ABC-Along 2008 ~ R through Z ~ Happy New Year

Prospero Ano y Felicidad!

Warning!! Image heavy post!!

The end of ABC~Along 2008

R is for Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez by guitarist Julian Bream (w/Chamber Orchestra of Europe):

S is for winter Snowstorms in the Midwest (four hours worth of snow on a previously snowfree lawn):

T is for Trees, my favorite thing in nature to photograph, especially with my Mamiya film camera although these are shot using my digital Canon PowerShot:

U is for porcelain Unicorn music box, a gift to me from my beloved oldest niece when she was only seven years old:

V is for Virginia, my mother’s name and the initials on this wooden box made for her more than 55 years ago by my father ~ similar to the tabletop in R and U above and W and Y below; the box is walnut; the letters are birch; the letter inlays are marquetry ~ a painstakingly long process of drawing images, cutting them out of wood and stacking them into a veneer, one of my father's many hobbies (sorry for the bad flash blur spot; I tried to bounce the flash using a white T-shirt to soften the flash, but it didn't work):

W is for Wagner Ware cast-iron frying pans:


X is for Xbox 360:

IMAGE x

Y is for YoYo Ma’s version of the Bach Concertos, my second most favorite album, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by Perlman being the first:

Z is for Zero calorie diet Pepsi, hubby’s lifeline:

FIN! This ABC~Along was a LOT of fun even if I had to catch up on more than half the alphabet on the last two days of the year!!

ABC-Along 2008 ~ L, M, N, O, P, Q

How’s this for staying on track over the duration of a long-term project?!

L is for Love in any time, especially in the Time of Cholera

M is for my husband Mike, who does not let me photograph him, so Maneki Neko the beckoning cat will have to do

N is for Needles, knitting of course, here is a small sampling:

O is for Ornaments, of the Christmas variety (the faded, missing half-a-leg, little "tin" nutcracker was made by my favorite niece about 20 years ago and spent the first 15 years of its life hanging from the rearview mirror of my car):

P is for purple, but in this case, Pottery, a mainstay in every available space in this house:

Q is for the handmade/hand-stitched patchwork Quilt my mother made me (yes, every single stitch on this overly large, king-sized quilt was completed by hand, without a stitch on the sewing machine):

Merry Christmas ~ Mele Kalikimaka

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau'oli Makahiki Hou - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Above you have your Bing and the Andrews Sisters version, below Jimmy Buffett, but one has to wonder why it's Merry Christmas from Florida when it should be Mele Kalikimaka from Hawai'i) Shaka, bro!

Korknisse and Cookie A. Has a Book Coming Out

I love these guys!! I need a wine-bottle cork source because these tapered-type corks don't make good bodies. I'll also need to make a trip to Jo-Ann's to get some ribbon and perhaps tiny bells. This isn't in great focus because I was freezing and because my camera was, too. I took four snaps and my camera started to complain to me. The temps are below zero.

See the tiny red berries on my burning bush? Neither can I, at least not with my naked eye. With the help of this photo and an extra click to embiggen, though, you will be able to see them. I hope the wildlife can find them. We had more snow today and more to come by tomorrow afternoon. We have about 15" of accumulation so far since Friday ~ not counting the drifts or plowed piles.

Our beloved Cookie has a book of sock patterns entitled Sock Innovation: Knitting Techniques and Patterns for One-of-a-Kind Socks set to be released in April 2009 ~ can't wait!!! (For those of you who don't remember, Cookie gave us such superb creations as Pomatomus, Monkey, Hedera, Red Herring, and more.)

Oh, Baby, It's Cold Outside on the Winter Solstice

Taken from my bedroom window. I didn't have the courage to try to go outside today.

Winds are very strong today, making the windchill effect -18°F. Brrrrrrrr!!!! Happy Winter Solstice!!

I hope my new trees make it through this winter. In the fall I had two maples planted, a Red Sunset and a Chinese Paperbark. We have a terrible wind tunnel-effect in our yard due to the proximity of the houses, so I really hope my little one that hubby never staked will make it! It's a somewhat rare for this region maple, an orange Chinese Paperbark that has the most splendid cinnamon-colored, peeling bark.

This isn't my tree. Mine has a one-inch circumference trunk. A baby.

