Left-Over Yarn Experimentation

For some reason, late fall is the time of year I pull out my overflowing bags of fabric scraps and hunt for project ideas that will reduce the stash volume and produce something useful, attractive, and/or fun. Scrap quilts are always great projects, and I've even made window quilts out of rayon scraps (totally inappropriate for quilts, yet too pretty to discard) by sewing them to foundation pieces cut from old tablecloths. Last year, I hauled out my boxes of knit scraps and used up an entire laundry basket full testing lingerie patterns.

Although I have plans to work with fabric scraps soon, the knitting machine preoccupation has moved me to drag out my large collection of worsted weight cotton and cotton/rayon yarns. Some of these are leftovers from completed projects, others are odds and ends I bought over the years from end of summer sale baskets. I've found that I don't usually like wearing sweaters knitted of cotton this heavy. Fingering-weight or sport weight cotton seems much more wearable. I knitted a cotton throw once, and it was heavy, and stretched badly, and wore out quickly. I even sold a few lots of pretty cotton yarn on eBay, but they don't have the brand names that knitters recognize these days. If only eBay had been around in the 1980's--these were real uptown brands in their day.

Now I'm swatching on the Bond Antepenultimate Sweater Machine, hoping for inspiration to strike. There's not enough of any one color or texture to make a complete project, so I'm looking for ways to combine colors and textures. I'm thinking about knitting strips or squares (or more random shapes) and piecing them together. Maybe I could make a jacket....

Return of the Greenbrier Backcountry Cannibals

For a while, my blog was one of Google's top hits for "inbred hillbillies West Virginia." I'd posted on James Dickey, Shelby Lee Adams, W. J. Cash, and Wrong Turn, a 2003 horror movie set in the "Greenbrier Backcountry of West Virginia." Time passes, and other Web sites have outstripped me, but lately I've been getting several hits a day looking for Greenbrier Backcountry.

That's how I discovered the release, last month, of Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End. Those unstoppable inbred hillbilly cannibals are back in a direct-to-DVD release. The Greenbrier has its headwaters in Pocahontas County, and runs right near Droop Mountain, so we're squarely in Greenbrier backcountry. That's one reason Wrong Turn is such a teen favorite around here. While it was actually filmed in Canada, the kids really enjoy trying to identify local landmarks. "I think I know that gas station!"

I'm sure the schoolkids will be interested in the sequel's synopsis:

Taking place shortly after the events of the original Wrong Turn, a group of six contestants are thrown together for six days in a simulated post-apocalyptic wasteland due to their participation in a reality television show called The Ultimate Survivalist: The Apocalypse, hosted and produced by a retired military commander Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins), in which the winner will walk away with $100,000. Located in a remote part of West Virginia, the contestants soon discover that what they really are fighting for is their survival--against a family of hideously deformed inbred cannibals who plan to ruthlessly butcher them all.

One of the things I liked best in the original was the parking lot the hillbilly cannibals kept by their house, filled with the SUV's and cars of the tourists they'd devoured. Mountain bikes and ski equipment filled the luggage carriers and back seats. Pocahontas County is being promoted as a tourist destination, and much of the real estate changing hands becomes vacation property. While the Tourism Board probably wouldn't agree, I think many natives might like to see a DVD three-pack in every ski condo rental unit: Deliverance, Wrong Turn, and this new movie, Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End. Y'all come back now, hear?

Some of the "do-it-yourself" movie review Web sites identify a genre of horror movie featuring "inbred hillbillies," but I've been disappointed to find they are usually about rednecks, hayseeds, or hicks, not hillbillies sensu strictu. Here are some examples of confusion about "hillbillies:"

• Top Five Late-Night Redneck Monster Movies
• Clemenza's Corner: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• A Look at the theatrical release of Alexandre Aja's The "Hills Have Eyes" from atrocities.com
• Hillbillies and Arabs--alike in their penchant for inbreeding.
• Are there inbred families in the Ozarks/Appalachians like in Deliverance?

Bond Antepenultimate Knitting Machine

I've been knitting a top-down cardigan in fine and annoying yarn, and somewhere in the middle of the long, tedious circular-knit, stockingette-stitch, needle-size 0 sleeves, I began to think about my knitting machine. I have a Bond "Sweater Machine" bought cheap on eBay in 2000. At that time, there were many knitters posting "Bond Incredible Sweater Machine" how-to's, hints, and tips on newsgroups and mailing lists. I learned how to use the machine and made several sweaters, then put it away, mostly because I had plenty of knitwear.

