Home From Sleeve Island

Hey, know what makes great travel knitting? (compact, simple-ish) Sleeves! Especially second sleeves. It only works for sew-in sleeves, not knit-on sleeves, because the idea is to not have the bulk of a sweater body to tote around, but for my second Brocade Leaves sleeve this was the perfect chance to git 'er done while miles away from the siren call of other projects.

If you're making them in sequence, not simultaneously, it's a good idea to bring Sleeve #1 along for frequent comparison. It's not much bigger than a sock, and you want them to match, riiiight? Periods of forced concentration (aka long airplane rides) enabled me to crank along to the last repeat of the leaf pattern. I'm home now, but so close to being done that motivation is not a problem. (Update: I am done!)

So after the sleeves are done and sewn on, the remaining challenge is the cardigan edging. I'm not an enormous fan of the plain blue edge of the cropped cardigan version. In fact, there are a whole bunch of different takes on this sweater as a cardigan. Take a look on Ravelry and see what I mean.

 I'd rather continue the picot edge theme of the hem and sleeves, with maybe a little taste of the contrast colors.

And then finish the whole thing off with nordic clasps. What do you think?

Little Things

The Shepherd sweater grinds on, but I'm afraid I've been afflicted with Second Sleeve Syndrome even before I'm quite down to the cuff of the first one. My excuse is that it's no longer mindless banging along, easily done while watching movies or tv. It's pay-attention knitting: pay attention to the cabling pattern and how it works into the decreases; pay attention to the stitch count and the decreases; pay attention to making the decreasing and cabling come to an end at just the right place to end the sleeve at the right length and have a couple of inches of k4 p2 rib to finish. Sheesh! I guess these are the dues for going my own way with the basic design. Some days I'm incredibly pleased with myself for cooking up an adaptation that works so well for me and eager for the finished product; other days I just want to catch up on Downton Abbey and zone out a bit.

So let's see what's happened lately in the zone-out zone:

 Not two hats, but one reversible hat, as modeled by my favorite Library Head, Willa Cather. It's the Esprit Reversible Cap (free, by the way) made with Cascade Fixation Solid and Spray Dyed. I love the way the hat feels on the head. The yarn is cotton and elastic, so it's very huggy and likely to stay put. I needed a hat to go with my red coat and this fits the bill (and the noggin) nicely.

What to do with the leftover yarn? Booties, of course!

The Fixation booties are a big 6-12 month-old size. And the dark ones are from the remainder of the dark Fassett stripe sweater. (Yes, I'm still working on sewing it up. It's got an awful lot of long seams that really have to be worked on in daylight.)

And in celebration of booties, I bring you this song about the other kind of boo-tay. A ditty I was first introduced to as the sound track of a YouTube paean to the rear view of Mr Benedict Cumberbatch:



Oh, okay. Here you go, fangirls. The Cumberbooty.

Blockage

Front and back of dark Fassett stripe sweater are done and blocking:

I never get tired of looking at how well the colors in this thing blend and shift. And even more so on the purl side, as the piece on the right shows. Hmmm...maybe I need to find a reverse stockinette stitch pattern for this stuff....? And before you ask, both pieces are the same size. The camera lens has distorted the one on the right. Compare the grid sizes.

I'm proceeding on both sleeves at the same time in order to avoid Second Sleeve Syndrome (Like Second Sock, only bigger) and to have the best chance of 2 sleeves that are the same size, shape, and length.

And notice how I slyly managed to show off the bumper tomato harvest? Every year, the unheated Alaska tomato grower has to pick a cutoff date for literally cutting all the tomatoes off the vines, ripe or not. Daylight is shrinking (only a week to equinox), the weather is rainy and cool, and we come to face the fact (reminded by yellowing leaves) that those babies are never going to blush on the vine. But tomatoes have a secret. Everything they need to be red tomatoes is sealed up inside green tomatoes, so all they need is to come inside the house and hang out in a shallow basket for a while until they get around to reaching their carmine potential. They even are kind enough not to ripen all at once, so we may be eating fresh homegrown tomatoes for over a month! Let's have another look and revel in the delights of salads to come:

One more thing--the most prolific plant was not any of those I nurtured from seeds and planted in big deck containers. The winner was an afterthought nursery start called Tumbler plopped in a hanging pot. On a per-yard-of-vine basis it whupped the Sunchocola, Scotia, Beaverlodge, and Fourth of July all to pieces! And their flavor is incomparable!