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Dear Ellen,

I loved your little froggy visitor and had to show you a toady friend I discovered on our  last trip to Fair Winds.  I helped him escape Ruby out of harm’s way.

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We made it back to the farm this weekend as well.  And we spent our first night on our property!  Dale was resistant at first, but I think if you were to ask him now, he’d claim it was his idea.  We had a wonderful time.  We stopped by the mercantile (I love that our future county has a mercantile) and picked up a pair of bib overalls for Dale so he can avoid constantly having to pull up his jeans.  He loved them…I may have a struggle to keep them on the farm!  We got a lot of work done both days and spent a delicious night by the fire listening to the insects, looking at the stars and roasting marshmallows.  Here Dale is searching for an honest man ridiculing my baby Coleman lantern.  However, I proved that by using it, it is possible to knit by the campfire, though I ended up correcting a few issues the next day.  We will be camping again soon…Dale went out and bought another sleeping bag and a blow-up queen-sized airbed at the sale at Sport’s Authority today — a sure sing that he’s hooked.  A portable camp toilet is on my wish list, though I managed in the woods just fine.

The knitting I was doing is the Annis Shawlette from Knitty.com.  I’m calling it my Crescent Beach Shawlette because the pattern has a lovely crescent shape to it and the colorway is Ocean Memories which brings back college memories of visiting the ocean at Crescent Beach, FL when I was a student at UF.  Man, I’m flying through this pattern!  LOTS of fun once you get the first few rows out of the way.  And this was my first experience with nupps, so I had a bit of experimenting and learning to do.  For instance, I found that you can’t be too inattentive when you are completing the nupps.  The first stage is easy, in same loop *K1, YO* three times, K1 so you end up with 7 live stitches in one loop.  Coming back on the purl side you purl all 7 loops together.  (Thank goodness for pointy tipped lace needles!)  My issue was that I tended to either realize I was at the nupp a loop too late (I kept trying to purl the first loop of the nupp as its own stitch) or I managed to drop a loop during the operation.  In my defense, remember that this was knitting by the campfire!  No worries though, I corrected my occasional dropped loop or extra stitch in the daylight by dropping back a row to redo or as is seen in the photos, by doing a bit of stitch collection after the fact.  Very easy — I just found a bit of the same color repeat from the end of the ball, wove it in to catch at the back of the nupp, brought the needle to the front at the top of the nupp where the loops are collected on the single purl stitch, caught the loose loop and returned the needle back through the same hole pulling the top of the loop through to the back and then securing the yarn end.  All better. I only have 15 or so rows to go and it’s all easy stockinette short rows.  These introduce the nice crescent curve to this shawl.  A fun knit and fast.

Making progress on my Hsssssy Fit Mitts too…they’re Stephen West’s Diamondback Mitts.  I’m making them for a friend’s brother — he’s been just great helping with challenges her family has had and works outside in all weather, so thought they’d be a nice way to show him some appreciation.  I love the pattern, but am thinking I’d reverse the rows of main color so that the cabled stitches are in the second row vice the first row of main color rows.  As it is now, the cable stitch is worked over some already stretched stitches as they’ve been slipped over the contrasting color.  The look is fine, it works fine, I’m just curious to see if the stitches look a little more even that way.  I’ll have to see.

TGIF is temporarily finished.  I say temporarily as I think that in about 30 minutes I’ll be downstairs ripping out half of the shawl collar/button band.  STUPID mistake on my part regards buttonhole placement.  The distance of the lower buttonhole from the bottom edge is way out of proportion with the width of the button band itself.  I knew it and yet decided it wouldn’t matter much and pressed ahead to include sewing on buttons.  And I decided I needed four buttons — which places the top button a little too high to let the shawl collar open like it wants to.  Once again, I should have trusted my instincts when the warning in my head popped up in the first place.  After living with it for about a week and a half, I know I have to go back and do it right — three buttons, better placement…and maybe a different bind-off.  I may not get back to it for a few weeks though…I’m trying to stay on task with Single Skein September knitting.

It will be another crazy week at the Pentagon.  Luckily only 4 days thanks to the holiday!  Hope you had a great Labor Day and have a great week.

Love, Jan

Dear Ellen,

Thanks for pointing me at the Knitmore Girls for their preemie/newborn hat design contest.  I was in dire need of snack knitting with a challenge, so the design contest was a perfect context.  I poured through the Japanese stitch pattern book, 250 Couture Knit Stitch Patterns by Hitomi Shida and found a few intriguing patterns that worked out to make what I think is a pretty cute little pattern.  I knit one up in leftover elann Superwash Chunky and one in some leftover Tempted Hand Painted Good Grrl.  Since I made them with scraps I’m calling them my Scrap Babies. The two different yarn weights yielded two different sizes — one that will fit a newborn and one that will fit a preemie.  I stayed up late last night to get the pattern finished and entered.  Then I saw your note about how they had extended the deadline.  I’ve downloaded the podcasts, but I guess I should start listening to it if I want this kind of information while it actually helps.

I did some other snack knitting too.  Katie’s Sparkly Scarf is finished and I hope to get my act together enough to put it in the mail by the weekend.  This was a really fun knit.  I ran out of yarn too quickly, but there was  enough for the purpose.  This is one of those scarves that you start at the center back with a provisional cast on and knit to one end and then go back to the center and knit out to the other end so that you can have nicely matching ends, a good design feature for this pattern.  Instead of doing a provisional cast on I did Jenny’s Magic cast on and just put one half on a stitch holder and then knit the first half from the other side.  Then I moved the reserved stitches back to a needle and did the other half.  It looked a little short when I was done, but thanks to the miracle of wet blocking (during which it reminded me of a planaria) it grew to a nice length for an accessory scarf.  I wouldn’t count on it much for actual warmth.

It’s Single Skein September — I haven’t started anything yet, but have ideas for socks (thanks to all the great patterns from Hitomi) and I have at least 2 pairs of mitts for Christmas presents.  I’ll get moving on those tomorrow.

Love, Jan