Mittens for My Favorite Almost-4-Year-Old

A tiny bit of thumb weirdness aside, the mittens were much, much easier to knit than I thought they'd be. Quick, even.

I made the "Small" size, thinking it would work for a smallish adult, but it turned out they really meant small, so I ended up shortening the pattern a bit to make them fit Ingrid. They're pretty long on her, but that's good. It'll keep the snow out of her coat.

Unsurprisingly, she says they're too itchy. I'm thinking of lining them with some soft fleece so that she'll wear them.

Next up: socks. Ana set me up with a pattern. I may go blind from using the world's skinniest yarn and size 2 needles, but hopefully I'll also end up with something colorful to keep my feet toasty next winter.

Scarf

This will be a gift, probably for my grandma, who loves the whole family of colors from fuschsia to purple and who this week sent me a birthday card with a photo of a cat on a bar stool licking the back of its paw as if preparing to do a tequila shot.

You’d think I wouldn’t have time to complete a knitting project, considering how whenever anyone asks for something useful out of me I go on breathlessly about how I’m lucky to get 45 minutes to myself every day. But, I don’t know: garter stitch. Knit, knit, knit, turn, knit, knit, knit. I can handle that.

Next I’m making mittens, which is a big jump. I’m intimidated by the thumbs, and I’m not convinced the pattern writer is in tune with what sorts of details I will need. For example, there’s this: “On next round, fold hem to inside at purl turning ridge and with left-hand needle, pick up 1 stitch from back of cast-on edge and knit it with one stitch from needle.” Which I will require some type of dictionary and possibly a YouTube video to decipher. But then she also specifies, after the heading “To Knit Mittens”: “(Make 2)”. Oh, right! Two! Thanks!

I'm going to use some fake Fair Isle yarn which I'm trying to convince myself isn't cheesy. I'll let you know how it goes.

That's a mouse. Can you tell? An expensive wooden lead-free organic free-range European-made mouse that I bought Iris for her first Christmas and that no one has ever played with. But I love it and I think I'm going to keep it. My displaying it on the nightstand years after the girls have grown up and moved out will be an early symptom of my dotage.

Put Up

This summer was my first real attempt at a vegetable garden. For several years, I'd grown lots of basil and tomatoes in big pots, plus a sweet little herb garden each summer. I'd been held back from a "real" garden by our lead-containing urban soil. This spring, though, I got my dad to help build three giant raised beds, and off I went, enthusiastic but pretty darn unprepared.

Though I grew up with a green-thumbed mom, I only helped at the micro level (Here, help me pick these peas.) I still don't have a good sense of the big yearly rhythm of when to plant what, how to plan a vegetable garden, what to expect, and what to do when.

So, with the gardening season (in our yard, at least) officially over, my assessment is this: I've learned a lot. Some things this year I planted far too late (turns out beets don't like the heat much). Some things I killed altogether without really knowing how (so much for home grown butternut squash). And some things I grew in bizarre, wasteful abundance (next year one row of radishes will do, I think.)

And I've got a lot in mind for next year: I'll grow fewer red peppers (we can't keep up with eating them and don't have a good way of preserving them), fewer radishes, and (as much as we love pesto all year long) less basil. And I'll add some new things: peas, tomatillos, rainbow chard, and another attempt at winter squash.

One goal of this whole thing was to have lots of home grown food to use all winter. Listing what I've got in the freezer and on the shelves, I feel pretty successful in that regard, for year one. Here's what I've put up. Everything but the apples (from a local orchard) grew right in our back yard:

Two big freezer containers of rhubarb sauce.

A quart of dried currants for snacks and baking.

A half-gallon bag of frozen currants for pancakes.

Two frozen bricks of Thai basil pesto.

Lots and lots—like probably fifteen meals' worth—of sweet basil pesto, frozen.

Five half-pint jars of radish relish. (No, we don't eat that much radish relish. Most will go as Christmas gifts.)

A couple of roasted red peppers, frozen, of uncertain quality.

Bunches of dried lavender, sage, oregano, basil, thyme, and rosemary.

Two gallons (broken up into little containers) of frozen tomato sauce.

Two quart jars of sun-dried tomatoes.

Eight pints of applesauce.

And—from all the unused stems, peels, rotten spots, etc. etc.—lots and lots of compost to go into next year's garden.

My friends, I made these out of pipe cleaners.

Now try to tell me I don't have some kind of future in the visual arts.

And feel free to call my bluff the next time I tell you I've got a "really busy" week ahead.

