That Time of Year

This past weekend, during a spate of unusually beautiful November weather, we attacked the back yard. And I mean attacked. We took down two over-six-foot TREES that had grown up since the last time we cleaned out; there was ragweed taller than my unusually tall husband; there wasn't a brick back there that didn't have something growing up between the cracks. Our wooden back patio furniture? Mushrooms. (I'm not an outdoorsy type; sitting out in the sun for "fun" has always escaped me.) Anyway, a LOT of work had to be done. Three different sizes of loppers/clippers, a rake, two dustpans, a bow saw, a weed-whacker, hammer, nails, and many, many, many large clear rubbish bags (required by our trash company for Yard Waste) were employed. One of the first things we had to do, just to get in the back fence, was lop down several thousand yards of wisteria vine. Here's what's left, along with a dozen or so seed pods, just in case it has, in fact, been cut back too far:


None of the leaves pictured are actually part of the plant now.
So, this got me thinking about wisteria and knits. For example, Vicki crocheted this lovely shawl:


The pattern is for sale on her blog for just $1.99 here. (This is a pattern I could actually afford after my double-overindulgence at Fibre Space last week.) And there's the lovely way that wisteria goes all twisty:


I was able to save one small piece that was three vines twisted together. I'm going to strip off the bark this weekend, polish it up, and let it dry out really well, then carve & coat it. In a year or so, it should be very pretty. Speaking of very pretty, Angela Hahn got this lovely photo of actual wisteria:


... and used it as inspiration to create this adorable child's dress:


This, and lots of her other patterns - which, trust me, if you've been knitting a while, you've seen them around - are available on her website, knittitude.com, and there are tons of Ravelry links for many beautiful finished projects. Or you can find them in Interweave, Vogue Knitting, Twist Collective... you get the idea.

Now, along with all the green growing things, several of the neighborhood trees are coughing up their leaves. Like these - which are HUGE. Those are my little size-eight boots in the photo, for scale, because you can't see the quarter I put down!!


So, big leaves. I've seen some lovely knitted leaves, so I went hunting on the internet again, and found Lorraine McClean correspondence courses. She has several examples of knitted leaves. Hm. May have to look into this once I finish my Level I TKGA (if I ever do).

Good resource to have, there. Also, while we're on the subject of leaves, here's the way one of our local Old Towns is stopping skateboarders from using the fountains in the town center for tricks:


Permanently attached metal leaves!
And, because the whole point of finding pictures on the internet to share is to find the pretties, here's a spectacular silver leaf, and other lovely things. Sadly, everything's dated from 2007, so it's probably all gone, but oooooo.... the pretty....