We're all finally over the summer of "big ouches", as my toddler would put it, and are doing some much needed catching up.


In these last couple of weeks there's been a whole lot of family time. When we're sick all we ever seem to be able to keep up with is the bare minimum of house work, so the last thing I want to do right now is stay inside. The boys agree.
We've been picking things in the garden, watching movies, eating lunch at kid friendly cafes, visiting with friends, swimming and generally trying not to sweat the small stuff. It's been a good month for all of us including the dust buffaloes roaming around the living room.
Yesterday at about 8:30 AM we saw a hot air balloon being inflated in the distance and threw the kids into the car with only about half the usual amount of back up clothing, caffeine, snacks and diapers. A bit of bad weather arrived and we lost sight of the balloon so we headed out to a plant sale ( I found a caper berry bush. I know, amazing. I'll talk about that later.) in a neighboring village. Because we'd left in a rush, we arrived a half an hour before the plant show was scheduled to open. We ducked into a second hand shop to pass the time and I found this.


She's a little beat up, but that just means that I won't mind sharing her with little children. There are 11 dolls in this set. The smallest is about the size of my thumb nail and she opens. The patterns on their aprons and kerchiefs are made out of straw.
I've been thinking a lot about patterns lately. I think it must be the changing colors in my garden. With fall coming on I'm tempted to start some stranded mittens or maybe a stranded vest for one of the boys. I haven't the heart to start another sweater right now. I also lack the time and the focus to work on anything of consequence. I've channeled my color work desires into a men's scarf. It's posing with my sexy radicchio.


The color work is an easy to memorize slipped stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's first book, knit from odds and ends of Noro "Cash Iroha" and "Silk Garden". The other day I was pawing through my stash when I realized that I hadn't done any knitting since we recovered. I think these long days in the sun are leaving my brain a little scorched. My other projects are looking too fussy and complicated. I'm glad I started this. The Noro "Silk Garden" in this scarf is providing a little interest without demanding any actual work. I'll just keep on knitting until I run out of remnants. That's about all the planning I feel like doing after a long Indian summer day.

KAL

The Fall issue of "Twist Collective" is up. It's probably one of my favorite issues to date. I like this, this and this. Not to mention this. But a knitter has to be reasonable. There are only so many hours in each day, and my children make a good case for needing to be fed. Their case involves a lot of yelling, but there's some precedence to support their argument.
This is my swatch for Hallett's Ledge. I'm using "Imperial Stock Ranch 2ply".


This particular yarn has tried to be knit into sweaters three times. I was a little worried that it might be cursed, but now I believe it was just being picky about a partner.


In an effort to get this project finished quickly I'm bringing in a friend. My friend's name is competitive nature. I've joined a Knit - a - Long. I don't advertise the fact that I like winning. It always seems a little crass to be competitive, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I like to win, and being a liar is way worse than being competitive. I guess I could just not admit to either, but that would make me sneaky. I'll end this train of thought before it goes too far. Oh no, it's gone too far.
I thought I might be able to come in second or maybe third, but was shot down on day two. Let me repeat that. Someone knit an aran weight, long sleeve, cabled sweater with a button band in two days. She must have cut her hands off and replaced them with super mechanized mini knitting machines. That's my theory.
I don't think I could knit this sweater in two days unless I didn't sleep and was cool with wearing a diaper. I'm not cool with that, so I'll have to wait.
I'm really enjoying the community of the KAL. It's wonderful to be able to chat about whether or not to use a P2tog instead of a K2tog. It's thrilling to see other peoples' swatches. It makes me feel less alone in my dorky-ness. Thank you internet. You complete me.

Jazzysocks

These are a pair of custom fit, no nonsense, top down, heel flap socks. I started them back in January, maybe you remember, and then there was a lot of baby having and leg twisting, etc., etc. In the wake of my shawl knitting frenzy I finished them off. Oh, and by the way, I was wretchedly ill when I finished them. This is no exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate. I thought you ought to know.


