Friday, October 26, 2007

As the smoke clears...

We're still here; a little sooty but safe. The 2003 Cedar fire cleared the brush so there was little fuel to lead the Witch Creek fire toward my area of town. Small favors!

Once we got home Monday evening we sat in our closed up house for two days watching the news day and night. I knit constantly which helped me keep my sanity; it's so hard to watch reports of fire in neighborhoods where I have friends. (So far I haven't heard of anyone I know losing their home - still keep those prays and Red Cross donations coming - there are so many thousands that did lose everything.)

For close to a year I've been hearing about the Chevron Scarf Kal and seeing the fabulous pictures of the scarves that came out of it. The pattern is in Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. It's a simple feather and fan pattern but the trick of it is the combination of two colors of fingeringweight yarn. The original pattern used Koigu KPPPM but the combination I saw over and over on the Kal was Socks That Rock medium weight in colorways Farmhouse and Watermelon-Tourmaline. While watching the fire reports I looked around for something simple and soothing to knit and decided this was the project I needed right now.
Socks that Rock Chevron Scarf
(see how orange the light is - that's the smoke in the air. It looks like sunset all day here.)

Prior to the fire we were on Vacation in Flagstaff - love that town. My favorite place to eat there is Martanne's on San Francisco St. (No picture just wanted to plug the restaurant.) My car knitting was a simple Reader's Wrap; lots of stockinette with a double seed stitch border.
Reader's Wrap
I'm using Kathmandu Aran in Color 124, a tweedy burgundy, which is 85% Merino, 10% Silk and 5% Cashmere. That sounds soft doesn't it? I knit English style and as this yarn draws across my right index finger it was scratching the skin below my cuticule. Karen at the yarn shop suggested self-sticking gauze; it worked very well. I'd wrap my finger and could knit an hour before the yarn started cutting through the gauze and wouldn't pull easily across the top of my finger. It worked well as a car knitting project.

As for the vacation: We found Fall in full glory.
Snow Bowl Trees
This is the road up to the Snow Bowl. The men were up checking the gondola towers - skiing can't be too far off.

We saw this flat-bottomed cloud formation that we've never seen before. It was the only cloud in the sky at the time.
Flat bottom cloud
Anyone know clouds? What makes it so flat on the bottom?

We drove to the Grand Canyon east of the Village. Much better views without the crowds and tour buses but a long way between bathrooms so plan ahead. Here's Annie on Vacation enjoying the view.
Annie at Grand Canyon
She took one look and then wanted back in the car - it was cold and windy.

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