I had a chance to buy a professional knitting machine a couple of years ago, but decided that was a large, expensive object I could do without. Nowadays, it seems the better consumer-market machines, such as Passap and Brother, have disappeared. The industrial machines are still available, and at the other end of the scale, the toy-like "Ultimate Sweater Machine." (That must make my model the "Bond Antepenultimate Sweater Machine.") Evidently, interest in home knitting machines is down. There are far fewer Internet resources available now than when I was learning, and disgruntled Bond owners are unloading their machines on eBay for low prices.

I really enjoy my little plastic machine. Although it is limited, it taught me how machine knitting works, and it will crank out the stockingette stitch fabric at a good clip. (Unfortunately, I'm committed to finishing the troublesome top-down cardigan by hand.) This week, I've figured out how to knit intarsia, Fair Isle, cable and ribbing, too. It's always fun to try new things.

I've put together an annotated list of "Machine Knitting Links," because so many of the sites coming up on Google Searches are moribund, with dead links and "404 Errors."

Advice, particularly on Bond Knitting Machines

• "Hints and Tips" collected over the years from seeing questions and answers on the Bond List. These tips are a miscellany, but there is much useful, well presented information. I didn't find any link rot here.
• Bond Links and Tips from Valarie, who last updated the page in 1998. These tips are good ones, well explained, and specific to the Bond knitting machines. Here's where you'll find directions for making claw weights for machine knitting out of cheap forks from the discount store.
• Miscellaneous Machine knitting Tips from Knitting Any Way, a knitters' and spinners' resource, along with some products for sale. Up to date and active. I particularly enjoyed MK Sock Hints and Tips.
• Heidi's Knitting Room contains lots of patterns, techniques, and Bond knitting machine tips. It's amazing how many different effects she can achieve with a very simple machine.
• Machine Knit - Your Machine Knitting Resource has some Bond knitting advice and patterns, but is more general in scope.
• Superba Knitting Blog has some well-illustrated how-to's.
• My Knitting Machines and Me--A machine-knitter's blog, she has good how-to's instruction manuals, and interesting things.
• Elaine's Knitting Page-devoted to users of the ISM Incredible Sweater Machine. A personal page with finished projects, she also includes Creating a Gauge conversion worksheet in either QuattroPro or Excel.

Commercial Web Sites With Good Information

• Knitting Today has Bond Club Online links page.
• Charlotte's Yarn Barn
• ROCKING HORSE FARM knitting machines and more.

Lists of Links

• Steph's Home Page: "Bond List Thoughts." Steph has several long link lists, for patterns, tips, and techniques. I don't think she's actively updating anymore (the most recent date on a page is 2004), but link rot is not rampant.
• Craft Site Directory: Machine Knitting Machine Knitting magazines, dealers, and yarn sources.
• Machine Knitting Free Patterns from Bella Online.
• Charlene's Machine Knitting Links and More. So many links, it's hard to work through it. There are some gems among the linkrot, though.

Machine Knitting Reviews and Overviews

• Demystifying Knitting Machines: An illustrated review by Eileen Bator. This is a good place to start learning about knitting machines, and she includes sources for further reading, if you're so inclined.
• Better Living Through Knitting Technology from "Knit Like a Man" blogger
• What Every Hand Knitter Should Know Before Buying a Knitting Machine from Angelika's Yarn Store

Interesting Ideas and Inspirations

• Machine Knitting to Dye For. Knit up a big rectangle on the machine, paint it with dyes, let the dyes set and dry, then unravel the whole thing and knit something else with it.
• Liz Biven's Machine Knitting Patterns--lots of inspiration, especially when she creates intarsia designs based on quilt patterns.

Marcum and the Yankee--Happy Halloween!

I like to celebrate Halloween with Pocahontas County stories of the supernatural. I've posted my favorite ghost stories at Haunted Pocahontas County, but I've never before ventured into local accounts of witches, witchcraft, and the Devil. "The Hammons Family: Traditions of a West Virginia Family and Friends" (1973) published several stories from the old days, and "Marcum and the Yankee" is especially interesting. I've edited the transcript of Burl Hammons' recorded story to make it easier to follow. When you listen to Burl tell the story, it's plain as day who said what, but the Library of Congress folks dutifully transcribed every "ah," and "he said," making it almost unreadable. They make up for this lapse by providing some interesting commentary on the prevalence of male witches, guns, and supernatural hunting powers in Allegheny folk culture.

