It’s the year 2007, and I hope we’ve all apprehended by now that there’s more to girls than sugar & spice & everything nice. This realization is only just dawning on the baby garment industry, however. The choices for wee lassies still seem to be pink, pink, pink, pale yellow, pink, seafoam green, and – oh! – how ’bout some more pink? So what’s the liberated baby girl to add to her spring wardrobe?

Why, shit-kicking jungle-green camo booties, of course. These are for the daughter of the most esteemed gleek and KP. They’re not a secret, because Steph called dibs on the leftovers of this Koigu two summers ago when I bought it in order to finish the last toe of another pair of Koigu booties for baby Matthew in London. They were the first booties I made, and I ran out of the lovely blue-green partial skein just before the end. The chartreuse-and-parrot segments of this wild, rather toxic colorway were just what I needed for the job, and the rest of the skein has been marinating in the stash ever since.

These are my go-to booties, the Ruffle Rib Better-Than-Booties Baby Socks by Ann Budd that appeared in the Summer 2005 IK. They’re cute and perky and require the perfect yardage to make with the leftovers from socks. Twenty-five grams will do you. Let’s see them again, just for fun:

Oooo, so green and jungly. Quick to knit, too. I dashed these off in just a few hours this weekend. Now to make about five more pairs, because new babies seem to be the accessory this spring!

New York City has decided to favor me with one last beautiful snowfall before my departure. The icy little flakes are gilding the berry clusters on the mystery tree I never did manage to identify (a blow to the pride of this woodland girl, I can tell you) and sizzling down the chimney onto the firewood I’ll never burn. I’m drinking one last glass of tea from the adorable shop downstairs before I pack away the kettle and the last of the glasses. It’s a bit of a woebegone day for me. Tomorrow the movers will come and I’ll have one last hurrah with my Spiders. And then on Tuesday we’re off to the next chapter. Time is passing shockingly fast. In fact, I’ve wasted more time staring out the window at the snow than I’m willing to admit.
So let’s turn to more cheerful thoughts. When I alight in Portland, it will be Spring. I’d almost forgotten how much earlier the season comes in the temperate west. My belle-mere, with whom we’re settling at least for the first couple of months, is an excellent gardener. I’ll have the chance to really get my hands in the dirt. In no time I’ll be photographing my knitting among the tulips and rosebuds instead of against the brick and concrete of my deck here. Mr. Garter’s mom is also a lapsed knitter, and she gets inspired when I’m around, so I’ll have a companion in the craft. And I’ll have all this to knit up:

Behold the European yarn haul: an absurd amount of chocolate tweed wool/alpaca for the Cabled Riding Jacket (I’m so nuts about this stuff I’m thinking of asking my friend in Milan to bring MORE when she comes to the States in April); enough wine-colored wool/angora for a sinfully soft, lacey sweater I’ll probably design myself; and two yummy hanks of wool I’ve earmarked for some kind of fair isle mitten pattern. Not the Pirate mittens, I think – the colors aren’t piratic enough. I’ve been eyeing that Foxes & Geese mittens book, whatever it’s actually called, and maybe there’s something in there that will call to me.

So much fabulous knitting to be done, and I’ll have lots of time for it, at least for a couple of months. Definitely something to look forward to. I’m scrambling to finish Cozy for my sister-in-law so I can hand it over when I see her in two weeks, and I had to dash off a pair of my favorite Koigu ruffle-rib booties for new baby Tyler, whom my cousin produced in February:

But it’s almost time to cast on something new. I’m bringing everything I need for the Hourglass Sweater – what’s better car knitting than endless stockinette? – as well as my trusty Montse Stanley in case I need to bust out a provisional cast-on on the road. And I’ve had one sorry Retro Rib sock languishing mateless in my drawer since October, so I’m bringing the yarn for that, too.

I’m chasing the sun west, my friends. Good things must follow. Change is opportunity. Now if I can just discipline myself to finish packing the last two $*@#ing boxes…

The Ruffle-Rib Baby Booties are finished! I can hardly tell you what fun these were to knit, except that the zig-zag decorative bind-off was a little tricky on the slippery metal circs. There are many more of these adorable wee things in my knitting future. But it was no simple task to finish this pair after I ran out of yarn. My LYS has a bowl on the counter full of Koigu oddments sold by the gram, and that’s where this pretty blue and green colorway (I call it ‘aegean’) came from. But they didn’t have any more like it, and I didn’t even know the number of the colorway to search for it online. So I had to get a bit creative to finish the foot and toe of booty #2. I bought these:

I worked two rounds in Pacific blue and then one in Toxic Alien green, carrying the blue up the side and stranding the ends of the green along the back of the work and catching it behind every other stitch. I decided not to carry the green so I could snip out the brown and black sections. I got a little lazy during the shortrow toe and just let the top be blue, but I think on the whole it was a pretty successful scheme. Judge for yourself:

I’m so happy with them I’ve already gone out and bought a bunch more ends. It’s going to be a regular booty factory Chez Blue Garter. But I’ve learned my lesson – this time I made sure I had at least 25 grams of each color. And hey, if you know anyone who needs some Toxic Alien baby booties, I’ve got enough yarn left to make them!

Friday was an utter fiasco. Let’s just say it involved boneheaded yours truly and airplanes and one more airport than it should have, and let’s just leave it at that, because it’s still too painful to speak of. The upshot was that I spent about five more hours traveling to North Carolina than I should have, and I missed my friends’ rehearsal dinner on a river boat and spent the evening in a hotel room with Domino’s Pizza and Whose Line Is It Anyway? reruns.

After allowing ample time for feeling sorry for myself, I decided to look on the bright side. On a sow’s ear of a day, what to do but make a silk purse? Actually, the Bible proclaims this is impossible, and not wanting to provoke any more retaliation from Upstairs, I settled for a cotton/nylon purse:

I didn’t have the right handbag to go with my outfit, so I grabbed a ball of Adrienne Vittadini Allegra in a pinky salmon shade and whipped up this little Regency Reticule to hold my essentials. It matched my hat quite nicely.

I also had plenty of time to work on Rosalind, my second Crusoe sock, and a pair of Ruffled Rib Baby Socks (by Ann Budd from Interweave) I’m making for some friends in England. I’m madly in love with these booties. And I love this fabulous Koigu colorway, which I picked out of the Koigu oddments bowl at Purl. Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn halfway through the foot of the second booty, as you can see above. So I’ll be dashing over there at lunch today to see if I can find any more of it. If not, I’ll have to get creative. These are just too cute not to finish.