Sweater Weather

We've been having a warm summer in New England. Really warm. I think we've had more days in the 90s than in the past five years combined. Even if you leave out last summer, which was as unusually cold and rainy as this one has been hot and dry. But over the weekend, a screen of gray cloud was drawn across the sky, water started to drip out of it, and our temperatures plummeted twenty degrees. And suddenly the urge to knit small light things that can be held without touching any part of my body aside from my hands evaporated and was replaced by the urge to fill my lap with something fluffy and warm.

This did not stop me from finishing the second baby sweater, however:


Nothing fancy...I wanted to do something different from the first one, so I cast on the same number of stitches as the raglan (less one button band) in the round, and improvised from there. (Note to self: Do not drink alcohol until after you have cast on. It makes the whole counting thing so much easier.)

But as soon as I had done that, I pulled out the sweater for my sister, which offended me back in the spring when the two front pieces inexplicably came out different sizes. (I checked the last time I saw her, and my sister does not have one armpit two inches higher than the other and a one arm a third larger than the other.) However with my sudden enthusiasm for fluffy, I soon ripped back the offending front piece and re-knit it (this time the same length as the other one, and with the armhole in the right place). And then, then I sewed the back and two fronts together, so I could pick up stitches for the sleeve. And that means I can at last show you something that doesn't look like a fuzzy yellow blob.


I'm really quite pleased with the way this is coming out--it's actually very close to the way I originally visualized the design- a round neck--

--which rises up a bit in back to keep the draft off. It has no buttons, because Kate prefers to let cardigans hang open in front.

It's quite long- nearly knee length on me, and my sister is only a little taller. But she wanted it long enough to sit on. It's a closely fitted design, so I have flared it slightly below the waist to give her some additional sweater to wrap around her legs, and small slits at the side to give a bit slack for movement:


I'm continuing the fitted style with the sleeves, and will taper down to another seed stitch band at the cuff. It's good to see this project moving again...it's been looking at me reproachfully* for a number of weeks. Now if I can just finish the sleeves before the weather turns warm again!

*Not that it has any grounds for reproach...if it wanted to be done sooner, it should have come out the right shape the first time I knit it. It has only itself to blame. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Retreating From the Edge

A week ago Monday, I crocheted another yellow beret (which looks just like the last one) and as I was reaching for another skein of yarn, I said..."Whoa! Whatever happened to not going nuts with this?"

See, having learned a few things over the years, I could see that I was on the brink of an obsessive attack. Now, this is not an un-useful thing to have happen. In fact I almost always let it happen on the rare occasions that it involves cleaning. Or taking down a cabana. Or yard work. (Okay, it would actually be kind of helpful if that kind of obsessive attack happened more frequently. Like more than once a decade. But.)

But deciding to say, give in to the impulse to reread the works of an author who has written dozens of books, for example, or to crochet a hundred berets? Not only are these less useful obsessions, but they can lead to behavior like staying up late saying things like 'only twelve more rounds until I change to the band' or 'only five chapters more to finish reading all of the Dick Francis books from the 60s.'

Which is a roundabout way of saying that for the sake of my sanity, I decided I needed to take a break from hats and mittens. To knit something small, yet different. To maybe put a dent in the growing collection of baby yarn:


As you can see, even the baby sweaters are traveling in pairs. It's actually kind of useful, because doing two projects in a row in the same yarn means I only have to swatch once. And in the case of the second sweater, I'm almost totally winging it (I'm doing something like a baby sweater I made about ten years ago, and haven't bothered to look up the pattern I used then.) But I'm using the baby raglan (which is from one of Carole Barensys' patterns) to gauge the size. So, I knit the body until it was as long as the body of the first sweater, on the same number of stitches (plus a few extra on account of cables), and then split for the sleeves. I'll try picking up stitches for the sleeves...if it looks funny, I'll just knit them separately and sew them on (though I much prefer to do something this small in one piece if I can).

For a wonder, not only did I have buttons in the right size in a reasonable color for this yarn, but I had enough for both sweaters (the second one will button at the shoulder, so as to give plenty of room to let the baby's head through).

Even if I have enough of this yarn left for a third sweater, I think I'll pass though. No point in trading one obsession for another!