This looks like the height of luxury, doesn’t it? But I think we’d earned it by singing for three hours in English, Latin, and Italian. I’ve managed a lot of knitting on my Pas de Valse cardigan during the 10am services (and other occasions impractical for lugging about a basket of yarn and accoutrements for stranded or intarsia colorwork).

I’m interested to see how this piece will look after blocking. It’s knit with a fingering-weight 2-ply Bluefaced Leicester wool on US #6 needles, which gives a rather pebbly stockinet fabric. I’m giving it entirely too much of my knitting time, but I’m so looking forward to having this airy, floaty cardigan ready for the very first spring weather.

Three pricks to the conscience in twenty-four hours can’t be ignored. First an off-hand comment from my husband: “Gosh, sweetie, you haven’t updated your blog in a while.” Then a heartfelt note of admiration from a reader on the other side of the world, of which I hardly felt worthy. And finally a call from my father, who checks Blue Garter almost every day for news of his eldest and was beginning to be concerned that I might be sick or sunk in a blue mood.

The truth is I’m just fine. I started a miscellaneous post and lost interest in it before it was done. The post I was excited to write a week ago was about something old-but-new I was trying with my mother’s Three and One sweater. This sweater is in Aran-weight wool, and I was concerned about the bulk of a regular steeked edge at the neckline and armholes. Then I read about Norwegian pseudo-steeks: cutting open your knitting with no steek allowance stitches added in. And there’s this brilliant method of picking up stitches with a larger needle, working a couple of rounds, then going back with a smaller needle, picking up the backs of the stitch heads from the inside and working a couple of rounds on those stitches, then joining the two lines to wrap the cut edge, tidily sealing it up for good and leaving a beautiful finished edge. Of course now I can’t remember where I read about that last part—someone’s going to remind me in the Comments and then I’ll add an update, which is what’s tops about the internet—but I was preparing a nice little photo tutorial for you as I went along.

Then it all went awry. The knitting turned on me, friends.

It turns out that one line of machine-sewn stitches, even if they’re teensy, is not enough to secure a steek edge if you’re not using fine and sticky yarn. I picked up as described and encased my steek edge, but I knew I couldn’t trust it… It looked pretty but felt dodgy, like Mr. Wickham. And when I gingerly gave it a few experimental tugs, the cut floats started to work free. No good. It pains me to imagine my mother’s distress if she were to wear her sweater and the sleeves started to come loose and unravel. I had a few panicky moments where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to salvage the top half of the sweater at all. But I carefully pulled out my work and skedaddled back to my trusty sewing machine. I went over the first line again from the back side, tucking in those wayward float ends. Then I sewed a second line beside it.

Now I had an edge that felt really sturdy, and it naturally wanted to fold to the inside, docile and waiting politely to be tacked down with overcast stitches. So I didn’t fight it. I picked up stitches around the armhole in the usual way and proceeded with my sleeve. Ah well. At least the sweater is saved and still on track to be done for Christmas.

Yes, it’s time to be thinking seriously about holiday gift knitting. I’m not sure quite what became of October, but it’s nearly gone. So Katrin and I finally made a decision about this year’s KAL/exchange. We each had stash yarn that would work for Eunny Jang’s Ivy League Vest, so that’s what we picked. I couldn’t resist casting on right away, and I’m already into the first large band. We both wanted to lengthen the torso of this cropped design, so I’ve started with a size larger than Katrin needs to accommodate shaping over the hips, and I’ll just keep decreasing until I’m down to the correct stitch count for her waist size. I love the browns, teals, and bright pop of new-leaf green she’s chosen.

This pattern means steeks again, though. I’m going to be well practiced indeed, working the Three and One and the Ivy League at once! Anyone need any knitting cut open? I’ll be your girl. Those steeks won’t get the better of me again.

It fits. The sleeves are a bit narrow and will be revised before I offer this pattern, but it works for Mr. G. We will have a proper photo shoot this weekend if time and lighting allow, but this little hint shows off the bits I’m most proud of anyway. See the shoulder gussets that allow a comfortable fit around the neck without having to slope the back or front at the shoulders? This unusual feature is what attracted me to the sweater in this historical photograph from Gladys Thompson’s excellent Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans:

Tempting as it is, I probably won’t require my beloved to don a sou’wester
and smoke a pipe for the official photoshoot.

Nor am I certain my considerable attraction to him could sustain a gnarly neck beard,
so we won’t be going for that authentic touch, either.

I love this book for its treasury of sweater designs and careful attention to the differences from one little cove’s worth of knitters to the next, and also for its photographs of crusty old fisherman. This is only one of the fabulous portraits it offers, although Gladys writes that it’s her favorite. I couldn’t tell, though, what might happen at the back of that particular old sweater, so I had to devise a way to raise the neckline at the back, as you see above.

See, too, how the maple leaves are changing. A last gasp of summer came through in the guise of a blustery hot wind that littered the sidewalk with roughly four thousand treacherous gum nuts from the hundred-year-old trees in front of our house, so it’s officially raking season. I’d like to pretend there’s another month to go before we really reach leaf fall, but I fear for the neighbors’ ankles. Our sweet gums are fine handsome old trees, but they are more accomplished than any other tree at protracting the drop of their pretty, star-shaped leaves over many months and then continuing to bombard unsuspecting passers-by with their spiky seed pods even after the leaves are gone. This year I see they are celebrating their centennial by growing a number of large clusters of conjoined pods, like gum nut rat kings, which will prove especially uncomfortable if they drop on people’s heads. You may wish to wear an old-timey felt hat for protection if you’re strolling in the neighborhood… fair warning. Luckily, I own several. I may need to knit a few more.

Thank you all for the excellent resources on intarsia in the round that flooded the comments! Special appreciation to Rodger, who tipped me off to an excellent book that was already right under my nose. I took Priscilla Gibson-Roberts to bed (um, you know what I mean) that very night to read up. I have begun a swatchcap to practice my Invisible Join 1. (I tried Invisible Join 2 at first, but it quickly got the better of me and left my circular needle locked in a contorted figure 8. I am sure this is my fault and not Priscilla’s, but I was too tired to work out what I’d done wrong.) We’ll evaluate the results together in a couple of days.

No photos yet, because at this point it doesn’t look good enough on my husband. It is snug, and rather short in the torso. I may have grossly underestimated the circumference of my beloved’s manly chest.  And I should have heeded Elizabeth Zimmermann’s wisdom about short rows across the back above the hem. Last night I was all ready to make a decisive surgical snip and tear out a line of stitches so I could lengthen the torso and graft it back together again, but the look on Mr. G’s face stopped me cold. He was horrified that I was about to cut the knitting. I had explained the procedure to him upon our discovery that the sweater was looking a little short in the body, but apparently the reality didn’t sink in until he saw the jaws of sharp, cold steel poised above a solitary, innocent stitch.

“Are you sure? I feel like I’m going to cry!”

This was so plaintive that I found I just couldn’t do it. I put the scissors down. I put him back in the sweater. (Dang, that little bit of ribbing sure did draw the sleeves in snug!)

“Can’t we just block it?”

The man has been learning by osmosis! He’s actually picking this stuff up! And he might even be right. A good stiff blocking all over might just make it possible for us not to cut apart the sweater. (Although I might still add those short rows.) I agreed that I’d knit the neck band and then we’d block it and see where we stood.

Into the tub with you, purple sweater. Grow, grow!