Independence Pass

One of the members of my knitting group told me that there was a statue of Mike, the headless chicken, in downtown Fruita, Co. Since I was there on our last business trip and couldn't find a yarn shop, I put some effort into finding Mike-

You can thank her for this photo. It took us a while to find the statue, partly because it didn't look quite how I expected. It was worth looking for, just as a novelty. I was amused to find it had, among the odd bits of scrap iron, a pair of scissors in it. The link above will take you to Mike's story. It's a little gruesome, so don't click if you're eating, especially if you are eating chicken right now.

On leaving Fruita, we drove home in a roundabout way, crossing the continental divide at Independence Pass. It was cloudy, but that just added to the beauty of the mountains, the bits of remaining snow, and the wildflowers.

It is a lovely, easy drive over the pass this time of year, with lots of places to stop along the way. Creeks, campgrounds, overlooks and the like dot the road all the way between Aspen and Granite.

This drive never dulls, since the same mountains on the same road offer different views from every angle.

Once home, I got back to work on my knitting. It looks like it has wound down to cotton, a good thing to knit this time of year. While it doesn't offer the tactile pleasures of wool, it is much more pleasant to have on your lap.

A big lump of knitting like this long-sleeved sweater doesn't bother me at all in the heat, unlike the little 3/4-sleeved cardigan I just finished. If that little lump of wool lay on my lap as I was knitting it in the the last week or two, I had to move it around to seek some relief. I started with the Sallie pattern from the Louisa Harding book you see beside the sweater, but am now hybridizing it with the saddle shoulder from the Skater Undertop from Avery's Knitting Classic Style.

Alongside the sweater you can see another dish towel that I've reluctantly started. After last year's numerous dish towels, I'm not in the mood for knitting dish towels. Only the desire to write up the pattern for this one has me knitting it again. The nice Pakucho cotton and the fun of trying out a new stitch pattern for the edging do offer some small compensations in the task of knitting over a foot of boring stockinette.

It's not all cotton knitting here, though. I've cheated and impulsively cast on for a kerchief in some fine silk merino. It's going fast, since it starts out small. I could have it done soon, but will likely hit a wall as the stitch count increases. You see, I might have enough yarn to make it a full-blown shawl. That, plus the beads I'd like to knit into it, might take a while, maybe 'til summer's end. I'm using the Springtime Bandit pattern and the blue yarn I blogged last summer. It's lovely.