Cherry Tree Hill

I am knitting a sock out of some gorgeous new yarn Shirani just got in:

Cherry Tree Hill's 100% superwash merino fingering weight sock yarn, lovingly and beautifully hand dyed in Barton VT - a quintessentially New England village tucked waaaaayyyyyyyy up in the Northeast Kingdom.

There are lots and lots of amazing colorways in every shade you can imagine and then some. But really the most charming skeins are the one-of-a-kinds called "Pot Luck" which you can request in a color family: Earth, Blues/Greens, Brights, Water, Blues/Purples, and Jewels. Beyond selecting the tone, the exact blend of colors will be a surprise! One skein of perfectly soft, perfectly plied, perfectly luscious merino begging to be knit up into a unique, not to be duplicated, made from the heart, pair of warm, (lightly) woolly socks!

I have to admit though, when I first looked at this lovely skein, I was surprised that Cherry Hill had labeled this particular pot-luck as a member of the Water group. Being that it was pretty much green...


However, once I'd worked an inch or two of ribbing, it suddenly dawned on me how beautifully the fabric evoked the idea of early blooms and freshly budding trees reflected in a mirror-like still pond on a warm, sunny, spring day. Taking a closer look at the gentle greens, soft pinks, lavenders, and buttercup yellows, with just the merest hint of robin's egg blue, I was reminded that water really is not blue at all, but colorless until it finds something colorful to reflect.

The hues of this skein don't shout out with vibrancy, but are much more subtle. Gradually emerging as the fabric unfolds from the needles, becoming something lovely: ethereal and impressionistic. Almost too nice for the pedestrian task of warming my hard working feet! Really more deserving of becoming an elegant sweater, but just the thought of all those stitches on 0's or 1's is replacing the calm of a soft, breezy, spring day with a terrible anxiety.....so I'm not going to go there.

I'll leave you instead with some lines from one of my favorite poets; Elizabeth Bishop, whose brilliant use of color and water imagery evokes the same feeling of peace and calm as I'm getting from this yarn! Bishop's poems are full of color, making them beautifully visual as well as lyric and lovely to listen to. Her gun metal blues and white-gold skies, like this beautiful wool, are rich with

"...melody, deep, clear, and liquid slow,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep."

Yours in yarn,
Claire