More Eye Candy Friday from Camp (and an IOU)

Flowers of the sea.

The bottom starfish there has a nudibranch buddy.  A Leopard Nudibranch, to be exact.  (Thanks, Astrid, for sleuthing that for me even while I was still on the train coming home!)

And… can someone PLEASE let my work know that working double time to seemingly make up for my vacation days at Sock Camp is playing havoc with my blogging time?  I work tomorrow too, but hopefully later this weekend I can fill you in on the camp goings-on!

Saturday Sky Sandwich (knitting in the middle)

I took a whole bunch of Saturday Sky pictures the Saturday before last; it was just that kind of day, even though busy.  Last Saturday, not so much.  But the two together: a good exploration of color in nature. Sounds like my camp homework!

Last Saturday WAS a beautiful day (though I missed the sunset by being at a Celtic music concert, the Boys of the Lough).

And the lilac buds thought so too.

Look how the different shades of blue give the sky depth.

The weekend before last’s Saturday Skies:

when I got home from work:

and later, when I prepared to leave (late) for the Twin Cities, to go to the Bohus exhibit I told you about, the next day.

The sun was setting as I crossed the bridge across the Mississippi River into Minnesota.

But I had to stop and get out of the car as I drove through the Mississippi River backwaters in the area between Wisconsin and Minnesota; it was so gorgeous.

The ice was leaving the river and the backwaters.

There were so many birds!  Geese, many geese,

but I also saw flocks of seagulls, solitary hawks, an eagle, tiny birds.  And can you see the red-winged blackbird back in his perch on the edge of the marsh?

He’s in the tallest tree.  Here’s another one, below.

However, the night was definitely falling, and I had to hurry on my way

Only to stop one more time at that incredible silhouette of the Minnesota plains farm against the dying sunset, that I showed you last Friday; another, closer, view:

Then darkness fell….

The next day, in addition to the Monkey socks I showed you, and the Gothlet’s gauntlets, I also had with me a new project, my first Baby Surprise Jacket.  (I’m certainly jumping on all sorts of bandwagons now, aren’t I?  How many years behind the times?

Here it is as of last week, posing on the car hood like the Monkeys did.

This is a combination of some mill end Socks That Rock heavyweight — I’m not sure if it’s undyed or if it’s a Spirit colorway that’s so faint, I can’t see a color — and the Twisted Duchess in Rodney that I showed you earlier as a cardigan and frogged.  I’m liking it in this combination.  Sadly, it no longer looks like this:  I had to frog it.  I can even see the mistake in this picture — now that I know what I did.  In this pattern, you increase after 5 garter ridges, on the short ends.  I did it on one end, but not the other.  The far end doesn’t look shorter just because of perspective; it really is shorter!  Unfortunately, because the pattern is mindless knitting after that row until row 44, I didn’t figure out my mistake until row 44.  Dummy me.

Well, that let me change the placement of the color band, anyway; I decided to move it up a little.  And I could have woven in the carried yarn a little better.  So it’s OK.  But it was a fair amount of frogging….I’m just now to the color band again.

And the coworker for whose baby I’m making this went and had her baby early, then, in the meantime!  (Not excessively early, just definitely before her due date.) So I didn’t get it done to give her in the hospital, obviously.  Since it’s going to be probably a 12 month size or so (and he’s a very average little guy), I will slack off my rush on this, I guess.  It’s good meditative knitting.

So, the other knitting-related part for the center of this Blog Sandwich is a follow-up to the Knit-Out also.  The day after the Knit-Out, I got an email saying that I had won a door prize, donated by the Minnesota Knitters’ Guild.  Since I wasn’t local, they were willing to mail it to me (though the American Swedish Institute didn’t actually tell me what it was).  The package came at the end of the week, and it was so cool!

A sturdy knitting bag, with all sorts of cool pockets,

And a great knitting notebook.

Anyway, after leaving the event that I won the above at, though I knew it yet not, I drove back down, this time along the Mississippi and stopped once for a couple more pictures, though it was no longer Saturday and the light was failing:

(the Mississippi at Lake City, where it widens)

Thus ended a wonderful knitting (and photography) weekend!