I really wanted an American Sycamore because it, too, has a splendid bark, a green-brown camouflage-look:

But Sycamores grow too fast and too wide for the space we have. Their canopies can grow to be in excess of 50 feet wide. I spent almost a year researching trees that met our space, environment, shade/sun needs and my aesthetic desire to have beautiful fall foliage. I was lucky to find a local nursery that carried the paperbark, a slow growing and smaller variety of maple. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Ten and One-Half Inches

Well, 10.5 inches in a few hours and more on the way:

We have almost 36 inches piled up next to the driveway:

More snow is on the way today, Monday, and Wednesday. Yeeesh! Here it comes:

It is so absolutely beautiful out right now, large, fluffy snow, lots of snow already, which always makes for such a wonderful sound buffer; although it is 4:54 a.m., lots of Christmas lights are still on, and the street lights make the snow look beautiful. I wish my flash had some power or that I could hold my camera still enough to get a decent landscape shot without having to dig my tripod out. Still. It is lovely. Take my word for it.

The good news is I finished my cowl ~ just in time:

Project Specs:
Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss ~ 70% merino wool, 30% silk (220 yards/50 gr), in Concord Grape (left over from DH's binary hat that used about six rounds of Grape, very close to one full skein)
Needles: size 4 Inox circs (16”) (cast-on with size 10 for elastic fit)
Pattern: Poinsettia by Anne Hanson of Knitspot (free on Winter 2008 Knitty)
I was so SURE I would run out of yarn that I didn't knit the last round, but it still worked out fine. Yum!!

Snow Day and the Letter J

We had a snow day today, the first one of this year, both academic and otherwise. Last year we didn't have any snow days despite some incredibly bad weather and poor decision making on the part of the administration not to cancel classes at a commuter college. Canceling classes today didn't mean much for most of my campus since the last day of the semester is tomorrow, so little teaching can be done, perhaps a few final exams, but there are less than a handful of Saturday morning classes, and very few classes are held on Fridays anyway, so not much other than support staff got the day off. Here's our trusty and trusted weatherman, Chuck G.:

Hopefully everyone was prepared because there had been a significant amount of news coverage about the changing weather conditions. Last Sunday evening it rained all night and continued all day Monday, with temps rising to about 37F degrees. All the previous layers of snow melted. We were back to green grass. Now we have in excess of 10 inches in most places in the Southeastern part of the state, and I imagine a lot more in the U.P. ~ and all of this in one day over a six hour period. We often had more than 2" of accumulation per hour. It was blinding, I tell ya! But wonderful. There is absolutely NO chance of NOT having a white Christmas. (Ugh, double negatives!!!)

Tonight I finished grading all the essays for all my remaining classes (two early start-short-semester accelerated classes already finished in October.) WHEW!! I am GLAD to be finished with that. Now just a few more assignments that are due tomorrow, figure out grand totals, post after midnight, and I am done. YIPPPEEEEE!!!!

I realized I am woefully behind in ABC-Along. Oh well, Burns was right about the best laid plans . . .

Here is my letter J:

Jergens hand lotion, the lifeline of my existence. I single-handedly have kept Jergens handcreme on the market and the company in business for more than 45 years. I don't know what I would do without it. I have other specialty handcremes that I also indulge in, including some heavy-duty ones for this time of year or when I am knitting a lot, but this is my 400 time per day staple. My letter K will be knitting, of course!

Chance and Good Fortune

Holiday Business: After you read this post, please head over to the Harlot's and donate to Doctors/Knitters Without Borders. Just the amount one would use for sock yarn would be good if all of us out there donated.

Poinsettia at Knitty by Anne Hanson:

You really need to click to embiggen this image because at the bottom of the cast-on you can see snowflakes that are clinging to this (shot in the wee small hours of the morning on snow in front of my house).

For the most part I try to arrange my schedule so that I teach late afternoon or evening classes, and it can get fairly cold in the evenings and at night in the Midwest. I am generally on campus late at night, usually after 11:00 p.m., and the cold, bitter wind can really bother my neck, chest, and throat after long days of lecturing in acoustically challenged classrooms and very long walks through campus and parking lots.

For a several years now, I’ve wanted to make myself a lightweight, warm, soft scarf or shortish cowl because my neck is often very cold when I go to and from work. I don’t want the bulk of an all out scarf or a decent sized cowl. I have been thinking a lot about dickies ala EZ, now commonly referred to as *neckwarmers* or *smokerings,* and just the other day I saw this while reading someone’s blog ~ a beautiful compact neckwarmer named Spiralucious by Anne Hanson of Knitspot fame.

