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Hi, Jan,

I hope your weekend travels went well and that I hear from you in Colorado soon. Our weekend was swell - several gardening sessions (no, the beans haven’t sprouted yet), a couple of good bike rides, a wonderful dinner out with Becky and Mike, the tiniest bit of housework (clean sheets are worth it, a clean floor not so much), time together with Wilson (even watching a basketball game is nice if you have knitting and your honey) and, yes, a finished object.

Too bad I didn’t finish it before Saturday evening when we saw Becky, because it is the colorwork hat, made for her birthday. I had worried I wouldn’t have enough of the Lamb’s Pride Worsted for it, so had bought another skein, but one was plenty for both mitts and hat. I did use about 1.5 skeins (GA (geek alert) 1.45 to be exact, I have 55 grams left) of Manos del Uruguay handpainted yarn. The shot with me wearing it is pre-blocking, the one on the rolled up towel, post, obviously. I threw in one of the crown, because I love the design. The blues aren’t as predominant in person, by the way.

So, even though our list has literally dozens of things yet to accomplish on it, I feel that this weekend we met our objectives if full. I hope yours did, too.

Love,

Ellen

OK, so technically, MS is June July and August, but you know, if it is Memorial Day Weekend, it is the start of summer to me. As a kid, that was the big weekend to get the garden in, remember? I remember those 4×50′ rows of green beans, even when we had 3 years supply in the freezer already. But there was something that felt so important about setting those tomato plants in their holes, pouring in water and then filling the hole with soil and then adding more water, mudding them in really well and getting them off to a good start.

My garden keeps getting smaller over the years, partly because of lack of time to garden and partly because when you get a crop share like Wilson and I do, you have to pretty much eat veggies full time just to keep up with the box. No sense in adding to it.

But I’m excited this year - I have a project! Here are seeds for Oaxacan pinto beans. Aren’t they gorgeous? I’m growing them out for Rancho Gordo, a farm from which I’ve been buying heirloom beans. Some people splurge by upgrading from a Ford to a Lexus; we splurge by upgrading from Bush’s to Rancho Gordo. I’ve been assured that it is a no stress proposition - I don’t possess the entire remaining seedstock or anything like that. Still, it gives me a goal. Watch for progress notes. I’m geeky enough to separate the colors and plant them that way. And if you have ideas for keeping rabbits and deer away, please let me know!

I have lovely daughters who send lovely knitterly things for Mother’s Day. Jenny sent a book chair - so cute and it holds your book upright so you can read and knit at the same time. It is currently in use in the kitchen with a cookbook, and I’m too lazy to go get a photo of it, but I’ll show you later. Karen sent lovely sock yarn - Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock in the Knitters without Borders colorway, so it is even more a gift that relates to her. Two pictures, so you can see its many beautiful moods. Somehow it reminds me of a calico cat.

Not much knitting this week - I’ve started Spanish classes and between class (6 hours this week) and study (about as much again) my evenings have been full. But we have a long weekend coming, and I sure ain’t planting 200′ of green beans.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Jan,

It is official. Spring is really here, and we celebrated by visiting the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with our friends, Chris, Matt, and Veronica.

It was a really gorgeous day and lots of good stuff was blooming. We’d missed the trout lilies, but among the things we saw were bellflower, Virginia bluebells, purple trillium, ginger, and Celandine poppy (that last one is especially for HG). And a very brave chippie.

V is quite the character. She pointed out to me that there was a very nice little house in the park where I would enjoy sitting and knitting. Chris later explained to me that this translates to “you can keep yourself occupied knitting while I explore all the nature displays at the visitor center”. The acorn didn’t fall far from the oak with this one, I think, as her mother is rather clever, too.

Some homegrown wildflowers from yesterday. For comparison, our neighbor’s yard. I refuse to feel bad, as the societal preference for a monoculture yard is completely arbitrary. Why do we want something that requires more effort and actually poisons the environment - just because English lords of yore had green lawns? Theirs, I’m sure, were full of many species beyond bluegrass. In a few weeks, we’ll have goldfinches gorging on the dandelion seed heads, and I will be happy. I hope you will be, too, settled into your new digs.
Love,

Ellen

P.S. No real knitting to report. I did finish the knitting on the Microgreens BSJ but will wait to photograph it until I have buttons. The ones in my stash were bought for what I thought would be a larger sweater. This is definitely a preemie sized offering, and needs preemie sized buttons. I’ve knit a bit more on the Manos colorwork hat, but not enough to bother to show.

