2. Don’t look at the pictures you took before.

3. Lay out the strips more or less the way you remember them looking.

4. Make a few radical changes of the background strips.

5. Break out the scissors and start cutting. Don’t give yourself the chance to fuss.

6. Sew.

Then you can think about something else, like a) cutting up all the new fabric you just bought for your next quilt, or b) how nice the tulips that have survived the marauding puppy are looking:

I thought this stitch pattern might be a chore, with those extended-slipped-crossed stitches, but it turns out it’s addictive. (Hence my swatch is twice as tall as it needs to be.) I’m still playing with the arrangement of the colors, but it feels like painting, and it’s extraordinarily satisfying. Can you picture it as a vest, with some 2-color corrugated ribbing for trim? I think it might be just the thing for next fall.

I won’t start knitting it before then, unfortunately. I’m creeping up on the completion of my secret Shibui project, and the Ivy stole will be finished in ten days if I have to stay up nights to do it, but then it’s going to be full steam ahead with my secret Popknits project and the Indigo Ripples Skirt. I really should take a swing at finishing my three-year-old Frost Flowers pullover, and then there’s that bag of Cashcotton 4-Ply in the stash suddenly begging to be an Apres-Surf Hoodie. Not to mention all the babies hitting the ground in August and needing little sweaters for the fall. What’s a girl to do, especially when she’s got sewing projects tempting her, too? Resist buying yellow and white and gray and black fabric for this (thanks a lot, Alison) or this (it was the embroidered bicycles that sent me over the edge), for starters.

On Friday night, Mr. G and I pedaled down to our favorite theater for a $3 movie, pizza, and microbrew (we love Portland). Some Like It Hot was playing, and I’m happy to report that it’s still a delightful date movie 50 years after it was filmed. Saturday I rode to the yarn store to meet Katrin instead of driving, while Mr. G cycled to the annual giganticus tech-entrepreneur-geekfest known as Bar Camp. And yesterday we took the bikes when we went to meet Mr. G’s dad for dinner. That’s three BATs apiece: they’re all within two or three miles of home, exactly the range where we’d be most tempted to hop in the car, but the bike trip takes only a minute or two longer. We also walked for the groceries all week and took the MAX train when we went shopping for a purple tie for Mr. G to wear to my brother’s wedding. Since my job requires me to drive over 30 miles on weekdays (I carpool, but I still hold myself responsible for the environmental impact of the trip), I like to leave the car in the driveway all weekend whenever possible.

Now I feel like I need a marvy little sidebar BAT/KAT tally graphic. Too bad I don’t have skills like that.

And the knitting? The Ivy stole has crawled up to row 26 of the edge chart. I’m halfway there, except that the rounds are still getting longer. I don’t think I could conscionably use the word excruciating to describe knitting cashmere (hey, how has unconscionable survived in our lexicon but conscionable is obsolete? Add it to the list with words like wieldy and whelmed, I guess), but this edging is like the last 2.2 miles of a marathon. Why, Skacel, why can’t you make a #0 Addi LacePoint? What daft manager signed off on a plan to make #1s and #00s but nothing in between? I may have cast on an Indigo Ripples skirt for some much-needed stockinet on #5s.

I’m almost done with a secret project for Shibui, so naturally my mind has wandered to what’s next. I’ve got something in the hopper for Popknits that I’m very excited to cast on, and I’ve been mulling over possibilities for the new Casbah. The confluence of the new Interweave Knits summer issue with Megan’s post about knitting cowls with doubled sock yarn turned on a light.

Look at all the complementary sock yarn I already have in the stash! Counterclockwise from the left, that’s Socks That Rock Lightweight in Amber and Mica, Dream in Color Smooshy in Gothic Rose, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Cedar, Socks That Rock Lightweight in one of the colorways with rock names they don’t seem to offer anymore, and of course the Casbah. All mostly superwash merino. Of course, a worsted-weight wool tank top makes no sense. But what if I shortened the body of the Confectionary Tank and wore it as a vest next fall? I couldn’t help myself. I started swatching.

