I’m one happy girl: Mr. Garter is home at last. Not only has marital bliss descended once again Chez Garter – my sweetie quickly rearranged the computer cables I’d crossed and restored the internet, wrote a new access page so that Bloglines should be working again, and pointed out to me that he had not, in fact, taken the good camera with him to Texas. It was in the closet the whole time. So I needn’t have resorted to the markedly inferior old camera for these pictures. Oh well, the PowerShot S110 still deserves the occasional chance to shake its tail feather.

Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been working on this week:

Miss May is quite the little Victorian wonder. I’d checked Weldon’s Practical Needlework, Volume 4 out of the library and I was struck by the sweet vests for little children. What to do but break out the calculator and adapt one of them for modern materials and a wee baby size? I had two skeins of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in the stash courtesy of Minnie, and this little garment knit up in a couple of evenings’ work on US #2 needles. The crochet edging was a different story, as I related below. Here’s how the neckline began:

Look at all those nifty little eyelets for the ribbon! I considered leaving the arm openings unadorned, as they appear here, but by the end I was rocking the treble crochet and couldn’t bring myself to stop. Besides, it adds that extra Victorian frilly flair. I’ve just finished reading Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, and since this pattern dates from the same era, I decided to call this top after May Welland, and sort of after Sassy Baby MJ, for whom she’s intended. Now she’s blocking, and unless she takes an awfully long time to dry, she’ll fly off to her tiny recipient on Monday. But I couldn’t let her go unchaperoned – she needed a little sweater for company, and I had some pretty raspberry Rowan All Seasons Cotton in the stash, too. At first I thought I’d make a Mason-Dixon Knitting baby kimono. I was rounding the bend for home when I noticed this:

Oops. It’s a little hard to tell from this angle, but see how the front edge of the sleeve is waaaaaay longer than the back edge? Um, yeah. It’s possible that I got a little too swept away by the pretty young things in The Forsyte Saga (I was really on a period drama kick while Mr. Garter was away… and by the way, why isn’t Lee Williams in more movies? So tasty! And Emma Griffiths Malin? So much more dazzling and talented than Keira Knightley. I would have let her play Lizzy Bennet. But I digress.) Anyway, I wasn’t happy with the way the neckline was turning out and I couldn’t tear myself away from the thwarted love unfolding on-screen long enough to figure out where I’d gone wrong with the sleeves and fronts, so I frogged. Actually, I didn’t even really frog – I just cast right on for the Last-Minute Knitted Gifts ribbed cardigan and unraveled the kimono as I knit. [Correction: this cardi is not from LMKG – it was merely with my stock of the patterns I photocopy for portability, and the layout was similar enough that I assumed it was from LMKG. It’s from a Debbie Bliss baby pattern book, and I can’t tell you which one because I gifted it to a friend. If anyone can identify the book, let me know – the pattern’s called “ribbed jacket” and the model on the adorable baby in the photo is fastened with a velvety rose pin. I could ask my friend, but she’s pretty busy with finals at the moment. Sorry to have puzzled those of you thumbing your copies of LMKG and scratching your heads!]

That’s better. So here you go, bitty MJ! I hope you haven’t grown too much in the past month to fit into these…