Discoveries that have delighted me this week thus far:

1. Miss Marple (or at least Julia McKenzie who’s playing her in the new Masterpiece series) is a lever knitter.

2. In Germany there is an octopus named Paul who has correctly predicted the outcome of each of his country’s World Cup matches by eating a mussel from a box labeled with the winning country’s flag. Paul is six for six, having foretold Germany’s shocking upset by Serbia earlier in the tournament and also their defeat by Spain in yesterday’s semifinal. (Keep in mind that Paul has eight tentacles and could probably open both boxes at once, but he is not greedy and apparently takes his oracular duties seriously.) I think that if America is ever to reach a World Cup semifinal we not only need to study the new German style of play but should also trade Punxsutawney Phil for a more sophisticated animal prognosticator.

3. You can make paper out of pond scum. The children who have confirmed this report that if you want to try it at home you should make sure you have good ventilation, as the paper smells rather fishy even when it’s dry. (They took this as inspiration to cut fish shapes out of it for a multi-sensory collage.) I must say the pond scum paper looks easier to work with than the thistle paper a friend and I made at a similar age.

4. Radishes are a good addition to homemade salsa. Use plenty of lime juice.

5. I don’t hate knitting cotton as much as I thought I did, at least not if it’s the right cotton. Mirasol Lachiwa is 60% cotton, 40% linen, and yet it is soft, gentle on the hands, doesn’t split at all, isn’t prone to rowing out in stockinet fabric…. I am forced to admit that knitting with it is downright PLEASING. (Occasionally there’s a little stray end of tough fiber poking out from the plies that’s rather scratchy, but these are easily pulled free.)

Never mind that it’s 59 degrees F and raining. The calendar says it’s July (and my husband has been wearing shorts out of sheer stubbornness), and if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that means Tour de France fever! Yes, I’ve once again got a hand in organizing the international knitalong (we’re over on Ravelry and we’re happy to welcome latecomers for a few more days if you’d like to join us). My friends and relations find this somewhat hilarious and/or bemusing, I think. Maybe it’s the fact that there are nearly eighty other fruit bats out there from Australia to Holland who love to watch cycling and knit at the same time and then talk about it on the internet. In years past I’ve taken on a really big challenge for the 21 days of the Tour, most recently designing and knitting Footlights and Daisy Daisy.

This year’s going to be a bit different. With a baby due in five and a half weeks, there are some things that need to be accomplished. I’ll try to put some nearly finished projects to bed so they won’t be abandoned for months once I’ve got my hands full of squalling newborn. And this poor baby has very few handknits made by its own mother (happily several aunties-to-be have been filling the void — those gifts deserve their own post!), so I’ll try to remedy that, beginning with Carina Spencer’s Small Things Romper, to which I’ll be adding a special touch:

I shall call it the Lanterne Rouge romper. (The Lanterne Rouge is the guy who finishes dead last in the Tour. Now do you get it?) Cute snailie isn’t mine; I borrowed his chart from Adrian Bizilia’s wonderful Norwegian Snail Mittens (in Clara Parkes’s The Knitter’s Book of Yarn) and modified it just a touch since it doesn’t need to fit on a mitten. In addition to nodding to the Tour, this snail is a sort of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” tribute to the soggy summer we’re having. His less adorable and far more voracious brethren have left my hostas in tatters.

Tomorrow morning I get to cast on! Since the powers that organize world sports have seen fit to schedule the Tour prologue at the same time as the Argentina-Germany soccer match, there may be a bit of squabbling over the remote, and I’ll probably have to go back and watch both events in full later in the day. Good thing the weather outside isn’t tempting.

Friday was our fifth wedding anniversary.  It’s ten years since I first knew I’d marry Mr. G and next year will mark half my lifetime that we’ve been friends, so I’d say we dance pretty well together by now. Not that we don’t tread on each other’s toes now and then or misinterpret the lead, but swing dancers who have come to learn and have a good time like to say a universal “I’m sorry” before the dance begins so they can jump in with good intentions and humor, and this kind of understanding works well in marriage, too. This is a busy time for us and we had my family in town for a weekend of  baby showers, birthday parties, and general merrymaking, but we slipped away to have breakfast together and luckily I had just the thing to wear to look nice for my beloved.

