Step 1:  Gather your materials – blocked garment, tapestry needle, scissors, yarn to match garment, safety pins, second tapestry needle in case the first one falls in the shrubbery, warm jacket, fingerless gloves, hat, heavy soled boots, ladder, husband to hold ladder and steady nerves of knitter, bubble bath, bottle of wine.

Step 2:  Ascend the ladder and do preliminary fitting.  Congratulate yourself on knitting a gauge swatch.

Step 3:  Beginning at the bottom of the garment work mattress stitch along first side seam until you feel faint.  Stop and rest at this point.  When the dizziness passes continue to sew up the seam until both feet feel paralyzed.  Admit to husband that he wasn’t just being bossy when he told you to wear hard soled boots.  Finish off first seam.

Step 4:  Move ladder and sew other side and sleeve seam, see step 3.

Step 5:  Wet block garment using rain water.

Step 6:  Walk up the street a bit and admire your handiwork.  Wave at the nice people staring.

Step 7:  Take photos as evidence of your extreme finishing skills.

Step 8:  Open bottle of wine, add bubbles to bath water and lie back.

It seemed much higher when I was on the ladder, really!

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A few months ago while clearing out a closet under the stairs, I found a box of Nostalgia.  It was a box I had saved for about 30 years.  And the occasion that I had saved it for was about to arrive.  My son was about to become a father.

It contained my son’s baby clothes, quilts, hats, toys.  There were quilts made by his grandmother, and his aunt.  There was a little yellow v-neck pullover that I had knit for him.  Also a little pullover that was handknit and handspun by another aunt.  There was a latchhook rug that his Grandpa made for him and that used to sit at the foot of his bed.  And there was this little sweater………

This little sweater was knit by my mother 32 years ago.  It was 1977 and Cowichan style sweaters were all the rage.  My mother was a knitter and she had a grandchild on the way.  So she thought that she would knit her new grandbaby a tiny White Buffalo cardie.

However she searched in vain for a pattern for a baby version of this sweater.  Before Ravelry, before home computers, and even before having a LYS, my mother’s only resource was the yarn section of a few department stores such as Simpson Sears and The Bay.  They had children’s patterns but nothing for baby.

That didn’t stop my resourceful mother.  She had some White Buffalo yarn, which was a sturdy four ply unspun wool.  And she sat for what must have been hours and hours and separated one ply from the other three.  Now remember this was unspun yarn.  It would break at the slightest pull on it.  So she must have been incredibly patient while winding off one ply of this yarn.  But she did it.

And she then used an adult sweater pattern that she already owned and knit it up using the one ply of the White Buffalo.  It turned out the perfect size.  It fit him from just after birth (with the cuffs rolled up) until he was about 6 months old.  He was born at the end of November so that sweater kept him warm through his first winter.

I decided to visit my mother one  cold day in the middle of November 1977.  I was 22 years old and very pregnant and uncomfortable. And I was very nervous about the impeding birth of my child.

I remember coming up the back stairs of the house and into my mother’s warm kitchen.   My mother sat knitting in her chair by the door.  She was working on this sweater and she looked up at me and smiled………..

The Malabrigo layette is complete.  I started out knitting the Moderne Baby Blanket in Malabrigo.  But when I finished the blanket I had yarn left over.  So I knit a pair of booties.  And a hat.  Still I had yarn left.  Another hat and tiny mittens came off the needles next.  A tiny blue sweater followed.  Not much yarn left.  Another pair of booties should do it.  I thought I was finished.  But then I saw another hat pattern on Ravelry.  I had just enough to knit this sweet hat called Cadence, top left.

Now I am waiting for the Malabrigo Baby…………….

I have been busy putting the final touches to what has become my Malabrigo Layette.  My new grandchild will most likely be born in the next few weeks so my baby knitting has moved into turbo mode!  I have just finished three really cute projects.  If you need a quick little handknit for a baby in your life, I highly recommend these three patterns:

Aviatrix baby Hat by Justine Turner and Two Color Baby Mittens by Abigail Welbourn

And Wave of Babies Booties by Yvonne Kao

These are three adorable well written patterns and all three are free Ravelry downloads.  Look for details and pattern links on my project page in ravelry.

My test knitter has reported back that the pattern is good to go.  She has knit up one glove very quickly, thank you Lyndsey!  And thank you to Melissa for her photographic expertise!