I was so wretchedly ill that I only managed a couple of hours sleep over a two day period. It was that kind of illness where you're sore deep down in your bones, and your skin feels sticky even when dry. My internal thermostat was going crazy and after some harsh bargaining with the Tylenol it opted not to go above 101F but not to go lower than 99F. My throat, however, was a real shark in the medicinal negotiations. It refused to compromise on anything. It made the homeopathic medicine cry.
I finished the foot of the second sock during the worst of this illness. There was a lot of one row, put the knitting down, stare at the mobile above my baby's bed for an hour, pick the knitting up, knit a row, repeat. My baby is also sick, and there was a lot of staring at mobiles going on. There were some points where we just stared at each other and telecommunicated about how much this bug sucked. He's my buddy.
Four days into this festival of germs, I'm starting to feel like the party's winding down. My throat is allowing for some solid foods and my body has cooled off. I have a throaty wispy voice which by husband describes as sexy, but which I would call contagious sounding. There's a lot of hacking and gasping for air, which I suppose just makes me sexier. The baby is still running a fever, but the doc says it's O.K. so I'll try not to freak out all over him and tell him that 4 days of fever is not O.K. for a mom, let alone a baby.
I'm going to sandwich this blog post about illness with a tiny bit of knitting and hope you'll still consider this a knitting blog. I don't want to have to change the title to "The Wendigo Gets Sick and or Hurt a Whole Lot, Plus There's a Little Knitting Going On". So, on to the socks.


I think that they are hideous. They remind me of modern dance, or free form jazz, or eating too much candy and then going on a violent amusement park ride run by a very young person who seems frighteningly uninvested in their job. They are totally gross. They are jazzysocks. I'm calling them that, because bad jazz is my least favorite thing in the world. Really bad jazz being either the Kenny G. or the crazed squealing horn variety and about 70 percent of the jazz in between. Billy Holiday, you know I love you. I'm not talking about you. You're more blues, and I love blues. Back to the socks, I think they went from Missoni to Methuselah when I knit the second foot. The small stripes circling the first foot are cute. The large sludge colored stripe on the second foot is throwing everything off. It's jazzy.
I'm not going to blame this jazzy quality on the dyer, Farmhouse Yarns. They made a beautiful yarn with colors I love. The creamy white with touches of yellow, pale blue and pink with a dark vegetable green does in fact remind me of "wild flowers" (that's the colorway). I think that in my delirious sickbed knitting I made one foot two stitches smaller than the other one. It's totally my fault.


These will be the socks I wear when I just don't care what other people think, which is most of the time.

Fini, All Done, No More

That's what my two year old son says when he's finished with something.


This is "Haruni" in Blue Sky Alpacas "alpaca silk", colorway "ivory". It took me about a half an hour just to pin it out for blocking. I'm so very proud of this. I know my friend will love it.


It's such a relief to be done with it. My hands were so busy knitting this thing that they couldn't stop, and I've almost finished a pair of socks in the last two days. It's like knitting in the wake of a big shawl boat. Now, if the promises of our mail services are to be believed, it should get there just in time for her wedding reception.

Soldiering On

One week after I gave birth I fell into a small stone watering hole while trying to count the salamanders. I am aware of how impossible that sounds. Yes, it is true. One leg stayed on shore, while the other one went in. I pulled a bunch of calf muscles and was pretty handicapped for about a month. During our June knit night there was a small fire. This was due to too much talking and not enough paying attention to the candles. I burned myself while trying to put the fire out and lost a good bit of skin on the back of my hand. Thanks to some good witch doctoring by a fellow knitter (mother of 8, lives in a yurt) my hand healed in about two weeks. I had one week with a good right hand and then I sliced the back of that same hand open on an exploded champagne bottle. I know, all of my accidents are fun related. Try not to be jealous of how much fun I'm having.
It took four stitches to close up the cut. I thought that would be the end of things, but since then I've had an allergic reaction to the tetanus vaccine, then an allergic reaction to the stitches which in turn caused the cut not to heal properly. Then my husband had a run in with a wood chisel and had to have three stitches. That's seven stitches in one week. Today my cut is starting to look like it's healing up but.......it seems like I might be coming down with some sort of sore throat thing.
This is the point at which I am admitting defeat. I am not going to pretend that any of this is O.K. It's insane. I know it's not life threatening, or terminal and things could be a heck of a lot worse, but right now I'm feeling pretty put upon.
That's why this......(please ignore the mess on my desk)


should be making me strap on the ole' straight jacket. This is "Haruni". Well it's almost "Haruni". It's "Haruni" minus one row of knitting. I ran out of yarn one row short.

Do you see the pretty scalloped edging? That's the row I'm missing. It's not a row I can skip. This is a gift for my best friend's wedding, so it's got to be finished within the week.
The extra skein has been ordered. In my professional opinion, the other yarn that I ordered along with that one skein was a medical necessity. It's a small soft cushion between my psyche and the proverbial wall.

