My Time of the Year

The temperature has dropped; we haven´t had any frost yet, but it´s not far away. It´s time for warmer clothes, to pack away the thin summer-things and get out the more autumn-adopted items. The cold mornings requires mittens. Wool-season is here! Every year when I look through my wardrobe to find the winter stuff, it´s like meeting old friends again.

The weather has been fantastic during the last days: high clear air and sunshine from a blue sky. What a pity I have to waste such wonderful days in the office! The outside is a explosion of colour: the leaves are turning yellow and red and it´s like natures own colour-therapy. Like time wants to give us a colour-boost before the winter begins. I´m an autumn- and winter person, now is my time of the year!

Not so long ago there were roses here...

Can there be a more tempting thing than a Christmas-calender made of 24 knitted socks, with a little gift in each one? That is, if the whole project gets done in time. It has to be finished in the middle of November, so I have to knit a sock every other day to get through this. Because there will be some days where it won´t be possible to squeeze in any knitting. I started the first sock yesterday on my way to work and it´s actually finished now. Only 23 more to go... A sort of my own solitary Socktober-fest!

The yarn is some left-over cheap wool - not very nice to knit with actually! But this calender is supposed to be a stash-reducer, a way to get rid of some of these odd balls and left-over pieces.

I have been asked to make a pattern for my Pippi-sweater in cotton, and one evening I produced two swatches, to decide whether to knit it in a k2 p1-pattern (2 räta, 1 avig) or in
stockinette stitch (rätstickning). I have decided in favour of the first alternative...I think...

The swatches are knitted in Rowan Handknit Cotton, in off-white and pink. The colours doesn´t show very well and I have been thinking that mabye I need a better camera. Or mabye, my camera needs a better photographer.

The lilac mittens are finished:

...and I´m very pleased with them.

The last of this years tomato-harvest is picked and is "after-ripening" (eftermognar) on a plate indoors. The tomatoes were a disappoinment this year, even though the summer was warm and sunny, it seems not to have been a "tomato-year". All my tomato-growing friend have noticed the same, so it seems it wasn´t my farming-skills that went wrong. Since I started growing my own tomatoes I hardly ever buy tomatoes any more: the home-grown taste SO much better and so much MORE.

This year I tried peppers (paprika) for the first time, and it went far better than I had dared hope for. And these also tasted much better that the bought ones. One day I´m going to have my own green-house! One day.