Although I love this pattern, I was still thinking about something that was more like the dickies of my youth, the standard blue ribbed things that had longish sort of flaps or tails that tucked under one's shirt while at school. They were always navy blue to match our Catholic-school uniforms: deep navy blue cotton jumpers with white blouses. No ornamentation was ever allowed (this was in the 60s), and the Spartan blue dickies were the only additions allowed to our uniforms to help stave off the drafts in the 100+ year old poorly insulated/windowed schoolhouse.

I wasn't necessarily thinking of a ribbed neckwarmer, but one that had those flaps or tails so that I could tuck the thing down inside my coat or ideally, use it keep my neck and chest warm so that I didn't have to zip my coat and have all the bulk of it strangling up on me when I drive.

I’ve been coveting several of Anne’s patterns for just about as long as I’ve been considering what to do to warm my neck without the bulk, and I decided to purchase the above pattern. Before doing so, I somewhat fortuitously decided to take another look at Ice Queen on Knitty (Winter 2007) because I remember falling in love with the gossamer-like beauty of this cowl but knew deep down that it would not be warm enough or the fabric dense enough for my needs (yes, I’m at that age when function beats out form every time). When I went to Knitty, I suddenly realized the new Winter 2008 edition/issue was out, so I quickly scanned the patterns, when what to my wondering eyes did appear near the end of the list but a neckwarmer named Poinsettia by Anne herself!

I immediately went about printing out the pattern, grabbing the leftover purple Gloss from hubby’s binary hat, cast-on, and have the beginnings to what is EXACTLY what I wanted and need: a pretty, yet warmly functional neckwarmer/dickie that is a little bit longer than Spiralucious in my favorite color to match my winter jacket by one of the great knitting designers!! And the pattern is FREE! Great good fortune all around ~ and all by chance!

Imaginary Eye Candy Friday

Sorry, this might take a bit of time to load. Either the images are a bit too big and need some file shrinking or blogger is pretty slow to upload today.

Several days ago, I finished hubby’s no-longer-a-surprise-binary-Christmas-hat.

He’s a computer programmer by trade, so this grouping of 1s and 0s makes sense to those who can think in binary terms, and the numbers represent the words “I love Mike” wrapped on their own rows. You should click on this image to embiggen to see the lovely 1s and 0s.

Before I even finished braiding the ends, he was off and wearing it on his nightly perambulations. He seems to prefer this fabric to the other 100% wool ones for walks in this weather since it’s not unbearably cold yet ~ nighttime temps remain in the low 20s F.

Project Specs:

Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss ~ 70% merino wool, 30% silk (220 yards/50 gr), in Burgundy, Pumpkin, Concord Grape, and Dusk (lots left over ~ maybe one full skein total or just over)
Needles: size 4 Addi~turbo circs (24”), Plymouth Yarns Bamboo 8” DPN when too small for circs (cast-on with size 8 for elastic fit)
Pattern: my own, a standard purl-banded hat with iCord topping

Hubby pretended to be interested in the hat while I was knitting. He often remarked that he liked the colors. When he figured it out it was for him, he obligingly tried it on. Then when it came to the iCord, he said “oh, no, not one of those Dr. Suess Cindy-Lou-Who things on top,” to which I felt no small amount of dismay, but left it on nonetheless. Who can have a hat without iCord if an iCord possibility presents itself to the nature of the hat?

I would have had some incredible eye-candy for today had I remembered my promise to take my camera with me yesterday when we went out to eat. We left the restaurant right around twilight and were heading home west into the setting sun. On our way to and from the restaurant, we can take a route that winds its way through the last remaining farmland in this once very rural area.

In my mind, not much can beat the view of vast expanses of furrowed and plowed farmland waiting to hibernate over the winter, near a stand of leaf-shorn maples a deep-red barn sits amidst a snow-laden field with Canada geese flying in formation overhead against a blue-grey Midwestern winter sky. To see this at twilight, with the golden-pink hues that brush the rivulets of clouds that mirror the furrowed fields is quite breathtaking. We oohed and ahhed all the way home, but once we got home, I couldn’t get my camera out quick enough to catch the dying light.

I know better, I really do. Any trip out that way, to my favorite place to eat French toast (yes, for dinner!) or to the movies will always hold some wonderful sights, and I am usually without my camera even though I always promise myself never to venture to that area without it.

So today you will have to settle for a binary hat and my meager word picture.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow . . .

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, and I am freezing inside, too. WHAT??

