Autumn Leaves & Shetland Lace

I love autumn colours, autumn leaves, mushrooms and fungi and delightfully squelchy mud.  This weekend I wandered in the woods basking in the colourful death throes of hundreds of trees, finding mushrooms and squelching in muddy puddles.  The trees are beautiful as they flare in one last beam of fiery colour before they cast their leaves to the ground and play dead for the darker half.

I love the changing colours, the turning of the season and the changeling trees - a prelude to calan gaeaf (Halloween) which ends in fire.

The evening light matches the trees in slanting floods of orange and yellow warmth, yet the air carries with it the snap of cool air.  Its time for shawls, scarves and snuggly gloves!

My wander in the woods triggered the urge to knit a shawl inspired by the autumnal colours.  I needed a suitable yarn so rummaged in the wool stash and found one that had the colour mix I was after...

I settled on a Shetland lace shawl and am fudging through a design which lurks half-formed, vague and blurred in the back of my mind.  I see glimpses of it and sketch indecipherable notes to myself which look more like the scratchings of Ogham or some ancient runic script than English.  I wish I'd write my notes coherently! 

The shawl is growing and I'm not entirely sure how it will turn out or how much control I have over it.  It seems to have a will of its own and belligerently intent on designing itself.  I'm looking forward to see how it turns out!