There was...a feller by the name of Marcum, and they was a Yankee there,...they didn't know where he'd come from....this feller got talking about building a mill, you know, a grist mill, and he...got this stranger to build his mill for him, he told him he'd just hire him to build the mill for him. And he went to work at the mill.

And it--it kindly got scarce, you know, directly, meat, you know, they killed the bigger part of their meat, and so...this feller said to Marcum, "Why don't you get out" he said..."and kill us a deer?"

"Well," Marcum said, that's kindy hard," he said....And Marcum went out and hunted that day and he never killed nary none.

"Why," he said, "if you've seen any sign," he said, "I can kill a deer."

"Well," Marcum said, "there's plenty of sign." he said. "I just didn't happen to see ary one."

And the Yankee said, "Well, I'll go with you in the morning."

And...they took out, and didn't go but a little piece till here'd went a deer...."Oh," Marcum said, "it ain't no use to track that deer, follow after that deer, just no telling how far it is," he said, "it's no use to follow after it."

And he said--told Marcum, the Yankee did, he said, "Just get up there, and sit down."

....And Marcum just sat down, just setting there, and he [the Yankee] got right down over the track, and he said, "Don't you speak," he told him, he said, "Don't you speak," he said. And Marcum said he just set there a little while, he said he thought that was one of the biggest, craziest men setting there over that deer track. And he set there right smart while...And after a while he...heard somthing a-coming the way the deer'd went, he...heard something a-coming. And...directly he saw that deer a-coming, he said it was just a-coming, and...its hair was all buzzed up and its tongue was out of its mouth, he said, that far, just like it had run to death. And...the deer just come up about 20 steps to hem, and [the Yankee] said, "Well, all right now, kill it."

And Marcum just took the gun and killed it. "And how--," he said, "now," he said, "I can't eat a bite of that deer myself, you can eat all you want," he said, "I won't eat a bite of it."

Well," [the Yankee] said, "I don't know why....That deer's just as good as any deer."

"Well," [Marcum] said..."if you'll tell me how you done that," he said, "I'll just give you anything I ever seen....just give you anything if you'll just tell me...."

"Now," [the Yankee] said...I don't want n' anything. But," he said, "it wouldn't be no use for me to tell you because, " he said, "you wouldn't do it if I'd tell you."

"Oh yes," [Marcum] said, I will," and he just kept on....

"Besides, if I'd tell you," he said, "you'd aim to kill me, and," he said, "that you'll not do; I can tell you before it."

"No I wouldn't," he said, "besides, a friend like you...." Then he just kept on....

"All right," [the Yankee] said, 'I'll tell you....You go up on that high mountain, and...when you see the sun...a-gettin' up of a morn, just as it's hit the hill," he said, "you shoot at that sunball, nine mornings. And," he said, "the ninth morning there'll be a drop of blood on your gun barrel. And," he said, "you take a little piece of paper and...cut a little place on your arm, and write it on it how long you want to be sold to the devil and give it to him when he comes to get it."

"All right," [Marcum] said, he'd do that.

And he'd go ever morning up there and--the ninth morning, when he shot that time, he said he looked onto the gun barrel and there was a drop of blood. And he just cut a little place on his arm and writ I think it was a year, uh, he wanted....And he said the gun never quit roaring; he said the gun never quit roaring, he said it just kept on roaring, he said the longer the worse, and the longer the worse, and after a while he said the whole earth just seemed like it got to jarring with him just up and down. And he said directly he looked a-coming through the treetops, and he said there come some kind of a thing that they was balls of fire coming out of its mouth. And he just dropped and away he went to the house and told 'em what he'd seen and all about this. He told them all about it and he said, "I'm a-going down to kill the Yankee just as quick as I can go down. Man telling me such stuff as that, I'm a-going down to kill him." They tried to beg him not to go. "Yes sir, I'm a-going down," he said, "to kill the Yankee."

And he just took his gun and started down where he was a-working on the mill and the Yankee seen him a-coming. He knowed just exactly what he'd done.

"Well," he said, I've come to kill you."

