I garden for the knitting

For the first time ever, I have my fall flowers planted before October. There’s purple and green kale, yellow and purple pansies, and cream, yellow, and orange chrysanthemums. Our front door doesn’t usually get a lot of foot traffic, but it is this autumn simply because I love to walk by all my flowers. “No, Brookelets, we’re going in through the front door so Mama can gaze adoringly, yet again, upon the beauty she has planted around our home. If you gaze adoringly with her, she’ll probably give you hot chocolate and pat you on the head while you drink.”

And what’s the point of having an autumn flower garden if you’re not going to use them as background for knitting pictures?

Who doesn’t look at flowering kale and envision how wonderfully it would pair with pumpkin tweed?

I’m amongst the crowd of people that possess no ability to deny themselves of pumpkins. If it looks like pumpkin, smells like pumpkin, or tastes like pumpkin…I probably already own it. I am powerless in the face of anything that reminds me of a pumpkin.

There’s a darling little cabled pumpkin baby hat pattern making its way around Ravelry, and I succumbed to the cuteness. Problem is, none of the local yarn shops that I’m willing to drive to for a spontaneous yarn purchase have worsted-weight orange tweed. (Insert sad face here.) I picked up some Rowan Felted Tweed instead, but the DK-weight was not working with the pattern. So now I’m just knitting whatever cables I want to knit. I’m excited about how this hat is going to turn out. Pumpkin + cables + tweed = Perfect autumn knitting.

You know what else is perfect autumn knitting? Aran cables, paired with rust-colored chrysanthemums:

Oh, the simple joy of undyed, Aran wool, the quintessential material of knitting season. It’s traditional, it’s elegant, and it’s cozy. Sometimes I wonder why I knit with anything else…until I see shelves of tweed yarn…or a skein of silk/merino laceweight.

My hollyhocks, those wonderful heralds of summer, have begun to turn brown and cast their seeds into the wind. As they begin to fold into themselves for their long winter sleep, I couldn’t resist the urge to photograph them, drowned out by the afternoon sun, in contrast to this little token of life and joy:

A little one will join a friend’s family in the next week or so, and I was feeling like celebrating its impending arrival with handknits. Just a simple little hat, so tiny that it covers my fist with very little room to spare. Just a squishy little thing, only usable for a couple of weeks before it will be too small.

Sort of like my autumn flowers…you don’t get a lot of time with them, but they’re beautiful and make me smile, which makes them a good thing to include in life.

Baby hats, tweed, pumpkins, cables, cream wool, and jewel-toned pansies…autumn is so lovely.