Submerged

It's taken almost all of October to find the right pattern for this lovely sock yarn, and I'm still not completely convinced, but for SKA October/November purposes, here goes: a repeat of Simple Skyp Sock by Adrienne Ku, with a beaded CO in memory of Adrienne Fong aka bellybuttonknits.



The yarn, Three Irish Girls Adorn Luxe, colorway Big Bang, is so beautifully cosmic, very nice, although the yarn is not quite as sproingy as I prefer. As part of the memorial sock-along tribute to BBK, I tried knitting up a replacement for my worn tabi-toed Send in the Clowns, didn't like it. Tried Kilauea, didn't like that either. Then I traveled too much, liked that some but didn't like the excess, and I saw Waterlicht, an immersive laser light installation in Manhattan.



My poor digicam was not up to the task of capturing the experience, and when I left I found myself feeling oddly rested yet similarly without words to describe it. The installation was lovely, numinous, wheelchair and family friendly, and well done – one never felt crowded or rushed, there were nice places to sit and contemplate, and helpful ushers with glow sticks to show the way. For all that, I overheard a young art critic sagely opine, "This is very cool, but also kind of boring." Well, the line to get in eventually wrapped around three sides of a city block. What I liked best, I think, was how one's sense of the city never really went away.



The sense of rising waters also never quite goes away. So many coastal communities along the Eastern seaboard are experiencing an increase in sunny day flooding, or street flooding from normal tidal action, not caused by unusually powerful storms or even king tides. Indeed, the projections suggest what have been the worst inundations in past will soon simply be the new normal, most of the time. Having slogged through the aftermath of hurricanes and nor'easters and bomb cyclones, even as Western states experiences worse and worse fire seasons, I'm looking for solutions. Of course it's ironic I've been traveling too much when my perennial favorite solution is carbon avoidance, especially transit avoided carbon, but one has to start somewhere.

Souvenirs

Of course now I can't wash my hand.



I had a good time at Rhinebeck. It was strangely warm this year – not as warm as last year, yet warm enough that heavy coats were not needed and I took off my Blue Wave hat. In the afternoon it briefly rained buckets, more a summer downpour than an autumn rain. The trees were barely turned, too, in the Hudson Valley in the third week of October. Perhaps it's true climate change is coming for our yarn. Hm.



However that may be, it was good to be at the fair, good to be with congenial company, good to see so many handknits and so many clusters of knitters doing their things, as the Stitch Marker Swappers, above.



There even were sheepie cookies. Which is enough, and more than enough.

Edited to add:



Although I didn't have time to knit a new Rhinebeck sweater, I re-purposed an in-the-round Angry Sheep gauge swatch into a cozy for my Zojirushi. I love my Zojirushi, which is a thermal bottle that keeps hot beverages hot and cold beverages cold. The cozy is to protect its finish as it clanks around in my tote bag, not because it needs extra insulation. The swatch is from the yoke of the cardi, which tapers, and the taper in the swatch rather nicely matches the taper in the Zojirushi. Happiness.