Tales from Somewhere

Looking for Ancient Ghosts

There are times, standing in a quite hall of a museum, that it is difficult to remember that the objects you are staring at had lives before they came here.  Hands shaped the paint and tightened the frame and probably even handled them roughly before they were installed here behind glass or ropes, with a constant guard to make sure no one gets so close again.  I always feel this disconnect most…

So this pattern caught my eye probably even before it was released, as soon as I started seeing teasers on Instagram. Like a lot of people I love the look of brioche lace, and this pattern in particular with its stole shape, color succession, and neat optional tassels, had a lot of features that I really loved. But I had never knit brioche lace before and it seemed pretty big and complicated so I…

That time between Christmas and New Year’s, its liminal. Festive but not festive.  A time for cooking simple foods after the elaborate traditional feast for Christmas and before you have to make space in the fridge to prepare for the upcoming New Year’s one.  I found myself craving vegetables, something satisfying to make, with no real recipe to follow, just the pleasure of cooking.  So I went to…

New Intentions – A Kitchen Colors Project

For over a year now I’ve been looking at the world through the lens of natural dyeing.  Ever since I moved to the West Coast I’ve been fascinated by the world of plants that I don’t recognize around me, and I’ve used natural dye manuals and field guides to introduce me to the oldest inhabitants of my new home.  In this time I’ve become acquainted with many of the native inhabitants of this land…

A shawl for winters – Aito

Plötulopi, an unspun Icelandic wool, had seemed almost mysterious to me.  Learning to knit in Iceland, the rugged, easy to work with balls of léttlopi were abundant and easily approachable.  There was a wall filled with the whole rainbow of colors in my corner grocery store, and unlike the groceries sold there, they were cheap.  Icelandic wool was the default wool that I learned to knit with, but…

A Holiday Halla Hat

  The first thing I ever knit, after two lil tiny squares: one all knit and one all purl, was a fair isle hat.  I wanted to jump right into knitting and I found a youtube video that showed how to knit this hat and had a link in the description to download the pattern.  It was obviously perfect since right after I’d finished I felt like I could knit anything.   I started that hat on Thanksgiving…