Sometimes the weather really is too good to stay inside and knit, and anyway, how could I just leave this beautiful machine in the garage? Yep, that’s the Serotta Ti, and she’s one-third mine! (Happily, my neighbor is willing to accept an installment plan.) Isn’t she gorgeous, raspberry sorbet pink and all? I *heart* her. You’ll have to forgive the iPhone photo; the SLR really doesn’t fit comfortably in the back pocket of a cycling jersey. You’ll also have to forgive my glowing lobsterishness. This is about eighteen miles into the twenty-six we covered on Sunday, which is the longest I’ve ridden in quite a long time, and that’s just how my face gets. I match my bike!

It was the first time I’ve seen Cathedral Park, under the St. John’s bridge—a very promising spot for picnicking above the river. We didn’t picnic, though; we were travelling light. But we did stop for tacos at Por Que No? on the way home, which made for a perfect afternoon.

Evenings are being spent working on the Frost Flowers cardigan. Those of you warning me to ditch it now are probably right, but my mother would tell you I’m awfully stubborn. Apparently I am also optimistic to a perverse degree, because somehow I’m still holding out hope that I’ll really like this sweater when it’s finished. I’m just getting comfortable enough with the double-sided frost flowers motif that I can work on it while I watch the Giro d’Italia coverage. I’m tickled that today’s Cuneo to Pinerolo queen stage takes the peloton through the mountains where Mr. G and I travelled to see some of the Olympic skiing in 2006. The race went right through Oulx, the town we hiked and glissaded down to after the women’s freestyle was cancelled for too much snow and the buses couldn’t get back down the mountain, and through Sestriere where we saw the men’s downhill. What beautiful country it is up there. Motivation to get stronger at riding the hills!

Oh, May… one of my favorite months! The weather is summery (for a few days at least) and I’ve been struck with a mad hunger for summer knits. I say mad because I have knit various lacy tops and cottony shrugs and every time I swear off all that nonsense and rededicate myself to wool. I do not particularly enjoy knitting with stringy plant fibers that don’t give or spring or bounce or plump up agreeably to make your work look better than it is. And the garments themselves tend to get irrevocably baggy and formless, which is not a look that does my figure any favors. But I found myself trolling Ravelry and drooling over this and that, and oh, yes, this again… troll, troll, troll; drool, drool, drool. And I do have a fair amount of cotton in the stash… enough to make any and all of these…

You’re going to be so proud of me. I didn’t cast on a single one of those lovelies. Why? Because there are some shamefully neglected items in the knitterly sag wagon Chez Garter. Namely this: the Frost Flowers Pullover, ignominiously zzz’ing away at the very bottom of my Ravelry page. The date I put on it there would lead you to believe I’ve only been working on it for two years. This is certainly a bald-faced lie. I know I’ve had the yarn since 2005, the year the pattern came out in Vogue Knitting. It was never a favorite project. Let’s just see what I’ve had to say about it on the blog during that time:

“I hereby swear it’s the last time you’ll see me knit with such an unnatural fiber.”

“If I hadn’t been so wet behind the ears as a knitter when I took this project on, I would have substituted a decent cotton at least.”

“…afraid this yarn was going to look like a pox victim knit up… it’s more like the hide of some desert-dwelling feline…. the African Plastic Sand Leopard…”

You can see how the spark never really kindled between us. Trendsetter Spiral and I have been on a four-year bad date, the kind that ends with an unenthusiastic “Well, we have each other’s number…” and you know the relationship is going nowhere. But I am a knitter of integrity, dammit, and I still like the design, and the sag wagon basket is overflowing and spitting out remnants of yarn balls and forgotten swatches, and it’s far too warm to work on the Gee’s Bend blanket that’s also in there with all its attending Manos del Uruguay. I’m getting back on the horse and finishing this thing if it kills me.

Cue Chariots of Fire music.

The Emily pullover didn’t look like much when last you saw her on this blog; I tried her on after seaming but she was definitely too small for me to model attractively. I took this as a favorable sign, since I was knitting this piece for my petite sister and not for myself! Marika, as you can see, wears Emily most beautifully. Thanks to my brother, head of the New York blog photography unit, for the pictures! Final wrap specs:

Emily, from Kim Hargreaves’s Heartfelt: The Dark House Collection, size XS

substituted yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed, 5 skeins Bilberry

US #5, #6, and #7 needles, as per pattern

torso and sleeves lengthened slightly to account for a difference in row gauge

Perhaps it’s perverse, but I truly enjoy seaming pieces in stocking stitch now and again. The knitting of this sweater went really fast, I love the yarn, and I love the result—it’s perfect for my stylish New York sister.

It feels like a long time since there’s been a finished piece of knitting to show off here, and I’m afraid today is not the day we’re breaking the pattern. The Emily sweater has been warmly received in New York, and I’ve made my brother swear to photograph his lovely wife attired in it for the blog, but they are busy people and I don’t know when I’ll see these pictures. I’ve been cruising on some other projects that haven’t gotten much exposure here yet, though. Let’s look at the Three and One progress, shall we?

This one continues to be easy to knit without much concentration, so during last night’s Portland v. Houston basketball throw-down I finished the 3×1 ribbed waist and went back up to my size 8 needles to continue up the torso. Shaping accomplished, I hope. I also thought to sprinkle in a dash of color during the ribs; I started to wonder if it would look funny to have a big expanse of neutral in the middle if Mum wanted to wear it without a belt, and then it occurred to me that I might as well just knit in the appearance of a belt and maybe skip the belt knitting altogether. The fifth-color red is going to appear at the shoulder and sleeve joins and possibly in the button bands but not in the main motifs, so I thought it might balance the whole garment a bit to use it at the waist. My mother doesn’t need it, but I deployed the strong red and the brown at the natural waist also for a slimming effect. (This works in my head, anyway—we’ll see about real life later on.)

Alas, beyond the chair in this picture you can just glimpse the season’s first garden carnage. Oh, fie. Oh, spite. This is not what I needed to discover on a day that has already been tedious and trying. Here you may spy the culprit who has thoroughly trampled and beheaded every one of my tulips just before they were ready to bloom:

This did not happen on my watch. Regrettably, other members of the family think it is “cute” when the dog gambols through the flower beds snapping at invisible flying insects. Said members felt my wrath when this was allowed to happen last year and seem to have totally forgotten the experience. Surely it is only fair if those who choose not to monitor and contain the canine exuberance are assigned procurement duties for fencing materials? Unless they would rather we paved the back yard and had nothing growing at all?

Meanwhile, I shall take a deep breath and look up.