Deep Midwinter

It's cold here. Really, really cold. It would be one thing if we had lots of fluffy, white, snowy loveliness to look at from inside our warm houses, but no. We haven't had a proper snowfall in weeks, and what we've got on the ground is in dirty, frozen blobs at the side of the road. All this cold makes it physically and psychologically hard to do much of anything but watch tv (I'm almost through all of Six Feet Under and am just beginning Season 1 of Glee), knit and play around on the internets. Each night when I settle down on the sofa with my knitting, I ask myself, "What shall it be tonight? A funeral or a musical number?"

I finished my big, warm cardigan a couple weeks ago and then quickly made some yoga/pilates socks for myself. Turns out that they are also the perfect thing to wear to my Hoop Fit and Flow class as they keep me warm and stop me from sliding all over the wooden floor when I'm trying to hoop. The folks at Hooping Harmony had a sale in January on their super bling hoops. I couldn't resist, and bought a birthday prezzie for myself. The hoop and the socks are actually closer in color than this photo would have you think. I might not be the most physically coordinated hooper, but at least I'll be color coordinated.

When I got home from hoop class, I tossed my socks on the bench next to the back door. They landed next to this striped fleece beanie and I realized that the colors are nearly a perfect match. So, back I went to WEBS to buy more yarn for a scarf to wear with the beanie.

This Sunday is the annual Super Bowl Escape at WEBS. All afternoon, knitters who want to get away from football will gather at the store for knitting circles, door prizes and nibbles. I'm looking forward to going with a few of my pals and meeting some other Noho knitters.

I hear that another winter storm is going to slam into the Middle Atlantic states this weekend. Everybody stay warm out there -- or stay in and knit yourself something warm.

Cardigan - Finished!

I started this sweater in March, when it was still cold out and I could picture myself wearing it as we transitioned into spring. Nice plan. Spring moved into summer, and the sweater (knit from the neck down all in one piece) got too heavy to have on my lap on hot days so I put it aside. Now we're in another cool spell and I finally finished it. And I wore it yesterday. It's comfy and stylish, and I got several compliments on it. The yarn is South West Trading Twizé bamboo and has a nice shine to it. Love it!

Last night, I cast on another pair of fingerless mitts for one of my Flickr pals who didn't get a pair in the previous Mitts for Mates gift giving. No pix of that until after the gift has been given.

Aruni in Her Sweater

Here's a snap of Aruni wearing the Baby Surprise Sweater. The sleeves look a bit short, but Anju says this is perfect given Aruni's propensity for sticking her hands in her mouth and drooling down her arms.

It's finished!

The Baby Surprise Sweater is done and ready to mail to NYC. I didn't have 5 buttons that matched, so I decided to go with the mismatched vintage buttons. I think it's kind of a bohemian chic look, which is fitting for a little girl who is spending her first months of life going to classes at Columbia. I hope Anju and Rahul send me a picture of Aruni wearing it.

Now I'm going back to knitting socks for moi.

BSS is almost done!

This lumpy mass doesn't look much like a sweater ...


... but here's how it will be folded to become one.

I've made a ton of progress this past week, particularly on the snow day when I beached myself on the sofa with cat and comforter and knit most of the day. At this point, with nearly 200 stitches on the needles, a row can take me about 20 minutes to do. I've made the button holes, and now there are only 4 rows left to go. After that, I'll sew the seams on the top of the sleeves, work in the ends and sew on the buttons and it will be done.

I haven't heard from my knit-along pal in days, so I hope it's going well for her, too. We usually consult when she gets to a tricky row where Stuff Happens. It's been a swell project, and I'm glad Erin suggested it, but I'm looking forward to having this done and going back to knitting socks.

BSS Update

48 rows done!


This is how the sleeves will be formed.