Rough Draft

This needs blocking. It also needs hooks and eyes sewn on, but I just couldn't resist wearing it around for a day. It's the "Ambrosia Cardigan" by Katya Frankel, from the most recent issue of "Interweave Knits". The yarn is "Classic Silk" from Classic Elite Yarns. I like it. It's very soft and has a nice hand. It's a blend of cotton, silk and nylon and has a slightly slubby texture. It's a very good around the house cardigan. I think it brings out the beer wench in me.


Now....... I've got to finish the shawl. This time it's for real. There's a cast on ban in place. I've got no where else to go. The shawl is all I've got. No more Mrs. nice pink cardigan. It's on, baby.

The Worst Word I Know is

Procrastination.


This sweater is a soft pink pile of procrastination.


I was planning to finish the Haruni shawl for my best friends wedding, but the baby came a week early, and another work deadline was moved up by two weeks, and somewhere around the Monday before a Sunday wedding I realized that the shawl would not make it. I spoke to my friend about the shawl's state of borderless-ness and she gave me the go ahead to not go ahead. She wasn't planning on wearing at the ceremony, so I didn't feel too bad.... yeah, I still felt like a jerk. Thankfully she's having a reception toward the end of July, and so I have a chance between now and then to finish what I started. This whole finishing what you start thing is very important. My mother told me so.


The problem is my Dad and Mom sent me some yarn. I wasn't expecting it, it just arrived looking all soft and smelling of a real American yarn shop. I put it up in the stash with every intention of waiting until after I'd finished the shawl, but with the new baby around I needed something easy to knit on. Evening after evening passed with no knitting. That was unacceptable, but I knew that I couldn't pick up that complicated lace knitting without a good solid block of time. If this sounds like a real B.S. excuse then you've got a good sniffer. I, however, was not savvy enough to see through my own thin excuses. I ran upstairs and grabbed a ball for swatching. "Yeah, I'll just swatch a little. A little swatching never hurt anybody. Besides, I'm not actually going to cast on for anything." This is a slippery slope, my friends. You see, that same day I had received the summer issue of "Interweave Knits". I was clearly lying to myself at this point. If there were a court of law that had an interest in whether or not unfinished handknits were being held hostage in my closet I would be in cuffs right now. The rest of that evening is sort of a blur. I know at some point I was tearing my desk apart looking for a ruler to check gauge. I think I started cruising Ravelry for pattern suggestions. I don't think the word "cruising" has been used to describe a good behavior since the 1950's. Everything spun out of control when I realized that my favorite sweater from the new IK was knit in one piece from the top down. That tidbit of info was what sunk my battleship of good intentions. I mean, top down sweaters pretty much knit themselves. Am I right?
Flash forward a week and I've got a nearly complete sweater in my lap. The shawl is languishing in a basket. I need to start bailing out the battleship right now. My friend's reception is coming up fast. Time to suck it up and start doubling the number of stitches on my needles in preparation for the border. Oh sweet baby Hitler that sounds like a lot of stitches. Sigh.

The Best Excuse

I have the best excuse possible for not keeping up with my blogging. It starts with a "B" and ends with a lot of diapers. Meet Miles.


When I had my first child we were unprepared. Oh, we had about four stylish baby carrying devices, endless booties and piles of freshly laundered diapers, but we were very, very, very unprepared. My first baby was what a nicer person would call challenging. I used many bad words to describe the situation. I'm going to have to preface this next part with a disclaimer. I love both of my sons and I don't think being a "hard" baby says anything about what kind of person the baby will mature into. My first son is a sweet, charming, thoughtful little boy.That said, my first boy was a disaster of a baby. He would probably have been diagnosed with colic if we'd ever been brave enough to get in a car with him for more than 10 minutes at a time. If he wasn't nursing, or asleep, or being carried by someone who was walking, he was crying. It made me feel like I didn't know what the heck I was doing.
I considered trying to convince a doctor to make me deaf. I fantasized about those sci-fi pods that put people into stasis for crazy long periods of time while they zip around the universe. Why don't we have those yet? Our first baby hated all of the baby carriers save for the Baby Bjorn. He wouldn't lay on his back. He never slept. He always wanted to be in motion so, that year, my husband bought me a rocking chair for Mother's Day. The instant my butt hit the seat the baby started crying. I was woken up 5 to 7 times a night until he was 8 months old, and he didn't actually start sleeping through the night until he was two. I thought all babies were that hard.
That's why I prepared for this baby as if we were all about to go on a four month trip to one of Dante's layers of hell. I stocked the freezer with about a month's worth of pre-made meals. I cleaned the whole house as if it were not going to be cleaned for a month. I taught the dogs not to scratch at the door. I organized all of our paper work. I was prepared to do nothing but nurse and pace the house. This is, I'm sure, why I now have one of the least demanding babies possible. It's like I gave birth to a house plant. He needs food, a clean diaper, an occasional burp and some cuddling. That's all. He makes me feel like a super mom. All I have to do is pat him on the tummy lightly and he starts cooing at me. I think this is nature's way of trying to trick me into having more. I just have to find the part of the form where I can check the box for the "easy baby".

