Leafing Through Fall Colors

"How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.” 

-W Burroughs 

Once again I fall for autumn colors, as we leaf through the pages of poetry the trees drop all around us. Tales of heat, and sun, wind, and even rain. The leaves of the tree books crunch underfoot, scattered, free for all to read, no longer fastened in the branches and twigs where they were composed. Some fly gently down, and then fly again, as a passing breeze rustles them into songs, and lifts, sorts, and shuffles the stories.

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly.” -Delia Owens

I am doing some stash busting fiber projects at the moment, with alpaca.

One is a rug that I make with all sorts of bits of leftover alpaca hand spun yarn, eight plying them together into mega yarn, and weaving the rug on a peg loom.

This year it is the dull brown oak leaves that call me. The ones with round edges, especially.

Many of the native oak groves here have been replaced with houses, farms, and roads, but a few can still be found here and there. This one is in a park that was once a ranch in the early days of this town, donated by a civic minded family, and now completely surrounded with city. 

It is the only spot I know of in my daily hikes where you can find a colony of acorn woodpeckers, sort of clownish looking birds, who nest in group apartments in the snags scattered about in this oak grove.

Next, I dig out a bag of naturally colored alpaca fleece that is such a warm brown that it is almost red. But the staple is very short, and difficult to spin. So I decide to felt. It is raining hard now, breaking the long drought of many months, at least for the moment. But it is not really cold, so I imagine a felt rain poncho. 

Such a large project can be made more easily if you felt it in smaller pieces, since felt severely shrinks the area of any surface you want to make. I felt each piece in two thin layers, resulting in six panels; sewing them all together at the end. Then I add some locks to the edges here and there, for decoration. 

Then the oak leaves speak to me. I gather a few different sizes and bring them home, tracing around them to needle felt each one to the poncho.

The result is a surprisingly lightweight but cozy poncho.