The design-minded among you will notice that the sidebar’s looking a little less scraggly. I owe Mr. G for this. You’ll also see there’s a link to his company website: one of the reasons I knit so much is that my partner for social activities is pouring all his energy into launching a small business. I think you can only know what an effort that requires if you’ve actually done it yourself. We certainly didn’t comprehend what we were in for when we took the decision for Mr. G to leave his job to work on SweetSpot full time. We saw a need within his family for better communication about his father’s diabetes; we saw that Adam had the skills and the passion to do something about it and to extend the project to other families in the same situation. He’d wanted to start a company of his own for years, and we thought now was probably the time to try: we don’t have kids, I have a job, we have some savings put by to cushion us for a year or two. Neither of us fully imagined the emotional drain, or the way every conversation we have would turn to the business, or the frustration of trying to bring in the support and relationships necessary to sustain a worthy one-man project. But SweetSpot is out in the world now, and if you or someone you care for lives with insulin-dependent diabetes, you might find that Mr. G’s service can help in the daily work toward wellness. It fetches, stores, and analyzes information from blood glucose monitors, and it offers a teamwork structure to make family participation simpler and more constructive. It’s free to try it out, and if you have any questions, the CEO himself will take your call in his handknit socks. How many companies can say that?

Exhibits 1 and 5 were the clear favorites, with 1 pulling ahead late in the race. (The social scientist in me wonders if this didn’t have something to do with them being the first and last options, and whether they would have gotten as much love if they’d been in the middle of the group.) Actually, they were my favorites, too. And you all made me think harder about what exactly appealed to me about each one.

Number 1:

This one has the most overt balance, I think: the diagonal parallel shift of the pink flowers and brown polka dot short strips; the strong Amy Butler browns spaced wide like columns; even distribution of lights and darks, with the lights forming a capital N if you squint at them. What bugged me: the Butlers being the same height, and the short strips along the top being equal in stubbiness.

Number 5:

I liked the energy of this arrangement, the way my eye had to move over the composition. But ultimately it was, perhaps, a little too unsettling. Plus, using the squinting trick, there’s a vast past expanse at the lower center with no dark mass to counterbalance it. This is where I got to thinking that the lower edge might look funny with a dark binding.

I also realized I probably need a ninth strip for width if I want the thing to be square.

So I went back to the drawing board. I looked in Bend the Rules again and realized that Amy Karol’s version staggers the short strips in the middle of the long ones, as I did with the pink flowers in version 5. So I thought I might give that idea more thought. I also realized I’d forgotten what I was drawn to in Moonstitches’s pleasing sheets: the horizontal continuity she achieves by varying the width of the strips and keeping those with large patterns in the order they were cut from the cloth. That ability for the eye to slide sideways across the quilt gives it order, I think. Most of my fabrics don’t have a pattern that you’d notice repeating horizontally, but the Amy Butler does. I thought I’d try making use of it.

This time I’ve tried to reduce the chaos by reducing the number of darks on lights and vice versa. Seeing it on screen, I think I might make a further change: slide the brown polka dot interrupter up the Amy Butler background strip, and move the pale twiggy one down the green strip next to it. Swap them visually, so that the brown polka dots stay together and offset the pink florals diagonally, sort of as in version 1.

What do you think?

And yeah, I’m just gonna sew the dog hair right in.

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

Exhibit 3:

Exhibit 4, which is just like 3 except I’ve removed the little pedestal of the sage green to the strip second from right:

Exhibit 5:

If you have a suggestion to improve the quilt beyond what I’ve proposed here, let me have it. The backing is the sage green (which has wee polka dots, as you can see better in the original picture below).

The binding will be mostly the Amy Butler at left, since I still have so much of it, unless I decide I don’t like the edges being so dark.

I worked on my little sundress yesterday, too, which means I ripped off the skirt and cut about six inches off the side so there wouldn’t be as much fabric to gather. It was way too Baby Doll for my figure. Now it’s better, but it still needs a zipper and a hem and a cute button for the ribbon ties that aren’t long enough to tie.