Pas de Valse! It was almost dry. And I’ve already worn it three more times — this one definitely goes on my list of knitting successes, and that’s a relief. For one, I started it last November, before I knew I was pregnant. I didn’t knit a gauge swatch, which is not behavior I’d recommend for a project like this. Once I got a few inches in and did bother to check, my row gauge was way off. I compensated by throwing in extra rows between the decreases. It still looked awfully short when I reached the armholes, given that it’s supposed to fall gracefully to the hips, but I just crossed my fingers that the blocking gods would accept my offerings. By this time all those extra rows had blown the stitch count to smithereens; I’m not even sure I could tell you what I did with the front extensions except that I tried to make shaping decisions that would keep them looking proportional to the rest of the cardigan.

Somehow, it all worked. The length is perfect. The sleeves are perfect (and this hardly ever happens for me). I want to marry this yarn and have its woolly BFL babies. (A note on the yarn: it’s Oceanwind Knits BFL Fingering, for which the pattern is written and on which I decided to splurge as a 30th birthday present to myself. Four 400-meter skeins were recommended for the 39″ size; I’ve got a full skein untouched and a good chunk of the third remaining, and lucky me because I’ll totally use it for something else, but keep that in mind if you’re thinking three skeins might be more within the reach of your budget. My colorway is Seabreeze, but I was sorely tempted by the Cranberry as well.) It’s soft enough not to itch my neck at all, even with sensitive pregnancy skin, yet it’s lustrous and far stronger than merino — breaking the strand will leave a mark and a sting on your fingers. Marnie MacLean’s pattern is one of the most thorough I’ve ever worked from — so thorough that you have to keep your wits about you and read ahead of yourself repeatedly to make sure you’re proceeding correctly — but it’s worth the effort for a beautiful result.

Tomorrow I have to drive to the coast, which really would have been the ideal location for a Pas de Valse photoshoot… barefoot in the sand against the plunging rocks and pounding sea… but alas, I can’t take my photographer with me. I’m totally wearing the cardigan, though. You’ll just have to imagine it. In the mean time, my husband likes this silly contrast shot to end on:

Look, our deck is now a construction area with a workbench!

(My parents never just come for a visit. They can’t stand to loll about and actually be on vacation, so they do projects and build me things — on this occasion, custom shelves for a closet so it could become a linen closet and clear a bureau for Minnow’s gear. Oh, and they painted a bookcase, too. They might come back next month to rebuild the rotten deck. Yes, they are exceptional parents.)

Thanks mostly to the generosity of others, our child is beginning to acquire a few garments, a large number of receiving blankets, sheets, diapers, and other necessities. (Today we added a jogging stroller to this list, handed down in mint condition from a lovely family at school!) This past weekend I took advantage of the only sunny day in three weeks to wash Minnow’s little wardrobe:

Awwww, wee baby things hanging on our wash line for the first time ever! I had to take a picture. I also resolved that Minnow should have more clothing made by Mama to hang on that line. Which leads me to these:

These are some extremely venerable khaki shorts belonging to Mr. G. If he hasn’t actually had them for all ten years of our relationship, it’s pretty close. They have permanent grass stains and paint splatters. As you can see, it was time for him to stop wearing them (that’s the crotch seam in the last photo), but it made me sad to see them in the trash bin. Surely there’s some good fabric remaining there, I thought. There are some thin spots, but they’re mostly sound and pleasingly soft from all those years of wear. I pulled them out of the bin and spread them on my sewing table. I took out the pattern for the Oliver + S Sandbox Pants I’d purchased and compared the smaller sizes to the ancient shorts. Looks like Minnow may be able to have a pair of play pants just like Daddy’s.

So tonight I spent a couple of hours with the seam ripper, my pink fabric pencil, scissors, and jazz piano on the radio. Stay tuned. I have an absurdly busy weekend ahead, but I have hopes of squeezing in a little sewing.