I've managed to make a fair amount of progress on the no-longer-a-surprise-Christmas-present-hat for DH, a binary-code pattern that states "I LOVE MIKE" in low level computer-speak. Enjoy the first two rows of code/pattern shot on my NY Dolls sheets that cast a violent pink hue on everything within a three mile radius:

Here is a bit more progress just modeled outside on the porch in the cold, cold, heavy falling slushy snow that made my back and head soaked:

A bit better view once it fell off the railing:

Yeah, there's little difference in the views except that one can see four rows of 1s and 0s in the last pic. The yarn is the Knit Picks' Gloss (silk merino combo).

I was not outside for more than four minutes, yet I am wet to the bone (no wonder those Victorian-aged folks were always getting pneumonia), cold, and my lungs are killing me!! It seems several people on the block are burning wood or those damn fake-logs in their fireplaces, causing no small amount of yeckO'crap in the air. I feel like I spent four hours in a 1980s video bar. Our area is fairly urban for the suburbs, and not everyone sparks up the fireplace on the same day let alone at the same time; nonetheless, my eyes are burning, my lungs feel equally burned, and my hair stinks of wet smoke. GROSS!!! I wonder why the air is so bad right now.

We are supposed to get between 3-7 inches of snow tonight. It has been snowing on and off since late afternoon, the beautiful, yet treacherous, heavy flaky Midwest snow that is back-breaking to shovel, crap for skiing or outdoor snow activities, and dangerous as hell to drive through or in.

We FINALLY, I say FINALLY, got all the plumbing leaks fixed today, thanks to my hand-dandy brother who was in town and DH. We have had plumbing leaks of one sort or another since March of this year, one that was almost catastrophic that leaked into the adjoining dining room and up through the carpeting, and this is no exaggeration. Knock on wood, they have all finally been resolved, repaired, and OVER. We had to replace our dishwasher, the intake line for the fridge's ice/water line, pipes and fittings under the kitchen and master bedroom's bathroom sink, and fittings for the washing machine. All these problems occurred one after the other since the March thaw began. Good. Grief. And this place is only seven years old. Plus all the insulation and protective bladder plastic that required replacement in this no-basement structure.

I. HATE. PLUMBING. PROBLEMS. PERIOD!!!

Today was a day of repairs as the boys also replaced a ceiling fan in the bathroom off the other bedrooms. This required quite a bit of finessing, reciprocating sawing, and enlarging of ceiling holes. The new fan/light looks lovely, though, and is larger and seems much more powerful. It is supposed to be very quiet, but NO. SUCH. LUCK.

Overall, we have MUCH to be THANKFUL for, including our families. Even though several of my siblings have been very hard hit by this Michigan recession despite none working in any industry related to the auto-industry and three owning their own business, we are still here, some in good health, others healthy in varying degrees. I remain hopeful and thankful, and I hope they can too.

I hope all of you had at least a few things to be thankful for this year.

Something to Do

I am looking for something to do. It's very hard for me to knit at night because I need lots of light for lacework or colorwork when using smallish needles. Right now I am working on a hat with this:
This yarn is Knit Picks's Gloss (the silk and wool combo), and I really, really hope it isn't too pilly.

I was moving along quite splendidly for my slow speed, when the 16" circ I was using just about drove me nuts! I have a size 4 ~ 16" in Inox circs, which are very, very pointy compared to my usual Addi-Turbos, but the needles themselves are very, very short, which causes a somewhat awkwardness to the grasp, and either the needles or the nylon is a bit sticky, which causes no small amount of drag. I started the hat with a 36" Addi circ, but that was much too long, so I downsized from the needle stash. Of course the drag and short needles made my hands ache, so off I went in search of a 24" Addi at the LYS where I saw this:

Of course like 90% of my yarn purchases, this was pure impulse buying. It's 100% Peruvian Highland Wool, looks very itchy, has lots of hair, but the tan tweed is absolutely splendid with bits of light blue and rust and perhaps a few other colors. I was looking for a worsted weight yarn for a cabled sock pattern I have in mind, and this sort of jumped out at me.

At the time, however, I didn't know that Peruvian Highlander Wool is best known for its felting ability, so I'm not sure whether or not to proceed, plus, it certainly looks scratchy.

What to do, what to do???

Sure, I could cake this up and try it out. Why not? If it doesn't work, I can always frog. But this seems like it wouldn't be frog friendly, and then I've wasted yarn, time, and money if the sock turns out to be on the crappy side. I guess I could donate, then, but I hate to donate what I wouldn't be willing to keep for myself. Seems sort of in bad faith, doesn't it?

Missed Socktoberfest

During the last week of October, when I realized how much of the year had gone by and that Socktoberfest was once again going on, I dug around in my sock yarn stash and found this.

