beebonnet report

Moderne

This season's debutante... Moderne!  This is the latest offering in the Art & Sole sock club.  The patterning was inspired by Zen sand gardens, and the color of this yarn was inspired by tangerines.  The yarn is Sokkusu Original sock from Socktopus.  I love this yarn, it's high twist merino and feels great.  And Alice got this color just perfect.  Yum!

harvest

The weather has been beautiful ever since sock summit and today I got to make the first harvest from the balcony farm

Oh, look at you my pretty!  What a lovely ruby red you are!

yum!  I can't wait to slice these.  I think I'll just eat them with salt and pepper and possibly a little balsamic vinegar.  The cherry tomatoes are a yellow variety, so this color is super ripe.  I already scarfed them down and I wish I had bushels more!  Luckily there are more tomatoes out there waiting to ripen.  The bush variety I have there is called Oregon Spring.  It was bred by OSU to fruit early here in Oregon, and it did fruit pretty early although it took a while to turn red.  However I've heard it's not the most flavorful tomato.  I'll have to try it out and report back.  My other tomato vine is a Tiffen Mennonite which is an heirloom variety that does well in the Pacific Northwest.  I'm hoping it will be delicious but it is definitely a later bloomer/fruiter than the other two.  Unfortunately my sunbeams are so limited in my garden that I can only really farm in a 3 foot space on the balcony, so each plant is precious.  Those that don't do well this year, won't be asked back next year!

And while I was out for a bike ride earlier today, I noticed that it is already blackberry season!  These are some of the most delicious berries I have tasted.  These were from right along the bikepath and there were thousands of them.  Mr. Bonnet and I didn't stand there all day picking though, we were busy riding bicycles!  We'll harvest all those thorny monsters in our own back yard.  They've got to be good for something!

 

And here is a harvest of another sort.  All that secret knitting I've been doing is finally coming to fruition.  This is Judy Becker's new book - Beyond Toes.  It's a lovely book about all the clever things you can do with Judy's Magic Cast On in addition to knitting socks.  The patterns in here are delicious and ingenious.  I have a pattern in here as well - mine is the only traditional toe-up sock pattern - called Spring Fever socks.  I'd sort of forgotten what they look like and now that I see them in the book, I'm falling in love with them all over again.

And as if that weren't enough harvests - here is another book that just came out that has a pattern of mine in it.  This is Knitting Socks from Around the World by Kari Cornell and Voyageur Press.  The patterns in this lovely hardcover are inspired by different knitting traditions around the world, and the list of contributors is kind of like a sock knitter's who's who. 

My contribution to this book is a Bavarian Twisted Stitch sock.  Fun to knit and fun to wear!

Both of those books are out and available for sale now.

And since we're on the theme of harvests today, here is yet another sort of harvest.  These are fleeces that were harvested from some lovely sheepies that I have finally gotten around to washing up.  First I assembled this super duper drying rack that I got at Ikea.

I love this thing!  It was inexpensive, it folds up, it's light weight and look how much fleece it holds! Plus you can easily move it around to take advantage of sunbeams or put it indoors when it's rainy outside.  It never gets rainy here..... ;-)

This fleece is a beautiful brown/grey rambouillet that I won in a raffle at my old spinning guild in Los Angeles.  I think I have a few pounds of it, and it is so soft and crimpy, it's delicious.  I can't wait to try spinning some of this up. 

And this is 1/3 of a small Jacob fleece that my cousin-in-laws gave to me.  They are young farmers in WA and looking to start a sustainable farm.  They are thinking of raising Jacobs, and this is one of their first sheep's fleeces.  I feel honored to have it in my stash.  I have special color tricks planned for this fiber!

It's very satisfying to reap the rewards of your effort!

put a bird on it!

Sock Summit was a whirlwind of fun and I was sad to see it end.  Can't wait for SS13!  I spotted quite a few club socks in the wild, but I only managed to get pictures of these 3 from the Illuminations club.

Claire showed off her lovely Granada in progress...

Justine had a very nice Belle Epoque

And I'm not sure who's feet these are sporting some Alhambras.

 

I also saw several Damselflys and a Charleston at the summit, but I didn't have the presence of mind to take pictures.

After Sock Summit, Cookie A, Anne Hanson and I explored Portland for a day until it was time to take Cookie to the airport.  Cookie and Anne wanted to visit this vintage dress shop in a bus, but unfortunately it was closed.

We had some pastries and champagne at Pix Patisserie, where, for only 25cents you can put a bird on whatever your heart fancies! 

And we spent a little time wandering some cute neighborhoods of Portland shopping for soaps, linens and letterpress cards.

The next day Anne and I meandered down the Oregon coast on the way back to Eugene where we slept and slept and ate and slept.  We deserved it!

Now I am in the throes of the next club shipments.  See you when I surface again!