Above, our hotel in Florence for Knitaly. Colleen and I researched our little eyes out looking for the perfect spot and found these two sister hotels, one with a rooftop patio. Each of the rooms is spacious, has a private bathrooms with all the special little touches we were looking for plus a homey, comfortable atmosphere. No impersonal mega hotel for us. One of the buildings is a 19th century converted pilazzo with high, beamed, ceilings, silk curtains....perfect!

Let's celebrate the rest of our lives together. Join me in Tuscany this fall for le dolce vita!

Another page from my book, this one showing a variation of Field of Dreams.

Another page, this one in the Ode to a Golden Hue chapter.

And, yes, the new blog will be coming soon. You'll find it here, at exactly the same spot, with the following special features:

• more room for photos
• more color (one can never have too much color)
• a subsciption service where you can sign up for automatic posting notification
• easier comment-making
• a keyword search of postings

Unfortunately, I can't bring over every one of my old postings so you'll have to click on a special link to go back in time. I'm busily bringing over the Knitalong, the free patterns, everything about Knitaly and updating the book info.

I'm so excited: it's March my retirement month!

Port Douglas, Australia...

Mardi tenaciously kept at this, relaunching away until she created this beauty unfolding here. Anyone recall her first venture? Big change!

Dear knitalongers, please bear with me a bit. The captain's had to haul the ship into port for a day or so to scrape the barnacles off me hull and repair the sails.

Translation: I'm in the middle of changing my blog, which means that every new posting must be brought over to the new program. In between learning the new, working on my book, and a myriad of other things, I'm falling behind a wee bit. STay the course or pull in with me until I'm back in the water. I'm thinking that maybe by the weekend you'll have a fresh new posting with (gasp) ripples!

PS: I've added a new comment to the previous post.

I love how you just know with a stylist's sharp eye exactly which shade brings out the best in the wierd and wonderful, like this exotic and exuberant cluster of pitcher plants I found in Kew Gardens last summer. Not any old shade would suit the peachy-rust shade of these alluring carnivors. See those creamy orchid-like flowers emerging overhead? With green in the background, no bug can resist such botanical wiles. Green shines while the pitcher plant dines, you might say ( I could have penned jingles. I missed my calling).

And green, you can be such backdrop for the most dramatic of staged players. Look how you've provided a deep, rich foil, ranging from brackish green to deep, murky leaf, to show up Lilly's buxom splendor? Lilly's a diva to your chorus of steady verdant splendor.

And who can forget the electric zap of your eel grass fired by sunshine? Lime to electric, green cannot be ignored. Shame on those who try.

And here's a thank you to those yarn maestros who have created a rich, nature-inspired range of greeny greens:

Tilli and Alchemy do serious green

Crystallized Morn. You can't tell, but little crystal flakes are sparkling in the diamond air

Sometimes when you're freezing in a cold, crystaline, absence of color, it helps to remember places in the world alive with hot pinks, vibrant fuschias and those eye-singeing reds. Tropical colors leap across the vision in high-energy spectrum acrobatics. Even the greens seem greenier, more vivid and alive than the shade in other climates.

Tropical combo: a Jamaican garden with a local fruit stand and an Australian lorrikeet for color

I recall reading a line from Kaffe Fassett, my color guru, who once made reference to a 'high note of singing green'. I never forgot that. GREEN SINGS! Why hadn't  realized that before? I'd heard it on some profound level, surely? Color is music to the eyes. The tunes of chartreuse, lime and evergreen, among others, have been rocking my world for ages.

Soon the world will dance and jive with singing spring green. Living things will be flitting off for a piece of the action in the seasons's version of an outdoor pick-up joint. Green really starts humming in May and June, whistling away those cosmic vibrations in the tune called 'alive and growing'...

As I look down from the poop deck upon my little sea down below everything looks so small when it's growing at an amazing rate. So long it is that now I can't stretch the whole thing out without risking the stitches falling off me needles.

You can see from me markings where I plan to take the design with smooth currents carrying on in a 'v' shape that takes one arm of the vee along the front and the other arm along the back of the not-a-poncho. Both will be following along with the shape of the edge.

Got another island coming up, too. See that? On the outside edge keep up the rough waters in either seed stitch or garter to give yerselves a nice, firm edge.

Tomorrow I'll be posting about making ripples. Until then, over and onward.

Tuscan hydrangeas amid stitches from the 'Locanza' design

I'm hard at work on my book these days, writing up new designs as well as the text. As an Italy-infused pattern book, I want the reader to feel as though they've dipped a toe into Italy, taken a mini excursion into the Tuscan hills, and come back to land with an itch to knit a countryside. Textures and colors range from clouds of blue hydrangeas that soften the edges of old farm buildings to the mysterious moss-on-stone of ancient grottos.

You'll recognize my already available Italy-inspired designs like the Medici Coat and Blue Skies Over Sienna along with new versions and several hot off my brain designs. Everywhere there will be photos of their inspiration.

Blue Skies Vest

Speaking of my brain, currently overheating despite the frigid temperatures outside, I've begun gathering material for my SECOND book. Book number two will feature 'organic' knitting, that unfolding nature-driven expression of color and texture. Though it, too, will have patterns, the emphasis here will be more on techniques, stitches and combining elements to evoke the natural world.

Today's tropical destination is brought to you by Bermuda, not exactly tropical by geographic terms but much, much warmer than home right now.

More inside...

  Today's tropical destination is brought to you by Malaysia where I travelled for work eons ago

Oh, boy, have I ever had it with winter. -13 C with a windchill of -17 and suddenly my sense of humor is freezing up. I went to find a bite-sized piece of laughter this morning and had to pry it off the side of the wall. It's just not funny any more.

But there's always knitting, piles of knitting. On the needles right now I have a vest (actually that's sitting on Headless Dorcus waiting for some kind of closure), the back for one of my Botanica designs for spring (leaves, green, growing things), a scarf for my book, a cardigan for Jackie, an 'art vest' (I don't know what that means, either) for a shop in Toronto and my knitalong project. It's no longer possible to transverse my room without tripping over something.  I have to develop some kind of flotation device other than my stomach, which only works in the pool.

the component vest

My current obsession is with component knitting, something that never really appealed to me before. -- all those little pieces to sew up-- but now I'm intrigued by the construction business. I want to knit strips and blocks and piece them together. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll come to my senses eventually but, in the meantime,  I'm finding that what you lose in the flow, you gain in the structural freedom.

Bontanica cardigan back

Hey, I'm planning on changing my blog format. I need your opinions...inside

The atol surrounds the island

Captain here. Just want to tell you how mightily impressed I am with your bravery. No wavering wills for this lot, no siree, and it isn't easy sailing blind.

Been lookin' at all your pictures, I have, and just as predicted, each one's different and each one's pretty spectacular. Meanwhile, I've been fielding a lot of questions about where we're heading so  thought it time to talk a little longitude and latitude.

When you squint at me wee sketch up yonder, you'll note that at some point we circular knitters will be joining our circles. But not for long. We have a little finangling to do to make the armhole for one side. Don't be worrying about the specifics just yet just know that the captain will be telling all the information ye need.

In the meantime, get out those trusty tape measures and measure yourself around the hips with an eye to deciding how much room you want for your not-a-poncho. I'm aiming for 53 inches because I want mine super-roomy. My piece is now 22 inches long from the bottom tip to my needles so I know it's time for me to up the increases or I'll be caught short.

From here on in, I'll be increasing two stitches at the begining and end of every row right up until I hit the 50-inch circumference zone. (I'll tell you what to do when we reach Sleevesville when we're inches away from landfall).

Now, design-wise, carry on as you've been going adding bubbles and moving your currents along. I have another feat of daring coming up but we have a bit more knitting to do first. (Psst! You can just see a touch of what I'll be putting you up to in the lower right-hand side of the purple current: open work!)

Here's a close-up of my bubbles. See how I've added colored ones

So, to recap, things for you to now:

• measure your hips and decide on your preferred circumference.
• If you want roomy, up the increases. If you want slim or ARE slim, keep on at the current rate of alternate increases.

Lynne's Molten Lava

The Indigo Road Vest

In keeping with my February tropical theme, this posting is brought to you by Nothern Australia, Cape Tribulation to be specific, the far, far northern state of Queensland and very much in the southern hemisphere which qualifies it for my tropics theme.

This photo was taken in August, in Aussie winter, and the winds blew in from the sea creating this wild, moody light to inspire the Indigo Road.

Was it warm? Well, no sensible Aussie would think so -- 65F is jacket weather to any warm-blooded Aussie--but we foreigners can get away with a vest. Later that day, at noon, we'd all been traipsing around in our T-shirts so layering helps.

Some knitters emailed me with their plans to turn the Indigo Road Vest (found here  http://www.janethornley.com/patterns_vests.html#1       in my patterns) into a cardigan. For more on how plus a little story on how a little (not) spider tried to sleep with Jane, click to 'read more'...

And to think some poor fools don't see knitting as romantic. We KNOW it's romantic, don't we? The picture above is proof, exibit A.

Here's the story:

A young woman sits knitting something gorgeous (underwear? a scarf?) by the feeble light of her dressing room table. She's furtive, private, about her knitting as she can rarely accomplish much more than a row or two before her young husband's ardor explodes into a fevered pitch.

Knitting an aphrodesiac, she knows it but she just can't help herself. And neither can Fred. He sees it as a prelude to love. She tried wrapping an army surplus blanket over her shoulders in hopes it would supress his desire but the mere glimpse of her slim fingers slipping out between the blanket's folds to manipulate the yarn and...well, I'll leave that to your imagination. Let's just say the obvious: yarn+ needles+knitting= passion

Exibit B: Try this in Public

Does it work for you?

PS: My journal's feeling very lonely without comments. Please don't stop trying. A few people have managed to leave me a message.