Thursday 20 October 2011

Someday My Quince Will Come

In the news today  - sixty-odd thousand geese have flown many miles this month to spend the winter in Angus.  Lucky for us we also had a flying visit from the marvelous Mary Jane Mucklestone.  We met up in the not quite so marvelous Travelodge at Aberdeen Airport as MJ swept in en route from from her star appearance at Shetland Wool Week before heading home to the States.

In her luggage was a copy of her brand new, not yet released book ( you can see just how excited I was to get my hands on it ) and many many beautiful swatches and samples of Fair Isle. Complete and utter knitterly Heaven. We managed to squeeze in a meal and a whole lot of talking and it was great to catch up with her. Next time I hope we'll be in more salubrious surroundings with a lot more time to talk and knit. Archie came with me and took these pictures. He had fun and said that we didn't talk about knitting too much.


So many samples and swatches
I used to have a face like this on Christmas morning!
 Also this week - our one and only quince was picked. We've had the quince tree for years, bought as a sad looking sapling after I read about making quince cheese in a cookery book. While every year it has given us the most beautiful flowers only now has a fruit appeared. It smells amazing but is rock hard. I'll cook it gently with some apples then eat very very slowly.

Oh, and I finished a pair of socks with some hand dyed yarn from Ripplescrafts. I know there is only one of them here but I really like the light in this shot.  I believe it might be that elusive thing called sunlight. Not a lot of that around these days but I have the memories of Mary Jane's colourful samples to cheer me through the winter.

I know, bad pun.

Stitch pattern comes from Hedgerow Socks on Ravelry.

5 comments:

Ellen Mason said...

lovely ladies, lovely knits!

Lynn said...

How fun and what a treat! I can't wait for my copy to arrive. Beautiful socks!

life ldc said...

You are so lucky to know Mary Jane, to have seen her book already, and to have been able to actually see and touch all of those great swatches!

Lucky girl!

kat coyle said...

love the photos!!! i was christmas morning excited too to see the knitted swatches, meet Mary Jane and get her new book.

Lisa said...

I love that picture with the swatches! Was the photographer standing on a ladder?