Beautiful November

We've had a warm fall this year. I came here in November 2001, and it was a similar year -- it was dry and relatively warm. I remember standing on my porch the day the moving van arrived, and just a dusting of snow was falling while the movers brought my furniture into the house. This fall is an echo of 7 years ago. We had 3 years of drought after that, then gradually more rain, until this year was wet enough to fill the empty sloughs and make the fields and forests lush again. The last four years have had blisteringly cold days in the winter (down to minus 40, sometimes with a windchill to minus 76). If this winter is like the one 7 years ago, it will be mild and dry, and usher in a dry summer. We shall see. This photo is from our walk on Sunday, when it was a beautiful 15 degrees C. That's one of the pretty llama girls reflected in the muskrat pond.

And this little salamander was swimming around the pond by the house.

Last weekend I went to visit my friend Penny who is a florist. She gave me this fantastic flower arrangement. It contains parrot tulips, birch bark, peppers, foliage from the garden, and some green plants.

Penny has a very artistic eye and can make a beautiful arrangement from "just things I find"-- she had a gorgeous fall group in her house that included dried leaves from her yard, and some fallen apples.

I liked this Vermeer lighting, but here is another picture of the same arrangement with the flash so you can see the vibrant colors.

On the knitting front, I've been piling up sock presents for the nephews. These are all in Knitpicks washable Felici.

And I recently completed this circular sweater. It's in Araucania Magallanes in a green variegation that is all the colours of a spruce forest in the mountains. The design is ingenious, it's a circle with the sleeves at 10 and 2 o'clock. You can wear it with the "noon" position at the top for a shorter collar and longer back (as in this picture), or with the "6" position at the top, for a deep collar and extra warmth on the back.

The stitch pattern is in bands of twisted stitch with a dark brown contrast, and in garter stitch. The edging is done in Suri alpaca, which is as soft as cashmere.

The pattern is from Vogue Knitting, Anniversary 2007 issue, though it's also in 2005. It's by Annie Modesitt.

And here's the last one I finished. It took me about a week, and I did it freestyle without a pattern. It's in Suri Dream by Knitpicks, color is Aqua. It weighs only 200 grams, and is super warm, soft and light. It's a self-striping yarn, and I like how the colors pooled along the neckline and on the sleeves. I only used 4 x 50 gm balls of yarn for this, it has excellent yardage. I think I used needles size 6 mm.