He said, "Just as I expected. But," he said, you ain't' a-yet." And...the Yankee just picked up his gun, and just took and shot him, and they said that Marcum just jumped up and just crowed like a rooster and just fell over dead. The Yankee just quit and they never did hear tell of him no more, he just quit right there and...went right on. They was no way they could get trace of him.

A Blog Post Per Day for November, 2007

Last November, I participated in Nablopomo, National Blog Posting Month, and posted every day for a month, whether I had something sensible to say or not. It was a helpful exercise, and convinced me to do more with my blog. I decided to try it again this year, even though the "badge" and "buttons" feature the Lolcat emblem of I can has cheezburger?, which I suspect may be the harbinger of the End of Western Civilization. I suppose nothing lasts forever.

The NABLOPOMO Randomizer is a nifty feature that sends you to a randomly chosen participant blog. Last year, I blog-hopped quite a bit and observed that the crowd was dominated by the young, the hip, and the suburban, and the drawing for prizes featured the donated handicrafts of people utterly devoured by irony. Still, I found many interesting, regularly updated blogs I wouldn't have read otherwise. It looks as though this year's participants will include a more diverse assortment, although the prizes remain resolutely too hip to live.

I haven't broken the "30 posts per month" barrier yet in 2007, so that's my goal. Oh, and I've got to memorize four poems. I promised Sherry. I'm starting to look longingly at limericks.

End of October Reds

Some years, we go all winter without a Purple Finch at our bird feeder, but this year, a small group seems to have been waiting for the sunflower seed bonanza to begin. I hope the bears don't find the feeder again--they're the ones who "took it down" in the spring. It makes me nostalgic for the my time in the city, where people curse the squirrels for eating all the birdseed.

• Tricky Bird IDs: House Finch, Purple Finch, and Cassin's Finch
• Separating Finches from Cornell's "Birdscope."
• Purple Finch entry from Cornell's "All About Birds."
• John James Audubon's account of the Purple Finch. This is well worth reading--here's an excerpt.

  The song of the Purple Finch is sweet and continued, and I have enjoyed it much during the spring and summer months, in the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania, where it occasionally breeds, particularly about the Great Pine Forest, where, although I did not find any nests, I saw pairs of these birds flying about and feeding their young, which could not have been many days out, and were not fully fledged. The food which they carried to their young consisted of insects, small berries, and the juicy part of the cones of the spruce pine.

Blow Flies Appreciate the Carrion Flower

I took the Stapelia flower outside yesterday, partly looking for pollinators, and partly to air out the living room, as the flower was getting a bit too powerful. Despite the wind and cool temperatures, I had blow flies within a few minutes. Although two species of calliphorids arrived promptly, only one held still enough for photographs. Unfortunately, no oviposition occurred. One of the flies rode indoors with the plant, and when I checked this evening, it had expired. Perhaps it was fatally entangled by the long, resinous red hairs inside the blossom. Life is full of unanticipated hazards.

Kitchener Stitch--Tidbit of Knitting History

It was only a few years ago that I really mastered the knitting technique known as "Kitchener stitch." Using yarn threaded through a tapestry needle, you can join two raw knitted edges invisibly, so that they seem to be knitted in one continuous piece. It makes a tidy sock toe. I was never sure whether "Kitchener" should be capitalized, or why the seamless grafting technique had that name, but yesterday, while looking for something else, I discovered the answers to both these questions.

"Kitchener Stitch is called after Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, British military hero of Boer War and WW I. He associated himself with a Red Cross plan to dragoon US womanhood into knitting 'comforts' for the men in the trenches, and contributed his own sock design, which included a square-ish 'grawfted' toe. Hence the Kitchener Sock; hence Kitchener Stitch. Truth is indeed stranger than imagination . ."

Carrion Flower

A friend gave me a small start of this succulent houseplant a few years ago. It wasn't until it bloomed two years ago that I realized it was a Stapelia, and not some euphorbiaceous thing. Stapelia is sometimes listed as a member of the milkweed family, Asclepiadaceae, and sometimes as Apocynaceae (dogbane and Indian hemp are North American species). Either way, its odd, fleshy flowers are in character. This species' flowers smell strongly of rotting meat (to the horror and dismay of my cat, Princess), and last time it bloomed, it was warm enough to place out in the yard, where it attracted blowflies. The blowflies actually oviposited on the flower, and in a few days, I had a brood of forlorn maggots looking in vain for something to eat. With any luck, it will stop raining, and I can take the plant back outside for its quirky, fruitless pollination.

Some links, including some amazing photographs of other Stapelia species:

• Stapelia growing guide
• USDA Plants Database page for Stapelia gigantea, which is an introduced plant in Hawaii.
• Wikipedia entry for Stapelia.
• Digital Macro Photographs of Asclepiads (including Stapeliads, Ceropegias and Hoya) by Martin Heigan
• Stapelia from the Succulent Plant Page

Rich October Skies

Last Saturday was probably the fall foliage peak for this part of Pocahontas County. All the calculations that tourism boosters use to predict fall color seem to have little value. We still haven't had a frost and it's been terribly dry, yet this year the colors seemed especially bright. Sunday, the wind came up, and this week's welcome rains have also brought down many of the colorful leaves, so my Locust Creek vista here is just a memory now. I am, however, a great fan of bare trees, and I'm looking forward to drizzly November views and snowy winter branches.

The Schoolhouse On the Hill

October's deep blue skies and colorful leaves always make me think of this Carter family song. My parents, aunts and uncles, and most of my cousins fondly remembered their days in one-room schoolhouses, and this song evokes for me a sweet, second-hand nostalgia that seems entirely appropriate for autumn.

I learned this song from the Sara Carter's singing in the June, 1933 session in Rounder Records' "Complete Victor Recordings" series. I've not seen the original 1907 shape note songbook; these are the lyrics as I hear them, and I may have misunderstood some words. The imagery is unusually vivid for a turn of the century sentimental song.

The Schoolhouse On the Hill

Fond memory paints its scenes of other years,
Brings me their memory still,
And bright amid those joyous scenes appears
The schoolhouse on the hill.

Chorus:

     Oh, the schoolhouse that stands upon the hill--
     I never, never can forget.
     Dear happy days are gathered 'round me still--
     I never, never can forget.


There hangs the swing upon the maple tree,
Where you and I once swung.
There flows the spring, forever flowing free
As when we both were young.

(Chorus)

There climb the vines and there the berries grow
Which once we prized so high;
And their ripe clusters glisten in the glow
Of rich October skies.

(Chorus)

School was in session until the 1960's in this schoolhouse, although it is on the Greenbrier River, not on a hill. Some of the students came to school in boats. That must have made vivid memories.

Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker

This Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker had an unfortunate encounter with the living room window yesterday. She flew away after while. We occasionally see these woodpeckers around the house in the spring, but this is my first fall sighting.

Dust On the DSLR Sensor

I had a little camera excitement the other day. I took some fall foliage pictures, and it became painfully obvious that I had dust on my camera's sensor cover. I have a Nikon digital SLR, (mostly because I've used SLR's happily for 40 years, and couldn't figure out how to operate a point-and-shoot camera), and I change between a macro and a telephoto lens often. You are supposed to change lenses in a dust-free environment, but I don't have one of those, so dust in the camera was inevitable.

As it happens, I was able to blow the large chunk of dust away with a Nikon-recommended blower-bulb, so most of my Web-reading has been for future reference. I didn't have to decide what sort of expensive or inexpensive equipment I need to buy, but now I know what's out there, and what other people do. Here is my collection of sensor-cleaning links.

• CCD / CMOS Cleaning
• Cleaning your Sensor: Are those spots you're seeing, or have the dreaded dust bunnies inhabited your camera?
• Nikon CCD Cleaning Guide from Nature Photography Central
• Image Sensor Cleaning Tips and Techniques--a collection of links from UltimateSLR
• Excerpt from the Nikon sensor cleaning video on YouTube. Nikon USA tells us not to touch our sensors or we void our warranty, but in Japan, they sell a cleaning kit, including a video showing how the Nikon technicians clean sensor screens. It involves lens paper and a wooden chopstick.

The Hawthorn Problem

Lest you think my success at maple identification will make me arrogant, let me tell you about my recent attempt to identify the hawthorn species in our yard. It took me a while to convince myself that these were, in fact, hawthorn, because they didn't look like any hawthorns I was familiar with, and they definitely don't "match" pictures in "the book" or on the Interwebtubenet. The Flora of West Virginia and Gray's Manual of Botany eventually let me eliminate all the other local genera in the Rosaceae.

