The Elizabeth Zimmermann Rorschach Jacket is half done. I’ve just finished the black stripe on the second half. We’re off to babysit my small cousins, and since I have completed all the freelance work and I sat for my final exam in Art History this morning, there’s nothing ahead of me after their baths and bedtime stories but knitting and HBO (or maybe Grey’s Anatomy, which I’ll admit I’m kind of hooked on, even though I think it’s gone downhill). This sweater is coming together quickly, although I’ve made some modifications to EZ’s suggestions. I’m making the medium-size length but the small-size width, and I had to reserve a lot more stitches for the sleeve than the directions indicated. EZ says to parcel the stitches out in thirds, with the middle third becoming the sleeve, but that would have given me an uncomfortably snug sleeve when I wanted this blousier effect. She also says to K2tog across the whole sleeve for the cuff, but I couldn’t get my arm in when I did that (and I have pretty skinny arms). I can’t imagine how it would have worked if I’d been knitting the sleeve with the smaller number of stitches the pattern suggests. But this is the way EZ wants us to knit: with sense. If the directions seem suspiciously ill-suited to your body shape, don’t follow blindly along. Change them until they please you. Half the benefit of making your own clothing is that you can customize it to your needs instead of living with not-quite-long-enough shirts and too-snug armpits and a-little-too-Flashdance necklines.

I’ve also been working on Glee, because I can’t go long without casting on for whatever Lisa happens to be knitting. It’s coming together nicely in a nifty indigo shade of Garnstudio Silke-Tweed that I found on sale, and I’m experimenting with a few short-rows on the bust. I hope they’ll prevent majorly revealing busty gappage in between the hook-and-eye closures. If anybody has tried this, I’d love to know what you did and how it worked out for you.

I know you’re all waiting for pictures of the finished Fishtrap Aran. And since I’m the kind of person who can’t stand suspense, I’ll relieve your minds by revealing that the 30″ zipper turned out to be just fine. I was saved from more ripping and gnashing of teeth. But it’s taking me an age to sew on the darn facings by hand, and I still need to attach i-cord to conceal the zipper from the outside before I’ll consider it really done.

So this post is the equivalent of those old cartoons where the action pauses and there are birds tweeting and maybe some classical music and it says INTERLUDE across the screen.

I give you the beginnings of the Elizabeth Zimmermann Rorschach Jacket:

It begins with a gigantic cast on for the center front and back and works out to the side seam and the sleeve, with some nifty miters along the way. The side seam stitches are live and hanging out on spare needles; I’ll graft them together when the sleeve is complete, pick up stitches along the bottom for the hem, and voila, half a sweater. Then I make the right half, add some buttons and button tabs, slap a belt on it, and Bob’s your uncle. (Where the heck does that saying come from, anyway? Seriously, I want to know.)

In other news, we don’t believe in dieting here at Blue Garter. Especially when there’s a chance of snagging a whole sweater’s-worth of beautiful and DISCONTINUED yarn. So when Knit/Purl had a President’s Day sale, I found I couldn’t resist Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran at 40% off.

If Mr. Garter is very good and wears his Fishtrap Aran every day for the rest of the year frequently, he may be lucky enough to get a Seamless Hybrid out of this plummy goodness.

You get to be in my special high-school drama geek club if you knew right away whence cometh the title of this post. For those of you who didn’t watch enough Monty Python as teenagers (or since), it’s from the bit in The Holy Grail where the peasants are grubbing about in the muck and they get into an argument with King Arthur about the legitimacy of his government. And what do I have in common with medieval peasants these days? A condition in the blood vessels of my fingers that I’ve only ever read of in historical fiction of that vintage. I’m going to show you a picture, but you needn’t click for big unless you’ve got a morbid fascination with skin conditions or you’re thinking you might have the same thing:

See the inflammation on the right fingers? At first, I thought it was some kind of repetitive stress syndrome from too much knitting and writing, but the trouble was in spots that didn’t make sense. When the first joint of my right pointer flared up, I got scared. I’m a thrower. The swelling is in just the place where the yarn crosses the back of my finger. What if it was some kind of nascent wool allergy? But the pinky I loop the yarn around for tension is fine. I asked my doctor about it, and she gave me a blood test for rheumatoid arthritis. Yikes. The same day, I was browsing over at Domesticat and read about her recent finger trouble. I relaxed a little about the arthritis, because her fingers looked as puffy as mine and she said she had something called Raynaud’s Phenomenon. But I read up on that, and my symptoms are decidedly less transitory. Plus the swelling was turning red and itchy. Something tickled my brain. What was that problem people used to get in the winter on their hands and feet before the days of indoor heating and Thinsulate? Chilblains, my friends. Chilblains occur in folks with poor circulation who are exposed to prolonged damp cold. It’s damage to the small blood vessels, and once you have it there’s nothing you can do except try to keep warm and apply corticosteroids for the itching. Oh, and try to keep the skin from breaking, because then you can get nasty lesions. Ew. They’re supposed to go away in 7-14 days, but I’ll probably get chilblains every winter for the rest of my life, although in some people they don’t recur. (I’m crossing my fingers as much as possible.) We’ve turned the heat up, although I hate to waste the energy and money. I mean, why else do we have heavy wool sweaters?

The upshot is it’s tough to knit these days, especially with wool. And you know how it breaks my heart to have to cut back on the knitting at all. I can still knit Continental fashion, but it’s so much slower for me. I am soveryclose to finishing the sleeves of Mr. Garter’s Fishtrap Aran, and then I get to steek. And I have this waiting for me:

This is undyed Unspun Icelandic wool from Schoolhouse Press, in Cream and Blacksheep. (Psst, don’t miss the shameless plug for Zimmermania at center top!) No, the pictures aren’t out of focus; the yarn really is that soft and loose. Icelandic wool has quite a long staple, which is why it hangs together at all in this state. As far as I can tell, it’s just been gently pulled into yarn form – there’s really no twist at all. I’m guessing it won’t do so well for projects requiring stitch definition, but it should make a very soft and warm simple sweater. My pick? EZ’s Rorschach, which is so shockingly underknit that I can’t even find an example on the internets to show you. It’s from Knitting Workshop, and it’s also available as an individual pattern from Schoolhouse (scroll down to #30). I guess I’m just going to have to hurry up and knit it so I can spread the Rorschach gospel myself. As you probably guessed from the yarn I chose, it’s a white sweater with a black stripe – a cardigan in Elizabeth’s beloved garter stitch with a black stripe running up the back, around the neck, down the front, and around the hem to accent the mitered construction. It’s worked, with EZ’s inimitable and original genius, in two halves from the center out to the 3/4-length sleeves, which are blousy and narrow suddenly to hug the forearm at the cuff. Then it gets six i-cord button tabs up the front for big black buttons, and a belt at the natural waist. The overall effect is very ’60s mod, and it feels au courant right now. I love it. I hope you’ll see it here soon! Although I may have to pause to knit myself some more gloves…