Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Green week: 2

Today a little indoor green. This is the beginning of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, from the Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. It has been languishing on the needles for most of the winter. I just love this shade of green, and the stitch definition of this yarn (Classic Elite 150). I've been working on it a little harder for the past couple of weeks, knowing that spring will probably be the best opportunity to wear the finished product.


And another sign of spring. New fence posts mean that the ground is thawed enough that deep post holes can be dug. In time, these will mellow out to the same silver-grey of the ones behind them. Although the posts and poles themselves may look green, too, they're not. The fences at the farm are mostly made from locust, a very strong wood, and one that's hard to find these days. Locust poles must dry out for at least a year before you use them, but then they're almost too hard to drive a nail into, so these fences are also built mostly without nails.

When my uncle Howard died almost four years ago, my grandfather bought the big stack of locust poles that Howard had saved in his barn and had them piled in his own hay loft, all the way to the rafters. The fences at the farm are old and almost continually falling down, so we've blown through the big stack pretty quickly, between wayward bulls and insolent horses*. Now we're down to the huge, thick poles at the bottom of the pile. These must be split and shortened (exposing the yellow "green" wood inside) so they don't pull down the fences they're meant to patch.

Man, looking at those fields is a little depressing-- I'm so ready for more green!

*There was also a little pony named Me Pony (as in, "This is me dog, an' me cat, an' me pony; I own them all.") who didn't know his own size. He constantly tried to jump out of his field over the fence, but aside from one memorable incident in which he jumped two fences in one run, he only succeeded in jumping straight into the fences and knocking them over. His head wasn't much higher than my shoulder.

4 comments:

Liz said...

Your sweater is going to be beautiful - I love hand knits. One of these days I'm going to have to learn how.

Jeanette said...

Gorgeous sweater!

Where are you at? I only wish we had as many signs of spring around here. Instead we are expecting more snow today *sigh*

But then again, I know we aren't done with winter yet because my crocus haven't bloomed. It seems like every year, the very day after the crocus bloom, we get a big snow and they all die.

As it is, they are barely peeking out of the ground so we have a while to go yet around here.

Louise said...

Thanks, Liz! I taught myself to knit from a book, and if I can do it, anyone can-- just took some time.

Jeanette-- I wish we'd had more snow this year, actually. We're up in northwestern Virginia. We've had a run of warmer weather here, too, and I'm worried about the buds on the trees. They get frozen off more years than not.

Thank you both for your comments!

Anonymous said...

i love that shade of green in your sweater, too.