The Right Tool for the Shawl

Having the right tool in the garden is essential. I've learned this the hard way on many occasions. Struggling with a badly sharpened pair of clippers does more harm than good. Trying to dig a hole with the wrong shovel will take you twice the time. Knowing this did not stop me from struggling with the wrong pair of needles for the last couple of weeks.


I've been knitting a "Haruni" shawl for a friend's wedding. When I started knitting, the only 3mm needles that I could find were some short poplar straights. These were fine for the first couple of inches, but about midway through the body of the shawl it began to weigh on the ends of my needles. I struggled forward until the day I realized that I was knitting with my head cocked at an alarming angle and one needle balanced on my leg. The other needle was perpendicular to the ceiling. My back was bent and my wrists were burning. I stopped, searched for my credit card and went online to order a 3mm circular needle. I don't want to have to tell my grandchildren the story of the shawl that gave grandma a hump.


The needle I ordered is a Knit Pro Symfonie circular. After slipping all of my stitches over to the new needle I took it for a test drive. It's the difference between eating a tin of spam with chop sticks in a cold February rain and being fed homemade waffles on a sunny Sunday morning in bed with your beloved. These needles are fantastic. They are light with just the right amount of grip. The points are expertly pointy. The purple cord and dyed wood are stylin' and the joins are smooth. I'm at a point where it's taking me about an hour to complete 8 rows of knitting, but the needles are making it a pleasure. I can't really think about the fact that I'm about to double the number of stitches when I start the border. That's going to be one of those character building exercises. Hopefully the 6 audio books I've just uploaded will numb me sufficiently that I'll knit my way to the end in a trance. It will be a close your eyes and think of England thing....I hope.
I've also started a baby cardigan in a recycled cotton yarn I bought in a moment of weakness.


I'm not wild about knitting with cotton, and this cotton (Plassard Nature, Coton Recycle) is very splitty. To be fair, it has a nice drape and the simplicity of the pattern makes the knitting tolerable. The pattern is a pretty standard baby kimono called "Bella Baby Ensemble" from "The Knitter's Book of Wool", which is a great book with a good number of classic looking patterns. The color is a soft gender neutral mint green. I can knit it without charts or counting or cursing. It's the yin to my shawl yang.

Minerva

Today is my birthday. As a treat to myself I'm going through my vintage Minerva knitting magazines and trying to add them to the Ravelry database. I know that doesn't sound like a real treat. It sounds like work, but I swear I'm enjoying myself. The combination of organization, 30's style, and knitting is pure pleasure. Plus, I don't have to feel guilty about not being productive. My parents drilled that one in so far it's never going to claw it's way out of my psyche. Must. Be. Productive. So, as I was saying, I'm flipping through my old magazines photographing these designs and although I've looked at them dozens of times I'm still blown away by their beauty.



Can you see the splits at each shoulder, and the delicate glass beads on the end of each tie? She looks so calm next to her flowering bush.
This next dress is spectacular. That's about as close as a modern woman should ever get to a bustle. She looks 12, but the dress looks mature enough to order drinks. Those sleeves could probably order the martinis for her.


How does a woman dress like that? It must take her hours just to squeeze into her foundation garments. Can you really wear a hat that small and not look like you're about to hop out of a clown car? They pull it off. I don't know how they do it.



I really love the intarsia collar and cuffs on this one. It looks like it would be deeply annoying to knit, but with a little bit of length added to the ribbing at the waist this would be a very wearable sweater. I think it would make me look like a lady detective.


This next lady is sporting a bow that ought to be on top of a car at a dealership, and a hat that has ears. I'm not completely sold on this one, but the tunic does have some nice details.


