Falling (back) in love with red

  Autumn is a particularly good season to appreciate red. I used to adore the color red. When I was a student, it was my signature color—I had a favorite red shirt and a terrific red felt hat that I wore a lot.

More recently, I have had a problem with red because of its increased pervasiveness in Madison. On any given day a significant percentage of Madisonians dress in Badger red, the UW's official team color. It's a very specific red (PMS 200) and there are official guidelines on how to use it. On football game days, there can be over 80,000 people in the stadium dressed in red—if the opposing team is Ohio State, which also has red as their color. That's just way too many people to be wearing the same color, especially the identical shade of one color.
   And yet...red is a lovely color that can light up the scene.

 Let's not forget that red comes in many varieties.

I can't stay mad at a color forever, so I just knit some red socks. They remind me of raspberry jam, not just because of the color but also the nubbly texture of the lace when not on the foot.

 I'm not ready to buy a bunch of Badger gear, but I do love my new red socks.

Knitty-gritty: I knit my socks with Cadmium Red Inspire yarn by Blissful Knits and Dyeworks of Portland, Oregon. The socks were knit on size 0/2mm needles in my standard toe up pattern, using a 4 row/6 stitch lace pattern sometimes called Stem Stitch. You can find instructions in

More Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.

A parade that is its own audience

A few years ago we discovered that there is an annual Halloween parade in front of our house. How we lived here for over twenty years before finding out about a annual parade with hundreds people in it is sort of mysterious.

Also mysterious is who organizes the parade and where they go afterwards. Here's what we know: there are a few signs around the neighborhood announcing when it will happen. It has nothing to do with trick or treating. They walk the length of the park we live on and then they go somewhere else. We don't know where.
   There is virtually no gathering of an audience. How can we gather if there is no publicity? I guess that's not the point: it's for the fun of getting dressed up and walking in a big group. Somewhere. Some year I will find out when it is, get in costume, and walk along to see what happens. There are a lot of very small children with parents but there are some unaccompanied adults as well.
   Again this year we happened to see the parade just by accident. I liked the accordianistas that had a Day of the Dead vibe going. (For the most part, the parade is very quiet.)

 Here's a family of bees attended by their bee keeper. I'm not sure why he has maracas.

Playing with colors: Autumn

I've been stitching a series of temari with autumn colors. Here is a temari with some mini pumpkins. The temari is about 3.25"(8 cm) in diameter. I've seen photos of gigantic temari, but I'm not at all ready to do one that is the size of a big pumpkin!

In this series I've been coming to terms with an aversion to tans and browns. They are really quite a nice colors, not bland and boring as I sometimes have thought. I am drawn to tans that have a bit of yellow in them, adding a hint of honey.

On these balls I've learned how to stitch both interlocking spindles like the ball with the blue background and layered or woven spindles like the one on the cinnamon background.

The more I look, the more I realize there are some wild and wonderful color combinations in the autumnal northern woods. I don't know if it will be possible to capture green and red together in a way that is as lovely as on leaves but it is inspiring to think about.

The nitty-gritty: The stitching instructions for these balls can be found in Japanese Temari by Barbara B. Suess. The color choices are mostly my own.

Water watching: pond strolling edition

I love it when I discover something wonderful in an unexpected place. I didn't expect to find a world class Japanese garden in the relatively small city of Rockford, Illinois which has a population of 152,871 according to the 2010 census. Plus Rockford has been going through some tough times in the last few decades. An article in Wikipedia states:

"Starting as early as the 1990s Rockford has had the ignominious honor of being listed at times as one of America's worst cities by the Rand Mcnally corporation and Money magazine, sometimes being ranked one of the top ten worst cities. This may have been due to the lack of jobs and high number of outdated or closed factories."

   So I was surprised and delighted on a visit last week to Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford.

 

Having been there, I'm not surprised that the Journal of Japanese Gardening that has named them the finest Japanese garden in North America. We visited during fall colors and enjoyed seeing the hill behind the garden in glorious bright colors. The garden is in the style of a 13th century pond strolling garden. There's plenty of room to stroll as the gardens cover 14 acres (5.7 hectares).
   The garden features several waterfalls, two large ponds, and a small river. There are plenty of koi in the ponds to add to the water viewing pleasure.

Even some of the gravel reminded us of water.

If you are in the Midwest and a fan of gardens, I highly recommend going to Rockford.
   

Still green

Autumn is suddenly just around the corner. Nights are cooler and the air is crisper. The corn fields are turning brown and all to soon only conifers will be green. We were out in the country the last couple of days; I feel a need to take advantage of the weather while it's nice. We rode our bikes on Short Cut road. It's a quicker way to get from the middle of nowhere to a different middle of nowhere.

We saw a rare green barn. (In Wisconsin they are usually red or white.)

Hiking in the woods, where a few trees are already changing colors, we hunted for wild hickory nuts but the squirrels had already found most of them.

 Summers always seem to go too fast but at least we have good knitting weather to look forward to.