A kind of rain dance

That's what I've been trying to do these past two weeks, to coax this autumn into actually feeling like autumn. Friends are planning Halloween costumes, and the equinox has passed. I want to feel a nip in the air when I go outside in the mornings. I want to pull out my box of hats and mittens. I want to drink hot cider. I want to wear my handknit socks. It doesn't help that both of my siblings have moved to locales with a very significant wintery season, and are gloating over the trees changing color (the bright side is that they will most likely appreciate handknit gifts this year!).

So I'm trying to convince the universe that we really don't need any more 90ºF days, that cooling off is not giving up, and that we've all had enough tomatoes for one season. Seriously, we are drowning in late tomatoes from the parents' garden. I am sick of caprese salad.

How am I doing this? By knitting a thick, textured scarf out of crunchy homegrown wool. I hit the halfway mark on Friday, and sure enough the clouds came out and I needed a coat yesterday.



Please excuse the badly-lit office picture! I'm absolutely thrilled with this pattern, although after studying other people's photos of the scarf in the delicious-looking Shelter from Brooklyn Tweed I think my yarn might be a smidge heavy. I could probably have gone up one needle size. It's from a local farmer called Bodega Pastures, and I got the yarn from Verb's old Berkeley store. How exciting is this news about Kristine's new shop? It's hard to fathom that I've been around here long enough to watch the little half-booth I visited at the SF Bazaar Bizarre in 2006(7?) turn into the presence it is today in the Bay Area's fiber arts community. But back to the pattern.

I'm withholding judgment on whether the yarn was too heavy until after I block the thing. Yeah, I'm gonna block it, even though it's a scarf. Normally I think a scarf should go straight from the needles to the neck, but I'm willing to block a scarf if it truly needs it. If it's a lacy item, then that's a no-brainer. Lace ought to be blocked, even if it's in worsted weight yarn, if only so that the ssks and k2togs have a chance to even out in the wash. The other free pass to the sink when it comes to scarves is texture that can warp the fabric. The last scarf this happened to was a Noro Silk Garden entrelac scarf, which I made in my pre-Ravelry days. I don't own blocking wires, so I won't be able to block it as precisely as Jared asks us to in the pattern. It'll probably mostly be me massaging the wet fabric into a suitable shape on a dry towel, and then hoping the cat doesn't become too interested.

In the meantime, the weather report calls for rain today. It's dry right now, but according to the radar map it's only a matter of time.