Hi, Jan,

I’m getting close to completing my BSJ. I’ve decided to call it Microgreens because it is turning out a bit small. It will definitely be suited to a newborn, not much older. Because of this, I’m thinking of scaling up the pattern. I know, I could just use thicker yarn or bigger needles, but I like the fabric that is resulting with sock yarn on US2’s.

In order to do this, I thought an analysis of the geometry of the sweater would be in order, and whether you are interested or not, I’m going to share it with you.

The sweater is quite a marvel of geometry. It is knit all in one piece, looks like an odd geometric surface when you finish, and you only have one end and two short seams (the shoulders and top of the sleeves).

You start with a long cast on. This comprises the entire wingspan of the sweater plus the width of the sleeves. You knit in garter stitch for quite a ways, doing double decreases a distance the length of aforementioned sleeve width in from the ends. As you can predict, you are knitting a rectangle, decreasing toward the middle of the opposite side of the cast on. If you ignore the fabric bunched up in this picture and look just at the part that is flattened out, you can see what I mean. Oh, yes, a few rows in from the edge, you increase a bit along the sleeve edges to provide a bit of ease in the sleeve width - it is almost like increasing after a cuff. I doubt you can see this in the picture, but it’s there.

When your sleeves are long enough, you then transition to the body by now increasing at the same point at which you were once decreasing. It’s almost like you are now knitting the same shape from the other side. You can fold your sleeves together at this point and see how the body is going to rake shape. It results in two double layer “L’s”, joined in mirror image along the upright, and with one side open at the joining edge. In short, a T-shaped sweater. In the picture shown, I’ve flattened out a corner of the body so you can see the increases and where the neck cast off is located (described later). The rectangle that was flat in the previous picture is now folded up on itself - see the triangular shape sticking to the left bottom?

Once you get a bit in, you cast off a few stitches at each edge which forms a neckline.

The sweater is shaping up at this point, but it would be pretty squat. To solve this EZ has you knit back and forth on the center panel for a bit, then pick up stitches on the edges of that bit and continue on to form the button band (the short edges) and continue to lengthen the hem a bit. The pictures show the resulting tab along with detail of the stitches picked up at the edges.

I suppose this would be easier to show once it is off the needles, but even then, I’m not sure if you can put this down in two dimensions.

If you haven’t knit one, I highly recommend it. It is so entertaining that I didn’t get much other knitting done on my trip, but here is a little update on the colorwork hat.

I’m also including a progress report on the Bunny socks. It is funny how the reverse stockinette sole makes the sock turn in on itself, at least with this yarn and gauge.

As you can tell from the lack of floral shots, I’m back home in Minnesota. Switzerland was fun, but I am glad to be back home.

I hope your travels were safe and satisfactory.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Jan,

Did you know this song was inspired by literal smoke on the water after a pyrotechnic accident at the Montrieux Jazz Festival?  My good friend, Alison, told me this as we spent a lovely afternoon strolling the shores of Lake Geneva at Lausanne.  We didn’t quite walk all the way to Montrieux, home of the aforementioned incident (a pyrotechnic accident at the famous jazz festival) but we did walk about 11 km, seeing beautiful flowers along the way, eating delicious sorbet (mine was orange sanguine - blood orange!), and in a fun coincident, walking past some folks setting up for a concert who were testing their speakers with  ”Smoke on the water”.  Alison had told me the story about 30 minutes earlier.

After our long walk, we went home for dinner.  I got to pet their kitty, a Rex who doesn’t cause sniffles in those allergic to cats and just as sweet as the breed is reputed to be.   

Equally important, I got to spend time with Michael and Abby, here modeling the fabulous Norwegian sweaters that Alison has knit for them.    She’s also knit one for Mark and is nearly finished with one for herself.  Mark cooked us a wonderful dinner - zucchini with Gruyere cheese and chicken with bell peppers in a  lovely wine sauce.    We finished it off with sorbet.  Because you can never have too much sorbet. 

Tomorrow night I’ll be home with Wilson.  That should be even more fun than strolling along Lake Geneva.  Or taking pictures of ducks.  Imagine that!

Love,

Ellen