Oh, May… one of my favorite months! The weather is summery (for a few days at least) and I’ve been struck with a mad hunger for summer knits. I say mad because I have knit various lacy tops and cottony shrugs and every time I swear off all that nonsense and rededicate myself to wool. I do not particularly enjoy knitting with stringy plant fibers that don’t give or spring or bounce or plump up agreeably to make your work look better than it is. And the garments themselves tend to get irrevocably baggy and formless, which is not a look that does my figure any favors. But I found myself trolling Ravelry and drooling over this and that, and oh, yes, this again… troll, troll, troll; drool, drool, drool. And I do have a fair amount of cotton in the stash… enough to make any and all of these…

You’re going to be so proud of me. I didn’t cast on a single one of those lovelies. Why? Because there are some shamefully neglected items in the knitterly sag wagon Chez Garter. Namely this: the Frost Flowers Pullover, ignominiously zzz’ing away at the very bottom of my Ravelry page. The date I put on it there would lead you to believe I’ve only been working on it for two years. This is certainly a bald-faced lie. I know I’ve had the yarn since 2005, the year the pattern came out in Vogue Knitting. It was never a favorite project. Let’s just see what I’ve had to say about it on the blog during that time:

“I hereby swear it’s the last time you’ll see me knit with such an unnatural fiber.”

“If I hadn’t been so wet behind the ears as a knitter when I took this project on, I would have substituted a decent cotton at least.”

“…afraid this yarn was going to look like a pox victim knit up… it’s more like the hide of some desert-dwelling feline…. the African Plastic Sand Leopard…”

You can see how the spark never really kindled between us. Trendsetter Spiral and I have been on a four-year bad date, the kind that ends with an unenthusiastic “Well, we have each other’s number…” and you know the relationship is going nowhere. But I am a knitter of integrity, dammit, and I still like the design, and the sag wagon basket is overflowing and spitting out remnants of yarn balls and forgotten swatches, and it’s far too warm to work on the Gee’s Bend blanket that’s also in there with all its attending Manos del Uruguay. I’m getting back on the horse and finishing this thing if it kills me.

Cue Chariots of Fire music.

The Emily pullover didn’t look like much when last you saw her on this blog; I tried her on after seaming but she was definitely too small for me to model attractively. I took this as a favorable sign, since I was knitting this piece for my petite sister and not for myself! Marika, as you can see, wears Emily most beautifully. Thanks to my brother, head of the New York blog photography unit, for the pictures! Final wrap specs:

Emily, from Kim Hargreaves’s Heartfelt: The Dark House Collection, size XS

substituted yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed, 5 skeins Bilberry

US #5, #6, and #7 needles, as per pattern

torso and sleeves lengthened slightly to account for a difference in row gauge

Perhaps it’s perverse, but I truly enjoy seaming pieces in stocking stitch now and again. The knitting of this sweater went really fast, I love the yarn, and I love the result—it’s perfect for my stylish New York sister.

A nice weekend with a visit from my friend Bronwyn (and her hilarious and wonderful friends who I wish all lived in Portland so they could be my friends, too) has quite scattered the clouds after my stressful last few weeks. We’ve had a stormy beginning to May, with thunder and lightning and drenching, sudden rain and just-as-sudden sun. It’s rare for the Northwest to see those pelting rains that knock the cones from the trees and recoil so hard from the pavement that the air above the streets is a blowing soup of spray.

Yesterday’s squall came through just after a baby shower for my cousin Ben and his partner, who will welcome a son next month. There were plastic babies in the ice cubes, which many of us thought was superbly creepy and which put me in mind of National Geographic articles about frozen ice men that fascinated me as a child. The funny part was listening to my aunt tell how much trouble it turns out to be to create clear ice–there was some sort of triple boiling of distilled water that took most of the day, and even then there were still crystals around the babies. Little thawed babies floating belly-up in your drink are sort of unnerving, as it turns out. I didn’t particularly want them to touch my lips. But on to the important part of the shower: the knitting!

This is a wee sweater I whipped up with my new little cousin-to-be in mind. It’s built on principles I like to think Elizabeth Zimmermann would approve of: plenty of garter stitch; no purling (really—even for the short rows to raise the back of the neck I knit back backwards, just for kicks); armholes made like afterthought heels so you can just keep buzzing round and around, then pull out the waste yarn and pick up sleeve stitches later; and her special i-cord button tabs. Here’s a cuff detail:

Mingus felt this photo needed a certain feline je ne sais quoi. Les chats, ils savent.

The unusual construction of the sleeve join means the sleeves can’t lie quite flat in the way you expect of sleeves, but in theory they ought to fit just fine on a three-dimensional baby and offer plenty of mobility for flapping one’s fat little arms.

I-cord button tabs.

I’m calling it the Islander sweater, not because I favor either of the New York hockey teams, but in honor of the island where this little boy’s papa and I grew up. I’ll be knitting a second version for another island baby due in June—a two-color variation this time, I think. It’ll be a great way to use up sock leftovers. This yarn, by the way, is one of the Pagewood Farms superwash merino sock yarns. It didn’t come with a color name, possibly because it was dyed as an exclusive for a particular yarn shop. It was a gift from my beautiful, articulate, witty, and talented friend Kristen, who I’d like to be when I grow up except that she’s only half a year older than I am, so I’m pretty sure there’s not much hope for me. One skein of this yummy stuff, which turned out to be one of the few variegated yarns I think is as attractive knit up as it is on the skein, was ample for the little (three-month size?) sweater. And there were leftovers. Look what I’m doing with them:

Regina Willer’s Blue Step Baby Booties are my new go-to baby present. So adorable! So fast! I cast on the second during this morning’s sermon (the choir director finally moved me to the second row—now I can knit away in between songs and the congregation will never know!) and I predict it will be finished by the end of Masterpiece Theatre tonight. The English translation is still a little bit quirky. Based on my knowledge of brioche stitch, I interpreted the half-brioche stitch pattern like this:

Row 1: *Sl 1 wyif, yo, p1*

Row 2: *K tog the stitch and the yo, p1*

The result looks like the picture, so I’m pretty sure it’s correct. The only other funny bit is where you decrease to form the top of the foot—you pass a slipped stitch over two other stitches, which isn’t totally obvious from the instructions.

And now it’s time to make supper. Something involving lemon-pepper capellini, red kale, and feta…

Despite lilac blossoms and sunshine and a bike ride and a giggly fit of middle-school-style note-passing (vive le hyphen) about cute boys during choir practice, I have managed to be rather glum these last couple of days. Apparently I am even grouchy when I sleep, because my husband noted having been kicked repeatedly. Sorry, honey. Also I have botched the foot chart of the Pomatomus sock for the eleventieth time, which is not like me as a knitter, due to the hubris I have exhibited in trying to knit without looking at said chart, which is. This pattern has my number. I have ripped back yet again.

But sometimes I find bright, glowing things to carry with me until the light returns, as it certainly will in a day or two. This is one: http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/

If you haven’t beeing following Maira Kalman’s “And the Pursuit of Happiness” illustrated blog over at The New York Times, do yourself the favor of clicking through. I *heart* her.