The beach, friends, knitting, seafood, yarn shop. Not a bad way to spend a weekend!
A huge “thank you” to everyone who came out to share this knitting weekend. I am fortunate to know such wonderful, talented and generous people, and I look forward to our next knitting retreat!
knit equals joy
I love this week’s challenge!
While on a long walk at Cannon Beach, I came upon a seagull obviously enjoying a delectable dinner.
I was curious to check out the main course…
…and was dreaming of cioppino as I left him to finish his meal.
Kelp and the sea – in flawless rhythm.
The Challenge:
There’s rhythm and motion all around us — this week, let’s capture some of it in a photo…
When I let my brain loose, allowing it to absorb what’s around me without trying to process anything in particular, what it often detects is choreography — unmistakable dance moves, often in unexpected places.
~Ben Huberman
This week, let your inner world and the outside one converge in a photo.
Viewed through a protected glade north of Cannon Beach. Looking outward, finding joy in observing the world around me, enjoying quiet solitude and thought. The inner world and the outer converge in this photo.
Photos show us the surface of things, but they often tell much deeper stories about the objects they depict — and about the people who take them.
Every photo we take says something about our emotions at the moment of taking it. So this week, share an image where you see a particularly strong connection between what we see and what you felt as you pressed that shutter button on your camera or phone.
This is my first entry to The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge. This week’s theme is Seasons.
It’s always cloudy and rainy this time of year in Oregon, but there’s often a little sunlight peaking through, the promise of a dry spell sometime. It’s enough to keep my spirits up and keep me dreaming of those warm summer days that will be here eventually.
The Daily Post – Weekly Photo Challenge
This week, let’s embrace the season: share an image that embodies the world or the weather where you live.
The word “seasons” can also describe a period or phase of your life. If this context resonates with you, share an image that expresses the seasonality of life itself or the present season of your life.
~by Jen Hooks
I’ve just finished up a few days at the Oregon Coast. I come here every February, as a quiet, restful retreat by myself. I will often take long rambles, beachcombing, looking for the beautiful, the interesting or the odd to capture my attention. City-combing, too, looking for interesting architecture, sculpture, artistic endeavors; flora, fauna, food; less often, because they move and you have to get their permission, people.
A huge chunk of the time here is spent knitting, of course. Or, now, designing. This trip, there was a lot of knitting, ripping out, and re-knitting. I’m pretty sure this sweater now has its course planned out pretty well and all I have to do is just keep knitting…
Colorwork sweater, a previous version which included light blue and melon colorways:
Even though all of the inspirational palettes I was drawing from included the melon (and orange), I finally concluded that they were not going to work in this sweater because I hadn’t introduced them sooner. They are in time out and are not even in the tub with the rest of the yarn. Now I have a plan and will be working the greens, blues and browns back in throughout the rest of the fabric:
There’s much more to be said about knitting on this trip, including the lovely Open Knit time at In The Wind Yarns and some new yarn (!), but that’s subject matter for another post.
Now, back from that little aside.
Within the last year, I started writing this blog, and I set up a Facebook page and Twitter account so that I could let you know when a new post was written. In the blogging, I rediscovered my love for writing. For many years, it’s been put aside. I thought that since I write correspondence and I’m the Grammar/Comma Queen at work – I thought that because of these things, I was using my love for the language, I was writing. But then I started writing the blog, and I recollected that, at age 8 or 10 or whatever, I wrote an essay on the results of tobacco use for our little neighborhood club. I wrote an essay for fun, for goodness’ sake! What kid does that?? I’ve loved writing all my life, and it’s been very rewarding to pick up the pen, so to speak, again.
It’s true that I don’t have the time to devote to writing that I would wish, and so I decided to post Wordless Wednesday once a week, to keep the blog active when I don’t have the time or energy to write something engaging. I love photography, and now I want a new camera!
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. I appreciate your spending some of your time with me. Wishing you a wonderful day. Now, I’ve gotta pack and head back home!
~Carol
Driftwood as small furry animals. Not designed by me. 🙂
If you have followed my blog for long – or read my “about me” page – you know that I LOVE the beach. Part of what draws me to the beach is the endless variety of texture to be found there. Especially here on the rugged Oregon Coast, the objects to be found on the beach are richly varied, always interesting. I’m always looking for something unusual, something new, something lovely or striking.
Texture strikes me. It draws my attention. It is beautiful in its order and in its variety. Visually, as light moves over the surface of an object or vista and the eye detects changes in line and shape, this is texture. As light plays over differences in density within an object, and we see these differences, we see texture. And when the eye travels over a surface and, along the way, discovers changes in the nature of that surface, we recognize this as texture.
The pictures in this post were originally published in a Wordless Wednesday in August 2015. There were reasons for choosing these specific photos, so I wanted to revisit them – and to think about the nature of texture.
During a ridiculously long walk along this section of the beach in Newport, which I paid for later with complaining, swollen ankles and aching muscles (note to self: no more beach hikes wearing flip flops!) I was the winner in finding amazing textures, such as those in the barnacles and driftwood above.
And what about these wind shadows? I found them enchanting – sand protected from the wind by small items on the sand blocking the movement of air. This interesting textural phenomenon was all around that day.
Fascinating: an object masquerading as something quite different in nature from its own nature. 
And finally, when I was heading back on that Newport hike, I came upon this impromptu sand and driftwood sculpture. Well worth the price of admission!
I finally explored the Salishan Spit in August 2014, after having been curious about it for years. It can be seen across the Siletz Bay from the highway, but I had never been there – I couldn’t even figure out how to get there! Finally I did my research, took the eight mile hike, and was mesmerized the entire time. There was something new to discover every bit of the way, from the dark sand (called “tar sand” by some locals) to a desolate “tree graveyard” filled with sunbleached, craggy remnants of an ancient forest.
Lovely, delicious, intriguing, ubiquitous texture:
When I returned to Gleneden Beach the following February to photograph the Salishan Cowl for the completed pattern, I was reminded again why this place had inspired this design. The organic, curved shapes were everywhere, from the clouds in the sky to the patterns in the sand.
As my eye finds textured nuances like these, they are filed away in my brain under “inspiration.” And some day, hopefully, bits and pieces of them will reconnect and reemerge – as a new and pleasing design.
knit equals joy 