nothing rhymes with cochineal

Before I owned digital cameras and blogged about knitting and other things,  I documented finished projects in sketch books. Filled with photos, drawings, observations, notes on patterns, bits of yarn and labels, notes of appreciation ~ I liked the way the spiral books eventually bulged and felt "lived-in". When I began blogging the sketchbooks were usurped, no longer compelling.  Recently, searching for notes on Italian yarn shops for a piece I'm writing, I found four volumes dating back to 1998. Looking through them I remember many things ~ because every sock, hat, scarf and sweater has a story.

Italian yarn shops....

the summer I made nothing but market bags and gave them away....

A nostalgia trip through the past with surprises, things forgotten, paths into other memories having nothing to do with fiber; losses (blankets made with others for friends going through chemo), gains (baby sweaters and hats ~ including the ones I made for Julia Roberts' twin babies). Simple compilations. These books weren't journals but they reveal many opinionated observations evoked by subject matter and myriad dull entries or pattern notes. How could I forget those days a decade ago spent at a country house deep in snowy winter woods with six writer friends? The woodstove blazed, good things bubbled on the stove, a couple of us knitted, and we took long walks through deep snow (they had to persuade me to do that). I still have the pine cone Susan gave me on one of those walks because she sensed I wasn't pleased to be wandering in the pathless woods. She said it would protect me ~ I still have it on my desk. It seems to have worked.

We were authors, musicians, jewelry designers, poets. We wrote and cooked together and one morning everyone chose a scarf (and hat) for herself from the box of handknits I'd brought and we wore them over our PJs and sweaters for the rest of the weekend.

I even tried my hand one summer day at kettle dying outside with natural indigo, cochinal, henna, logwood (as noted). A group of women wearing sunglasses and straw hats gathered at a rural home and got to work. But as I write now, it's snowing, sleeting, and a fierce wind is blowing horizontally. The dog is at my feet (he hates wind) and my tea is cooling. It's a good life and I found this (with no note as to author):

Be weird. Be random.
Be who you are.
Because you never know
who would love the
Person you hide.