So: many lovely shades of blue above: but there are so many more; an almost infinite series just in the Saturday Skies I’ve photographed.  Thus I decided to make a mosaic out of all the Saturday Skies I had photographed, since I started doing so in 2007.  I had to winnow it down to 36 photos, though, for the mosaic.  So I eliminated all the photos that had significant non-sky content.  And all the sunsets and sunrises, as this is a blue-gray nature study.

After ruthless pruning, here is my Saturday Sky photomosaic:

1. Lilac-buds-in-the-Saturday-, 2. geese-in-the-Saturday-Sky, 3. snowy-sunset-Saturday-Sky-F, 4. Saturday-Sky-with-small-pla, 5. Saturday-Sky-with-Scandinav, 6. west-wind-and-power-lines, 7. Saturday-Sunset-jan-24, 8. Saturday-Sky-December-20-20, 9. foggy-october-4-morning, 10. field-outside-Viroqua-in-Oc, 11. Saturday-Sky-over-McCormick, 12. Saturday-Sky-Sept-13, 13. Saturday Sky over Noah’s Ark August 30, 14. Saturday Sky August 30 with Spring Forward Socks, 15. Saturday Sky August 30 on a hot August afternoon, 16. Saturday Sky August 16, 17. Saturday Sky over Little Boy Lake August 9, 18. really blue Saturday Sky August 9, 19. hazy Saturday Sky over Lake Monona, 20. oil painting clouds, 21. Saturday Sky with flag and crane, 22. Saturday sky June 21st 2008, 23. 20080415_365, 24. Apple blossoms against a Saturday Sky, 25. Sun halo, 26. saturday sky april 5 2008, 27. Saturday Sky through Frost, 28. snow in the afternoon, 29. saturday sky with tree and crane, 30. Saturday Sky with Crane, 31. saturday sky with maple, 32. Saturday Sky with falling leaves, 33. saturday sky oct 27, 34. Saturday sky for the parade, 35. Saturday Sky November 24, 36. Saturday morning sky with morning star

(Made with kd’s mosaic maker)

I love how, as I said above, the blues and even the grays always have shading.  I think that’s one of the characteristics of color in nature, but especially of color suffused by light, as the sky is.  None of these are an even, flat, smooth blue or gray; there is always a gradation.

Must be why I prefer hand-dyed yarns, even in solids.  Flat seems boring now (I’m spoiled); subtle tone-on-tone adds depth and light and interest. Hmm?

First Green

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Descending rapidly from the sublime to the mundane, this particular gold did not stay, mostly because I ripped its little roots right out, as it was grass invading my flower bed. But let us pass on, shall we?

Here’s a more poetic illustration for the Frost poem, actually, the tulip bulbs starting to come up, which you saw last week:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A week from today; in fact, in one week and one hour (if the train is not excessively late), I will be boarding the Amtrak Empire Builder en route to Seattle and thence to Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sock Camp.

Tina Newton, the dyer-founder of Blue Moon, is teaching a dyeing class this year at Sock Camp.  We don’t really know what exactly is going to happen, other than our ‘homework’ is partly to notice colors around us in nature.  We also are to bring examples of our favorite colors and colors that are not, shall we say, in our comfort zone.

So, Carrie at Irishgirlieknits had the idea of using our blogs as a color notebook.  Expect to see some meanderings in photo and words all week.

Colors in nature are somewhat constrained here right now.  But there are a few early greens in my yard today, the first FULL day of spring!  And it amazes me how different they are when you really look at them.

Like the daffodils with a sidecar weed: the daff leaves and their bloom looking almost bluish-green, but yellow-green at their tips still, and the weed a warm mossy green, though with a slight sheen.

Or the dormant lavender just waking up, a pale purplish-grayish-green.

But when in the sun, the light catches the silver and hides the green.

The palest fuzzy green of the mullein.  (Don’t you want to pet it?  It’s as soft and fuzzy as it looks!)

Green toned down with dark red veins — penstemon.

And lastly, what I think of as a classic ’spring green’ — rhododendron.

Mmmm spring!  At last!

Tomorrow:  Saturday Skies with more colors, and Knitting News.

Sky Eye Candy Friday

Last Saturday’s Sky, on the way to Minneapolis.