Here’s the link:

Woodsie Gloves

The recent cold weather together with a new shipment of Malabrigo in the shop has found me knitting fingerless gloves.  I’ve discovered that this little accessory is the perfect project to experiment with the design process.  One size usually fits all, and it’s so small that if you have to rip back it’s not the end of the world.  I just think of them as large swatches!  One skein of Malabrigo worsted and a couple of evenings cozied up to the TV and I have my gloves.

The pattern stitch combined with the color reminds me of the woods where I walk my dog.  The Malabrigo colorway is called Pearl Ten, beautiful  shades of taupey brown with subtle little hints of blue.

I have written up the pattern and it will be available soon.  A new friend on Ravelry is test knitting the pattern for me.  And my friend and co-worker yarncandysweetfiberhas taken some awesome photos for me.

Has this ever happened to you?  You are knitting away on some project and having a grand old time and then something tramatic/emotional/sad happens in your life while you are knitting on said project.  Maybe for example someone you love is in the hospital and you bring your knitting to work on while waiting around hospital corridors.    So you work on your  project and you are comforted and it does help pass the time.   And you think to yourself, thank god for my knitting.  Without it I would be sitting in this overheated waiting room with nothing to do!

And it is so true, knitting has gotten me through sickness (mine and others), natural disasters, divorce, births and deaths and lots of things that I can’t remember at this moment.  It has brought me comfort while I go through life and hit the bumps that everyone hits now and then.  But the projects almost never survive the crisis.  It’s like the worry and emotion go directly into the project and become so entwined with it that you can not separate it no matter what you do.

My most recent case in point, my Kai-Mei socks.  I loved the pattern, loved the yarn and I had completed one sock, and had immediately started the second.  I was about at the halfway  point, I had turned the heel and was about to pick up the stitches of the gusset, when wham, I ran into life.  Or should I say life ran into to me.  Someone who I loved very much was moving several provinces away and due to difficult circumstances I didn’t know when I would see this person again.  It was harsh.  I dreaded it for months.  And the day finally came that I had to say goodbye, and I brought along the sock.  I said goodbye, and we drove away, and I started to knit.  And I completely messed up the gusset.  But I couldn’t stop knitting.  I knew that I was going to have to rip back everything I was doing but I really didn’t care.  I just needed to knit.  When I got home I was too upset to think about the sock, so I dumped it into my knitting basket to deal with later.

That was five months ago.  Every once in a while I see it and I think that I should really get that sock sorted out and finish it.  But I always manage to think of more urgent knitting that must be done.  And it finally occurred to me today as I looked at it sadly lying in the basket that it had happened again.  The bad vibes.  I didn’t want to touch the socks, knit them, look at them.   And I certainly didn’t want to finish them and wear them.  I had knit the bad vibes into the sock and that was that.

So I am going to rip them out.  Maybe I can make something else with the yarn, or maybe not.  We’ll see.

My only question is, if I hadn’t been knitting that day, where would the bad vibes have gone?

What a difference a week makes!  We have gone from blue skies and sunny afternoons to grey skies and rain here on the west coast.  My projects seem to be following the same trajectory.  Last night I finished Spring Bandit in Malabrigo worsted, colorway Polar Morn.  This is a really well written pattern and a fun quick knit.  I used slightly less than two skeins of my favourite yarn and I love it.  This colorway is awesome, shades of pinky grey with a hint of lavender here and there.  I couldn’t entertain my neighbors by hanging it in my tree for a photo because of the weather, so had to settle for it draped over my knitting chair.

I’ve finished my scarf version of Charlotte’s Web Shawl.  When I was on the Island recently I purchased three skeins of Koigu mainly because I couldn’t resist them.  I was in scarf mode at the time and thought that three skeins would be enough to make a scarf size charlotte.  I was also teaching a class for Charlotte’s Web, so I cast on with the first class.  I worked on it here and there, but other projects tempted me and poor Charlotte was left in a corner.  The other day I took a look at her and realized she was very close to being finished.  I spent a couple of evenings with her and was done.  I had originally thought I would add the fringe but decided against it in the end.

When I took the scarf outside to get some photos I realized that the blues and reddish browns were a perfect match to the sky and the autumn leaves on the Japanese Maple outside my window.

My modifications were simple, I just added an increase at either end of the wrong side rows.  This gives you an extra repeat on the outside edges every 8th row.  It is wider and less deep than the original pattern.  More details on my Ravelry project page.   It’s the perfect scarf size and I wore it yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving……..