I knew that Crataegus species limits are tricky, and that there is hybridization, but I thought I might identify these shrubs to species group. Unfortunately, the initial couplets in the keys all concern leaf characters, and these little trees have extremely variable leaf morphology.

Lest you think I'm giving up prematurely, here's a synopsis of the Crataegus problem from the Dickinson lab at the University of Toronto:

Between 1896 and 1910 the number of North American Crataegus species increased dramatically. Many of these species were described by C. S. Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum. Sargent eventually expressed himself to a correspondent about his pleasure in traveling in South America, where no hawthorns grew....The large number of species described during this period...led W. H. Camp (1942) to enunciate what he saw as "the Crataegus problem."

....[T]he discovery of polyploidy and other evidence (e.g. widespread male sterility) of...hybridization has been studied in detail only in situations involving the Eurasian diploid species C. monogyna....Polyploid Crataegus are apomictic and are suspected of being of hybrid origin, but only apomixis has been studied in any detail, and that only recently (Campbell et al. 1991). Even so, new species of Crataegus continue to be described without discussion of whether they merely represent apomictic genotypes, or in fact comprise populations of different, panmictic genotypes.

And here are some Cratategus identification tips. Note the frequent use of the "spp." word.

• USDA Plants Database page for Crataegus
• Virginia Tech Tree ID for Crataegus spp.
• Crataegus spp. page from the University of Toronto Botany Page's Families of Vascular Plants Course Page. This is an interesting assemblage of information and links that I'll be visiting again.

Dark Night Of the Taxonomic Soul

After reading Dave's Invasion of the Swamp Things, I began to lose my nerve. It's not that I was frightened to learn that red maple (Acer rubrum) is now the most common tree in Pennsylvania. It's just that I never see red maples around here. I began to worry that I could no longer tell one maple from another, that the trees I've been blithely calling Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) actually were Dave's ubiquitous Acer rubrum.

Eventually I was reassured by Gray's Manual of Botany and some Internet resources. The dominant maple here on Droop Mountain is indeed Acer saccharum, Sugar Maple. I expect this is because Droop Mountain has been cleared farm land since the early 1800's, and because many farmers kept a sugar bush for making maple syrup. The fencerow full of big sugar maples here on our place is what's left of such a sugar bush.

Although samaras were scarce this year because of the hard freeze we had in April, I found these diagnostic maple seeds in the yard. Sugar Maple (and Black Maple) have these "horseshoe-shaped" samaras, while the twin seeds of Red Maple come to a sharp point where they meet the peduncle.

The leaf buds on Red Maple are blunt, but these sharply pointed buds are characteristic of the "Hard Maples," Sugar Maple and Black Maple (Acer nigrum). Given my mood of self-doubt, I had to go back to Gray's Manual, to check whether I had Sugar Maple or Black Maple. The delicate lenticels on these twigs are characteristic of Sugar Maple. On Black Maple twigs, the lenticels are large and raised, and the older twig regions are waxy, and tend to peel. I still know one maple from another.

Some maple identification links:

• Maple Tree Identification from the Massachusetts Maple organization; the same text and photos as found on Maple Tree Identification from Maple-trees.com, which sells trees.
• USDA Plants Database entry for Black Maple
• USDA Plants Database entry for Red Maple
• USDA Plants Database entry for Sugar Maple
• Maple Identification guide from the Cornell Sugar Maple Research and Extension Program; for kids, with nice photos.

White Snakeroot, Gone Ecru

When White Snakeroot goes to seed, it looks like so many other Asteraceae--long, etched achenes with fluffy ecru parachutes. I don't believe any milk cows would be tempted by them in this condition.

More October Reds

While the maple leaves have stalled in their color change, my rose bush is growing again, coming up with different October reds.

Carping Tourist, Pocahontas County, 1821

The October issue of The Pocahontas Times' monthly tourism supplement is finally on the Web. It features an interesting article about Huntersville Traditions Day by Drew Tanner. Published before this year's event, the article describes the ongoing renovation of the old schoolhouse building, and quotes historical notes from a February 1, 1951 article by Pocahontas Times editor Cal Price.

I particularly enjoyed this letter, written by Colonel J. Howe Peyton shortly after the formation of Pocahontas County in 1821. It includes two of my favorite topics: local history of textiles, and insulting accounts of rural people by obnoxious tourists. He boasts of his own palatial slave quarters and condescends toward the dirty backwoodswomen in his letter, so I'm sure his manners made the local folks glad to see the back of him.

