Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun

My Favorite Red

No trips out and about this year to view the lovely fall colors. Instead, I've had a miserable cold and sinus infection for the last week.  Just when I was congratulating myself for "missing out" on the terrible cold everyone else in my family already had.  So, I just took the fall colors pictures from my yard... better than nothing, I guess.  I feel a little "robbed" though... all the best views really have to be hiked to, and I'm just not up to hiking yet.

I'm still plodding along on Inishmaan.  I love the way the sweater is going to look, but I can't seem to knit for long without making mistakes that have to be frogged.  If anyone had told me that it would take me all summer to knit this, I would have laughed. 

Three Four months later and I'm not laughing yet!  Usually, I'm a process knitter anyway, so how long something takes is not that important to me, but it's been really annoying to have to keep re-knitting so much that was already finished.

Here is the picture of the sleeves and also a close up of the color that shows all the flecks of different colors that occur in Rosewood. That heathered multi-color effect is what has always been one of the strengths of Jamieson's Shetland Heather besides the superb stitch definition.

Fair Ribbons

The Alaska State Fair opened last week and I had several pieces of knitting entered so I was excited to go on Wednesday to see how they did.  My son and daughter-in-law went last Friday and phoned to let me know that their daughter's baby sweater which I "borrowed back" in order to enter, had two ribbons on it...   "one of them was a really big yellow one".  I had know idea what that category might be so was interested to go see for myself.

We had a great time at the fair.  We didn't get rained on or blown away... at this time of year a gift that can't be taken for granted.  We ate too much, visited all the animals... too few for my tastes... and did lots of walking.  (I don't think I walked of the Denali wild berry cream puff that indulged in though!)

It was so overcast that all the pictures of animals look like were-monsters of some kind with their red bulging eyes, so I'm not including were-pigs, were-sheep, nor were-goats.  Only the chickens and rabbits were in a well lit area, but I'm never quite as entranced by chickens and rabbits, so forgot to take any pictures.

All the knitting, quilting, sewing, spinning, and crocheting is displayed together in a high-ceiling barn-like structure with very dim lighting.  I would have loved to take a picture of the whole display as it was a riot of texture and color.  Unfortunately the lighting is very bad so that made taking pictures a nightmare.  Most of my pictures didn't turn out very well, and several didn't turn out at all... just a blur.

Here are pictures of some of my result:

My grand daughter's Dale of Norway, Bondegard design, baby cardigan

My Seaforth gansey tunic, a pullover entry

 

My Stillwater cardigan, a cardigan entry

 

I had a couple other entries too, but the pictures didn't turn out. 

Of course, now that we had a dark dismal overcast day, today the sun is blazing and it's almost warm outside. All the leaves are beginning to turn and Fall is definitely in the air.