NEW BLOG COMING! KNITALY & BOOK UPDATE!

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!

AN ODE TO GREEN

Poor, unsung, Green, how do I love ye. Let me count the ways..

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

HUMMING 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'...