Once in a while a knitter comes upon a happy confluence of yarn and design that’s irresistible. So it was for me with Lenore—that huckleberry yarn, that Gothic lace cuff: I knew we were meant to be. Except that when Marika requested another pair of socks because she loved her Hibiscus for Hope pair so much, I realized nothing in my stash and nothing in several yarns stores reminded me of her the way this yarn and this pattern did, so really I was only meant to be the middle man in the relationship.

It took me ten months to cast on, though. (No snorting: I do have one or two scruples about starting new projects when I’ve got so many old ones unfinished.) And by that time I’d taken Meg Swansen’s and Amy Detjen’s Arch-Shaped Stockings class at Sock Summit. And I was possessed by the beauty of the arch-shaped foot to the extent that I was ready to slap it on every pair of socks. I like to think Stephanie Pearl-McPhee would be honored rather than offended to have her already-lovely pattern Swansenized… because that’s exactly what I did.

You’ll have to forgive the fact that they’re a bit small on me. Marika’s feet are two sizes littler, so I hope these will be just right on her.

For some reason, the first of the pair came off as smoothly and beautifully as you could wish, while the second gave me fits. I ripped out the whole foot because I discovered—after I grafted the toe—that my tension had gone inexplicably slack and the sock was nearly an inch longer than the first. There was some ugly pooling going on, too. I actually wondered if I had somehow picked up a larger set of needles (which has happened before, but only on occasions when I slacked off for a year or more between socks and Ravelry hadn’t been invented yet to remind me what needles I’d been using in the first place). I hadn’t. And I wanted to get these socks right, so I missed Marika’s birthday in favor of doing them justice.

They’re off and away. I hope they keep my beautiful sister’s toes cozy this winter.

*Stephanie’s socks were inspired by Poe’s “The Raven,” but the lost Lenore has an earlier eponymous poem, too. The text is here.

Fall has come—whump!—to the Northwest. The maples and walnuts are at their showiest and our big sweetgums (still with a stubborn cloak of summer green) are flinging their branches about in the easterlies that bring us our cold fronts. The rain is forecast to begin tonight and continue until… no one knows. My weather calendar shows nothing but drear droplets, on and on. We have knuckled under and turned on the heat, and the vent that is pleasantly blowing warmth up my trouser cuffs is also blowing cat hair into my glass of cider. Yes, the Knitting Weather has arrived again.

It is October, so I am knitting socks (for Socktoberfest, ye muggles, a knitter’s official license to knit as many socks as she pleases, not that she wouldn’t be knitting them anyway, which I suspect is thoroughly equivalent to the situation of the Germans and their merry beer-drinking). I am knitting extraordinarily glorious socks of Teeswater wool. I had to look up the Teeswater sheep, never having heard of it. I discovered that a Teeswater ewe was the founding mother of the Wensleydale breed, of which I have heard (and knit, with excellent results). That Teeswater mama passed on her lustrous locks, which are durable, sleek, and soft. These socks will have their own post soon, as will the Arch-Shaped/Lenore socks I just finished and mailed to Marika. Today I want to tell you instead about some schemes for the future.

These lovelies are precious cargo from my trip up to the islands. They come from Lopez Island sheep via Island Fibers studio, the work of two women with an enviable workshop nestled at the edge of the woods. A big garage is loaded with bags of fleece waiting to be washed and primped and sent away for spinning. They have a dyeworks where Debbie works her magic on the natural white and gray heathered wool, producing a luscious range of come-hither colors. Maxine gave us a tour of the weaving room, where Debbie was at work on a big rug, and introduced us to the end products you see above and all their beautiful cousins. The plump white fluffy one on top is a woolen-spun Rambouillet, light as a soufflé and soft as a mole’s armpit (my grandfather’s saying, which I must remember to use more often). The blue one is a sport-weight 2-ply, dyed on the natural gray of the sheep from local farmer Sally Bill’s flock. Maxine explained that this flock began as a Romney-Lincoln cross, but has since had visiting rams of many backgrounds, always with an eye to improving the fleece. She calls them Sally Bill sheep. The gray skein is Sally Bill wool blended with 30% alpaca; I can feel just a little more weight to it and suspect it will drape a tiny bit more. The rusty red skein is a worsted-spun 3-ply wool prepared at a mill in New Mexico. It looks ready to shout a stitch pattern from the rooftops and I can’t wait to give it a whirl.