Southern Minnesota farm at sunset, not too far from where I live.  The glaciers made it here during the last Ice Age, whereas they didn’t reach to La Crosse.  Hence the Great Plains essentially start here, as opposed to the bluffs and coulees and ridges of my home.  Certainly gives the sunset lots of room.

Venus is up in the sky in its Evening Star persona.

Iced Apples

Not dessert, unfortunately.

Ephemeral Eye(ce) Candy Friday

Here at dawn yesterday as I walked to work.  (Click to embiggen if you like.)

Gone by the 50-degree-F afternoon.

Maybe spring is coming, after all.

Tacoma Eye Candy Friday

Mount Rainier from the air at dawn, upon saying ’so long’ to Madrona and preparing to re-enter reality.

(Click for the big picture, if you like, to see it as I saw it.)

The window seat can be an otherworldly place.  Thanks be for blogging, or I might not have had my camera right there and handy.

Donuts

Gothlet quote of the day:

Donuts: Not just for breakfast any more!

And who can argue with that?

This was breakfast time yesterday as I got to work, not as gray as the day before, over the parking lot:

Late in the afternoon, the high temperature was a record-tying 51.  Fortunately, yesterday’s steady rain stopped.  Rain in February is not a good thing here: the ground’s frozen and it has nowhere to go.  There was some minor flooding, plus now it will be ice-rink-slick in areas.  The good news: most of the mounds of snow are gone.  My Pacific Northwest friends tell me the snow is over there instead!  Strange….

I missed the near-record warmth, working late to get things tidied up so I can leave tomorrow in good conscience.  Here’s the sunset over the parking lot on the OTHER side of the building I work in.

And I left in the full dark, a few hours later. Sigh.   Gotta pay for your fun — on both ends — I think.

Maybe I’ll go have a donut.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

This is the Night Sky that greeted me on my way home late-ish from work last night.

Venus is at the top left, and the sliver of the new moon/waxing crescent between the tree and our neighbor’s house.

So, no, there is no real star in the above picture!  But wait, and you’ll find out the real reason for the post title.

I was only home briefly, as we were on our way to see Bobby McFerrin at our local fine arts college.  I had gotten tickets for the whole family, and one extra so that the Gothlet could bring a friend.

What an amazing concert and incredible performer.  Not just that voice (with its four-octave range) and the vocal innovations of his one-person a cappella arrangements, but the energy and the creativity that overflowed the stage, and the entire 1000-seat sold-out theater.

At one point, he asked for audience members to come down and sing with him — to sing a song of their choice and then he would sing along in accompaniment and counterpoint.  I nudged the RockStar (who really does have a voice that’s a gift).  No one came down right away (we’re a bunch of diffident German/Scandinavians, and the college students, who are less shy, were all in the upper balcony).  So my (13-year-old!) RockStar got up and walked to the stage first; hopped up and sat easily on the edge of the stage with Bobby McFerrin in front of a thousand people with a cordless mic in her hand.  She sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” a cappella (of course) with perfect pitch and perfect poise.  (It was the first thing that came to her head that she knew he’d know, and which I think was inspired: she had such a sweet, pure tone; started off singing it ’straight’, and on the last repetition, played with the melody slightly; and because it was so familiar, he really had fun with playing with his counterpoint second part.)  Then she got a hug.

WOW.

Later on, he asked for a small choir up on stage, and the Gothlet, not to be outdone, went up there with her friend (they have sung together in a city youth choir).  Also very cool, though they kind of got lost among the big people visually, but what they sang with each other and with Bobby was awesome (we got to sing with them too, at the end).

Wish I could have recorded these moments, but do you know what?  When I videotape or photograph something, I don’t see it quite the same way since I’m paying attention to framing the picture etc.  (I did have my camera with me, even.  But resisted the temptation — 1) not allowed, 2) see above, and 3) takes bad video!  Just wish you could have seen it too so you could know this wasn’t just a fond mother bragging.) In the end, perhaps this was better, since I was purely in the moment — 100%. 

Twinkle, twinkle, little — RockStar.

(I know, I know, not so little any more.)

Shine on!

2008 Sunrise Eye Candy Friday

Yesterday, I showed you my first sunset of 2009. Today, a look back to a sunrise from earlier this week, but a whole year away.

Here’s to many more lovely sunrises!