It’s Furious Balancing

Orange really isn’t one of my favorite colors.  I’m drawn to almost all the shades of blue there are,¹ and I’m growing more fond of burgundy and darker greens, but orange just hasn’t done it for me.  I think it’s because if I wear anything with yellow undertones, I look like I have a bad case of jaundice.

This is all a preamble to the many photographs I’ve been taking in the past few days. First up, chrysanthemums:

I’ve been saying every fall for the past six or seven years that I want to put mums in my garden, but I’d never gotten around to it.  One day last week, I got a wild hair to go to Downtown Home and Garden during my lunch hour — it was only a block away, for Pete’s sake — and buy a plant.  The orange-copper flowers are my favorite color for mums.  This one seems to start out with a fresh yellow blossom which changes over time to a darker shade of orange.  Of course, I threw out the plant identification tag when He Who Does Manual Labor Since He Wife is Made of Spun Glass  helped me plant these. ²

Next, some knitting WIP’s.

This is the scarf I’m making for my friend, Jen.  I started it in early August as part of my “Help Keep Laiane Relatively Sane During the Summer” program.  Well, I’ve since determined that winter is coming and I need to wrap this one up.  It’s almost 40 inches long now, and I want it to measure 60 inches before blocking.  I’ve once again entered the Knitting Black Hole where I knit and knit and knit and knit for an hour and it measures the same as it did before I picked it up.  The pattern is the Chicabean Scarf from Kelly Green Rogue and the yarn is Paton’s Classic Wool Merino in Paprika (Color 238).

That is the back of my second More Stripes vest by Amy King, and I’m actually following the pattern as written this time around.  I did my first version in only one color of Noro Kureyon, but this is done with two dramatically different colorways. ³  I know I couldn’t get away with using the bright orange-pink Noro on its own, but I think that the neutral colors help tone it down.  I’ve decided that I’m addicted to steeking.  I get some weird adrenaline rush, I think.  I’m going to do a crocheted steek on this vest so I can truthfully say I did it all on my own. ⁴

The last WIP is made with the Alchemy Silk Purse I got at the Lansing Shop Hop.  Like I said, orange usually doesn’t appeal to me, but this yarn yelled at me from across the room.  I think it’s the autumnal colors.  Click for big.

Eventually, this will metamorphsize into a Dragonscale Scarf to go with my leather jacket.  The key word here is eventually.  It might be next autumn.  Working with 100% silk takes patience; I have to slow down my knitting speed⁵ to avoid splitting the yarn.  It will be drop dead gorgeous when I’m done, though.

Finally, a gratuitous kitten picture.

Chrissy needs to wear a bright orange collar when we go out in the backyard to nibble grass.  Well, he nibbles grass; I just supervise.  If he doesn’t have his collar on, I can’t find him if he dives into the bushes.

Don’t let the cuteness fool you.  This cat ate a ton of bricks for breakfast; he is very dense and I swear he weighs 20 pounds.  One of his nicknames in our household is “Kissy Lardbutt.”

Welcome to autumn, cats and kittens.  Happy (Belated) Mabon.⁶

* * * * *

1. Except pastels.  I hate pastels. [↩]
2. If you click the picture, it should take you to the Flickr page so you can  view it in larger sizes, like Extra Huge. [↩]
3. For those of you who are curious, the pink-orange Noro is Color 102 and the brown-taupe-neutral is color 149. [↩]
4. The Husband helped with a sewn steek the first time. [↩]
5. Which isn’t that fast to begin with. [↩]
6. I discovered that the time from the equinox until October 15th is known as Winter Finding in the Teutonic tradition.  I like the sound of that. [↩]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.