Coast to Coast

The Coast to Coast race is today. No I'm not in it (even the thought of doing it makes me perspire with fear).
Maybe one day, theoretically, I would. I love the idea of slogging my way from one side of the country to the other via my own power. I should have done it 20 years ago, when I was a machine (shakes head with disbelief), It's almost three hundred kilometres or so, between here and Kumara Beach (the runners leave from what we call Spirula beach [Spirula's being a shell we always find washed up there]). It takes over three hours in the car, and I complain about the cold somewhere around Arthurs Pass. But it's beautiful country. There are Kea's, and crags, lakes, and dry, arid desolation. And the delicious colours! - truly a yarn-dyer's inspiration. I love it!
I'm in awe of what these sports people are doing today. They left before I was even awake this morning, and sometime after lunch the first athlete will pound his or her way into New Brighton. What a fantastic feeling that must be!!

This is the athletes route from the West coast to the East coast.

Image from: http://www.coasttocoast.co.nz/the-race/race-profile/ (Speights Coast to Coast)

I could do the bike segment - I'd love the bike segment. And would it really be so bad to just stop somewhere around Mt White, and just take up residence with the Kea's, forever.

Like this Kea, but free ...

PS, summer holidays are over. Knitting is recommencing. More to come ...

For Eleanor

... and our other Northern Hemisphere comrades - some of our summer warmth for your soul!

Love the determination of this guy - if you've ever biked on sand you'd know it's hard work, and he did it with a fishing rod!

Unfortunately I missed a horse and sulky riding by half an hour later because I was too busy knitting to notice until it had passed. I resolved to catch it on the return journey but was over the other side of the dunes photographing the hidden destruction a recent scrub fire had wrought on the regenerating dunes.

I smelt this fire when it was burning, one hot evening in town - luckily it was only a relatively small patch. Scrub fires seem to spring up from no-where when it reaches 29 C and Nor'West. I could see bits of plastic / glass bottles amongst the scorched earth - possibly the source of the ignition.

But it has been a fantastic summer so far!

Before and After

I like to dye variegated coloured fleeces for hand spinning (it's actually much easier to dye after spinning, which is what I did here). The natural variegation in the fleece (including the weathered tips) absorbs the dye differently, with the lighter colours in the fleece becoming much brighter than the darks, resulting in an interestingly variegated yarn with an often subtle hue - as if the fibre were stained rather than dyed. Naturally coloured fleeces dyed this way suggest what sheep might look like if they came in colours other than various shades of white, grey, brown and black.

This particular grey variegated Romney fleece turned out to be more than a little blah after washing and spinning. Below she holds approx 968 metres of spun Romney for her next winter jersey. I intended dying it anyway, but given how little variegation there was in the resulting spun yarn I may as well have got it machine washed and carded instead of doing it all myself.

Before

And after

I was very surprised at how difficult it was to get this fibre to uptake dye. The commercial yarn I used to tie the skeins dyed very well and are absolutely saturated with colour, and is no doubt superwash treated, which always enables dye penetration. Still, I cooked this stuff for almost two hours and the resulting colour is more of a stain than a deeply saturated dye colour - which is quite nice nonetheless, like a naturally blue sheep might look, wandering about the hills.

The dyed colour is hard to capture, somewhere between these two blues - a light charcoal-navy, with a slight variegation in colour as the lighter shades in the fleece dyed a brighter shade of blue. At least it will be robust and snuggly warm ... and a unique colour. I'm thinking Blank Canvas, and a bit of FairIsle, for interest.

Finally, some summertime warmth for the frozen Northerners out there. Yesterday's lunchtime view from the Crater Rim of Banks Peninsula. Having a blast on Instagram (which I might admit suits me better than blogging)

Summer!

Summer finally arrived, and dare I say eclipsed Christmas with it's warmth and lush growth. It's not that I don't like Christmas, but to me there's nothing nicer than wondering around the garden and countryside with it's green abundance and summer bounty. Autumn is wonderful too, and so is winter. I really like spring as well - it's a great pity I can't make a living planting and tending trees.

I finished my Leaves of Grass shawl unexpectedly early. I originally cast this on so that I would always have back-up knitting for when other projects and designs were finished. I anticipated that it would take at least a year to finish and I wouldn't have to cast on another sock as back-up-back-up knitting for many months. Alas, knitting Leaves of Grass was so soothing and a great knit and natter project that I finished it in three months. It was pretty straightforward to knit, and I enjoyed being able to memorise a chart row and simply knit it endlessly until the end of each long round without having to think of shaping, gauge or whether it would fit. It was so nice knitting someone else's pattern! Unfortunately now I have no back up knitting and no desire to cast on another stupid sock!

I dyed this wool on the kitchen table. It is 100% 4 ply/fingering merino with quite a tight twist on it. Hopefully it will be rugged enough to weather being dragged across floors and lawns

 

Yes, a greyer skein snuck in there at the beginning of the second to last chart. And I don't seem to care a bit.

Sentinel

Sometimes it takes weeks (and weeks) to get decent photos of a shawl.

But with temperatures reaching 30 degrees C this past Saturday we found our way to a favourite and little known bay on Banks Peninsula, just down from the Summit road.

Where the grass is long, the rocks are volcanic, and the water is virtually wave-less. There were even cicadas singing in the gorse.

What I love most about Banks Peninsula is that it's just a short trip through the Lyttleton tunnel, or a few minutes from town over the summit road and you instantly feel like you're out of the city and on holiday.
It just feels different.

Poppy Seed

Ashfords Merino/silk sliver

The idea was to create a simple stocking stitch shawl that highlighted the beauty of handspun fibre, with just a bit of a lace edge.

It may be a little more lace than I initially wanted, so will try another version in this. At least that is the plan, but it may be too stripy

above yarn was from this:

Equinoctial Gales

Blocking a shawl in a howling Nor' Wester.

It's not just the power of the wind, but the dryness of it - sucking the moisture out of it before I've even finished pinning! I'm guessing it's dryness that equates to a well stretched-blocked shawl, and not length of time it stays pinned out.

Not quite enough rocks, pot plants, mops, or cast iron frying pans

Oh November.