Its fall. I know that some of you don’t want to hear that because fall means winter is up next. For many people winter is not looked on with favor. Many people are terrible wimps about the cold and will, by December, sleep in a pair of wool socks, under five blankets, wrapped in an old stretched out hoodie. I count as one of those people.

But still, we cold-wimps must face the reality that it is fall. Just because I’m knitting outside in the sun and its 91 degrees out does not mean its still summer. It just feels like summer. But its not. The cute little hummingbirds have skedaddled to parts south. So have the big gnarly turkey vultures. Most importantly all the leaves are falling. Oh yes those leaves are falling. Trees know that its fall because they (unlike humans) pay very close attention to the length of time the sun is in the sky. When the days start to shorten, trees drop their leaves. They don’t give two craps what the daily high temperatures are. So you can always trust a tree to know what season it is.

When you live in an urban place like I do, it can be easy to miss the early days of leaves falling. That is because nearly every commercially owned place pays a small army of men to come through with those fantastically annoying air machines and blow all the fallen leaves away. Fallen leaves never get much chance to build up! But I know a very small boy and every Thursday evening he and I go for a walk. That very small boy can find the fallen leaves. Its his special talent. His other special talent is stomping on them to hear them crunch and he can exercise this very special talent until you are just ready to cry from the sheer boredom of it all.

But that is not the point. The point is: its fall. The trees say so. I’m getting ready for fall by… knitting up some leaves. I may not like fall and I hate winter but I like knitting leaves. We all have our cooping mechanisms.

If you’ve been following this blog these leaves wash cloths might remind you of a head scarf I once made.

Or a set of coasters/wash cloths/place mats I also once made.

What can I say, I like to knit leaves. I like to knit the same basic leaf lace motif over and over but in different shapes and different yarns. I’m dull, repetitive, a big fan of leaf lace. And I tell myself that me knitting leaves over and over is exactly like Georgia O’Keefe painting her back patio door over and over and Claude Monet painting the House of Parliament 19 times on the same size canvas from the same vantage point. I’m exactly like them! Except for how no one will ever pay hundred of thousands of dollars for my knitted leaves. But other than that, I’m just like those masters of the art world.

I’ll get the pattern for these written up and published. I’m almost done with that. Actually, I would have been done with it in time for this post but… I took a break from that knit a few more leaves.

Its a compulsion.