in the 90s, and hiking became soggy again – this time from the inside out. After that, I preferred to put the needles down and just sit in the cold river right outside our door.
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ASTITCHMATISM 