Hurricane Irene Pullover - knitting content

Yes. Real knitting content - with pictures. Because TheQueen does still pick up sticks and string. She just hasn't been very productive, this long, hot, summer of adjustment. Perhaps she is not knitting tricky Victorian green lace, but at least She's still within the same hue. Here I offer you glimpses of a wonderful green yarn - not really electric green, not spring green, though perhaps you could say it's baby leaf green - The label says Lime Green  but it's got sunshine yellow blended in with the green fibers. It's happy and bouncy and vibrant without being loud. The fiber is soft but still has some scrunch to it. I know this sweater will cheer me up when I am sick of my winter clothes; all brown and dark and sad.

In fact - I am imagining it with a Munro plaid tartan skirt - either pleated like a kilt or in something narrower. The Munro plaid is BD's family tartan and I've always wanted to get myself something in the old colors. Yes. there are "new" plaid colors too - pretty much the same, but slightly more vibrant.


As I said in a previous post, I got this yarn at the most darling yarn shop - Dog House Yarns -  in my favorite shopping town - Culpeper, VA. Poor Culpeper took some wicked hits last week with serious earthquake damage - to the point where several downtown buildings will have to be torn down. Weep weep - the Culpeper folk have really worked hard to keep the town vibrant and alive so to lose actual buildings seems so unfair. To have inches of rain dumped on them too seemed doubly wicked.

Dog House Yarns has one of the best selections of sock yarns I've ever seen in a shop. My mouth drooled at the different offerings - and if I didn't know I already had miles of sock yarn already I might have maxed out the Visa card. Instead I was really looking for something to make a go-to sweater. Something plain, but beautiful, substantial, with crisp heft, but not scratchy. I almost succumbed to the Cascade Echo Wool - and I still plan to get some - but I fell for the Shepherd's Wool colors. Both are super reasonably priced - coming in around $5 per 100 yds. These are prices a knitter can indulge with.

Anyway - I am making this sweater a pullover, knit from the top down, with set in sleeves. For the most part I just used the schematics of Kristy McGowan's red dress that I knit last winter from her book Modern Top Down Knitting. The gauge is different - but the proportions are similar. I'll add sleeves and short row bust darts, and of course I'll stop somewhere around my hips. I'm getting a gauge of 6 rows per inch so the rule is I have to knit 6 rows every day till I've knit 60 from the underarm join. Then I'll decide on a hem treatment. I have an idea but I want to see how much yarn is left.


Because you know TheQueen can't do something completely plain. There needs must always be a wee bit of fancy to everything she does and she has such an idea for the fancy bit. I'll let you know about it when get body done. In the mean time - don't you believe it - it is easy being green - when it's such a pretty green.

In the mean time - it's Friday evening of a 3 day weekend. How good is that? Lots of knitting can be done in a 3 day weekend. May your needles speed you ahead.

It's Happy Birthday Month!

I've been so inundated with weather the past week I forgot that a New Month has rolled around - my favorite month. My Happy Birthday Month. Old friends know I like to celebrate all 30 days of September, not just because it's got my birthday in it (the 21st) but also because the worst of the hot weather is over, I can start putting away those summer clothes I've grown so tired of, good tasting apples come back into the stores, and it's the start of the Monday Holiday season. There's Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day ... not always a Monday, but good enough. Plus there are the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays looming and then those add-ons that shorten the work weeks in January and February. I know. Spoiled Rotten - that's what I am. But I love me a 4 day work week.

As for our recent weather adventure - well, we did alright. We lost a passel of old trees.


 BD is out in the woods every day opening up the old paths - at least, the main one that takes you out to the mailbox ... which he also had to repair.

He says some of those paths will never be re-opened. He's spent a lifetime building them and he doesn't think he'll live long enough to put them back. Where limbs aren't blocking the way, huge stump holes have opened up across them. I don't have any photos of the deep woods because I've been sick-hearted enough just looking at the damage you can see out in the fields.

But of all the losses - this was the worst. We were overjoyed on Sunday morning to see the big oak tree still stood. It has two trunks - one which stands straight and tall and a second that leaned way over the lane, making a green tunnel opening to our farm.


Especially when we saw the road just beyond had washed away!







An hour or so later as we had lunch on the back porch we heard a tremendous crash and knew something else had gone down. It was the leaning limb - and it took 3 guys, a chain saw and a front end loader just to move it out of the lane.








It's an enormous change to the landscape around here - and sadder than any of our other losses because we've loved this tree for so many years. Until Sunday it was the biggest tree on the farm with a limb span of about 290 feet. It's a willow oak - some call them pin oaks - and of the trees we lost, most were oaks and most of the oaks were willow oaks.

There was more road damage at the back end of the farm but it didn't take Guys with Tools long to fix up the worst of it all and over time we'll fill in the gaps with more stones, clay and dirt and new trees.

We had a little water damage to the house - nothing we can't fix. The chimney bricks had soaked up so much water they began to weep like some Catholic saint statue and though the whole chimney was soaked in the attic, the seeping never made it all the way to the second story floor. The worst spot was the bathroom ceiling and we were planning on renovating that anyway. Maybe not doing sheet rock in the ceiling but once we have workmen there what's a few square inches of sheet rock. All the timbers in the house are oak so they're far less susceptible to water damage.

What else is going on at TheCastle? We have electricity back and we feel utterly and completely indulged with the luxury of running water, internet connections, DVD players and late night knitting. Yes. There is knitting at TheCastle and I'll be back to share with you both fiber talk and WIP photos as well as paeans of praise for an adorable yarn shop: Dog House Yarns where I discovered (and bought some of) my new favorite yarn Shepherd's Wool.

So - see you soon with photos!