Elizabeth Zimmermann, in her wonderful Knitter’s Almanac, designates the month of May as the time to knit mittens for next winter. You’re digging in your heels, right? In the northern hemisphere, at least, May tends to bring the first really promising weather of the year; summer is just around the corner and we can finally forget about winter. Who hasn’t had enough of rain, wind and snow? The next winter isn’t for ages, and there are three whole months of lovely long, bright days ahead. Many people I know cease to knit entirely at this point in the calendar. (I call them foul-weather knitters. We fair-weather knitters have been seized by an addiction so bone deep that blistering sun and wilting humidity cannot keep us from the wool. I shall be joining squares of a thick wool blanket in the summer heat this year.) Anyway, it’s understandable if even year-round knitters are turning to swishy summer skirts and breezy tops in linen or cotton. And yet, Elizabeth was as practical as they come. “It is better not to make mittens in a hurry,” she wrote. “When snow flies and small frozen hands beg for warmth (sob), the actual knitting tends to be perfunctory and possibly scamped; one economizes on the number of stitches; one does not make the cuffs sufficiently long. The main object then is to turn out scads of mittens to appease the demand, and enjoyment of production is not what it might be.”

The same is true of winter hats — who hasn’t, in a hurry to be done, started the crown decreases too early and left the ear lobes exposed as a result? — and my daughter has just outgrown both her warm ones. Also, I am not optimistic enough to expect real warmth in the month of June, particularly at daybreak when my husband often buckles our girl into her pack and heads off to the coffee shop. (They bring me coffee in bed. I know. It’s an excellent arrangement.)

My kid has an enormous head. It’s in the 97th percentile, while her weight is 65th. Having spent many years looking at her father, I am not surprised that this turned out to be the case. (And I’m very grateful she was willing to start small at birth and then grow that noggin really rapidly once she was out.) But the hats sized for children 1-3 years old don’t fit any more, so I thought I’d best take an actual measurement before knitting her a new hat to make sure it would fit for next winter. Eighteen and a half inches, my friends. This translated to the Adult Small size of the pattern I’d chosen. Not the Toddler size or the Child size, the Adult Small. Ada is wiggly in general and also wanted to pull the measuring tape off her head to examine and taste it, so it’s possible I was off a little bit, but I thought I’d better play it safe. Adult Small it was, though I did go down a needle size because, really, Adult Small? An apprentice teacher at my school taught her class to use their own Reasonableness Detectors to check answers to math problems (you subtracted and got something bigger than the original number… does that make sense?), and this was pinging mine. But I didn’t go so far as making a swatch or anything. Another thing I’ve learned from Elizabeth Zimmermann is that a hat is an excellent swatch its own self. Plus the yarn was so delicious that I had no choice but to knit it RIGHTNOW.

Mopsy, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts… it’s my new favorite. You’ll never believe it’s only 10% angora. Cozy doesn’t begin to describe it. I want to knit a sleeping bag out of this stuff. And it loves to cable. I felt compelled to cable all the ribs on the hat even though the pattern doesn’t call for it.

Here we’re wearing it Dutch Girl style, with the ear flaps turned up. But turned down and pushed back is pretty hilarious, like Princess Leia on a wagon train. (I think the flaps will lie flatter if I actually give the hat a bath and a bit of blocking, but it’s tempting not to.)

And yeah, it’s plenty big for next winter. And the one after that.

P.S. This grown-up girl said “Mama” yesterday and I think she may actually have meant it. She was in bed with me, clambering about and practicing standing up, looking pleased as punch with herself when she managed it. I could see the wheels spinning as she thought, “The only way this situation could be more excellent is if I were also nursing right now.” So she huffed and puffed and bumbled herself sideways, stooped for the attack, then looked up at me with a big, milky, toothless grin and said, “Mama!” I’ll take it.

The holiday maelstrom swept us up and spat us out again two weeks later. Since I last wrote I’ve had food poisoning, a baby demanding bi-hourly night feeds for a week after the resulting drop in her milk supply, a cold, a leaky shower that may require retiling and new drywall, not to mention the usual commotion of parties and shopping and wrapping and eating… but also thirteen days of wonderful visits with family and the opportunity to squeeze my wee niece’s marshmallow-injected thighs even if I couldn’t snuggle her as I would have had I been healthy.

I finished the Tomten jacket for my nephew and gave it to him with Astrid Lindgren’s The Tomten and The Tomten and the Fox. It is far too big and will probably fit him next winter and maybe even the winter after. My pictures of it suffer sadly from lack of time, daylight, and styling genius, but some sort of documentation was necessary to prove that I finished the thing at long last…

Like how I didn’t even manage to get that sleeve unrolled all the way?
In my defense, it was coming on to rain pretty hard.
But I could have at least started with a smaller coat hanger.

The chief addition I made to Elizabeth Zimmermann’s excellent pattern was jacquard colorwork at the shoulders after Franklin Habit. Garter stitch jacquard (and I’m using the term as Montse Stanley does to describe stranded color patterning) is not difficult to do; you can work any charted design you’d use for regular stranded colorwork, except that you have to work each row of the motif twice: right to left and then left to right, so that your design reads on the garter ridges. On the wrong side there’s a pleasurable dance of the working and resting wools fore and aft to keep the strands on the inside of the sweater.

