Yes, over three years ago I started knitting this sweater for my mother. (I had the yarn for two years before that, but you know stash must be aged prior to use… right?) It required so much concentration and counting, that I only worked on it for fits and spurts and insanely long car rides when the kids were asleep.

There was a time when I thought child-rearing and knitting intricate patterns might be mutually exclusive, but I kept at it, and did most of my knitting at night, when nobody would bother me. And I’ll admit, there were times when I just put it away for months at a time, when it was just too much work to try to figure out where I had left off.

But as the kids got bigger I found more time to knit, and I even got them trained to not try to rip my needles out of my hands or out of my knitting when my back was turned.

Last week I met one of my neighbors who is a spinner, seamstress, knitter, and weaver (and probably more than that) and also happens to be the superintendent of the fiber arts division at our County Fair. She encouraged me to enter something in the Fair, but I didn’t think I had anything ready. Then I remembered the sweater.

I had finished the actually knitting of the sweater a couple months ago, but the daunting task of blocking, weaving in yarn ends, and seaming still lay ahead. (For you non-knitters, weaving in yarn ends is like fingernails on a chalkboard). It took three days to dry the sweater after wet blocking, and I finally resorted to turning on the baseboard heater near the knitting to speed things up.

And then there were yarn ends. O M G. It took me five hours just to weave in yarn ends, and I am not kidding. Seaming everything up was the real test, and thank goodness my knitting gauge stayed consistent over the years, because everything fit together the way it was supposed to. I did have to run to our local fabric store (thank goodness we have one!) to find buttons for the sweater. I found lovely pewter buttons for all of $4. Score!

I finished everything today by noon and walked it over to the fairgrounds. So here it is, Mama. The Swedish Thora that was five years in the making is finished, and it has turned out every bit as lovely as I had hoped.

P.S. I’m holding it for randsom until you come visit me.

Olga and I picked as many ripe strawberries as we could find today. You can see the plants in the bed against the garage behind her head. They don’t get a whole lot of sunlight, but it stays nice and warm next to the wall, and I think they like that.

Of course, greedy as we are, we gobbled them up while Gavin was napping. (Sorry, Gav.)

Upon waking from his nap, Gavin did his Harry Potter impersonation all over the yard with an old broom.

This rose bush has behaved very badly all season, and finally it is starting to bloom properly. It was making these massive buds that would swell and start to bloom, then suddenly get so heavy that the stem would bend over and the entire mass of petals would drop right off onto the patio in a globe of pink, then rot. Now it looks like it’s going to explode into a bouquet right on the bush, and the stems seem to be supporting the blooms. Anyone have any idea what is going on with this bush?

I want to remember this day forever.

And my goodness, they are perhaps the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted (and I grew up amidst miles and miles of strawberry fields, mind you). They are tiny and strangely shaped, but sweet and juicy.

After gorging ourselves on as many ripe berries as we could find (I think we got two each… I might have sneaked a third and not told anyone about it…) the kids took a nap at the same time. (By the way, that is Olga’s new rug from Ikea, a trip of which I shall tell in detail later, as it deserves its own post.)

I’m going to put in a brand new, totally rockin’ bamboo floor this summer.