July means several things to me: my birthday and the years’ worth of memories of elaborate treasure hunts, games on horseback, camping, and astronomy that go with it; the reliable start of halcyon summer in the Pacific Northwest; evenings outdoors enjoying the long light (though twilight comes much sooner in Portland than in my hometown) fresh produce from local farmers; and in recent years, the Tour de France.

When I probe for the origins of my obsession with the world’s greatest cycling race, I come up with the confluence of nostalgia for my first trip to France in 1998, a bleak city winter in New York, and my husband’s foray into triathlons. I think it was in 2005 that we discovered you could find video archives of previous Tours online, and I think I was the one to suggest teasingly to Adam that watching Lance Armstrong power up an Alp or two might bring his training sessions on the stationary bike to a new level. Before I knew it, I was ensconced on the couch (at an awkward angle; there was no room in our tiny apartment for the couch and the bike to face the computer at once) with my knitting, totally absorbed in the new world coming through the small grainy picture on the screen. The drama of the mountain stages, the cat-and-mouse in the peloton pulling back a breakaway or setting up a sprint finish, the beauty of the French landscape (my imagination ably filled in what the video quality left to be desired). The titanic rivalry of Armstrong and Ullrich, the death-defying descents, the colorful commentators and tifosi. I was hooked. When one year’s footage was over, we went back to the previous year. Soon I was watching the stages alone when Adam was working late. We didn’t have a television for that summer’s edition, but by 2006 we’d moved to Portland. We settled in our new house on July 4th, just in time to meet our cycling neighbors and learn that the bike store where they work would be showing the live Tour coverage at 6 a.m. each day. I got up extra early the first morning and made fresh ginger scones to share with the diehards who stopped in before work. Then I mesmerized them with my drop spindle while we all watched the race unfold.

To my dismay, the Bike Gallery stopped screening the Tour after that first year. But by 2007 we’d inherited a television, and I could stumble down in my pajamas, brew some coffee, and leave the door open for the neighbors to come join me. If the stage wasn’t over by the time I had to leave for work, I’d catch the end of the prime time coverage that evening. And always, knitting was bound up in the experience. Of course I joined the Tour knitalong as soon as Debby told me it was in the works. Last year, I translated a French pattern and set myself the task of completing a complicated cardigan during the three weeks of the race.

And this year? I have to keep the details of my project under wraps, as it’s for publication. But I’ll tell you this: it’s a vintage-inspired cropped cardigan in an unusual lace pattern, and it is every bit as yellow as the maillot jaune. It’s like buttercups, crocuses, daffodils, and Cheetos in a blender. I love it unreasonably. Maybe I’ll show you a little corner of it here and there, just to be a tease. It’s only five inches long and already I’m fantasizing about wearing it in Paris some spring with a voluminous skirt cut like it’s 1959, strolling the hidden gardens, reading on park benches, devouring daintily nibbling pastries at sidewalk cafés. Or maybe lurking in a slinky dress in a dark bar with a glass of absinthe, conjuring the ghosts of Degas, Picasso, Hemingway, and Toulouse-Lautrec, because it’s a versatile little number. (I’m not convinced absinthe would be all that pleasant to drink, but just say it aloud: “glass of absinthe” – what poetry.) Or best – and most realistically – of all, cycling the streets of Portland. If I can only find some wicker panniers for my Bianchi Milano, I’ll be able to pretend I’m a stylish French girl riding home from the market with produce and baguettes. And just think of all the knitting I could stash in the bottom.

Holy comments, Batman! I’m truly flattered by the love for the Blue Thistle jacket, and I’m working my way through to say thanks and answer questions. I was especially tickled that so many first-time commenters came out of the woodwork – thanks, new readers and not-so-new readers chiming in for the first time!

Since you all seem to like seeing new sweaters, it’s convenient that I can finally unveil a secret knit that was finished in November. I’m seeking permission to bring a photo over here, but for the moment you can skip over to the ShibuiKnits page to peek at Spring Thaw! And why, yes, I am just a little bit pleased to be finally modeling the sample of my first published pattern.

And while you’re over there, you can also take a gander at my Ivy Socks – I’ve been sitting on these puppies since July. Whew! It feels good to have these knits out in the world! The patterns are available from Knit/Purl, or from your local ShibuiKnits retailer.

Less than 48 hours until I leave on my pre-dawn drive to Tacoma for a heavenly weekend of Madrona workshops! I get to bask in the wisdom of knitterly goddesses Nancy Bush and Lucy Neatby, my friends. And will any of you be in attendance? I hope we’ll meet in perusing the booths of yarny goodness. I’ve decided to allow myself a skein or two from Blue Moon’s Raven Clan (if there’s any left), because I think it’s such an interesting experiment to do a whole run of different black colorways, and because there’s no black yarn in my stash, but throw yourself between me and the credit card swiper if you see me reaching for anything else, okay? Look for a full report on Monday!