I don't have any desire to wake up and worry about whether or not I've got a clean pair of gloves. I know that dressing like this isn't possible for someone with children, or a garden, or a kitchen, or a waist, or dogs. Oh god, can you imagine what a dog would do to a knitted dress? Still....I could probably get away with wearing that first lace blouse with a sturdy linen skirt. I really don't have time for new projects. Thank goodness I still have time for fantasizing. I'll leave you with the tam o'shantered sailing Scottswoman. Imagine the kind of life you would have to lead in order to justify this ensemble.

Planting, Spinning and Waiting

I have spring fever and have abandoned my knitting to spend more time outside. It's not quite warm yet but we've had a week of warmish days. I've been pruning, planting and hauling compost. My master lists are tucked into my moon planner and I open it carefully every day, as if it were a sacred text, checking to see when to plant what, and what to plant where. I can't stop smiling even though my back feels like it's one kink short of a Z . As if things weren't good enough, Jeanette called yesterday to tell me that she's back in her own home. We went to visit her today, and she has flowers popping up all over the place.


On the wool front, I've got two new hanks of freshly washed handspun. The first (pictured below) is posing with my lettuces.




It's a blend of dyed merino, yak down and some black Jacob. I think it's an aran weight. The next yarn is a worsted weight blend of dyed merino and cashmere.



I think it's destined to become a baby hat. Both of these skeins look like spring to me. Maybe that's just the spring fever talking.

Snow Drops and Sandwiches

The other day we went for a walk down by the Vers river.



This time of year there are carpets of snow drops along the banks.



The water is a delicate blue green.



It's a peaceful place. It feels like no one comes here. Everything is so still.




The Romans built an aqueduct along the cliffs because they liked the taste of this water. You can still find little well houses where later inhabitants tapped into the aqueduct's tunnels.



We finished off the walk with peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. It was a very good way to enjoy the final days of winter.

Little Signs

My witch hazel is witchy. There's one branch that decided to bloom yellow instead of red. The flowers are just starting to open so you'll have to look closely to see it. The whole bush is red except for this one little branch. It's remarkable. I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again, I love this plant. It's going to get a spot right next to our bedroom window, so that we can wake up to it every morning. It's always doing something interesting.
There are also some crocuses popping up under the plum trees. You can see one peeking over the shoulder of the baby cardigan.


This is my Jade Baby Cardigan. It's exactly what I wanted it to be. I ended up knitting the sleeves from either end of the same ball in order to get as much length as possible out of the paltry 270 yards I had (J-Knits Superwash Me, DK in pueblo). It's a light weight cardigan, so I don't mind the short sleeves. I think it will be just right for a spring baby.
I did make one small mistake right at the very beginning, and didn't notice it until I was well past the sleeves. See if you can spot it. I really don't think it was worth ripping back for. Hint, it's in the lace on the right hand side.


The buttons were bought at La Droguerie in Paris. They're like a cross between lace and snowflakes. I was saving them for a special project. They tend to catch a little when you button and unbutton the sweater. They're not very practical, but since babies only wear these kinds of sweaters for a month or two, I'm not going to worry about it. Life is too short, and these buttons are too pretty.

Unexpected Happiness

Sometimes when life gets really hard the best thing to do is to stop and look at all of the little things.


My marmalade and quince paste came out perfectly.


A knitter friend gave me a brown ball of dried plant, and after about three hours in a little water, it opened into this.


It's a rose of Jehrico.


I'm knitting a baby cardigan with no pattern, and it's working out beautifully.


Even the button holes are perfect. That almost never happens.

Couch-scapades

My husband and I have been couch warming for the past couple of days.


We thought that we had dodged our son's cold. Actually, we did dodge it for a day. We took our usual combination of homeopathic remedies and felt great. The following day I was feeling so good that I celebrated with a coffee eclair followed by a half a bar of chocolate. This is a stupid thing to do if you're trying to avoid a cold. My husband did roughly the same thing, and we both started feeling bad about an hour after the last piece of chocolate had finished melting in our mouths.
The positive side of this is that the cold has given me a chance/excuse to do some knitting. In an effort to avoid another failed sweater I have changed my strategy. I spent my first day on the couch making these.


These are swatches with nice blue note cards attached. I had entirely too much fun filling out the cards. Organization is such a turn on. Don't you think?