"On Tuesday at two o'clock, we arrived at Huntersville, the seat of Justice of Pocahontas County, a place as much out of the world as Crim Tartary. Owing to the bad condition of the roads we were fatigued and bore many marks of travel stain. The so called town of Huntersville consists of two illy-constructed, time worn, (though it is not time which has worn them,) weather beaten cabins built on logs and covered with clapboards. My negro cabins on Jackson's River are palaces in comparison with them.

One of these wretched hovels is the residence of John Bradshaw, the other is called the loom house for these people are self sustaining. They spin and weave. The big wheel and the little wheel are birring in every hut and throwing off the woolen and linen yarn to be worked up for family purposes. The home-spun cloth, too, is stronger and more durable than that brought by our merchants from Northern manufacturers.

In Bradshaw's dwelling, there is a large fireplace which occupies one entire side, the gable end. The chimney is enormous and so short that the room is filled with light which enters this way. It is an ingenious contrivance for letting all the warmth escape through the chimney, whilst most of the smoke is driven back into the chamber. In the chimney corner I prepared my legal papers before a roaring fire, surrounded by rough mountaineers, who were drinking whiskey and as night advanced, growing riotous. In the back part of the room two beds were curtained off with horse blankets--one for the Judge and one for myself. To the left of the fireplace stood old Bradshaw's couch. In the loft, to which they ascended, by means of a ladder, his daughter and the hired woman slept, and at times of a crowd, a wayfarer. The other guests were sent to sleep in the Loom House, in which was suspended in the look a half-woven piece of cloth. Three beds were disposed about the room, which completed its appointments: one was allotted to Sampson Matthews, a second to George Mays and John Brown. The loom was used as a hat rack at night and for sitting on, in the absence of chairs in the day. As there was not a chair or stool beyond those used by the weaving women, my clients roosted on the loom while detailing their troubles and receiving advice.

Bradshaw's table is well supplied. There is profusion, if not prodigality in the rich, lavish bounty of the goodly tavern. We had no venison, as this is a shy season with the deer, but excellent mutton with plenty of apple sauce, peach pie, roasting ears. As a mark of deference and respect to the Court, I presumed, we had a table cloth--they are not often seen on Western tables and when they are, are not innocent of color--and clean sheets upon our beds. This matter of the sheets is no small affair in out of the way places, as it not unfrequently happens that wanderers communicate disease through the bedclothing. Old Bradshaw's family is scrupulously clean which is somewhat remarkable in a region where cleanliness is for the most part on the outside. A false modesty seems to prevent those salutary ablutions which are so necessary to health, and I did not commend myself to the good graces of the hired woman by insisting on my footbath every morning.

We remained five days at Huntersville closely engaged in the business of the Court, which I found profitable. Pocahontas is a fine grazing county, and the support of the people is mainly derived from their flocks of cattle, horses and sheep, which they drive over the mountains to market. There is little money among them except after these excursions, but they have little need of it--every want is supplied by the happy country they possess, and of which they are as fond as the Swiss of their mountains. It is a pretty country, a country of diversified and beautiful scenery in which there is a wealth of verdure and variety which keeps the attention alive and the outward eye delighted."

Cardigan Anxiety

My French Tweed cardigan is at that interesting stage of top-down knitting. It's just about time to divide the sleeves from the body. If I do this too early, the body and sleeves will be tight, and look skimpy and pitiful. If I knit too many rows before I divide for sleeves and body, the armholes will be big and floppy, and the sweater will look like a shapeless sack. I know this from bitter experience, and I have yet to get it just right. It's disconcerting how little difference there is between too big and too little, and it's not something I've been able to accurately eyeball or assess by trying it on.

When (or if) I get the bugs worked out of this top-down set-in sleeve design, I'll provide directions.

Red Socks Finished Just In Time For Cool Weather

These red socks have been in the works a long time. I finally finished them Wednesday night. In case anyone is considering it, I don't recommend this pattern, "Broad Spiral Rib" for socks. It's pretty, but it's rather tedious in fine yarn on small needles, and the "ribs" are lumpy and draw up the fabric quite tightly. I'm sure I'll wear them happily, but many people are more particular about sock texture than I. Ah well, it was good practice for working twist-stitch patterns. On to more interesting knitting.