The yarn is Knit Picks Sock Memories 100% merino, and I think the colorway is called Carnival ~ and very appropriately so. It just looks cheery. For photo staging, I put it on my new hot pink flannel sheets that my hubby calls the New York Dolls sheets because that punk rock band had an album cover with the same sort of dizzyingly hard hot pink.

Then I broke out the umbrella swift and ball winder and made myself a cake and cast on for a plain ribbed sock.

The orangey color in the yarn is really a deadringer for the pink on the sheets, so go figure. Don't try to adjust your monitor; the color problem is with either my camera, my flash combined with overhead light, or my eyes.

I have to admit, I’ve used some pretty nice sock yarn in my day, Trekking, Handmaiden, and Koigu included, but this yarn is soooo soft on that I truly love to wear socks knit with it more than any other yarn. It has its flaws, though, and one of those flaws is the awful way it pills after just one wearing, and they certainly get ugly pretty quickly because of the pilling, looking raggedy as all hell within a month, but they feel like butter and can be washed and dried with no harm to the socks themselves.

After making a pair for myself last year (or was it the year before??) out of a beautiful autumnal forest red color and wearing them to death during the winter, I swore I would never make another pair out of the yarn even though I have a good nine skeins left and several pairs planned. I was too disappointed by the way they pilled and vowed not to waste my time knitting (I am so very slow) another pair with that yarn.

But after my dermatological breakdown this year, the awful spring rash from either a reaction to the lawn fertilizer or something in the garden that blossomed and made me sick for several months, my skin seems not to have recovered well. Everything seems to feel scratchy or make my skin feel irritated, even my beautiful Pomatomas in the Handmaiden and my new flannel sheets that we washed four times before using to soften them up a lot. So I am going to give the Memories another chance as the old pair seems to feel splendid on my feet, and our temps are dropping into the single digits tonight. These would have been a great Socktoberfest project, but I will be happy if I can get them done by the end of the first week of January 09.

I think I will call these the NY Dolls socks, my husband's penchant for punk bands of the late 70s notwithstanding; hopefully they will keep me warm because of their electric punk origins as well as stay soft and treat my toes tenderly.

First Snow at Midnight

We've had rain for over a week, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a downpour. Halloween was unseasonably splendid, warm, bright, and sunny, as was election day. In fact, election day was a sunny and magnificent 70 degrees Fahrenheit, unheard of for November in Michigan. We had a tiny snitch of snow a few days ago, but tonight, well, here it comes:

Snow at midnight:

Freezing temps tonight, rain for at least a week, roads and sidewalks are solid ice topped by snow. Can't get more dangerous than that. But I do like not having anywhere to go and mounds of knitting at my fingertips. I simply CANNOT WAIT for winter break.

YIPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Great Day in the Morning!!!

Like many of you, we watched the returns all night, and at 11:00 p.m. EST, we cried!!! And later, when we finally went to bed after hours and days of NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Daily/Colbert Show, I slept like a baby for the FIRST. TIME. IN. YEARS.

Thanks America!!!!!!!!!! YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vote Today!

I voted. Did you?

We voted this morning. We played with the idea of standing in line before the polls opened (we stay up all night, so that would have been easy), but we opted to gamble that the 10:30 a.m. time period would mean light turnout in the suburbs. Our gamble was right, but maybe it's just this area that we moved to ~ lots of retirees who vote by absentee and often the daytime polling places are pretty lightly attended. In the past, when I was in grad school and lived in Detroit, the lines were always several hours long (as if a line could be measured in increments of hours). In any event, we got in, cast our ballots, and got out within 15 minutes, and if anyone is counting or taking exit polls, we voted for Obama.

We also voted to support stem cell research and provide more county benefits for our veterans. In other words, we voted for a new way of life and the promise of a better tomorrow.

I hope you will get out and vote and encourage all you know to do the same. Vote, that is. So text, call, and talk to your friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives, and even that person down the street whose name you don't know. Update your blog, webpage, twitter post, Facebook, and MySpace page. Reach out. Vote. As if your life depended on it.

My thanks and heartfelt appreciation to everyone who stood for hours in the heat, cold or rain. I know I appreciate your patience!

BTW, my mama voted for Obama, too. And I ain't young, so even the older folks are doing it.

