I Heart My New Camera

Did I mention that I love my new camera? I have to make a public big smooshy THANK YOU to my grandmother Millie who contributed along with my parents to making this camera possible for my birthday. It will be a huge help to me in my new business and it has been really fun and gotten me very excited about photography again in a way that I haven't been since high school.

All of the above photographs were taken with the old 50mm Nikon lens from my old manual camera strapped on it. It looks very funny to have this spiffy new digital SLR with an old lens on it. BUT it takes beautiful pictures. Small depth of field, great in low light. These were all taken late in the day yesterday, all inside with natural light except the one that is obviously outside. This lens only works on the camera manually so it has been a joy to control aperture and shutter speeds again and manually focus after handing all control over to digital for the last couple of years.
"B is for bone" is for Analisa. Heart you boo!

Coincidence?

My dog is the same color as the river rock at my favorite swimming spot and the same color as the yarn for my latest sweater...There are no coincidences.

Giving Thanks

What a wonderful month in the mountains! Amazing to watch summer slip away as each day was cooler, crisper, shorter. Giving thanks every day for the warmth of the sun, the freshness of the river, all that the Earth gives and receives. Just beautiful.
Bellow are photos from walks in the woods near the house, the sweater that was my big project for the month, my new hobby of baking fresh focaccia (nothing better than letting dough rise in a sunny window) and the first use of the wood stove for the year.

New Hat, New Camera

Pattern: Inga
Source: Ewenique Fiber- The Blog
Yarn: Knitpicks Merino Style
Colorway: Storm and Nutmeg
Needles: size 3 and 5 circular needles

Two new things to be mentioned here on this post. First off is that these are the first shots taken with my brand new SLR! I am very pleased. This hat is also my first fair isle project so that is also very exciting. It was really fun. I am a tight knitter so this was a good lesson in loosening up a bit. The hat is really big which has been a problem for other knitters that have tried this one. I even already started the pattern a few rows in but I would have to do it even more for the hat to fit me or most people. Luckily I have a large headed brother in-law-in-law and his birthday is in a few weeks.

September in Celo

We are spending the month of September up on the family farm. It has been really really wonderful. Now that my mom has finished building a second home (right next to my in-laws farm), it has been nice to have our own space when we come up for this long. Especially because Gabe is using this time to study and I am working on my business it is also nice not to have the usual distractions of 20 goats, 2 sheep, 2 lamas, 3 rabbits, 5 dogs, many chickens, the list goes on.

It is also a really nostalgic time of year to be up here. The final days of summer where the line between summer and fall blurs into a perfection of temperature, color, burstingly ripe tomatoes, and the last several jumps in the river for the year. We say prayers of thanks for every warm day that we can still sit out on a big rock in the sun or for bare feet because we know it won't last much longer. Although the surrounding foliage is still a bright blanket of green, the shade seems to have shifted slightly and lonely bright red leaves that seem to appear out of nowhere float past as we dip in the river. Fall, my favorite.

We have been in a really bad drought here in western North Carolina and the river has been soooo very low. But a couple of weeks ago a huge storm brought something like 8 inches of rain in less than 48 hours and the river rose several feet. A few days later Gabe and his dad decided to tube the river in it's unusually swift currents. The pictures below are right after their climb back up the hill from the river after their float. I thought they looked so cute. Usually we never tube with wetsuits or helmets but this was precautionary after the flooding.

Some more busy knitting

I have arrived! I have joined the Elizabeth Zimmerman knitting world. After admiring a zillion Baby Surprise Jackets on blogs from around the world I finally dove in when Knitpicks recently had a huge sale on books. My cousin Emily recently had twin girls which is no small feat any way and certainly after 10 weeks on bed rest in the hospital these girls are quite the miracles. I had to rush on a knitted present, her due date was the first week of September but all the way back in May when Emily was hospitalized with contractions I knew I had to step things up a bit. I actually got to hand deliver these sweaters last week when my mom and I were in New York on business and made a little side trip up to see Emily, Jim and Susanna and Rebecca in Connecticut.

The pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket
Source: The Opinionated Knitter, by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Yarn: Getting back to you on this one
Needles: size 7

This picture is for Carolyn who had not heard of this pattern. For those who have not heard of the Baby Surprise Jacket, this magical sweater is knit all as one piece. This is what it looks like before it is simply folded up and turns into the above sweater with the only seaming being from the shoulder to the cuff of the top of the sleeves. Pretty amazing.

Pattern: Yarn Over Cable Socks
Source: Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: Yarn Ahoy! Hand painted sock yarn
Colorway: The Desert Song
Needles: size 1 dpns

What happened to all the knitting?

Well, there hasn't been much said about knitting on my blog lately but it isn't due to any less knitting around here. There was a bit of a dry spell around May and June while it was a super busy time for me but recently the knitting is back in full swing. Lots to share so let's get on with it shall we?



This is a cool little item that I fell in love with when I first saw the pattern online. It is from the Berroco Norah Gaughan Collection Volume 2. I was surprised how long this actually took me and how much yarn it used too. It was my first purse/tote and it was a bigger project then I had anticipated all around. Maybe it is mostly because I could never really fully take my eyes off the pattern while knitting this one. I would like to try it again and maybe do two different colors instead of knits and purls to form the pattern as is one of the other patterns in the book. Thanks a thousand times over to my stepmother Carolyn who used her wonderful sewing and quilting skills to line both the bag and it' strap for me as well as putting in a pocket and a magnetic closure. Without these additions I think the bag would have been really floppy and saggy, especially the strap seemed like it was going to stretch a lot as the bag got loaded with items.

The stats:
Pattern: Skuld
Source: Berroco Norah Gaughan Collection Volume 2
Yarn: Knitpicks Swish Superwash
Colorway: Squirrel Heather
Needles: size 3 and 6

Berry picking

So, my little sister, Addie, has been visiting. She is 14 years younger than me and she just turned 14 two weeks ago. This summer marks a big time where I am twice her age and in this poignant summer between junior high and high school for her now is the same summer that for me 14 years ago also marked this big school transition and was the summer I got a baby sister. As the only sibling that I have ever had, that was a big summer for me and it is fun to mark this kind of summer for her with her first ever trip on her own to come and stay with Gabriel and I. It has been really fun to have her here and to talk about high school and life and what to expect and dream of the years to come.

One of the many activities that we have gotten ourselves into while she has been here is last week we went blackberry and blueberry picking down in Pittsboro, south of Chapel Hill. We took a good friend of mine, Kathryn along. When we got there we actually got stuck out picking in a big thunderstorm that drenched us all. But luckily we were all great sports about it and it didn't slow us down a bit. That is one of the wonderful things about rain in the summer time in the South is that even when you get wet it is so hot out that you never care. In fact it is welcome! We picked gallons and gallons of berries. I have been freezing them, making jam and generally enjoying fresh berries on almost anything we eat. My sister was so cute, I think it was her perfect day, apparently with out knowing it I combined her two favorite things "rain and blackberries!"

Love you sissy!

Yikes!

So much has been going on since the last post I hardly know where to begin! Luckily it has been because I have been spending more time outside than in.

Weddings, trips to Costa Rica, lots to report on but as I still get the photos organized from Costa Rica I will start with last weeks trip up to the farm. Luckily I made it up there at the exact right, perfect time for the blueberries! Last summer we missed them because we were in Tanzania which was like totally unacceptable so I couldn't let another year go by like that. The lavender was also in full bloom and it smelled wonderful from the blueberry fields.

Ah, sweet summer!



Oh, and I found some cool mushrooms on a hike. The Smokies are always great for finding mushrooms in the summer time. Sadly I couldn't tell you what any of them are.