This week I finished a pair of socks for my husband. I used a pattern from knitty.com called Java Socks from 2011. It took me a few weeks to get them done and during the knitting process I got glasses. I had worn “readers” before but this was my first prescription pair. They are multi-focal so it took me a week or so to get use to them. Halfway through the second sock I realized one of my size 1 needles was actually a size 0 and I had been using it the whole time! No way was I going to start over so I just found my missing size 1 and carried on. There’s a size 0 in the photo–can you see it? (I still can’t!)

The designer of this fine pattern is Cailyn Meyer and you can find her on Ravelry. I was checking out what else she had done and found a pattern called Albuquerque Gloves and I fell in love with it. I don’t really need fingerless gloves so I used the chart and started a hat. Ok where am I going with all of this? Not Albuquerque! Because I can’t go there. My husband and I were going to head to New Mexico for the winter to go rock climbing and exploring but that state has serious travel restrictions so it’s just not feasibly. Looks like will be heading to Arizona instead. Which is actually wonderful because I have never really been there.

When I started up the Fleece Love and Happiness blog again this year it was because I wanted a place to write about my TRAVELS since we are retired and were traveling full-time. Well, covid happened and travel stopped. Even though winter is coming (and virus love winter) we should be safe in our remote camping locations. In about 10 days we will be back on the road. Today I’m packing up yarn and tools for knitting on the road.

Fall arrived in Washington State and the mushrooms came out. After buying and reading the book The Rainbow Beneath My Feet: A Mushroom Dyer’s Field Guide by Arleen Bessette and Alen Bessette, I was sprung on the idea of collecting and using mushrooms for dye. My husband and I journeyed out into the woods in mid October and found several kinds of mushrooms to try. Because it was rainy I didn’t want to bring my field guides opting for using my best guess, then picking them to bring home to identify. As it so happened, I was unable to identify most of the mushrooms that I picked. Even with the excellent book Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora I was left without anything concrete to make notes about. I had imagined a system where I’d identify the mushroom, make notes of the mordant, pH, and time spent in the pot. I started recording what I could on scraps of paper but they eventually ended up in the garbage. What I did end up with was several shade of yellow yarn and some dreaded beige. However, I am not discouraged and plan to go mushroom hunting again and try for better identification.