I know people usually swatch for a specific project, but I think this may be where I've been going wrong. One days worth of swatching has taught me a lot about myself. The first thing that it has taught me is that I am a way looser knitter than your average bear. I knew this, but I didn't know exactly how much looser I was. For a project that calls for bulky yarn and size 9 needles, I may need to pick a worsted weight yarn and size 6 needles. Shocking, I know. Before I discovered this fact, I would automatically drop a needle and a pattern size. I (wrongly) figured that this was enough to ensure a good fit. Now that I see that in writing, it seems delusional. So the key here is that I've discovered that not only do I have to change needle sizes, but I may have to change the weight of the yarn as well. Instead of picking out a pattern and then picking out a yarn, I'm going to swatch every yarn I own until I get a fabric I like, take notes, and pick a pattern accordingly.
The other thing I learned is that yarn labels lie. Worsted is not always worsted. I can not rely on the label, or Ravelry or even a well intentioned fellow knitter. I'm going to use classifications like worsted, dk, aran, sport, fingering, and bulky as guides, not absolutes. You can't look at a yarn and tell how it's going to knit up. I've got pretty good eyes, and I can pick out two yarns that look for all the world like they're exactly the same weight, but when I knit them up on the same size needles and I get two completely different fabrics. Fiber content is a factor, but even with two "aran" wool yarns you can get massive differences in gauge depending on the spin, the crimp of the wool, your mood, whether your watching an action adventure or a romance (this has actually happened to me), the weather, the sheep's diet...you get my point.
The hours on the couch spent wiping my nose, popping Tylenol, knitting little squares and watching the first season of "Mad Men" were bliss. I've decided that "Mad Men" is the "Dallas" of this decade. There are a lot of rich white folks, some sexism, cheating, fist fights, shocking amounts of booze, and a good measure of corporate hooha, but I digress. At some point, I paused the drama and crawled up to the yarn hole to raid a bin for more swatching material.
Up until this point I had thought of these stash yarns as specific sweaters. Each yarn had been purchased with a pattern in mind. Now, things are different. Every yarn is looking for it's soulmate. There are no more arranged marriages between a yarn and a pattern.
While looking at my finished stack of swatches I had another thought. I'm going to try to knit my way from one bin to another, starting with these yarns. Why not? I like all of them. I've got enough of each yarn for a sweater, or at least a vest. It's a stash busting/sweater knitting two fer. It also means I won't have to pull my whole closet apart looking for a specific yarn. In an attempt to avoid another sweater knitastrophy, I've made myself a few rules.

1. The sweater I choose must have been knit by at least 5 people on Ravelry, so that I'm not the (sucker, Guinea pig, lab rat) person who has to spend hours sorting out pattern errata.

2. The sweater must look good on most of the people who've knit it. I've noticed that some sweaters are much more figure friendly than others. I need to knit something that looks good on everyone, that way if I flub up the size I can pass it on.

3. I'm going to error on the small side. I thought that it was, when in doubt, better to knit a larger size. Maybe that's true for some people, but most of my friends are medium to small. If I have to give a sweater away it will give me a lot more options if it isn't an XXL. Add to that, knitwear stretches out over time. It almost never gets smaller, unless your husband felts it in the washing machine. The final argument is that finishing a huge hunk of knitting only to find that it's way too big is more demoralizing than knitting a smaller bit of knitting, only to find that it's too small.

4. I must achieve gauge before beginning. This is not optional.

5. I must check for errata every time. This is also not optional

6. I must read (most) peoples' Ravelry notes before I begin. There's plenty of good info in other people's notes, especially when it comes to sizing.

7. I must read and re-read the pattern all the way through before beginning.

Following these criteria, and using my new swatch system, I've chosen to knit this. This is "Rosamund's Cardigan" by Andrea Pomerantz. It can be found in the Fall 2009 issue of "Interweave Knits".


I chose this sweater for a couple of reasons. It's a cardigan. People liked knitting it. Most people who started it finished it. It's knit from the top down, which means I can try it on as I go. It can be made to be reversible. Yeah, I know, reversible stuff is cool. The other people who have knit it had relatively few problems with the pattern, and it looks good on almost everybody. Looking at the photo in the magazine I would not have guessed that it would look good on most body types, but I swear it does. It's been in my queue for awhile, but not at the top of my list of things to knit.


The yarn was really the deciding factor. It's called "Ecolana", and it's made by Aslan Trends. It's a blend of alpaca and merino, which gives it a slight drape and soft shine. There are some white guard hairs which give it a fuzzy look. It's not unlike the yarn that this pattern calls for. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be "the one", but even if it's not, at least I'll be able to give it to someone who will love it.