For You II

Way back in December, I promised homemade gifts to a few readers. Eva and Ally and Melissa were the winners, and this week I put in the mail some patchwork pincushions:



I'm giving the fourth one to my mom for Mothers' Day. She grew me inside her body, lost years of sleep raising me, held my vomiting head over the toilet, etc. And you read my blog. And you both get the same gift. That's fair, right?

The pattern was from this book, which is so full of classy cuteness it makes even me feel crafty.

Enjoy!

Sestina Striped Bag

Here it is, stuffed with newspaper and almost dry. I might still take a razor to it to make it less hairy.

The deal with the stripes is, they are in the same order as the end words of sestina lines would be. I told you: geeky. I only got through about three and a half stanzas, but there it is. Weirdly, I feel like I understand better how a sestina works now that I've stitched out the pattern and seen it in yarn. Cross-training, right? Because I haven't written a poem in ages.

I am ready for winter to be over. I am also ready for my kids to grow up and move out of the house. I hope one or the other happens soon. Iris is teething or something and not sleeping. I'm out of fun ideas and am the most boring parent in the world. And "yell, bribe, and threaten" is starting to take over my discipline toolbox. Green leaves are going to save me soon, right?

Ready to Felt

I know you'll want to share the suspense with me. Remember all that yarn? Here's what it looks like knitted up into sort of a bag shape and ready to throw in the washing machine and felt down to (I hope) about two thirds of its size and a whole different texture.

In retrospect, I don't think it was really totally necessary to use all the colors for this. It may not end up being the thing I want to carry everywhere I go. But it's been a harmless diversion.

And if you can detect the very geeky rhyme & reason behind the order of the stripes, I'll buy you a beer.

Stash

Well, enough odd introspection. Enough rambling holiday tales. Let's talk about yarn.

I'm only a very new knitter, and in general I'm not exactly crafty, but I'm sort of getting hooked. The meditative powers of knitting are, of course, well known. And crafting things is good creative cross-training. I get more writing ideas when I'm engaged in a physical project like knitting or sewing.

I am wary, however, of the stash. A few years back, I made a foray into quilting (and maybe I'll go back to it when the sewing machine can be set up without endangering curious little ones). I have such a high tolerance for repetitive, boring tasks that I enjoyed it quite a bit, and made one or two things I was happy with. But shopping for fabric played a large part in the whole enterprise: buying fabric that might one day be used, or buying one thing, then using another. Now we have an entire piece of furniture dedicated to storing my fabric stash. It is a little cupboard in the hall, and, although it also does a nice job holding up a decorative bowl full of fossilized clams, it also seems kind of wasteful and silly, and I'd really rather not build up a yarn stash that also needs its own piece of furniture. (Let alone spend the money that would require. The day care costs: Yowch, they are killing us.)

Enter the nearby giant thrift store. A week or so ago, I discovered the bin of plastic bags of used (or should I say pre-owned) yarn, and dug around long enough to find this:


















I'm starting to make a striped, felted bag out of it, and I'm loving imagining the history of the material. It feels like I'm carrying out work the previous owner never got to, and I feel a responsibility to her. Look at those labels! This is old stuff. And the photo doesn't show this, but there were also tiny pieces of yarn coiled into meticulous little skeins. Too short to use for anything I know about, but carefully saved nonetheless.

I'll be keeping my eyes on the yarn bin at the thrift store from now on. I like the idea of basing these little projects on scavenging rather than shopping, carrying out the good intentions of someone's long-ago shopping trip. And maybe someday somebody will return the favor by putting the remains of my fabric stash to good use.

Mama's First Sweater

I started knitting this shortly after we found out I was pregnant with Iris. Knowing how long it was likely to take me, I chose the largest size the pattern offered (12 months). The day before she was born, I finished the knitting and tucked the pieces into my knitting bag, not to be seen again until a couple of weekends ago, when I finally got up the nerve (and had time) to tackle the seams. Ingrid and I chose and sewed on the buttons during Iris's morning nap today, the day after her six-month birthday. It fits, but barely. Better late than never, right?



I know you can't see much of the sweater here, but isn't she a peach?






For you knitters: This is the Harvey Kimono from that Natural Knits for Moms and Babies book. I followed the pattern exactly, even using the same yarn they did. Any clue why the sleeves came out long enough for a baby chimpanzee? Damned if I am going to do anything about it at this point other than roll them up, but it'd be nice to know for next time.

Debut

Once simply a wildly popular blogger, I now take the fiber arts scene by storm with these stunning new pieces:


Stingray Dishrag I



Stingray Dishrag II

















Coming soon: Photos of the ribbed, tubular dealie I made this weekend as a result of my mother in law's lessons on double-pointed needles.

Now all I need is a pattern for a winter hat with strings that tie under the chin. One that will fit a big-headed 15-month-old.