tiny happy

I've not written here in a while – I'm going to blame the darker and shorter days! It is nice to be back today, though. I wanted to show you a bright colourful winter rainbow.

I've recently had the joy of getting to know an older woman through my work – she's a playwright and poet and we're working on a project together. Her deteriorating eyesight makes knitting impossible for her now, so I offered to knit her something for the winter. She asked for a rainbow scarf! 

It's fun to make something upon request, especially when it's something I wouldn't have done otherwise. For R's scarf, I used a mix of DK merino yarns: the red, orange, yellow and green are merino-alpaca blends I found at the local craft store. The purple and blue yarns were handspun by my Mum.

I wanted a squishy texture to my scarf, so used this Mistake Rib pattern by Purl Soho which I recommend! The finished piece measured about 7" X 74". You can see more of my notes here on Ravelry.

One of my favourite Sam Hunt poems is called 'Rainbows (and a promise of snow)'. I first got to know it by listening to the album the poet recorded with Dunedin band The Heavy Eights (you can hear this particular track here).

The poem is filled up with friendly idiom, the kind of things men say to each other, but it also somehow gives a real feeling of a New Zealand winter; almost comes with the smell of woodsmoke. The first half of the poem is: 

Winter means one side or other of

the shortest day. Our birthdays both

are on that good side, friend, of

solstice. Winter is a warm hearth;

rainbows, and a promise of snow.

Or so life’s been for me this last

half-life of sixteen years. Days go

so very slow they say, so fast.

It matters not. A good mate dies,

another goes abroad or mad.

It matters neither way. What does,

what always will, is that we load

the fire high with logs. She’s a

winter this! bull-seals barking in the bay.

If she don’t snow soon, I tell you

friend, she’s never going to.

– Sam Hunt 

To find the rest of the poem, you can click here to read the whole book it's from. It's on page 10.

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