FO: Autumn Melody

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday, even if you don't celebrate American Thanksgiving.  I got to go stay Wednesday night with my family at my cousin's house the town over from where I lived during the first two years of grad school.  It was a whirlwind trip, and I had to drive back Thursday night for work on Friday, but it was nice to see my family and check in on my aunt and uncle.  The rest of the holiday has been a whirlwind of work and assorted panicky moments spent staring at a blank notebook, preparing for my defense next week.  I've been seriously clinging to my more simple knits lately.

One not so simple knit that I finished up before the aforementioned computer disaster was my Autumn Melody, knit out of Brooks Farm Solo Silk.

I bought this yarn at SAFF with the last of my yarn money.  I really wanted something that looked like fall but was at a loss until I found this.  It's got some unrecognizable numerical name, but the color is absolutely perfect.  It is dominated by orange and yellows, but also has hints of less obvious colors, including purple.

To knit up this yarn I really wanted something with leaves that would showcase the colors and reflect the foliage for which my region is best known.  The Blue Ridge Parkway is a dominate part of the geography back home and tourists come from all over to see our mountains ablaze with color.  I ended up returning to a pattern that I knit at the beginning of the year in another Brooks Farm yarn.  You can see some similarities, but Autumn Melody looks almost nothing like New Year Flame, both of which are variations of Rose Beck's Unique Melody pattern.  This pattern is representative of what Rose Beck has become known in the knitting community, clearly written with so many customizable options that one can choose from a variety of yarns and sizes.  For Autumn Melody I chose to knit something more akin to a stole, four motifs wide and six body repeats long.  It was a fairly quick knit, very addictive, and used all but a tiny scrap of the yarn.

I've already gotten a lot of use out of it as both a shawl and a drapey scarf.  I never seem to want to knit actual scarves, but I forget how much I enjoy wearing this style.  I'll have to look into making some more as a break from the more typical triangular shawl.

Wishing for Autumn

So that was an unexpected time away from blogging.  I don't realize sometimes how much I enjoy communicating with the nicer side of the internet until I have to be gone for a while.  My dad went back into the hospital last week so I had to go home to help out.  He's ok and home now, but it was scary for a while so I needed to concentrate on my family rather than put my angst out in a public form.

I don't know about where you live, but here it has been insanely hot for what feels like forever.  Yesterday was the first day in a few months that I can remember the temperature not reaching the mid to upper 90s.  Of course what can one do in the dead of summer heat than turn to air conditioning and cold weather knitting?  I guess my knitting mojo has decided that it doesn't care what the weather says, it's time for hats and scarves and such.

Two hats out blocking on the porch yesterday.  Sadly it was too dim outside when I got back from work to get any photography in, but hopefully I'll have some assistance in this soon.  In the meantime I am quickly knitting away on another cabled cowl.  It seems my hands were in need of a break from the small needles.

Bonus points for ID-ing the trashy teen girl novel.

While I was home I spent my days with my dad so that other family members could do all the things that needed to be done. (Side note: my mom, sister, and brother all started school in the past week and it has bummed me out a little because it is the first time in my life, like since I was four, that I'm not going back to school.  It's the most bizarre thing ever).  In between walks he slept a lot and so I got a ton of reading and knitting done.  One doctor, upon observing me there at 7am knitting for the third day straight, asked me if I was having a baby because I knit so much.  I was a little offended, but mostly just surprised.  I know other knitters have reported a lot of strange comments on their knitting, but I've never had the stereotypical responses.  I got a lot of them in the hospital though, which is a little surprising because people do so much waiting there.  I can only conclude that in small towns like where I grew up mainstream knitting is still less visible than I like to think.

Just wait till it gets cold.  Then they'll all come to my side of things.