In these little skeins are the kernels of a grand idea. Formulating a grand idea is something like poaching an egg; I know that once I break it into the simmering water the exterior will go all to a wispy mess if I don’t very intently spoon it back around the yolk, and it takes composure and deftness to bring it off. The yolk is this: a design collection for hand-knitting inspired by my home islands. The wispy mess? Just how many and which designs it’s feasible to include; the possibility of writing some vignettes (EZ would call them digressions), some personal geography; a timeline; tackling the book design myself. I know I’d like to feature local yarns, though probably not exclusively. Keeping the whole thing digital, at least for now, seems prudent, as does releasing the patterns for individual sale. A couple of patterns I haven’t released yet might be included (Mr. G’s new gansey, the Islander baby sweater), and I’ve got sketches for a number of others. I’m fairly sure that skein of Rambouillet wants to become a squooshy, cozy shawl-let; I’m excited to swatch the alpaca blend and the 3-ply as contenders for a long vest with twisted stitch motifs.

More to come… I’ll be working on some swatches in the coming weeks!

I realized I’ve been keeping you all in terrible suspense about the state of my possibly piratish eye. Turns out it was just irritated and what I thought might be a flap of peeling eyeball was only cornesomethingsomething, or a weird eyeball wrinkle with a six-syllable name I forgot as soon as the eye doctor pronounced it.  She gave me some eyedrops and sent me on my way.

So off we went, patchless and parrotless, to Friday Harbor for a long weekend. I escape up home whenever I can, and this looked like the only opportunity until New Year’s.

My parents are building a new house perched on a knoll in a madrona grove. You can see Mt. Baker, the Olympic range, and even Mt. Rainier on a clear day from the site. It was not that clear a day, but the last sun filtering through the trees and warming the valley below was delicious. This stone patio is going to get a lot of use, I’m sure.

(Yes, it’s funny that the dog’s belly appears to be the light source in the picture.

“Darling, it’s a bit dim in my reading corner. Would you turn on the Labrador?”)

Pssst… spot the handknit socks? I’m not sure you could miss them given the comical length of the pants I’m wearing. I am not so good at packing hastily, and although I dried and retrieved the last round of laundry before we left, I did not take my jeans from the basket and place them in the pile of clothing to take north. So I borrowed pants from my mom, who isn’t as tall as I am.

Next time I’ll tell you about our trip over to Lopez and the exciting wool I brought home. Yes, it was a good weekend in more ways than one!

It’s out of the chrysalis for the Cocoon-Stitch Half-Circle Shawl (a thoroughly unromantic name—make yourself free to propose something better!). Actually, I’ve been wearing it for some days, but it took some doing to achieve the necessary husband + camera + daylight confluence to document the occasion.

It was windy and bright up on Powell Butte (why yes, I absolutely DID steal the idea to go for a little hike and shoot photos of a new shawl up there from the talented Miss Emily of the Family Trunk Project, whose trunk show I hope to attend at Twisted next Friday), which is why I’m looking so squinty and ruffled in these pictures.

I do love this little number. Sooooo soft. Soooooo cozy. My preciousssss. I’ve been wearing it all different ways—points free, pinned in front, cattywampus and pinned at the shoulder. It’s a perfect size to warm your neck and shoulders without dragging its points in your soup or snagging on the furniture. If you can bear to knit from line-by-line directions, I absolutely recommend it.

Now, your good wishes, if I might have them. I may have torn my cornea (courtesy of grit in the eye while cycling). It doesn’t feel that bad, but it doesn’t look that good. Do please cross your fingers that the optometrist won’t insist on any treatment more drastic than a piratic eyepatch. I shall wear my most swashbuckling boots to her office in the morning in an attempt to turn her mind in that direction.