Knitting an Autumn Forest

This is actually a post about knitting.

Knitting is, for me, a very seasonal thing. I was talking about it with my sweetie this morning[1] and she said she thought knitting – as a very stationary activity – was well-suited to the Summer, the time of year when not moving around a lot and, ideally, sitting quietly in the shade, will keep you most comfortable. But, for me, it’s so very connected with Winter. My guess is that it’s because, when it’s cold out, I want to bury my hands in something cozy and give myself excuses to curl up in a little ball somewhere warm with a blanket around my shoulders and a cup of tea close at hand.
However I think I also made this connection because it’s something you can do (to a point — all I can do is “garter stitch”) by feel, something you don’t need to think about all that much, something that – more to the point – you can do indoors, after the harvest is in, while the wind is howling outside. I associate it with winter because, for my agrarian ancestors at any rate, it was (most likely – I am making a big assumption here) something that was done during the time of year when they weren’t sheering or weeding or threshing or what-have-you.

Anyway. Knitting (and spinning; I found a neat drop-spindle tutorial on youtube – over here – which I rather like) are on my mind.

The “autumn forest” part of this post’s title comes from the variegated yarn I’m using to knit my mother a hat[2] which is going to be somewhere between a tuque and a cloche.
I picked the yarn because it’s (a) variegated, which makes the same-stitch-all-the-time look a bit less monotonous, and (b) because it’s in the right colour palate for her — she’s an Autumn, meaning that she looks best in golds, rusts, ambers, and olives.
I’ve been knitting double-stranded from two balls of variegated yarn, which means that the knit doesn’t move from colour to colour in blocks but, rather, is a constantly changing mix. I was looking at it this morning and what I saw was the forest in autumn, specifically Vincent Massey Park in mid-October, as viewed from the Carleton University campus early in the morning. The hazy mix of rust and pumpkin, gold and maroon and brown, mixed with the dark hunter-green of the conifers, emerging from the morning mist.
I like it. I think it will be perfect for her.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] Reader, I confess it: I was knitting in bed.

[2] I don’t, at this point, work with patterns. As stated, above, I only know how to do garter stitch, so not a lot of point worrying about patterns just now.