But the knitting continues predictable and satisfying:

I finished Ana a good two weeks ago, but I’ve been waiting for natural light and a photographer. The hat isn’t as yellow as the afternoon sun made it in these shots, but you get the idea. I don’t know about “boho chic 4 ever,” but I think it’s a good argument for bringing back the snood.

Reader, the sainted man walked thirty-five blocks to visit said LYS. And he brought me this:

I may have suffered the most fleeting of disappointments that this is a Budweiser cap and not Molson or some other brand that’s, well, Canadian. But it’s still an awesome idea, and it’s also a magnet — a pleasingly powerful one at that.

But let’s pull back for a better look at the yarn, no?

Just imagine how improved the world of knit blogging will be if they ever invent Pat the Bunny technology for computer screens. You know, so you can feel the yarn in the picture. Because this is HandMaiden Casbah: a collective 975m of 80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon. Ain’t it glorious? Poor Mr. G was a little crestfallen that he hadn’t brought me something I’d never seen in the U.S., but I assured him that he’d managed to peg one of my very favorite yarn companies, and it’s a colorway I’ve never seen. It isn’t on the HandMaiden colour card - perhaps it’s exclusive to Lettuce Knit?

According to the company’s information, this is designed to be a sock yarn. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t feel like one. And I have such a wealth of it! I do believe it needs to be a sweater of some kind. I think I’ve written before that I have opinions about the use of variegated yarns in large garments. Socks can be as rangi changi* as you like. Babies can get away with anything. But it’s tough to sell me on strong random color changes in large swathes. I need regular striping or something to subdue the chaos. I’m half considering designing a sweater made out of narrow strips of garter stitch so I can figure out the color repetitions and make them stripe. That instinct, I realize, borders on the psychotic. Think of the seaming! There must be an easier way. Miters might do it, for instance. So leave me your suggestions - what patterns do you know that might make the best use of these soft desert colors?

Of course, I can always settle for a lovely lap blanket. The yarn is machine washable, after all. And no matter what it becomes, my husband is a sweetheart.

*This is a useful Nepali word with the felicitous dual meaning of “riotously colorful” and “drunk.” Honestly, is there a better descriptor for some of the sock yarn out there? Why don’t we have an equivalent word in English? Nepali fills many holes in my English lexicon. Another is kaancho, which describes the mouth feel of under-ripe bananas.

It’s been a drear few days weather-wise, and we’re all suffering a little cabin fever around here. Mr. G went to Toronto for five days, which means that Lark has been living in the car in the school parking lot and Mingus hasn’t been outdoors in two days, since I haven’t wanted to subject him to a whole day of huddling outside in the downpour by letting him take his morning constitutional before I leave for work. So it was an extra treat to come home yesterday and find these pushed through the mail slot:

Isn’t is marvelous how it’s still so exciting to get presents from the mailman, even if you’ve bought and paid for them? That’s a Schrodinger Original sock cube - just the thing for protecting my socks-in-progress from the cruel world of cat hair they’re born into. I love those little rosy brown sheep! Go check out Cathy’s shop - she has a couple more sheep cubes like mine, plus an adorable Japanese print of matryoshka dolls.

And as you see, I couldn’t resist ordering a copy of Lisa Lloyd’s new book as soon as it pubbed. I haven’t had time to read deeply yet, but I already learned a lot about the properties of different breeds’ wool. I’m sure there’s a wealth of information here to improve my spinning, and the cabled sweaters are truly succulent. I’m not casting on anything right away: the Ivy stole and a secret project for publication with Shibui demand my fidelity as their deadlines loom. But in the mean time, this title is joining the ranks of the books I leaf through late at night just for inspiration.

I love bending the rules in my knitting, so I’m thoroughly content to follow Amy Karol off the beaten path in sewing, too. I already love her for eschewing fusible interfacing in favor of good old cotton flannel (some of which I also bought so I can sew a charming handbag or a bib on a whim this summer). But I can’t start on my quilt just yet: my sewing table is occupied by my cute little Vogue dress! I did the top this weekend, and thus far I’m very satisfied with my work. We’ll see if I still feel that way once I tackle the invisible zipper and find out whether the thing will fit. I’ve already discovered that a yard of ribbon for the tie at the top is not enough; I love the ribbon I have, though, so I’ll be working on a creative solution to dodge the need for extra length to tie a bow.

