saunter.

I knit my first garment, a sleeveless sweater with a tie at the waist and a large collar. It took me 2 weeks to complete and I hardly knit anything else while I worked on it. It’s perfect except the mattress stitch I used to seam the tie part onto the bottom. It’s a little tight, so I’ll have to redo it, but I think I’ll wait until it’s actually cool enough out for me to wear the sweater.

On another note, my hair is getting awfully long. I’m getting it cut sometime this week.

Now that I’m obsessed with knitting, I always have a project with me and often take it out to knit a few rows while I’m drinking a coffee, waiting for Jesse to leave work, volunteering at the National Park Visitor Center, or the like. People walk up to me or look over my shoulder to see what I’m working on and I get compliments here and there. When they discover I’ve only been knitting for a few months, I often get one of the two following questions: 1. Have you ever felted? (I guess it’s all the rave right now.) 2. Have you ever made socks?

My answers are as follows: I am currently knitting a tote bag which I will felt, but it’s one of those projects I only work on when I don’t have to count stitches or concentrate on a pattern. As for the other question, my answer is ‘no’, and I figured it would probably always be ‘no’ because I have such a disdain for socks.

I was one of those kids who grew up running around barefoot most of the time and lived in Florida for over 10 years where flip flops are the norm. I even went to my prom in a big flouncy $300 dress and a pair of matching flip flops on my feet. My toes just really like to wiggle and to feel things like grass and sand and to be able to breathe and be free. Socks are generally ugly and they itch and make my ankles hot and leave wooly bits between my toes. Don’t get me wrong; I’ll wear socks when necessary, but with a degree of reluctance. I understand they’re useful for keeping blisters away when hiking and for keeping my shoes from getting smelly.

So, I reiterate, I would probably not ever knit myself a pair of socks.

Well….this was how I felt until I saw these magnificent foot gloves.

They are what I imagine a mermaid’s feet would look like if she didn’t have fins instead. The pattern that these socks were based on is in the Interweave Knits book Favorite Socks and when I flipped through it at knit night this week, I discovered there were many other patterns for beautiful socks.

I could grow to like socks….if they could all make me look like I have mermaid feet.

When I skip breakfast at home in the mornings, I usually stroll down to the Green Bean for a cup of coffee and an asiago cheese bagel. This morning I chose a rather misshapen, lumpy scone riddled with blueberries instead.

There’s something about pairing the crumbly, dry and subtly sweet with the warm, black, boldness of a large dark roast drip coffee.

I’ve been trying to walk 5 miles in the mornings before going to work and yesterday I decided to take it easy and just carry my camera with me instead of focusing on the mileage. I have noticed some beautiful flowers during my walks and wanted to make sure I got some photographs before it was too late. The flowers in New England are really peculiar compared to Florida and seem to have a shorter bloom cycle. I also needed a good excuse to take out the 100mm f/2.8 macro I bought and have used….never. Here are my favorites.

I have no idea the name of this flower. I’ve tried using the internet to identify it, but that’s been no help. The flowers are really tiny, a little bigger than my thumb.

The next few are irises. They really smell like purple.

I’m not sure about this flower also. It grows on a vine and hangs in a cluster, sort of like Wisteria, but different flowers.

These are certainly the most interesting from this group. I’m told they are called Bleeding Hearts and that there are only pink and white varieties. They look less like hearts to me and more like hanging chickens. This is definitely the end of the season for these flowers so I wasn’t able to get any really great shots of them, but there’s always next year. They’re just hard to spot because the flowers are not very large.

If any of you can identify that first flower, I’d appreciate it. I’m getting excited as the weeks get closer to my canoe trip in New Hampshire because we’re trying to catch some alpine flowers in bloom. I also learned of a tucked-away field of hundreds of rare pink-and-white Lady’s Slippers.