Just a few more inches to go on this second Celia sleeve!
I am really dying to be done with this cardigan, first because I want to wear it, and secondly, because the stitch pattern is a little fiddly and I kind of want to do something with a lot of plain stockinette now (although the effect of the stitch pattern is, I think, totally worth the extra effort). No big plans for this weekend so I may well be into yoke territory by Monday!
My seeds are transforming into plants this week, check it out:
These are some of the collards I planted. The peas are also coming up in earnest and the tomatoes just started poking up this morning. I’ve acquired an actual garden plot now so the agenda for this week/weekend is to get the soil prepped and ready to receive some plants. And then hopefully in a month or so I’ll be eating some home-grown produce!
The first Celia sleeve is fini:
Now it just has to hang out resting it’s laurels for a bit while I knock out a companion sleeve. And then it’s onto the yoke and then finishing and then NEW CLOTHES! Ahem. I am very excited to finish this cardigan, can you tell?
The other thing I did while my mother was visiting was *finally* start something on this garden I have been planning since April…the mild winters here mean that yes, you can start your growing season in September. I am starting small–peas (which prefer the cool weather that’s coming and are also good for the soil since they are nitrogen fixers), collards (also better in cooler weather), and then tomatoes (not sure how those are going to do but I like to try something a little risky in my garden). I also have a little rosemary plant that I’ll be putting in. This is just the starter garden in the small strip adjacent to my apartment that I’m allowed to cultivate. I’m thinking I’m also going to see about getting an honest to goodness plot in the community gardens. Despite my inertia in starting, I do love to garden. I need to do a little more reading up to figure out what grows well out here, and then I’m thinking I can start getting some real variety!
Here’s the start of my garden:
Hopefully something will sprout up soon!
I had a great week with my mother visiting…we didn’t really do anything super exciting, but the point was to see each other and we accomplished lots of that. We did go to the Botanical Gardens, Art Museum, Farmers Market, and various little shops on State Street. Oh yeah, and the beach, obviously.
I did very little knitting (my mother, despite having taught me to knit, is not actually much of a knitter herself these days), but a little more progress was made on the first Celia sleeve:
The main sitting around activity I did was drinking tea and getting caught up with my mother, and when we weren’t doing that or off touristing, we read. I finished two books:
Ghost Map is excellent, I would highly recommend it if you are like me and have a strong amateur interest in epidemiology. It’s a really great account of the London cholera outbreak of 1854, which led to the discovery that cholera was a waterborne illness (in short). Our Lives are the Rivers is some historical fiction, about Simon Bolivar’s mistress and her two personal slaves. I’m not sure what the ratio of actual history to fictionalization is (it’s been eons since my Latin American history classes), but it was an interesting read regardless. Next up I think I want to read The Irregulars, although I suspect it may be somewhat less than flattering to Roald Dahl, one of my favorite childhood authors.
…in sleeve!
The sleeves are going to be sort of in between 3/4 and bracelet length, so this is not as much of an accomplishment as it might be, but whatever–it’s still progress!
Also, I probably won’t be updating the blog much for the next week–my mother is coming to visit and I will be too busy enjoying girl time!
While I liked the way my little intarsia/embroidered leaves came out, I decided I’d rather do something a little more traditional for my new armwarmers:
The only thing is, now I’m torn about whether to stick with the armwarmers plan, or go all out and make them gloves. I could use a pair of either, so utility is not really a consideration. Hmmmm. I guess if I went with gloves I might have to get a second ball of the brown (since the fingers would be a solid color), whereas if I just stop with armwarmers I might get away with just the one ball. Decisions…
This weekend I finally remembered to throw my Denim swatch in the washer (and, for good measure, dryer):
Like denim, it appears to have faded a bit, but the shrinkage is pretty much nonexistant. I’m not sure if this failure to shrink is because a) the yarn does not actually shrink b) I knit the swatch pretty tightly to start with so it just didn’t have room to shrink (assuming a principal similar to felting applies), or c) more aggressive washing than I am used to subjecting my clothing to is required to produce shrinking–I wash pretty much everything on a cold wash with low agitation.
I am quite happy with the density and appearance of the washed swatch, so I’m not too upset about the non-shrinking. I’m not in a huge hurry to get started though, so I’ll probably let the swatch ride along for a few more rounds of laundry just to double check this shrinking business.
I tend to view knitting seamless sweaters as four parts: lower body, sleeve, sleeve, yoke. I guess you could add a fifth part of “finishing”, but I am such a minimalist on that front that I can’t really, in good conscience, count it. he biggest fourth of the sweater is (to me) definitely the lower body, and probably also the most boring. I know some people really hate sleeves, but I find that after slogging through a whole torso they tend to go pretty quickly. And then the yoke has the whole wonder of going more and more quickly the closer you get to the end (another reason why I am not a fan of top down–starts fast and finishes slow, instead of the other way around). Anyway, all of that rambling is coming to a point, which is that the biggest “quarter” of Celia is now finished and waiting for the sleeves:
Yesterday afternoon I broke out Deirdre and started my embroidery efforts for real:
I love it!! Seriously, so, so, so love it. I can’t wait to be done and able to wear this thing out in public. I also can’t wait to have something for *me* finally finished…it’s starting to feel like it’s been a while.