You do want to be careful about where you place this kind of patterning. I didn’t anticipate how much the jacquard portions would spread vertically, and my first attempt at shoulder decoration created a major puffed sleeve I didn’t think my nephew’s Texan father would appreciate. I had to scale down the motif to end up with just a gentle epaulet shaping. In a future Tomten I think I’ll try an even, ’round-the-hem motif and just a simple band at the shoulders, but the shaping I stumbled upon could actually be useful in an adult garment; EZ went to intricate lengths to incorporate it via short rows in Cully’s Epaulet Jacket. (She added a nice natural bend to the elbows in that design, too — can’t you just see a prettier, colorwork version of an elbow patch dressing up a tweedy jacket? It would be functional, too, as the jacquard stranding adds sturdiness…)

I also got a little fancy with the button loops. These are just short lengths of i-cord twizzled back on themselves and sewn down. They don’t have the elegant economy of EZ’s i-cord tabs or applied i-cord button loops, but I was splashing out.

So! That’s one longterm project put to bed for a cleaner slate in the new year. Now for that Helter Skelter argyle for my brother, and maybe even that wooly Manos blanket that’s been cryogenically frozen in the bottom of the workbasket for about four years… but there are always so many new projects beckoning! My mother went to Ireland this past year and couldn’t find an Aran sweater in natural brown. (The woman in the shop didn’t even believe her that sheep came in brown.) Obviously someone needs to do something about that, and a certain seminal text on Aran knitting happens to be back in print now… Na Craga’s been on my list of dream knits for years…

I’ll leave you with an appealing nephew anecdote. Background: Riley’s daycare provider was concerned that he’d feel left out because his mother requested that he drink water in his sippy cup all day rather than juice, which is what the other kids get. My sensible sister-in-law just pointed out that she could call the contents of his sippy cup “juice” and he’d be none the wiser — the little man isn’t yet two years old. So we got to the Oregon coast just after Christmas and Riley trotted over the dunes and caught sight of the pounding waves. He flung his arms wide and exclaimed, “JUICE!”

Happy 2011, everyone. I’m not making it an official resolution like Don’t Eat Vegetarian Food in Decidedly Non-Vegetarian Restaurants, but I’ll try to be in touch here more often.

(No, I didn’t knit this relic from my childhood… and my mother’s not sure who did. Intriguingly, it seems to be an example of Armenian knitting — the contrast color is stranded and trapped behind even when it isn’t in use, which makes the hat warmer. And Ada’s was made by someone in Peru.)

Snowy woods. Early twilight. Pies in the oven of spiced pumpkin and of apple, ginger, and lingonberries. Baby napping near a space heater (not too near, and tended by her father, lest you should worry for her safety!). Wool on the needles. Singing through the tattered 1947 Fireside Book of Folk Songs (charmingly illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen in their very first job) with my mother while slicing apples. (You’d never believe what Sweet Betsy from Pike was up to in this version.) The cherry tree busy with birds — rufous-sided towhees, juncos, fox sparrows, chestnut-backed chickadees, and my favorite nuthatches — waiting their turn for the feeder. Family drawing close around the wood stove.

A good Thanksgiving to you, whether or not you’re celebrating a national holiday today.

The news, if it’s news to you: a Blue Garter Baby is in the works. (Some of you are going to say right here, “Hah! All those baby knits! I knew it!” but it’s absolutely true that almost all of them are for babies other than my own. It’s babies galore this year.) I have reason to know that wee new lives are not sure things and so I’ve delayed announcing this one here, but our Minnow is blithely thumping me with tiny feet and fists at this very moment and we have seen on the ultrasound that it looks healthy as a horse in every particular at 20 weeks’ gestation… and at some point soon I’m going to have to model an adult-size garment here (I hope it will be Pas de Valse) and you’re going to notice that my midsection is not so svelte these days! In fact, let’s just get that last bit out of the way right now:

We finally snapped some documentary evidence last week after we’d hiked up Mt. Hebo in Tillamook County on a glorious day. (How I love Spring Break!) As the hiking would indicate, I’ve been entirely healthy. I seem to be one of those hateful women who suffers no ill effects whatsoever during early pregnancy, although I’m sure there are still plenty of delightful physical symptoms down the road that can’t be dodged. When people know you’re gravid they thoughtfully ask how you’re feeling, and I’ve had to confess to feeling remarkably normal. One friend who’s raised two children replied, “Well, this is the new normal.” And she’s right. There will be all kinds of new normal to adapt to, and I think I’ll try to remind myself of that at times when I find I’m struggling against the changes to my comfortable routines.

Minnow should make his or her appearance in the world around 11 August. (Nerdy knitter that I am, I’m hoping for two days early on Elizabeth Zimmermann’s centennial birthday, and since 8.9.10 in the American dating system appeals to my husband’s sense of number he’s promised that he’ll have me out running stairs in an effort to kick-start the labor.) The sex will be a surprise to everyone but Alison the ultrasound tech — she didn’t even record it in her report for my doctor. We’ll be getting a niece just a few weeks later, so I can channel any urges to knit adorable girl things in that direction while making sensible gender-neutral clothes for my own offspring.

This is it. Our lives will never be the same. But there’s no spice and little joy in too much of the same anyway, right?