Today is my brother's 50th birthday, so I must tell you a story.
Once upon a time, when I was young and carefree and childless, my eldest sister turned 50. I was then spending my days lounging by a pool in Santa Barbara, waiting for a work permit, so I thought this was a fine excuse to make her a sweater, which I did. I think it was a blue wool/acrylic blend, and lacy vertical panels.
It was
too small, and she had to send it back to me and I unseamed it and made new side panels, and might have done something with the sleeves but I forget, and sent it back to her.
A few years pass, and my next sister turns 50. However, at this point I was not carefree, but having my first baby! I started well in advance by making something so gigantic that it had to be totally ripped out, and then, finally, late, I made a vest, with some great Norah Gaughan diamond cables. I figured if it fit me, it would fit her, but didn't take into account my nursing-mom voluptuosity, and it was still
too big.
Then, in my family there is a big gap before the next 50th birthday. But, if one looks around, one will find a sister-in-law to fill the gap. So I made her a sweater a few years ago. This one I actually have a picture of!
I designed all the stranded work (she lives in
Victoria and so there are sea-things, mountains, trees, her house....) and knit like crazy (she was silly enough to be born around Christmas!) and was doing fine, till I went to sew the sleeves in and found that I had knit them both on, apparently,
huge needles. Not the usual mistake of continuing on small needles after the ribbing... These sleeves were completely different gauge from the body, and had to be totally ripped and reknit. Grr. Anyways, this did ultimately work out, though I believe she said something like, "It fits fine, especially if I just lost 5 pounds..." It wasn't supposed to be so "body-skimming" but you know, one's gauge changes with stranded work!
That still left me several years before my brother's birthday. I had been on a quest (which, as a
matter of fact, I am still on) to find a nice brown yarn that didn't look like mud after a while. I was buying lots of Lett-Lopi, thinking to mix browns and other colours in some artful way in a sweater for me. Then, my brother took
this picture and I wondered how I could make a knitted version. A postcard of the Nova Scotia coast (he was living in Newfoundland, but what the heck: browns, greens, blues, greys...) and I was all set.
I started in England. I knew my timetable -- lots and lots of time.
All went well till I got to the yoke, where I figured I'd put the clothesline of icicles. But, the yarn was already doubled and quite dense, and stranding doubled icicle-coloured yarn around would have made it incredibly lumpy.
And, how does one make short, not totally regular, icicles look like
icicles and not just little badly formed rectangles? It was not to be. He might recognise them, but no one else would, and the result would be an in-joke and a lumpy, funny looking sweater.
Now, if we can just avoid the size problem... It's long on me, which is good.
I loved making this sweater; the knitting was completely mindless, which left lots of interest in picking the colours and trying to work my way up to the sky on the yoke. The yarn was lovely to work with, really -- if only it hadn't made us all sneeze!
I have many many part balls of
Lett-Lopi left, which will also make us sneeze. Some of them have
already been dealt with. (I'd never looked at that colour card before; I think I used about 15 or 16 of the colours, along with a couple of full balls of
Kureyon and a zillion scraps.)
With this year, my leisurely approach to 50th-birthday sweaters is over. In the next 6 years I have 2 SILs, a husband, yet another sister and myself! And then.... I think I'll wait till people start turning 100! Ohmygosh, my dad's almost 90!
Added later: My brother writes:
Thanks for the lovely sweater, which fits as if it had been made for me.
Well, thank goodness for that!
I can sorta knit it!
And this is the next piece. The quilter has log-cabinned clockwise, and knitting can only go counter-clockwise, I think, so I will fudge, but the whole thing is fudging, really, isn't it? Onward and upward and wonky!
I have joined a book swap! We need to find a book written before 1960 which involves knitting in some way, even some teeny way; make a bookmark, and send a package off to someone somewhere! I have a few ideas, but must see who I'm giving the book to, before I make any big decisions!
I just read on Grumperina's blog that Magknits was no longer around! 
Go read their statement... Sad for us, but it seems a sensible thing for them to do, really. And although I used some patterns, I certainly never supported them by even clicking on an advertiser. I guess there is no free lunch!
