First things first

I figure I’d better post this list before it gets any longer. It’s amazing how many free knitting patterns out there don’t fit into “conventional” categories.

Knitted mushrooms! My daughter is currently in the middle of a serious fairy phase, so I think some of these are on my horizon. Maybe those fairies could use some knitted daffodils, too.

Knit your own party bunting. This looks so charming . . . and so time consuming. I think I’ll stick with a sewn version.

Knit tie. If you’re looking for a stereotypical Father’s Day gift and can knit really fast, this may be the project for you.

Knit heart pin. If your ambitions are more along the lines of “tie pin” rather than “full-on tie,” this may be up your alley. (Another option: get started on your Valentine’s Day gifts now!)

When you’re ready for new linens and need to figure out what to do with your old ones, consider turning them into yarn.

I’m intrigued enough by Knitminder that when I do get an iPhone, it’ll probably be one of the apps I load on there (right after Peggle). Some of the functions look like they duplicate what Ravelry has, but the counters and the project notes (with photos that you take with your phone, I’m guessing) look like they might be handy.

Think your knitting is getting stale? Shake things up with these conceptual knitting patterns.

Halloween will be here before you know it, so you’d better starting thinking about your costume now. Whatever you have in mind, be sure to include a knitted mustache. A knit/felt bangle bracelet would be a nice addition, too.

Reading: The Longitude Prize, by Joan Dash. Officially, this is a “children’s book” (one that I spotted on a shelf while Sylvia and I were on our weekly library trip), and the publisher’s note even specifies that it’s suitable for ages 9 to 12. It’s written at a much higher level than most books targeting that age group—and I’m delighted about that, since I find that most so-called children’s literature isn’t particularly well-written or intellectually challenging. This book happens to tell a terrific tale, too: the true story about how one self-educated, poor clockmaker figured out how to determine longitude at sea. Reading about his genius is thrilling, as is learning about the science of the day. How exciting* it much have been to be alive during the 18th century, when so many discoveries were being made.

Eating: The last of this season’s sugar snap peas and spinach. The pea plants are yellowing and will surely be spent within the next couple of days; the spinach was already starting to bolt, so I pulled it all up two days ago.

Watching: As We Forgive. I’m not even sure where to begin in talking about this documentary film. The words “amazing” and “powerful” and “moving” come to mind, for all that they are trite. The synopsis for this film begins with “Could you forgive a person who murdered your family?” I’ve heard this question before, especially in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks, when there were numerous interviews and articles about people who’d lost family members in the Twin Towers. But in those cases, the connections between killers and victims were distant or anonymous. This movie, about the reconciliation movement in Rwanda, is about situations in which the connections were quite close and personal: people who had been neighbors and friends turned on each other—not only killing, but killing in extremely gruesome and hands-on ways. Over one million people died in less than four months. There are over one million stories to tell, but this short film focuses on two. In each case, we hear a killer describe in detail what he did, and then we hear from the victim’s family about how they feel about the crime and about offering asked-for forgiveness for it.

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*If you were a wealthy, highly educated, upper-class, western European man, of course.

I have long admired William Shatner, not so much for his singing (The Transformed Man is pretty painful to hear, though Has Been is actually quite good) or his acting ability, but for his willingness to make fun of himself.

I can’t help but wonder what he thinks of the just-published Shatnerquake, by Jeff Burk. From the publisher’s blurb, as listed on Amazon:

It’s Shatner VS Shatners!

William Shatner? William Shatner. WILLIAM SHATNER!!! It’s the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner.

Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911 Shatner, Singer Shatner, Shakespearean Shatner, Twilight Zone Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Esperanto Shatner, Priceline Shatner, SNL Shatner, and - of course - William Shatner!

No costumed con-goer will be spared in their wave of destruction, no redshirt will make it out alive, and not even the Klingons will be able to stand up to a deranged Captain Kirk with a lightsaber. But these Shatner-clones are about to learn a hard lesson…that the real William Shatner doesn’t take crap from anybody. Not even himself.