The Baby Surprise Sweater is coming along nicely, although I can't claim that I've been 100% accurate about the pattern. Somehow I ended up with more stitches than I should have around row 48, or I went two rows too far, but then I was miraculously back on track around row 58. It's taking on a very weird shape as I work on the body, but that's what's supposed to happen. The yarn is great -- a much richer purple than these crappy pix show. I'm not stressing about the pattern so much any more. It is what it is. I guess that's the zen approach to knitting.

Freaky Friday Knit-Along

Erin and I are doing a knit-along. We're making Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Sweater -- she for her cousin's new baby-to-be, and me for Anju and Rahul's 10-week-old baby girl. (I'm sure that the surprise will keep as I doubt A. and R. have any time for blog reading between grad school and taking care of baby Aruni.) Erin's plan was to use some yarn from her stash. I ordered the pattern (link above), and on Saturday I ran out to Webs to pick up two balls of Jellibeenz. Arriving shortly after I returned from my Webs mission, Erin came in clutching a Webs bag of her own. "Look what I got in the bargain corner," she said, pulling two hanks of Araucania Pehuen hand-dyed cotton in a green colorway from the bag. I went over to my Webs bag and pulled out two hanks of the SAME yarn in the orange colorway. Of the hundreds and hundreds of yarns to choose from at Webs, we bought the same stuff! (We're both saving it for some other as-yet-to-be-determined project. Any ideas?)

Now, you'd think that a sweater knit all in one piece in garter stitch would be easy-peasy, right? Wrong! Elizabeth Zimmermann, who is, apparently, the knitting goddess of Britain or the universe, wrote this pattern in 1968 in a conversational, tweedy English lady prose that's a wee bit short on the details. We cast on our 160 stitches and puzzled over how to mark the places where the decreases were supposed to occur. Finally getting the hang of it, or so I thought, we knit four rows before heading out to the annual Roe v. Wade anniversary event. Later that night, thinking I was on a roll, I knit another half dozen rows, reaching the tricky row 11 where I totally screwed up. I couldn't figure out how many stitches I was supposed to have on either side of the markers, and I ended up un-knitting back to row 7. Next day I went online and found the BSS notes -- a row-by-row explanation of what the fuck we're supposed to be doing. Now, just what kind of screwy thing is it where you need a pattern to follow a pattern? I think I'm back on track now, and I'll be posting some pix of the WIP here and/or on my Flickr page. Erin and I will give each other e-mail progress reports as we knit along. I'm pleading for words of support and helpful hints from anyone out there who's made this sweater and lived to tell the tale.

Sunday afternoon I put the BSS aside to go to the Silver Chord Bowl, Northampton's a cappella alternative to the Super Bowl. JJ and I met for lunch beforehand and she gave me my birthday giftie -- a little Uglydoll to be the mascot of the Mini Cooper, the SAME Uglydoll (Icebat) that Erin has hanging from her rearview mirror. This is just too weird. It's like I've been reincarnated as Erin and I'm not even dead. I went over to Faces and exchanged Icebat for Bop n' Beep, all the while having this Freaky Friday feeling (although Erin and I don't look anything like Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis). Something cosmic was definitely going on. Comet McNaught? Groundhog's Day? Who knows.

Crafties!

One of my loyal readers (of the four or so that I have) has requested pix of the xmas crafts. Here they are:

This is Erin wearing her lime green, vegan zig zag scarf. The yarn is Feza Carnevale, which was a bit of a pain to work with because the fuzzy bits obscured the adjacent stitches and I often dropped them. But the results are quite nice -- soft, warm and a bit stretchy, with a hint of shimmery stuff. We decided that lime is the new black.


Velvet bag with milagros. This is the one I made for JJ -- it has milagros that are significant to her (cat and fish) on it. The one I made for ST has a bird and an ear. The arms, legs and donkeys may become significant at some point -- you never know. Spooner brought the milagros back from Mexico last summer. I'm now out of them, except for babies, pigs and praying figures, so I'll need to have a pal fetch me some more from south of the border.