I love Autumn.
To paraphrase my kids, I love it so much I could marry it.
Common wisdom is that the world comes alive in the Spring, but for me the metamorphosis that is Autumn has always been a time of exciting beginnings.
I love the clear air, the crispness, the cool nights and warm days. But mostly I love the colors. The glorious golds, magentas, and one thousand shades of green compete with the richest blue sky of the year Thrumming along behind the bright shades is an amazing richness of brown, deep and dark, or mild and calm.
Change is often very hard. Last year my husband, Gerry, was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a terminal blood cancer that affects – in my husband’s case – the bones and bone marrow. We struggle to be honest with each other. Instead of fighting the changes, we try to embrace and learn from them. We use our energy to fight the disease.
The Autumn metamorphosis makes it easier for us to understand the inevitable final phase of life as an evolution that every living thing must pass through. In the purest non-religious sense, Autumn helps me to find peace with the concept of death, and what may lie beyond.
While pondering these heavy thoughts in a long drive through Wisconsin this October, I rounded a curve and before me was a landscape so lovely I had to stop. As I got out of the car with my camera I thought, “Gerry will really dig this – he loves these colors!”
Gerry and I love car trips. Our honeymoon was a long drive up and down the Hudson Valley in New York, our favorite vacations have been driving ones. We love the forced intimacy of a car, the diners and historical markers along the way, the pure joy of making a journey together.
When Beth Casey asked me to think up a palette for a new colorway for Lorna’s Laces in honor of Gerry and his ongoing fight against Multiple Myeloma, I immediately thought of the Wisconsin roadside photo. Here is the photo I took along the road, with individual colors that were eventually used in the dyeing process pulled out.
I’ve long felt that Beth is a true artist of dyeing, but the experience of working with her to create a colorway for Gerry confirmed my belief in her artistry. I feel that she’s captured the beauty and freshness of that lovely Autumn day by the side of the road in Wisconsin in this stunning colorway.
Here’s a hat I worked up for Max yesterday, it’s close fitting enough that he can wear it under his hood or another hat (we’re in 2-hat territory up here, folks…), and it looks adorable on him.
I am in LOVE with this colorway.
But I’m more in love with Gerry.