KCBWDAY3 - Jane Thornley, One of My Knitting Heroes!

  

I've written about Jane Thornley before!  In fact, we've written about each other.  Here is an excerpt from the first of two blog postings I wrote about her this past January:

"Do you ever wonder how/where/when you’ve met someone?  After a while those recollections fade (and really don’t matter!), but when I asked my guest blogger to recall, she had the same response.  We just don’t remember how we “met!”  However, I can say that Jane Thornley has been my inspiration, my muse, my fierce Scrabble (on FB) competitor, and my “kindred spirit” for a number of years.

I am honored and humbled by her coining the term “Kindred Spirits” about our work.  We do think we discovered one another (not sure who!) on Ravelry where she manages several knitting groups.  Amazingly, our work is quite similar in its love of nature and natural materials, use of color and texture, and combining fibers and stitches to produce wearable knitwear.  She is far more skilled, inventive and innovative, published, adventurous, and recognized than I, but surprisingly, we share many of the same attributes.  I can always find her up EARLY to play several of our on-going Scrabble games! ;-o)" 

The second part of the interview with Jane is here.  And now I should add novelist, travel writer, knitalong developer, retreat and workshop planner and expediter, jewelry designer, AND most recently, buyer of MY work - to her auspicious list of talents!  Well, actually we traded!  She "bought" one of my Upcycle Scarves and then sent me this most delightful package of goodies from her stash!

Wild Thing Upcycle Scarf

A lovely trade, I would say!

Goodies from Jane!

    

I believe this is the design by Jane that I first saw that so reminded me of my own line of Bernadetta scarves.  Hers is a free pattern, so you are most welcome to read it and try your hand at it.  I had already been producing my own Bernadettas for several years, so it was astounding to me that someone else in the world thought about color and texture in ways so similar to my own.  These first two photos are Jane's Free range scarves; the last photo is one of mine! 

And this is one of mine: 

 More of mine can be seen here.

PLEASE VISIT JANE'S WEBSITE!

  

3KCBWDAY2 - Photography Challenge Day - Birch Bark Bernadetta in The River Birch

Well, a photographer I AM NOT!!!  I struggle constantly to get good photos of my work and then doubly hard to get acceptable ones for my gallery's website.  So today's challenge almost got substituted with the wildcard topic.  However, I decided to take this as a challenge and try to get photos (that is.....ONE photo!) that might possibly tell a story.  Of course, I am much better with words than pictures (except when I'm trying to learn something new!), so there has to be a story that goes along with this photo!

The scarf is one of my own, one that I will keep forever, but one that could be sold EVERY time I wear it!  I have sold a handful of similar ones to those who almost insist on my selling this one, and there is indeed a story to the name.  The Bernadetta Scarf has its own story, the likes of which can be found here on this blog if you are so inclined to read about the origin of the name.

But Birch Bark seems to be a very popular color combo, one that I have repeated over and over again.  So I decided to try to take a photo of this very popular selection of browns, taupes, cream, white, grey, gold and silver tones, and black among the branches of the only birch tree in our vicinity.  It's actually our next door neighbor's tree, but it occupies a sizable portion of our property along the golf course.  Yes, that's a bunker in the background.

This is a River Birch, not at all like the beautiful northern birches we had in New England, but it's the closest I can find here in southeastern North Carolina.  And it does have beautiful exfoliating bark.  My color inspiration, however, came from RI where we lived for 30 years.

So that's my story!  Other examples of the Birch Bark combination of colors include the pieces below, and additional photos of my original Bernadetta scarf are here and in the subsequent photos on flickr: