Satisfying, Cheap, and Shiny

What to do while waiting for my Sixareen problems to get sorted out and for the dark Fassett stripe sleeves to block? Knit me a cowl for the winter! The Churchmouse Inside Outside cowl to be precise, in a wonderful cheap fuzzy sequined (sequins!) yarn, Patons Lace Sequin.

The picture doesn't quite show how wonderful the sequins are--very tiny and subtle and non-scratchy next to the skin, yet they have a charming twinkle that's a lot easier on the wallet than Kidsilk Haze Glamour. Doesn't get much more satisfying than cheap and shiny!

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!

Dry Dock

My Sixareen Cape is in dry dock for the time being. I have overcome a bunch of obvious errors in the pattern, but this last one is a deal-breaker. The pattern says to decrease the top until you have 82 stitches. Seriously? Can a normal human being get their head through such a tiny hole? Adding insult to injury, the pattern illustration shows a loose, flow-y top more like a cowl than a constipated turtleneck. Something is very wrong here. Is it the decreasing? My gauge is OK. WTF???  Sadly, the discussion on the Ravelry group hasn't been much help. Most of it is about misunderestimation of yarn quantities--been there--and there is an entry from Kate saying that a corrected pattern is available for those who downloaded it on Ravelry, not much help to those of us who purchased a hard copy through MagCloud. I have emailed Kate requesting a way to get corrections, but she is in the midst of her house/business move and will not be available for a response for some time. Hence the dry dock. I'm sure a solution is forthcoming, just not for a while. And I think some frogging is in my future.

But does the knitting stop just because one project is on the rocks? Certainly not.

There's the dark Kaffe Fassett stripe sweater, for one thing. And I found some cheesy acrylic yarn with sequins (sequins!) that makes really darling "dress-up" baby booties. And is that more Sour Cherries sock yarn I spy? Mm hmm. Because you don't have to have an actual baby in the pipeline to knit a cute baby sweater. If you build it, they will come. I think I know the right baby for it, but it's pretty hard to tell the exact size until a Baby Surprise sweater is nearly done.

A Day in the Life

What a difference a day makes to a mushroom. Remember this little beauty?

 A day later it was this:

Mushrooms--you just can't help lichen 'em!

Plain Sailing

Just plain stockinette on the Sixareen Cape from here on out. All the fair isle is done, and it looks pretty good even in its unblocked state. The moss stitch border looks a bit frilly and flip-uppy, but I'll have to wait for the blocking magic to see if it's really going to be a problem.

And I think I promised you a look at the dark Fassett stripe sweater.

This was the best approximation of the color that I could get with the light available. The pattern is this one, in the prescribed yarns, but with less contrast than you see in the woman's model. I used Regia Hand Dye Effect Night Tones and Random Stripe 2903. The yarns look very much alike at first, but they have slightly different textures and one has long gradual color changes, while the other has shorter color shifts. It makes for fascinating if subtle color play that you really have to appreciate up close and in person. Maybe before I'm done I'll find the right light and setting. And no, that's not the shape. It's not blocked, so the sides are curled up. In places you can see the light through it, so you see what a light layer it will be, and a good friend of many of my turtlenecks this winter.

And just for fun, here's what's happening all over the Alaska woods right now--mushrooms!

There are many others, but the most numerous and photogenic are the amanita/fly agaric/fairy toadstools/call-them-what-you-will cartoon 'shrooms. They're the most colorful, bright red when they're young, and covered in mad white dots. They're also poisonous, so nothing eats them. Once in a while a bird or a squirrel will take one up in a tree and then leave it there when it figures out it's no good.

Almost cool enough to make you believe in gnomes, isn't it?

Rowing Along in My Sixareen*

The Alaska summer has turned a corner, folks. the sunshine and relative heat are no more. Birch leaves are starting to turn yellow and the intermittent rain is greening up the forest moss. Time to realize that the cold is coming and that there will be a time when I will want the warmth of my Sixareen Cape. I've now got two of the three fair isle pattern repeats done, which feels like a big accomplishment when there are 414 stitches in each round.

The dark Fassett stripe sweater is coming along, too--the back is almost done--but not very photo-worthy yet. Good thing I also have a new pair of booties on the go:

A really sweet colorway of a cotton/wool/elastic sock yarn called Cherry Sours. It's even more charming in Spanish: Caramelos Cereza Agria. Isn't it funny how they can take two colors I'm not all that crazy about, pink (I really get tired of all the pinky stuff they make nowdays. It's like pink is the flag of the double X chromosome.) and green (because green is so, well, green.) And put together with a strange pinky muddy light brown in little baby footies I can't help sighing awwwwwww every time I look at them. I even find myself thinking this yarn would make a really darling baby surprise jacket, and I don't even know anybody offhand who is expecting a person who could wear it.

You may also have noticed a particular vegetable theme in the photos. That's because I'm capital-T-Thrilled that I am going to have tomatoes this year! For the past 2 summers it has not been warm enough for my tomato plants to set fruit. Two years! Big plants, lots of blossoms, but it has to be at least 70 degrees or so for the flowers to set fruit, and even up next to the south-facing house wall, they weren't able to manage more than a couple of wee green marbles. I'm counting on the fruit being all the sweeter for the long wait.

*A Sixareen is a Shetland boat. Look it up here. And video of an authentic re-creation is here.

F.O. Fashion Show

There hasn't been much blog fodder around here lately.  I've been busy but boring. My apologies. Just knitting back and forth, back and forth in the case of the red stripe sweater, and round and round and round in the case of the aqua Trigere.

And now, at last, lookee here:

The red stripes are an actual sweater, one that fits nicely and that I think I am going to like very much. It's quite soft and light, which makes me even more glad that I changed the neckline from the big cowl to a turtle. The only reason the cowl is standing up in the pattern picture is because it's stuffed full of scarf. On its own, the cowl would just sigh and flop down. An even sloppier look than the soup-stained standup in the picture. (No, there are no soup spots on the model in the picture. She doubtless is a much tidier soup-slurper than I.)

And the aqua Trigere is done. I like the way the beaded lace inserts turned out. The fit's a little closer than I would like, but I think time and more hard work will take care of that.

 Finished Objects mean an opportunity to get a new Object started. And I do believe, posing coyly in the pansy patch, you can discern the beginning of another Fassett stripe sweater, one in more solemn and subtle tones: