Atlantic and Pacific Memories

It's been a bit short on the knitting content here on this blog this past month. As you can imagine, lambing season takes over our lives. Although I'm still knitting and designing, I can't post any current projects because they are going to be in an upcoming book I am working on. I've also been doing quite a bit of designing for Nashua/Westminster Fibers for their upcoming Fall 2008 pattern collections.

When I work on a book, I put a lot into it and come up with all kinds of ideas. Books have a certain amount of pages and everything must fit according to a formula - aka "book layout and design." This part really drives me crazy because my content, that I worked on, wrote about and conceptualized in my head often gets dropped. But those are the breaks. I often save the ideas and can try to add it to the next book project if it fits. And then there is my blog which is the perfect vehicle for showing ideas that get cut.

From reading this blog, you know that lots of my ideas come from nature and observing. So it was with the colorways of both of the Atlantic and Pacific socks. (This pattern is on page 84 of Kristin Knits.) I wrote a lovely little passage about this inspiration and it got cut to two short sentences. I'll let you in on some of it here.


Over the years, I have lived on both coasts of the USA. I went to school at Oregon State University on an exchange program in 1978-79. I was one of a large number of exchange students from all over the USA and parts of the world. Most of us weren't there only for school. Mostly we wanted to explore the incredibly beautiful state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. OSU was where I met The Farmer - he was on exchange from UMass and I from University of Delaware. We all would venture to the Oregon Coast (Corvallis was only about 1 1/2 hours from the coast) and spend time on the beach and eating clam chowder. I am pretty sure beer and coffee was also involved. I can still remember the amazing sunsets like they were yesterday - purple, fuschia, orange, gray blues. They are marked on my mind and I hope they never leave. I don't have a photo of these days but you can see what I am talking about here on this "beach camping website." Those sunsets inspired the socks on the polka dot legs.

About ten years later, my friend Sally invited The Farmer and I to her home on Swan's Island - a small island off of Bass Harbor "down east" in Maine. I had never been to an island in Maine before. We both fell in love with the everything on the island - the people, the colors, the freshly caught lobster, the smells. We've been going back ever since. Last summer I wrote about our trip here and here.


So that's where I got the color ideas for these socks. I am really happy with the way they turned out. I had intended them to be shown on a man and a woman but we didn't have an available male at the shoot. But there was a little person and her mom (not me and Julia in case you are wondering). Luckily I had brought a bunch of Julia's tights with me and they were the perfect accessory. We plopped the mom and her child on a table in this lovely gray room and here's how they look. I do so love the photo and how the legs are intertwined. Kevin Kennefick did a great job.

There will be some big news next week about something a new friend and I have been working on. Stop back at the beginning of the week!