It's no secret that Autumn is my favorite time of year.  The humidity of the dog days of summer have all but disappeared, the biting bugs have stopped biting and the days are almost always warm and sunny with the nights turning cool and crisp….so wonderful!  I wait all year long for the short 2 months that we get to enjoy the amazing display of color that Mother Nature blesses us with up here in the North Country.

Ken and I took a ride last Sunday around Lake Winnepesaukee winding through the small towns of Moultonborough, Melvin Village and Tuftonboro to take in the beautiful scenery.  I love the reflection of the trees in the water here reminding boat owners that it's almost time to dock the boats for the winter.

As a child I used to love walking through the piles of leaves that accumulated as they fall off the trees.  Even still when I hear those leaves crunch under my feet and smell the leaves as they are getting ready to crumble, I remember those days of raking huge piles of leaves to jump in with my friends.  Smells of warm apple crisp and hot spiced cider…..and Halloween!  So many wonderful things to love about Autumn in New England.

Many of the colors that I create in the dye-pot are inspired from the colors that surround me come this time of year.  The deep reds that are never a true red, but a combination of reds, greens or reds and orange or purply reds tinged with brown.  Truly beautiful colors, don't you think?

…and the colors on my knitting needles are some of the colors that Autumn inspires.

What are some of your favorite Autumn memories?

"Inspiration"

"Cluck"

Pattern:  Bluebelle
Yarn:  Woolen Rabbit Sporty Kashmir
Colorway:  Corn Husk
Needles:  US 5 & US 6
(it's a little big on Hannah as it was knit for me)

Believe it or not I have actually been knitting this year.  This was the second sweater I have finished and another one only needs the neck edging to be knit on.  That makes 3 sweaters in one year which is pretty darn good for this very slow knitting Woolen Rabbit.  The 4th and 5th sweaters have already been swatched for and I am anxious to get started on them once I finish the socks that I promised to Courtney.

Cecily's pattern was a pure delight to knit.  The instructions were very good and as you know I am a huge fan of simple stockinette stitching.  It's always so soothing and moves along quickly.  Knit in Sporty Kashmir, I was very pleased with how this fabric turned out.  Incredibly soft but not so soft that the garment lost it's structure.  The best part of this pattern for me was the knit in short row sleeve caps and then knitting the sleeve down.  As a rule of thumb, I do not enjoy w&t short rows and but using them to knit in a sleeve cap instead of sewing it in….LOVE it!  So much neater than my less than perfect seaming.

I know that this is a sweater that I will wear alot and isnt this the very best reward for knitting!  Right?

A while back Amy Herzog invited me to vend at a knitting retreat she was hosting.  The retreat was called make.wear.love and was held in beautiful Sebasco Maine.  What a treat it was to spend time in this lovely place!  I had never been to the beaches of northern Maine and truly this spot was just breath taking.

Amy's retreat was an in depth class on her book Fit 2 Flatter, and also included classes with Clara Parkes on different yarns and the fabric they produce and Mary Jane Mucklestone on Color Theory.  As a vendor I was invited to attend the classes, and I was thrilled.  I learned SO much about sweater construction and how to get a better fit with a few changes within the pattern.  (the math part though….ey yi yi…not my strongest subject)

One of the fun things for me as a vendor was sitting back and just watching the excitement as the women tried the various sweaters from Amy's book.  Finding sweaters that really fit them well…sweaters that they couldn't imagine wearing, looking great on them.  So much fun!!
There were 2 other vendors at the retreat, Indigodragonfly and String Theory.  We all gave Amy a sweater's worth of yarn that she used to make 3 different sweaters for the retreat and this was the sweater that she knit with my Frolic yarn.  I love it enough that as soon as I finish Courtney's socks, this will go on my needles.

Amy and her husband have also been working on a software program called CustomFit which will allow you to plug in your carefully measured measurements and a knitted swatch for a sweater that is custom fit just for you.  VERY exciting!  The beta test knitters have been working with the software designers over the past year and on this weekend, a very excited Amy opened up the software to the retreat members, and over the week has slowly been opening it up more.

I left the retreat full of new ideas and new tools for knitting sweaters.  Once home I immediately cast on and knit 2 swatches.  I can't wait to get started!!

Many years ago I was fortunate to meet and become good friends with pattern designer, Anne Podlesak.  We actually got to know each other through our mutual love of  angora rabbits.  Anne came to visit here one day and went home with one of my favorite little fuzzy ones and a friendship was formed.  It was Anne who introduced me to the wide world of blogging all those years ago and once I discovered blogging, I was hooked!  Many of my dearest and closest friends today are those who I have come to know through blogging.