It’s Shatnertastic!

I can’t wait to read this.

After my last knitting-related post, I was still feeling pretty antsy to cast on for a non-sock knitting project. I started two and have already completed both of them.

First up: a bonnet based on the one Lyra wore in The Golden Compass. The story behind this yarn is a sad one. My friend Gina has a colleague whose mother died recently, and the colleague gave Gina her mother’s yarn. There were two balls of Lion Brand Jiffy Thick-and-Quick, and when Gina was at my house last week telling me the story, she asked if I wanted one. We both decided to knit charity hats with them (part of our admission to Knitters Day Out this fall), and I like to think that her friend’s mother would’ve have liked to see the yarn used this way. This was a very quick knit, done in maybe an hour and a half.

Next, I set out to knit something for Maggie, the daughter of one of my college friends. I’ve knit Maggie a few things already (a jester hat and a novelty-yarn scarf), both of which she’s appreciated. She just turned six in March, so I thought I’d make a foray into full-on garments this time. I started with the vest pattern in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges (a very excellent book that belongs in every knitter’s library) and tweaked it here and there. I opted for a button-front style (rather than a pullover) and knit it in the round out of yarn I’d gotten in Vermont over the past few years. This was a lot of fun to knit!

The result? Apparently, it was a hit! It arrived on an 85-degree day, and Maggie insisted on wearing it anyway. As you can see, it mostly fits yet still has lots of growing room, so she should get to enjoy it for at least a couple of years!

I’ve long loved “The Masochism Tango” and lately have been working on it at the piano. It’s coming along, but my piano noodling sounds positively awful compared to Tom Leher’s.

To see and hear more of his work, take a look at the list here. My other favorite of his is this one. It’s strange to find humor in something that scared the crap out of me during a good chunk of the 1980s (I lived near not one but two primary nuclear targets).

Our garden is doing great! We’ve been picking sugar snap peas for about two weeks now. (Sylvia does most of the picking. And the eating, too—right there in the garden.) Last weekend we picked enough lettuce to make a huge salad for four adults, and yesterday we picked this big pile of spinach* (and accompanying dirt) and more sugar snap peas than Sylvia could eat before it was time to head back inside.

There are still tons of immature pea pods and pea flowers, so I imagine we’ll be enjoying those for another week or so. The small spinach leaves should be pickable next week, we have enough lettuce to feed an entire rabbit warren, and the bean plants are covered with purple flowers. For some reason, our Swiss chard has gone kaput. I think that’s the first time this has ever happened to us—it’s usually a champion grower that weathers the heat well and produces all season long until the first frost. I think I’ll throw a few more seeds in the ground there and give the chard another chance.
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*Which of course cooked down to almost nothing.

Yes, that’s right: all my Denise needles and cables are in their box. Which means that I have nothing on the needles right now (aside from my usual portable sock project).

I want to start a new project (a sweater for myself, ideally). I want to knit from my stash and not purchase new yarn, but I am having a hard time coming up with something. I don’t want to do a “basic” sweater—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I am really in the mood to try something more “interesting.”

I’ve been doing a lot of swatching, and here’s what I have in sufficient quantities to knit an adult-sized sweater:

Berroco Ultra Alpaca, 7 skeins. 22 sts over 4″. #8 needles.

Nature Spun, about 10 skeins. 20 sts over 4″. #6 needles.

Lopi, many many skeins. 14 sts over 4″. #10 needles.

Vermont homespun, lots. 16 sts over 4″. #7 needles.

I’m kind of interested in making the Cardigan for Arwen (Ravelry link here) or the Sunrise Circle jacket (here), but both call for a gauge of 18 sts over 4″, which rules out the first three yarns I listed. Think I could make it work with the Vermont stuff?

Any other suggestions?

