My life in Vermont
This is my latest knitting project. I made it as a shop sample out of Lanett fingering yarn, two strands held together. The pattern is called Fisherman T-Shirt by Oat Couture. Came out pretty cute and I learned something about increasing at the beginning and end of the row – always a good thing.
This is what Okemo looked like on the way down the mountain today. Snow is still on the ground up near the top where it is colder. Killington, just a half hour to the north received 7 inches at the summit yesterday. Winter will be here before we know it.
We had light snow overnight with a light covering on the ground this morning. It didn’t stay around long but it portends things to come. Other than slip-sliding across the deck in her usual dash-about way, the snow didn’t phase Monte at all. She did set about to eat it, but she often does that with rain or dew on the grass.
It is cold and blustery today and many of the trees are bare. There is still lots of color around but much of it is carpeting in the woods now. We still have several lovely trees in out yard but I fear the leaves will not be able to hang on too much longer. We’re hoping for a good snow year again – it’s good for the mountain and therefore good for the town. And it is so incredibly beautiful.
Milkweed seeds emerge from their silky bed so snug to dance with the wind.
That’s the local name for taking in the beautiful fall colors here in Vermont. The early bright reds and oranges of the maples have now given way to the warm golds and browns of the aspens, birches and oaks. This has been a good year for color and we’ve had many out-of-towners coming through to take a peek. We’ve met folks from Oregon, California, Montana, and Texas, as well as the closer midwest and mid Atlantic states. We’ve also met some international folks. For those of you who haven’t made it here this season I’m posting a sampling of the many photos I’ve taken of foliage. As always, click on the thumbnail to see a larger view.
Felting is such an amazing and serendipitous thing. There is an element of surprise no matter how well you plan. So it was with high hopes and some trepidation that I started these knitted clogs that would be felted in the washing machine.
When James would come to visit, he used to “steal” his father’s fleece clogs to wear around the house. When I mentioned that I could knit and felt him a pair of his very own clogs, he quickly told me what colors they should be.
After a bit of deliberation to get just the right colors, I settled on an Ironstone bulky held together with a light weight tweedy yarn for the green upper and a solid Nature Spun for the brown accent. The pattern wasn’t hard but I needed to pay attention to all the increases that shape the double sole and the upper. They knit up big as you can see in the “before” picture but felted down to just right. Once they were dry, they were good to go. Ooooh, toasty feet. And just in time for winter.
Our good friend Bob is a weather stick maker. This is local lore that has been passed down from the old timers. The best weather sticks are made of hemlock but some makers also use fir. These trees respond in amazing ways to the changes in humidity and predict the weather by pointing their branches up or down. There is a bit of a learning curve with them though since they predict pretty far ahead and within a pretty wide radius.
Bob came up to our home one day to look for a suitable tree on our own property. We walked through the woods but didn’t find any. Then later, when we cleared out some paths to our maple trees in preparation for sugaring next spring, we found one and cut it down. We promptly hauled it down to Bob at the bottom of our hill who watched it for a while and then cut three branches out of it for weather sticks. We’ve mounted two of them – one on the front porch and one out the kitchen window. The third one is in the mud room waiting for a home.
These pictures show our weather stick predicting good weather (pointing way up), changing, and predicting bad weather (pointing way down). Isn’t it amazing how much they bend?
You can read more about weather sticks here.