Actual Knitting Content

I am as amazed as you are ~ a knitting blog with actual knitting content. A toddler's jumper in pink cotton by ?? (I'll have to search around for the label) and cotton~linen boucle by Wendy Yarns:

Finished knitting:

Taking a soak:

Pinned and stretched:

I won't pretend that I knit this in the past year. This is the Minnow Knits, Too pattern that I made for my now 16 year old niece. (Good grief, how humiliating!!) This jumper has been wallowing in my stash, unseamed, for 14 years. Now that's a UFO. I dug it out after writing about it a few months ago, and maybe, just maybe, I might finish those seams and give this away. Well, we can only hope.

Sewing ~ Bumble Bee Summer Dress

Oh, GOOD GRIEF, Charlie Brown, it's already Socktoberfest time, and most of it has already flown by!!!! What a dismal situation it is when I can't even bring myself to post or knit at least once a week. I don't have a real excuse, just overwhelmed with too much work I guess. I would love to lighten my teaching load or my committee work load, but I doubt I'll be able to do either for awhile, especially since not only are long-time faculty retiring by the handful, but other newer or newly hired are up-and-quitting at the drop of a hat to pursue writing full-time. Well, enough of what I can't change.

THANK YOU dear sweet Lorette (my favorite Knitting Doctor) for commenting last month (or the month before that) on my still unfinished Tomten. This kid will graduate college before I finish seaming up the sides. No wonder I never make sweaters anymore.

Years ago I spent a significant amount of my free time sewing. A few weeks ago, my sister was cleaning out her kids' closets to try to free up room for winter clothes, and she dug this out of the back of her daughter's:

I made this for her daughter what is probably a good 10 years ago now. The little imp never wore it, refusing always to wear a dress, clinging only to T-shirts and spandex-type pants even though at the time, she supposedly liked bears and bumble bees. (The fabric has bumble bees buzzing around honey jars.) Do click on one or more of the images to embiggen and enjoy the cute fabric!

I like to modify sewing patterns, A.) because I can, and B.) because sometimes some modifications work out nicely for the wearer.

For example, I will often turn a buttoned or zippered dress into a pullover-type garment like a jumper or sleeveless summer dress, and when I do, I usually line the top rather than use neck and armhole facings so that the seams are not only hidden from view when turned inside out but the addition of a lining makes a garment wear better and withstand wearing better.

So here we have a perfectly good toddler sundress that has never been worn. At least it will make a nice contribution to Salvation Army or the folks who pick up clothes for veterans. I'll tell ya, I doubt I'll be making any more items, knit, sewn, or otherwise for headstrong two and three year olds!

Saturday Sky ~ A Slight Heatwave + No Rain

spaceholder

Progress

I know, I know, I haven't been blogging even though school is out for the summer and I theoretically should have more time to blog and knit. I generally turn off my pc as much as possible in July and August because it really makes this room too hot during the summer, and my laptop doesn't have Fireworks (my photo editing software) or the Canon software to download photos from my camera, so I can't do too much blogging from it. Sure, I could type, barely, but I can't get photos, and what's a blog without photos? Boring. I could put the software on the laptop, but it's my work laptop and has a smallish hard drive, and I don't want to give away my software to the school.

I had some time yesterday to make a bit more progress on the Tomten ~ finished one sleeve and picked up the stitches for the next one:

The end is in sight and not any time too soon because the baby is due this week, whew!!

I’m not a big fan of garter stitch, and even on this small piece, the never-ending garter almost bored me to death. But I do have to say that I am very enamored of the pretty edge that garter produces when you slip the first stitch of every row (do click to embiggen):

It looks like little pink pearls on a string. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it is one I am willing to make. These little pink pearls sort of remind me of Hester Prynne's daughter Pearl in the Scarlet Letter.

Long ago I picked up the habit of slipping the first stitch of each row, likely as a result of doing so for the heel flap of socks, but since I don’t employ garter stitch very often, I was quite tickled by the very nice effect such slipping does for the selvedge edge of knitted fabric. While it is true I am an excellent seamstress, like many of you, I loathe more than anything seaming knitting together, but this edge is so nice and crisp that it should make seaming a snap.

Because this edge is so nice, I don’t think I am inclined to add the button band I had originally planned. Garter stitch button bands aren’t special, and they certainly won’t have the nice line that this currently has but will get a bit wavy and messy. Although I want to add the extra color band around the hood and front closures, I think I am definitely going to forego it and just add a loop and largish button at the neck. It would be very nice if I could find some ladybug buttons because that’s what my cousin is using as a theme in the nursery. It would be very cool if I could find some large pink ladybug buttons, but I’m not that lucky, and I think that is too much to ask for.