I have no shame when it comes to boosting other people’s ideas, especially when those people are knitters as clever as, say, Jared. Six weeks ago he posted this fabulous rendition of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Shirt-Yoke Cardigan. I wanted one of my own, and I wanted it immediately. Happily, bulky wool and size 10.5 needles were invented for the purpose of instant gratification. I whipped out my Knitter’s Workshop, and in a weekend of knitting, I had most of this:

I added some darts up the back for a more womanly shape, but I always meant to copy Jared’s idea for the side ribbing. (In fact, in my lust to knit an entire sweater body from one skein of yarn in a mere six hours, I forgot all about the ribbing. But a quick session with a crochet hook revived the dream – I simply dropped the appropriate stitches and hooked them back up purlwise.)

But whoa! What happened there on the front? Friends, I ran out of yarn. I knew it was likely. I was planning a direct rip-off of Jared’s nice ribbed button band, but the third skein petered out just as I was finishing the collar. Being too impatient to order a fourth skein from the yarn shop on my little island and wait for more to come in and then for my mother to mail it to me, risking a dye-lot change in the bargain, I went stash diving. I organize my yarn by weight, and there isn’t all that much in the bulky bin. But there were two skeins of this scrumptious Rowan Yorkshire Tweed, which I bought years ago to knit Kristin Spurkland’s Flower Hat from the Winter 2004 Interweave Knits – the very first knitting magazine I ever purchased. I still think the hat is awesome, but I hadn’t gotten around to it four years later so I figured the yarn was fair game.

I first envisioned a Barbara Walker Banana Tree pattern up the front, as seen in Starsky, but the tweed didn’t show up the traveling stitches all that well. So I picked out this pretty Double Wave cable instead. It leaves handier spaces for button holes anyway. And then I think all the Jane Austen I’ve been watching on Sunday nights went to my head. Somehow it came to me that the big blue front panel would look a little less random if there were some sort of blue element elsewhere… like embroidery. Now, I can’t embroider my way out of a paper bag. I’m sure any self-respecting six-year-old in Miss Austen’s day could have whupped my arse in an embroidery show-down. But I’m all about leaping into the deep end with things I’ve never tried.

I give you the Blue Thistle Jacket. I’ve hardly taken it off since it (mostly) dried on Wednesday.

And psst… look who’s grown!

In which we have two agendas: firstly, to kick off November with a little contest. As always, I waited until the evening of the 30th to carve my Hallowe’en pumpkin. The challenge? Identify the source of the inspiration for this year’s carving:

Hint: It’s a movie. I’ll take the title or the director’s name to be a correct answer. You have until Wednesday the 7th to enter your guesses, at which time I’ll put the names of all those who got it right into a hat and select a winner. What’s on the line? Something tasty from the Blue Garter stash, of course! Since I can’t seem to stop adding to it, I figure I’d better spread the love around to my loyal readers now and then.

And secondly, the epic project reveal. The winter before last, we lost Cousin Saucy, as my branch of the family always called my mother’s cousin Sandra. She went in for a knee-replacement surgery, and during her recovery a blood clot went to her brain and left her in a coma from which there was no chance of recovery. We had to let her go. Last year’s trip up into the San Juan Mountains in Colorado was our memorial to her, and we left her ashes at the mouth of her father’s silver mine. Saucy and I had a kinship of the mind and soul, not just of genes, and she was a big influence on my young life. She was a horsewoman, a farmwife, an archaeologist, an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, a bookworm, a historian, and, as it turns out, a knitter. According to her sister, she didn’t do much knitting after her sons were born, which was back around 1970. But she kept a stash of yarn, and I inherited a load of it.

(Thanks to Mr. Garter for the artsy photo shoot, since I’m never home during the daylight hours!)

Vintage Norwegian Raumagarn 3-Ply (at least that’s what I think “3 tr.” means – correct me if I’m wrong, Norwegian readers!) from, if I’m interpreting the shade card correctly, 1966. Forty-year-old virgin wool! And it didn’t take me long to figure out that I have basically all the colors for this:

A quintessential 1920’s Fair Isle sweater! This picture is from Ann Feitelson’s tour de force The Art of Fair Isle Knitting. I’ve got my shades of sheep colors, my blues, my red/oranges, and a dash of mustard yellow, and the picture is clear enough to serve as a template. The colors are best here:

I’ll never know what Saucy intended to knit with this wool, but I think she’d be deeply tickled by this project. We never did get to go pony trekking in the Scottish highlands together (although she did go with her son), but she loved the country and would certainly have approved of an historical Fair Isle recreation. It’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t have had something like this up her sleeve, since the colors are so exactly appropriate. And Scotland may well have been on her mind in the latter half of the ’60s, as our mutual favorite historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett were being published. It’s all I can do not to cast on a swatch cap right now, but I must be disciplined and finish my Shibui sweater first. And since the Quintessential Fair Isle may top out the list of my most Meaningful Handknits, being sort of sacred to the memory of someone I loved, one really mustn’t rush it anyway.