Our garden is full of all sorts of neat growing things. It’s such an exciting time of year! I’m especially thrilled by how our sugar snap peas are doing. This year I actually got my act together and put them in the ground early enough (on St. Patrick’s Day) to give them a chance before the summer heat arrives. And they are doing great! Here they are last week, with Sylvia’s hand reaching in to “help them find the net” (she likes to guide the tendrils to the support net and see the curly ends latch onto it).

And here they are just a few days ago. Flowers! Peas aren’t far behind…

In spite of what recent posts here may have led you to believe, I haven’t just been taking pictures of flowers these past few weeks. I’ve actually done quite a bit of crafting!

In early spring, I decided to start on my first “real” (i.e., not teddy-bear-sized) top-down raglan. At Christmas I’d received a copy of Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top, and after reading through it felt pretty confident that I could knit a top-down sweater for myself.

So in March I dutifully swatched and found the gauge I wanted for the many skeins of Nature Spun I had in my stash, then cast on. All seemed to be going well at first, and when it came time to set the sleeve stitches aside and continue on the body, I tried on what I’d knit so far and double-checked with some of my knitting friends that it was turning out all right.

But somehow, in spite of my gauge checking and careful measuring and getting a thumbs-up from my friends, something went terribly wrong: in mid-April, when the sweater length was about four inches below the arms openings, I tried it on again and discovered that it was too big. No, “too big” doesn’t do the size of this thing justice. It was ginormous. I spread it out on the table, whipped out a measuring tape, and was astonished to find the width of this thing at 22 inches. That’s 44 inches all around. That’s nearly a foot more than was I was aiming for. I have no idea how this happened. It’s so bad that I’m not even going to take a picture of it. Needless to say, at that point I was feeling pretty discouraged about the whole top-down sweater thing. I’m sure I’ll give it another try, but I need to put this aside for a while first.

Fortunately, I have managed to get a good dose of project-completion satisfaction recently. For the last year or so, I’ve taken to having a sock-in-progress with me at all times (well, whenever I’m taking my sling bag somewhere with me). My sock projects fit neatly into the awesome bag that Deborah gave me last fall, and it’s amazing how a-few-rows-here and a-few-rows-there can turn into a completed sock faster than one might expect. The pair of socks I just finished is for me, and I made it out of the fabulous Sea Wool yarn that Chelle gave me a year and a half ago. I loved working with this yarn, and the socks feel very luxurious. They’ve been packed away for the summer, and I look forward to wearing them when the weather turns cold again next fall.

And here’s another recently (as in “two days ago”) piece of knitting. I knit a lot of ball-band washcloths a few years ago when the first Mason-Dixon Knitting book made them all the rage, but then I ended up taking a break from them for a while. Now I make them as gifts for friends, and I really enjoy the process of making something by hand that contains thoughts of the recipient and is likely to be appreciated and used. My latest thing: monochrome cloths. I really like the simple look of these.

I’ve been doing some experimental sewing, too! I recently did the “seasonal switcheroo” in Sylvia’s room (put out-of-season clothing and bedding into a storage box, make sure the in-season stuff still fits) and remembered that there was still a stack of receiving blankets in one of her underbed drawers. When she was born, we got a gazillion of these as gifts. They didn’t get used for swaddling—partly because Sylvia was born just as spring hit its stride and the weather was warm, and partly because she was ten pounds at birth and from the get-go was just too big for them—and were mostly used by Sylvia when playing with her stuffed animals.

She’s been in need of a light cotton blanket for summer, so when I saw these receiving blankets I figured, “Hey, I can just sew these together to make a big blanket for her.” And that’s what I did. Sort of. My plans to make a huge blanket were foiled when I realized that the dozen or so blankets in the drawer were of two different sizes—and some had been stretched or poorly cut or whatever and weren’t as square as I’d like. So I ended up making two blankets: one with six blankets, and one with four. Here’s a picture of the smaller one (which lives in our den now). I can’t provide a photo of the larger one because it is on Sylvia’s bed—she loves it.

Recycling + something Sylvia will actually use = Hooray!

I see you shiver with antici…

…pation.