***

During the writing of this post I had a phone call from my mother to tell me that my grandmother has passed away. It’s not a sad passing. The word “pass” comes from Latin pace, “peace,” and that’s no euphemism in this case. [oops! This is me reading my dictionary wrong. The OED was trying to tell me that "pass" comes from an Old French word derived from Latin passus, which means 'pace' - not that passus itself derived from Latin pace. Now we all know. Thanks for the catch, Mom.] Ruth Phillips Foote lived ninety-seven wonderful years, and she died with the same quiet grace and perfect manners that marked her every action and set the behavioral benchmarks for all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was perfectly organized, she bought our Christmas presents in September and mailed them in November, she wrote stylish and heartfelt notes of gratitude for gifts or simple communications of love and pride at her family’s accomplishments. She was always dressed fit for high tea, she used her silver service daily, and she spoke so beautifully that her laudatory pronunciation of words like “newspaper” were instilled in me as a tot. (Now that I think about it, this last was especially remarkable: she was born and raised on Long Island.) But despite her high polish, she was warm and squeezable and ready to laugh. She adored her family and her many, many friends, and when she outlived them all, she just made kept making new ones. And she did the New York Times crossword every day of the week, including Sundays, and could beat anyone at Scrabble as recently as last year.

We knew she was coming to the end of her time with us. My brother got to make a final visit last week, and my aunt and uncle who live on the east coast have been making regular trips to see her. We knew she wouldn’t make it to his wedding in May, and she didn’t really get to know his fiancée, who is more like her in generosity and boundless affection and social grace than any of us. She treasured every chance of seeing her family all together and would have loved to be there. But it was time for her to go. In a lovely coincidence, one of her nieces stopped in for a last goodbye this afternoon. Having been a nurse, she could read the signs that Gram didn’t have much time. My grandmother wasn’t responsive, but when her niece held her hand and told her it was okay for her to leave and that Taddie, her beloved husband, was waiting for her, she made a little sound at his name. Three hours later she was gone.

It felt frivolous to go on with a chatty post about my new fabric, knowing that my last living grandparent had left us. But Gram was a consummate sewer. At seventeen, she took in sewing to help support her family after her father died, but the necessity of the work didn’t spoil her pleasure in it. She made clothes for herself and for her children. She made my mother’s wedding dress. And she would have been pleased to see me pick up the hobby. I have her little maple sewing box, which still holds her sewing machine needles and cleaning tools and some shockingly dull scissors, well used over the years. I would have sent her a picture of me in my finished dress, and she would have framed it and put it on her bureau with all the other photographs of her dear family. She would have written me an elegant letter of praise in her expansive, decorative hand and reminded me of her opinion that even though my cousin Alison and I were her two summas, what I was really cut out for was modeling, dear. Gram didn’t believe in long goodbyes. She was always ready to look forward, even though her memory for the past was unparalleled. She had a beautiful sense of balance that way.
So that’ll be all for tonight. I’m off to have a little glass of scotch in memory of both my grandmothers.

Fast forward to the fall of 2007. I finally stumbled across a tweed sock yarn that was a decent match (I hadn’t been looking all that hard): Regia Tweed 4-Ply. I bought some in a creamy white and a horsey brown, counted stitches on the original and made a guess at the needle size, and was off and knitting in plenty of time to finish my reproduction sock for Mr. G’s birthday at the end of November. I gave it to him, but hadn’t woven in the ends because I wanted to make sure it fit comfortably. It did. He was delighted.

So this week I wove in the ends.

Übersock at left, reproduction at right. Look, it’s got cat hair on it already.

Mr. G can walk like an Egyptian…

… and can almost still twist himself into a reasonable first position. Remind me to tell you sometime about how he took ballet with eight-year-old girls when we were in college. (I guess I just did.) I love a sense of adventure in a man, don’t you?

He’s already worn them three times.

* The kind of reproduction that doesn’t involve making babies. I didn’t even think of that sense of the word until I’d already posted this, dudes.