Rainy Autumn

Photos from my walk around our small park yesterday morning. It's a shame I'm too lazy to do it every day, especially in the mornings, when the park is almost empty, but it was such a nice walk under the light drizzle.

This year autumn and cold came early and it seems they are here to stay, the good news - the central heating is on as of today, hurray :) I've taken out my knitting needles and started a pair of wool socks for husband and I'm beginning to plan sweaters and cardigans again. Cozying by the heater with a fresh knitting project and an engaging movie - well, cold weather has its perks too, I guess.

 

And an old pudding recipe, that my granny used to make around this time of the year, when the extended family gathered for the grapes picking (my grandparents were wine makers) and which I absolutely adored.

After the grapes had been picked and the first grape juice was made, she would take a mug of juice, add sugar, toasted flour and a lot of broken walnuts and make this pudding. Mine didn't come as tasty as I remember hers, but I'm not sure if it's the distorted childhood memories, the quality of the grape juice (I made mine at home from store bought grapes) or my proportions. I'll definitely try it again.

Kladnitza, A Circular Trail, 2018

Our traditional late autumn hike along the low Southern slopes of Vitosha. We usually start from the village of Bosnek and walk to the Live Water spring and around, but this year we decided to start from Kladnitza and make a big circle in the area, passing through some of the places we hike, when we start from Bosnek, and return back to Kladnitza - some 17 km of pleasant fairly easy walking. A very picturesque and easy hike is the transition from Kladnitza to Bosnek, but as it isn't circular, it would require public transportation and the connections of these villages to Sofia are not that good and we were not convinced it would be worth it.

After a week of cold weather (the temperatures dropped to 5C during the week), this Saturday was warm and sunny, just the perfect day for a long autumn hike.

Peak Selimitza and the high Southern ridge of Vitosha

Rila back in the horizon

The plateau was amazing. I'm a sucker for these grassy high mountain sceneries:

The classic lonely tree on the hill

What a bonus - hay bales. I wish I had a FO for the perfect FO photosession :)). But here's Gaby posing with her FIFA sweater I knitted for her back in June:

Autumn Colors

As the Indian summer is over and it's cold and gloomy and rainy outside, I am taking out my wool dyes and getting my knitting mojo back.This weekend I got to play with two new to me Bulgarian sock yarns. Until now I've only used the Turkish Alize Superwash 75% wool 25% nylon, 420 m / 100 g and I am quite pleased with it. But I'm always curious for something new.

The Performance yarns have the same technical description as Alize Superwash, but so far I'm happier with them than with the Turkish yarn, as far as dyeing goes. The yarn took the dye beautifully, preserving its shine and smoothness better that Alize Superwash. Of course, the major test - knitting, is still ahead, I'll be counting on my mother for reviews, as these skeins are a present from me for her.

I used one and the same method for both skeins - layering of colors on twisted hanks, using four colors for each hank, three of which were the same and done simultaneously - butter yellow, bright yellow and orange. For the fourth color I chose green for the first skein,

trying to imitate this tree in front of our building.

And for the second hank the fourth color was sort of chocolate brown - a mixture I made myself from yellow, red, blue and black. On these pictures the skeins are still a bit messed from the dyeing

and here they are reskeined, smoothed and ready to be sent. I love reskeined yarn, as it gives better idea of the distribution of the colors and how they would knit up in the future socks.

FO: Bray Cap

And one more small project, knitted from left over yarn - Bray Cap in Wool Silk Tweed, a lovely yarn, which I knitted into a long tweed cardigan last autumn.

Pattern: Bray Cap by Jared Flood
Yarn:  Ice Yarns WoolSilk Tweed, color Copper, 80 g
Needle: 3 mm, 3.5 mm
Time to knit: 2 days

Easy-breezy hat for autumn in signature autumn color, with enough wool content to keep me warm and enough lace to air my head on a sunny October day.

Autumn in Town

It's been cold, really cold these days and winter already stepped into the mountains. I'm still hoping we'll get some Indian summer later in the month, but today we had to put our wooly hats on during our walk in the park. Despite the cold it was so peaceful and beautiful, I love the smell of autumn in the air!