Autumn Leaves

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson

Unlike Emily, I didn't wear any trinkets; in fact, I stayed in my fleece jammies all day. But I did enjoy looking at all the colorful trees in my neighborhood today.

I gazed on these lovelies while I sorted, washed, dried, folded, and hung up laundry this morning. Those stunning scarlet beauties are willows, the brilliant orange in the background are poplars, and the yellowy-green in the bottom right corner is the snowbell in our front yard.



And then this afternoon, I just couldn't keep my eyes off the maple in the back yard.



All of the houses in our row have maples in the back; while ours is the smallest, it is by far the most brilliant in fall. Just look at how much brighter red ours is than the neighbor over to the right. With the contorted black locust to the left and the trumpet vine on the fence are both turning chartreuse and yellow, we have more color in the backyard now than we did all summer!

The crisp fall air even has Andy Rooney feeling chipper! ToolMan took him for a walk this afternoon; they ran into saw a neighbor walking her shih tzu, Jake. Andy instigated a short bout of wrestling and was bouncing like a young pup! I want to thank everyone for their concern about him; I relayed every single hug, chin scritch, ear rub, and head pat to him. I'm pretty sure he understood every best wish he got, except maybe the one from Gail. Gail is sure he could knit if he only had thumbs; he already got 5 toes on each foot, so he's pretty sure he doesn't need thumbs, too!

I didn't spend my whole days leaf peeping, though! I did finish a scarf for myself, but I'm not going to post pictures of it until it debuts at Westside Wednesday. They saw me cast off a scarf last week of the coziest, squishiest yarn; but that didn't mean it was finished! No, sirree; I had further plans. But you'll just have to wait to see it.

And I finished a Christmas present that I can actually post pictures of, since I'm pretty sure the recipient doesn't read this blog. For Brother-In-Law Jim, I finished the Big Black Things:




Those #@!*% Golf Club Covers. I gotta tell ya; knitting those big honkin' things in black acrylic was not fun. The duplicate stitch actually went pretty quick, though. I think he'll get a kick out of these.

And I finished up another spool of yarn.



From StitchJones, 4 ounces of corriedale, in her "On The Vine" colorway. From the moment I laid eyes on this roving, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

I split this roving in half lengthwise, then one half I split again lengthwise; that gave me a 2-ounce strip and 2 1-ounce strips. I spun all of the singles (1 2-ounce and 2 1-ounce singles) to the same diameter. Then I Navajo plied them using first a 1-ounce, then a 2-ounce, and last the other 1-ounce. This gave me a self-striping yarn that will knit up into narrow stripes on each end, with wider stripes in the center. Now, I just have to get it knitted up in time to go into the Christmas gift box!