Map Of The Woods

I finished a sweater just in time before semester begins tomorrow.
The idea started out as colorwork mittens with some leftover yarns, and halfway through the first mitten, I thought, wouldn't it be great to have these fun motifs on a cuff of a sweater?

So I put the mittens on hold and dug through my bins and bins of stash.  I was able to find some fingering weight yarn I could use for contrasting body and sleeves. Purple and grey, one color combination I really dig on clothes, even though they were different yarns.  The purple was Naturally Haven (1050 yards, 100% merino) that I bought from Elann. This was the 3rd project I'd used this purple yarn with.  The Grey was Classic Elite Fresco (450 yards,) the alpaca and angora in addition to the wool gave it a slight halo. All other colors were leftover yarns, and used about 3-10 yards each. The needles were US #3 needles so the stranded part wouldn't be too stiff.

The name "Map Of The Woods" actually came to me at the same time of doing a sweater. From that name, the idea of paw prints on the body popped up in my head.The pal prints and the mushrooms on the cuff were the 2 motifs I came up, while the other motifs, the flowers, the fox faces, and the trees were all adapted from different books.

I knitted the body in round from bottom up and splitted into front and back at the underarm.  The sleeves were knitted separately in round and sewn on to the body before blocking.  Can you believe it, I actually sew the sleeves!!  For neckline, I went with a little funnel neck.

I really liked this fun project, doing color work without testing my patience.

Map Of the Woods is sort of an homage to the hikes I've been doing, and my new jogging routine in the woods behind my house (yes, jogging, me! that's a shock to me too.)

On the note of woods, I'd like to mention 2 bear encounters in the past 2 weeks near my house.  First was when I was on a trail not far from my house, my usual walk route. I heard scrambling noise up the tree 10 feet away, and it was too loud for small animals. I saw a small baby bear, followed by a not very large mama bear. I made some loud noise and turned around.  The trail was no more than 10 minutes walk from my house.  Then few days ago there was a mama bear and her cubs outside our house. Our neighbor was yelling, and Paul went out to make noises too hoping to scare them away, and hoping they won't come back.  He said the mama bear was quite large and was already tagged.  I'm very, very saddened by these frequent visits of bears so close to residential area. If they ever get caught twice they will be put down, the one bear tagged means she was already caught once.

We live in an area where we're encroaching on the bears' territory. That is why the garbage MUST go into bear proof trash cans so bears don't rely on human garbage for their food source and cause "problems" for human.  BUT, there are many irresponsible people, and being a tourist town, many tourists that rent condos near our place have mountains of trash after 3 days visit that many wouldn't bother to try to fit everything into the bear proof trash bins.  I'd warned people many, many times when I witnessed them just leaving trash bags around. It really pissed me off.

Last year, a mama bear was killed when she broke into a house where the resident had tons and tons of trash in their garage. Their neighbors reported the house many times and apparently they refused to do anything. That was right before winter, and no way her 2 cubs that scrambled away could survive without her. Weeks ago this summer, a vacation home owner shot a bear that was minding her own business walking down the beach.  He decided that he didn't want to have bears around his vacation home!
Visitors to bear country area, please be considerate of your actions. And, please, no more developments when the town is 70% empty during low seasons, and all the new developments are for timeshare, vacation homes. Why taking away more land from wildlife when these houses are just gonna sit there empty most of the time?