Jude Hsiang

🩷

Thank you from Maine

Thank you! Because my friend left everything up to me--she only some blues--it took a lot of trial-and-error.

Central Maine.
Outside: Mud Season has arrived.
Inside: The sweater I knit for my friend is slowly drying. Buttons will be added tomorrow, delivery on Tuesday.

Rereading this, my favorite novel, at the moment.
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Without a diversity of opinion, the discovery of truth is impossible,"
― Andrea Wulf
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

#showmeyourknits Week 84 is sweaters. One of my most frequently worn. Knit in 2020 with 5 shades of vintage Shetland yarn, using Meg Swansen's Fair Isle Cardigan for basic structure (I've used the pattern several times) & Elizabeth Zimmermanns' Three & One Sweater for the colorwork. I-cord trim.

Don't fret, mud season will be here soon.

About 70 years ago, my dad painted this picture of me at Portland Headlight based on a photo he'd taken. He was never satisfied with the water, by the sky is quite good.

Thank you! Onion skins have quite a bit of tannin and the results here are especially deep because I used a fairly strong WOF (concentration) and let scarf "cook" until it had absorbed the dye well. I always let the fiber cool overnight in the dyebath, then hang to dry for a day before rinsing.

#showmeyourknits It's LACE week. Here is my Advent Scarf (2012)--pattern by Kristin Benecken--in progress and finished. 1248 yards of Valley Yarns BFL fingering weight, natural color, 425 beads, then dyed with onion skins. Finished size is 16" x 92"--pretty long but I love wearing it.

That's why K$H is in the back row.

8:20 AM. Where's my snow?
South China, ME.

Agreed. The old postcards depicting a Maine potato on a rail car were a shocking pre-AI deception.
The potatoes in my garden come 3 to a Tonka dump truck. Tasty!

They also prefer to eating snow to the water I lug for them.
They also enjoy drinking from mud puddles.

Mainer here. Our potato postcards are an old favorite, too.

Excellent! I've bought a pattern...someday...

We are expecting another round of snow, and the garden fences are semi vertical.
Our ducks aren't in a row. They don't worry about the weather, nor do we.

Thank you. It was a challenge--lots of fussy knitting and sewing.

#showmeyourknits Week 82 is animals. Here's a mantis I knit for a colleague. The pattern, Praying Mantis is by the remarkable Hansi Singh.

This Mainer approves your action.

Making progress on the sweater I'm knitting for a friend. Someday hers--on lumpy mess on the right--will a real sweater like one of my old ones on the left.

My lack of superstition may be attributed to the fact that my father and his brother were each born on a Friday the 13th.

#showmeyourknits Week 81, reds & pinks
Advent Calendar Scarf 2013 by Kristen Benecken in Valley Yarns BFL Fingering in natural, then dyed with cochineal.
Alma's Scarf by Mareike Sattler in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool's deep pink.
Wool yarns dyed with madder during my artist-in-residence gigs.

Illustration from Tomtebobarnen,
The Children of the Forest (first published in 1910) by Swedish author and illustrator of children's books Elsa Beskow (1874-1953)

Watercolour

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

I had Beskow's Pelle's New Suit as a child and, 70 years of fiber work later, I share a copy with my students as my original inspiration.

In the 1920's my grandfather, a selectman, proposed consolidation for our area schools. It took 50 years (during which his children and many of his grandchildren attended private schools) and the quality of education in the area improved dramatically.

"Less than..." was the real shocker.