UPDATE: If you’d like to purchase Winter Garden, it’s in my Ravelry store. There’s also a link to buy it in the sidebar of my new blog.

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words about the new jumper! I originally had a mad plan to knit one in a different palette for Ada to keep… I think I’ll follow through on that, but I’ll have to knit her the next size.

Fierce! With crooked teeth!

Winter Garden features Brooklyn Tweed’s new fingering-weight American wool, LOFT, which I could happily knit till the end of my days. The only trouble with using LOFT for colorwork like this is that the skeins are much more generous in size — 275 yards/50 grams — than you typically find for this weight: Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift, for example, comes in a put-up of 115 yards/25 grams and is therefore less than half the price. I had to splurge to acquire the six gorgeous shades I chose for contrast colors. One could certainly just purchase two skeins of the main color and go stash-diving for the rest (the yardage needed is very little per color), but it is dreadfully hard to resist once you’ve ogled Jared Flood’s luscious and thoughtfully edited palette of heathers in person. And I’m really so pleased with this motif that I’m dying to knit myself a whole pullover of stripes and flowers to use up the substantial remnants! (The red — Long Johns — may not last that long, though. I have my eye on Gudrun Johnson’s new Norby hat.)

I had planned to weave a 1/4″ velvet ribbon through the eyelets and tie a bow, but decided the effect would be too fussy for my tousle-headed girl. The eyelets form a sufficient visual divide between the skirt and the bodice as they are… though part of me still thinks that ribbon would be irresistibly sweet.

I have written up the pattern for the 12-18 month (20″/50 cm around at the bodice) size shown here. I think this will be the smallest size, but I’d like your input on that before I grit my teeth and buckle down to the onerous process of grading it. Would you want to knit this for a smaller baby, say 6-12 months? With the buttons placed as they are I wouldn’t really consider it practical for anyone who still spends most of her time lying on her back. And what about for bigger kids? I was thinking, on the supposition that most folks won’t want to knit a larger garment on 3 and 3.25 mm needles, about going up to 4T. I also figure a child gets pretty opinionated about her wardrobe by then and it would be a tragedy to put in this kind of time and love only to be rejected! But tell me what you think about the sizing.

My experience knitting Winter Garden lead me to a scheme for 2012: I believe I shall try to buy only non-merino wools. My friends think this is utter madness, and of course I feel the world of wool would be a sadder and itchier world without the contributions of the noble merino. But what about all the other breeds, each so full of its own character and history? Merino has long been the gold standard, but now that it’s so widely available it’s also become almost the only wool many knitters (and the loved ones who wear their creations) will touch, and our choices at the yarn shop reflect that demand. I fear other breeds may already be suffering as fewer farmers raise them for the high-end hand-knitting market. And it may be no good thing for the merino sheep themselves to be so disproportionately favored. Understand that I’m speaking entirely from instinct, not from having done any thorough research into the state of the world-wide sheep industry. But on a personal level, too, many of my favorite and most-worn projects are of breeds other than merino. Amanda, my warmest and best-looking sweater, is knit from Wensleydale grown here in Oregon. My Blue Thistle jacket, also still unpilled and looking great, is Perendale. Mr. G’s Fishtrip cardigan is who-knows-what sturdy wool. My Pas de Valse is BFL (and pretty pilly now, but I blame this on the loose gauge the design requires, not the wool itself) and my Rorschach jacket is Icelandic wool. So let the non-merino stash diet begin. I predict I won’t even miss it (and of course there’s plenty of merino already residing in my yarn closet if I do). Anyone care to join me?

I’m a few shots short of a wrap for this project. A mother can only allow her small child so many minutes underdressed outdoors when it’s forty degrees and drizzling before guilt sets in, no matter how eager that child may be to canter up and down the sidewalk and show off her climbing on the front steps. And indoor photography is out of the question unless I can figure out a way to corral my subject within three feet of the south window. But I’m impatient to see some new content here, so you’re getting an advance peek at a post I hope to finish this weekend. There won’t be any parade of 2011 knits or summative assessment of resolutions; I simply haven’t the energy just now. I do want to show off this little jumper I made for Ada’s cousin, though. (Yes, it was meant for a Christmas present. Yes, I took it to New York and failed to finish sewing on the last two buttons and weaving in ends before we had to come home again. And yes, I’m still learning to adjust my expectations of myself now that I’m Mama to 1.4 little people.) I’m hoping you’ll like it.

Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet—
You by the fire and we in the street—
Bidding you joy in the morning!

–Kenneth Grahame, from The Wind in the Willows

Advent is my favorite season. I didn’t know it was a season until I began choral singing for the Episcopalians — I knew the word only in the context of the many Advent calendars I made to count down to Christmas in my childhood (the tour de force being a rather intricate model castle for a young friend). But I could have told you that I liked the weeks of festive preparation, of secret gift-making, of gathering greens to decorate the house (my only horseback-riding accident was precipitated by finding myself unable, at full gallop, to untangle a branch of scarlet-berried hawthorn from my wooly glove and my mare’s mane), of tramping out into the damp fields to cut a spindly fir, of eggnog and satsumas and caroling in the cold, as much as the climactic morning with the stockings and presents under the tree. And in recent years, I’ve liked those weeks of anticipation more than the event itself, grinchy as it may sound to say so. (I get, quite frankly, a little overwhelmed under the deluge of generosity from our dear ones. If I could get everyone on board with thoughtfully choosing — or even making — a single gift per family member, I’d be vastly happy.)

Now I like the thought of this season as a time of beginnings, of preparation, of watchfulness and mindfulness that the winter earth is sheltering and nourishing the seeds that will thrust up and shake themselves free when the sun returns.

And so Advent feels like the right time to share that a little field-mouse has drawn himself — or herself — up by our fire to bide. In the way of little mice, this one didn’t wait for an invitation, but quietly established itself in the coziest way possible and made its own plans to appear in the outside world in June, when the world is warm and lively again. I haven’t knit him or her anything yet, but these summery little slippers are waiting to cover a set of tiny toes…

The thing I’d most love to make for this second babe is Leila Raabe’s Spire Blanket from the new LOFT Collection. In that wonderful Old World color, blue flecked with red, exactly as shown. I’m sure that later I’ll be seized by fits of inspiration to design anew for my little one, but Ms. Raabe has already crafted every detail of this blanket just as I’d wish. (And really, why put pressure on oneself to design as well when one is already contemplating knitting a big lace blanket involving 1600 yards of fingering-weight wool? Will the baby care? I expect not.) But I am determined that this child shall be no less thoroughly swathed in woolen handknits just because it wasn’t anyone’s firstborn. You’ll learn, little field-mouse, that this is how your mama shows she loves people.

Yes, joy shall be ours in the morning.