How is it that the come-hither of new projects is most compelling just when it’s most critical that you finish what you’ve already begun? It should be a law, like Murphy’s. Sarah’s Law of Distractibility, maybe. Barring disaster (and we all know Disaster is skilled at the limbo and the high jump), the Mediterranean Ivy lace is going to be the most beautiful work I’ve ever done. But even the plain rounds take more than an hour at this point. When I was twelve or thirteen, there was a summer I spent with my friends Lizzie and Alice, nearly always in their swimming pool when we weren’t riding our horses through their woods and fields. We trained hard at underwater swimming, one end to the other and back again, hot blackness rising behind our eyes as we strained through the shallows to touch the wall and erupt gasping for oxygen. That’s what each lap of this stole feels like now: push a little further every time, right to the limit of punishment to the eyes and fingers. Five days left to knit, including all the time it’s going to take to crochet a single chain of edge loops.

So what led me to blow all of Saturday morning, the only crafting time I had that day, sewing an oven mitt? (And yes, I forgot to photograph it again when it was finished.)

Good question. It was for Mother’s Day. But that’s not much of an excuse. And still I itch to cast on six new projects. Fortunately, the knitting gods are keeping me on the straight and narrow: I discovered that I’d twisted the join in the Indigo Ripples skirt (which I never do), and that despite (or because of?) my math and swatching it was coming out six inches too large anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen (okay, so -men is ambitious), I need your votes! Saturday was sunny and glorious, and I spent a happy hour in the back garden cutting fabric strips for the Bend-the-Rules Lap Quilt. That was the easy part. Now I have to decide on a pleasing arrangment, and for that I could use your practiced eyes.

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

Exhibit 3:

Exhibit 4, which is just like 3 except I’ve removed the little pedestal of the sage green to the strip second from right:

Exhibit 5:

If you have a suggestion to improve the quilt beyond what I’ve proposed here, let me have it. The backing is the sage green (which has wee polka dots, as you can see better in the original picture below).

The binding will be mostly the Amy Butler at left, since I still have so much of it, unless I decide I don’t like the edges being so dark.

I worked on my little sundress yesterday, too, which means I ripped off the skirt and cut about six inches off the side so there wouldn’t be as much fabric to gather. It was way too Baby Doll for my figure. Now it’s better, but it still needs a zipper and a hem and a cute button for the ribbon ties that aren’t long enough to tie.

But the knitting continues predictable and satisfying:

I finished Ana a good two weeks ago, but I’ve been waiting for natural light and a photographer. The hat isn’t as yellow as the afternoon sun made it in these shots, but you get the idea. I don’t know about “boho chic 4 ever,” but I think it’s a good argument for bringing back the snood.

Coming home, I’m always struck by the things I’ve missed, the most obvious first: the salt air, the first flush of green in the pastures, the spring lambs, the exhalations of the damp woods. This time, as I knit quietly on the ferry, I realized something new that my city life lacks.

Behind me were a pair of old timers, heavy men who fill their flannel shirts, with rough, stubby fingers, one with a shining face reddened by a lifetime of sun and wind and probably drink, the other pale and jowly as a basset hound, bristling with whiskers. I listened passively for an hour as they jawed away about classic cars, catching snippets of their talk on the purl rows when I didn’t have to focus on my lace pattern. “I sold him that ’49 Merc back in ’86 for five grand. He drives it in the parade every year. But juice up the brakes and she could still make Seattle.” On and on they chatted, unhurried, steady and gruff as a couple of outboard motors. At some point I tuned in again and they’d made a seamless switch to rabbit hunting. “You gotta get the fur wet first or you’ll have a mess. You get two guys on it to pull from both ends and it’ll come right out of the skin like a salmon, but it’s real tacky under there and if you don’t get the fur wet first you’ll have a mess, all right.”

I don’t hear these conversations in Portland. True, the inhabitants don’t tend to be as concerned with vehicles and varmints (most don’t have garages big enough to rehabilitate fleets of jalopies anyway, and you’re more likely to hear discussions about retro-fitting for biodiesel than which chassis you might substitute to rebuild your truck if you weren’t a purist). But I think there’s something about the urban pace of life and diversity of acquaintance that gets in the way. These island men have known each other since they were schoolboys; who knows how many times they’ve had variations on this conversation. They aren’t under a press of sail to be off somewhere else. They don’t excuse themselves awkwardly from each other’s company when a topic has run its course, but work out variations on the theme like master musicians. It’s an art, this deliberate, hour-gobbling talk. Maybe it happens in Portland, too, but I don’t slow down enough to hear it.

I have also missed the ruckus of spring frogs. The combined voices of the peepers in the marsh at moonrise make a roar audible inside the house. Humans are notoriously noisy animals, but they have nothing on the average courting frog. If all Manhattan poured out into the streets at night and sang show tunes through bull horns, we might hope to equal the clamor of the swamp. We slept with the windows open.

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!