I shall wear a pullover of the darkest shadows in the fir forest, a green so earthy it is almost brown, with the most exquisite florescence of color ever designed at the yoke.

It shall be softer than a mole’s armpit, as my grandfather would have said, half of its fiber being angora, and it shall have been knit with the smallest needles I own. This is why I shall be very old indeed before I can wear it, but it shall be Worth It. (In fact, I have taken care that the colors will also suit my daughter, because this pullover shall be an Heirloom, dammit.)

Yes, I have spent nine months regularly peeping the SOLsilke website and trying to choose among the many beauteous Bohus sweater kits, and I have finally screwed both my courage and several years’ birthday money to the sticking place and ordered The Wild Apple. I have lusted for these sweaters since I first learned of their existence about five years ago. I have lovingly petted several gorgeous examples that once belonged to Elizabeth Zimmermann, which felt a little like being allowed to leaf through the Book of Kells. A year ago at the Madrona retreat I was spurred to the action of buying a kit by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who pointed out that master dyer Solveig Gustafsson, recreator and sole purveyor of the materials and designs originally developed by the Bohus Stickning couture knitters in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, is in her eighties and won’t live forever. Much of what I like to knit and design draws on history for inspiration but veers off in a more modern direction, but occasionally it’s invigorating to go straight to the source and knit exactly as the ancestors did. (The lovely book Poems in Color thoroughly describes the Bohus history and offers patterns for many of the designs — hooray! — but presumes that modern knitters will not wish to tackle an entire sweater at 9 stitches per inch. The results are beautiful, but the sport-weight gauge means you lose a touch of the intricacy of the authentic Swedish sweaters.)

But which to choose? I dithered and dithered. Forest Darkness, with its oceanic color shifts? Guld, with its striking golden collar? Blue Shimmer’s pleasing, classic blues and browns? The subtle beauty of Gothic Window? Or the eye-catching Egg? (Here’s a link to the Kerstin Olsson page on Ravelry so you can drool over all of them at once. Follow the SOLsilke link above and click “Bohus Stickning” if you’re not a Raveler.)

Finally, I decided the choice was simple. The Wild Apple was the first Bohus design to make my heart beat faster, and it still does. It’s the most riotous of the color schemes, but I had no idea how raucous some of those oranges and greens actually were until I breathlessly tore open the package from Sweden that arrived on my doorstep this week. I would never have had the guts to combine these colors. The Bohus addition of purl stitches to the motifs allows the designer to integrate colors to an unusual degree, to bring them into conversation rather than just contrast, but still… mint and olive greens? Paprika and cherry reds? That Kerstin Olsson knew the rules well enough to break them and wasn’t afraid to be loud. I’ll bet my grandmother would have liked her. Because those yoke colors remind me more than a little of this:

detail from my grandmother’s castle tapestry

Here’s a glass raised to old women with sure minds and sharp needles. That’s what I want to be when I grow up.

In July of 2009 I started a green linen top from a 1932 pattern collected by Jane Waller and Susan Crawford. I ran aground when I realized it was going to be far too short in the torso and so I put it aside. Last April I picked it up again, bought another skein of Euroflax, and figured out a solution. But by the time I was finished, I was too pregnant to fit into it. Into the drawer it went, where it rested patiently all summer, fall, and winter. And now, at last, it can take its proper place in my wardrobe.

I love it! Linen is a fiber that demands its pound of flesh up front: it’s rather hard on the fingers during the knitting. But it just gets better and better with wear, and it should last forever. Want a closer look at the bit I had to re-engineer? Sure you do.

That line across my middle was the original cast-on. I think we can all agree the resulting top would not have flattered my figure one bit. So I hatched a plan to pick up stitches and work downward to get a better length and more of a flapper look. That seam was going to be visible unless I cut out the original cast-on out entirely, though, and I was feeling a little too lazy for that. I indulged the impulse to just pick up stitches and go on the rationale that the reverse stockinet fabric is also exposed at the cowl — why not emphasize the transition on the torso by turning the purl side out there, too? I made a few other changes as well — I abandoned what seemed to be a sloppy-looking 1 x 1 rib at the shoulders, and I neatened up the look of the sash at the bottom by working a twisted rib there. I also made the sash much longer than the pattern specifies. (Everyone else on Ravelry did, too, if they didn’t scrap the idea of tying it and use buttons, so I suspect the given length is an error in the instructions.)

(And yes, it’s a little bit peekaboo there at the side since I’m not wearing the undergarments or high-waisted skirt that would have been assumed back in 1932. Of course, neither am I wearing the conical bra that would have yielded the preferred silhouette of the era.)

Verdict? I love this top. Every so often I swear off knitting summer garments because they always disappoint me, but this is an exception. And I’m still so enamored of this shade of green. I’m going to be wearing this all summer… as soon as it stops spitting rain and gusting wind, that is.

During the candlelight service tonight, waiting to sing William Byrd and Healy Willan and Eleanor Daley and trying not to drip wax on my music or my handbell or my neighboring sopranos, I was thinking how this ought to be the time we celebrate the new year. January’s being the first month seems so arbitrary, you know? It doesn’t mark a new season. The days are not appreciably longer; the weather hasn’t improved. No one feels reinvigorated on the heels of the winter holidays. It isn’t time to plow or plant crops or to do much of anything else significant but just keep hunkered down cooking soup and knitting as often as possible. But now the air is soft and warm, the trees are green and bronze and even auburn with new growth, the tulips are in full glory, Ada let me sleep five hours in a row last night… it feels like a time for new beginnings. I’m ready to come out of hibernation.

(And yes, that’s my daughter in a giant pot that looks like an egg.)

Did you like how I baited the weather gods with that taunt about the fifth of July and they FELL FOR IT and gave us a week of sunshine just to be contrary? Granted, it isn’t all that warm, but in the shelter of the back yard it was pleasant enough to shuck off jackets and fleece boots for a quick photo shoot with new summer pants.

Ada’s little friend Etta has a pair of these sewn by an auntie; they’re so cute I had to track down the pattern. It’s the Big Butt Baby Pants from Made by Rae, and I could sew little pants like these till the cows come home. Except that we’ll call them Big Bottom pants, because my mother reads here and she thinks “butt” is crass unless it’s a verb, an archery target, a cigarette end, or a cask of wine. No crass pants for your granddaughter, okay, Mum?

I started with the pinky-orange fabric with the jars of tadpoles (can you stand it?), which has been in my stash for a couple of years, and then chose the orange print to go with it. Turns out my orange is just a slightly quieter version of the fabric Rae used to illustrate the pattern — a coincidence, but who could resist orange with circles?

They’re too big for her right now, and that’s intentional. I made the 12-18 month size so she can wear them all summer. I’ve got a second pair cut out already. I figure she needs one for every day of the week.

(Ada is holding a very small stick in this picture; I imagine Lark is either hoping she’ll throw it or wishing to teach her what is best to be done with small sticks: they must be obliterated by crunching them to tiny bits and then rolling in them. At least Ada is already inclined to put sticks in her mouth, clearly promising to be more intelligent than either of her parents.)

Mama likes to think this twig looks a lot like a #1 double-pointed knitting needle.
Can her first pair of socks be far away?

And oh, the glories of bare feet and inquisitive fingers and real dirt to put them in! I’m taking real pleasure in watching my daughter begin to explore the little ecosystems between the patio bricks. (And fertile ecosystems they are indeed on our particular patio!) I hope it’s just the beginning of a lasting love for the natural world.