Over the years Anne and I have worked on a number of projects together.  Anne is amazingly talented both as a designer and a dyer, so when she emailed me about an ebook that she was working on and I looked at her inspiration pinterst board, I was intriqued with what she was imagining for this sweater.  I sent a bundle of my Sporty yarn to her in the Midas Touch colorway and then didn't think much about it for a spell, until I got an early glimse of Rapunzel…I swooned…. I LOVE it!!

I am an Irish girl, so when I see those celtic cables I always smile.  This sweater is so beautiful.  It also makes me smile when I see my yarn displayed in such a beautiful work of art.  Thank you Anne!

Rapunzel is part of Anne's ebook Legendary Knits.  Do yourself a favor and go take a peek.  So many lovely patterns!

White Island Lighthouse on the Isles of Shoal.

Sunday morning was a bright, brisk morning as Ken and I set out on our mission….to visit with my whale friends.  Every year for my birthday we try to get out on this adventure.  Usually we head out for a long weekend in Plymouth, Ma, but this year I had a show to work on Saturday, so we stayed a bit closer to home. 

Heading out for Rye Harbor, we gave ourselves 2 hours to get there which should have been plenty of time, but as we headed for the beach road realizing we had only 15 minutes before the ship headed out, it was a race!  Poor Ken was sighing and groaning.  I knew how much he wanted to give this to me for my birthday, which made me feel so bad.  We rounded the corner into the harbor with barely a minute to spare!

…and just like that we were off!  A much smaller boat than we were accustomed too made for even more fun as we were very close to the water.  The waters were fairly calm and the sun was brightly twinkling off the waters.

After seeing some small minke whales and harbor porpoises we headed out for deeper waters.  Soon enough we came upon two logging humpback whales.  Whale rest is referred to as logging.  Whales don't sleep like people do in regular rest periods as they need to "think" to breathe, so a portion of their brain has to be awake enough to remind them to breath. 

Every now and then, one would take a semi deep dive…….

…and the other would follow suit.  They gave us a long show before we headed off to even deeper waters for more whales.  Before we left however I was able to catch this picture of the florescent green light that appears when a portion of a whale is right under the surface.  It's the barnacles that live on the whales.

You can see a glimpse of this under the whales tale as it was just lifting out of the water.

And again here when this whales flipper was suspended right beneath the surface of the water as she was resting.  (both of these humpbacks were female). 

There were times when we were as close as 6 feet away from these majestic animals and as you can imagine it was just breath taking. We could almost reach out and touch them.

We stayed with them as I said for a while but then the captain was told there were some fin whales further out, so we set out again.  Fin whales are HUGE!!  Not only are they huge, they are FAST!  So fast that I wasn't able to get a clear enough picture as we followed 2 of them.  One a suspected male, named Fjord was chasing a female named Comet.  It appeared that Comet did not want to be caught because the ground she was covering at the speed she was moving at was amazing.  It felt more like a whale chase than a whale watch.

We stayed with them for a good amount of time although not nearly as close as we were to the humpbacks because of their massive size and the huge waves that they were producing as they move that quickly through the waters.

As the sun was getting lower in the sky, we headed back to the harbor in the chilly Autumn air relishing every single moment of the wonder that we were blessed to witness on this beautiful day….and of course an ocean trip would not be complete without one of my favorite little friends. 

If you get a chance to spend an afternoon with whales….DO IT!

Just a short post to say hi!  I am busy winding lots of yarn for the Squam Art Fair tomorrow night.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello. Doors open at 7:30 pm.  I would love to see you!

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to just disappear like that.  August was a crazy month here at la casa woolenrabbit.  With the 2 girls headed off to college, it meant all of us working extra to help finance it.  The carrot in front of our nose was our vacation on Cape Cod.  We stay in a town called Mashpee where the sunsets are unmatched and we weren't disappointed this year either, so beautiful! 

Our vacation was filled with wonderful things that made all of our hard work worth it.  We were joined by our good friends Carole and Dale, which always makes for a fun time when we get together on the beach or for dinner.  We took one day to all go on a seal watch off of Chatham.  I have never seen SO many seals in one spot.  It was definitely a highlight of our week for the girls, as seen here in Hannah's vineo.

Another first for us (Ken and I) was kayaking.

I have frequently said to Ken that I thought we should get a couple of
kayaks as a way to get out on the water and just enjoy nature. Ashley
has been raving about it for years, so when the owner of our rental
house offered us the use of his kayaks, we were thrilled. I really
really enjoyed it, enough so that I am hoping to add a few here this
fall or next spring.

There have been many things going on here that I didn't get to post about….lots of knitting, sewing and gardening, some highs and lows with the girls leaving for college, but I will leave some of that for another day, another post. 🙂

As the summer is starting to wane, I thought I would leave you with one of my favorite pictures from our summer…….

Have a wonderful weekend!!