Autumn days

It’s Friday again … time trots on, doesn’t it?  I’m really glad that you enjoyed reading my last post (the TAAT tutorial); thanks for all your comments on the blog and social media.  I’ll look forward to hearing how you get on with knitting them!

Small daughter is delighting in telling me how many weeks it is until Christmas (not enough), and I am blasted with a medley of Christmas hits in the kitchen every morning until she goes to school.  No, I am not currently hanging my stocking on the wall, snow is not falling all round me and I am not driving home for Christmas.  It’s only November!  I am trying not to be too bah humbug about it as she is beyond excited already (oh dear!), but I don’t want my life to be rushed towards the end of the year any faster than it’s managing to do quite successfully on it’s own! 🙂

Instead, I am trying to appreciate the Autumn colours when I’m out with the dog.  I keep admiring how marvellous they are this year, and can’t quite remember if I thought the same thing last year or not – I should really go back and read some of my blog posts!

We’re not seeing much in the way of late Autumn sunshine and the leaves are quite soggy underfoot, especially on this path, but it is lovely to walk through a carpet of them, even if they are a bit of a soggy carpet!

One of the woods that we walk through is full of beech trees and I absolutely love this part of the path.  The tree canopy is so large here that the leaves still crunch, and the dog makes them rustle and scatter as he charges through them.  It’s funny, but he always walks around piles of leaves on the pavement as if he’s not sure what he’s putting his feet on (our last dog, a border collie, loved them!) but he’s absolutely fine when they’re on the ground like this.

More and more of them, in every direction!

You can’t see the branches during the spring and summer months and I love how they have grown into twisted shapes around each other to reach the light best.

I’ve never spotted this den before, either, but I must have walked past it a hundred times or more!  There always seems to be a den of some sorts in this part of the woods, I think it’s great!

It’s very easy, once you leave the woods and the coppery-coloured leaves behind, to think that everything else is just brown – especially when it’s a grey day as it was this morning and there’s no sunshine to brighten everything up.  When you stop look, though, it’s not “just” brown, is it?  Look how many shades there are in these leaves!  I’ve been charging along with my head down this week, and it’s been good for me to smell the air and see the colours today.

Look at all these seed heads too!  I can’t remember what these plants were – Michaelmas Daisies (Aster nova-belgii), I think – but there are seed heads as far as the eye can see now.  They’re going to look very pretty when the frost comes.  We did have a frosty morning early on in the week but now we’re back to the damp weather.

Home again, and the dog has remembered how much he likes to spend the day snoozing on his bed in front of the AGA.  I would like to spend the day snoozing on a bed in front of the AGA!

Instead, I’m making a start on getting the Yarndale Sock Line socks organised and ready for their new homes.  I’ve been leaving it later to send them out over the last couple of years as they seem to be given as Christmas gifts or when the weather gets really bad, so leaving it till around now means they’re arriving at the time they’re really needed.  I’ll keep you updated on where they’re going, and I’ve still got my post all about the Sock Line at Yarndale to write as well.

I’ve been spending the last couple of months working on commission socks which isn’t so exciting when I want to show you what I’m doing, but I’ve finished another pair of socks too, and these ones I can show as these are my husband’s new socks.

The contrast is WYS Sarsaparilla and the main colour is British Skies by Sheepish Fibre Art.  I’ve got enough for another pair which I will make with a different contrast (I’m thinking WYS Bubblegum), although they’ll have wait for a bit as I’ve got new socks on my needles now!

Here’s one of the pairs of commission socks which were published in this month’s issue of Simply Knitting …

but now they’re out in print then I can!  Oh, I do love to see my socks when they’ve been professionally photographed!  I think however you do things like this yourself and however well they turn out, you can still see what the bigger picture looked like in your mind’s eye, whereas here I can just see the socks!

They’re called Diamond Socks and the pattern is a blend of rib and twisted stitches which gives big sections to show off the Winwick Mum Wildflower colours but still adds some texture to the knitting.  Yep, that’s Sarsaparilla again (they’re such good value, these balls of WYS yarn, especially when you use them for contrasts!) which I think works beautifully with Wildflower.

The pattern is printed in issue 192 – you may still be able to get a copy from your local supermarket or newsagents, and you should be able to get a digital copy too if you’re overseas and you’d like to read the magazine.

Finally, sticking with the subject of Winwick Mum yarns, it’s been seven months now since they were released into the wild (seven months!  That’s amazing!) and I’d like to write a blog post about the projects that people have been able to make with it.  You may well have seen this request already if you follow my social media accounts or are a member of my Facebook groups, but if not and you have any photos of projects in Winwick Mum yarn that you’d like me to include in my blog post, please do get in touch!

It’s started raining again and it’s so gloomy now that I’ve got the lights on at 3.45pm!  Small daughter won’t be impressed as she’ll get wet walking home from school so I’m going to love you and leave you now, and go and make her a hot chocolate ready for when she gets in.

Have a wonderful weekend! xx