Yesterday I stepped out of the house and saw this cardinal in a tree, with the clear white con trail across the sky, and thought, "Ah, Saturday sky!" It was really Sunday, and I'm posting it on Monday... but you get the point.
We went to a little farm in the city yesterday looking for baby animals to photograph for an upcoming fair, but there were no babies yet! Just a few chicks under a warm red light, which makes for not so great photos....
I was thinking about mossy yarns the other day, and I remembered these lovely bits of handspun that I'd come across on my mossy West Coast travels.
So, I got my trusty 7 mm short circular needle, the two yarns, and a couple of afternoons, and came up with a nice warm hat... in April, just as I'm thinking I might one day be able to leave the house without a wool hat!
The Yarn Harlot gave the knitters of Toronto a list of places/scenarios in which to take pictures of socks, and we seem to have been rather diligent about this! There's a flickr group here.
Here's the sock on my deck, looking toward the CN Tower.
I could have taken this picture on any recent sunny day, but now it is grey and damp out. I even had to put a plastic bag down under the yarn on the table.
Wouldn't you love a shawl that looked like that!?
February and March have been the months of fire in this year's version of Project Spectrum. I have not really been paying attention, but when we flew out west, I took this funny stretchy wool (the red is even called Vesuvio -- how's that for fiery?) that I got long ago when Mary Mary Quite Contrary was getting rid of yarn.
Not very exciting so far, is it?
I've been working on the ribbed socks with the Kaffe Fassett yarn. One down, one barely started, and there is in fact a deadline on these babies. There's nothing like a sock-knitting deadline to get one thinking of other projects...
And some of the weekend's other activities include bike riding and ice bashing.
The blue socks are on the go again.
I have just returned from the parental homestead, where we celebrated a bunch of birthdays, but mainly my dad's 90th! Actually, his 89 and 11/12ths, but what the heck. Other recent birthdays include Arthur's and mine!
I have a nephew I haven't seen in ages, and he brought 4 of his daughters, who provided a bunch of craziness for Arthur. The poor boy would have been lost and adrift without some little girls to hang out with, at the party and in the hotel pool!
Although I'm not doing much with sock needles, I have been knitting up a storm with the leftovers of the birthday sweater. Many half-balls of lite Lopi and scraps of Kureyon were left, and while the blues and browns have been mitered, though not yet felted, the greens have become a scarf.
I designed all the stranded work (she lives in Victoria and so there are sea-things, mountains, trees, her house....) and knit like crazy (she was silly enough to be born around Christmas!) and was doing fine, till I went to sew the sleeves in and found that I had knit them both on, apparently, huge needles. Not the usual mistake of continuing on small needles after the ribbing... These sleeves were completely different gauge from the body, and had to be totally ripped and reknit. Grr. Anyways, this did ultimately work out, though I believe she said something like, "It fits fine, especially if I just lost 5 pounds..." It wasn't supposed to be so "body-skimming" but you know, one's gauge changes with stranded work!
matter of fact, I am still on) to find a nice brown yarn that didn't look like mud after a while. I was buying lots of Lett-Lopi, thinking to mix browns and other colours in some artful way in a sweater for me. Then, my brother took this picture and I wondered how I could make a knitted version. A postcard of the Nova Scotia coast (he was living in Newfoundland, but what the heck: browns, greens, blues, greys...) and I was all set.
I loved making this sweater; the knitting was completely mindless, which left lots of interest in picking the colours and trying to work my way up to the sky on the yoke. The yarn was lovely to work with, really -- if only it hadn't made us all sneeze!
Oh dear, I have fallen from the straight and narrow path yet again.
So, la de da, look at the rest of that yarn, just sitting there, such pretty colours, la de da, let's make a mitered square, and then ....
Luckily, I remembered that long long ago, in fact Winter 94-5, Vogue Knitting published an article about miters. This gives a much nicer way to decrease -- mark the centre, knit almost up to it, decrease, carry on! Do it on every knit row and every other purl row. Six stitches decreased in 4 rows, easy as pie.
And see, it makes a nice straight line down the middle.
