A quick and easy remedy against a chilly spring, these armwarmers can be readily knit from stash oddballs or leftovers from other projects. A dash of stranded colorwork and a faux button detail add eye-catching style. Download the PDF here: Lovisa Armwarmers

I used two different alpaca yarns, Frog Tree Alpaca Sportweight (the natural color) and a skein of unmarked burnt-orange I bought at La Droguerie in Paris. Both have been in the stash for some time. The buttons were leftovers, too–from one of the first baby sweaters I made when I learned to knit. They were supposed to go on a matching cap that I never made. My Lovisas have already seen a lot of wear, since they let me bring my 3/4-length shirt sleeves back into wardrobe rotation. The garter flap above the thumb keeps them nicely in place, but it’s easy to slip my thumbs out and free my hands, too, which isn’t true of my other fingerless gloves and is turning out to be a useful feature. I’m planning other color combinations. Who doesn’t have an odd 50 or 100 yards of sport or DK leftovers lying around in every shade? I’m never able to bring myself to throw them away. I could see following the same recipe but making stripes if I’m not in the mood for stranded colorwork, or if I have even shorter bits to use up. Before you go off to paw through your own stash, a few doggie outtakes:

The faintest gleam of sunshine while I was taking my lunch break yielded this:

There’s been enough interest in this “design” from folks who’ve seen me wearing my new armwarmers around that I’ll be writing up the pattern. This should be a totally foolproof process as long as I can manage the color chart in an attractive computery way, so I hope to do it over the weekend. In case you want to go stash diving in anticipation (and this is a truly stash-divey project), these are knit with sport-weight or DK alpaca. I used Frog Tree’s (warning: before blocking this stuff was shaming me as a knitter–my stitches were cattywampus and totally ahoo at the needle joins, thanks to the 2-ply construction and loose gauge. Blocking solved everything, so don’t give up in despair as I would have if this hadn’t been such a spontaneous project.) and La Droguerie’s. I’ve got loads of both skeins leftover, so these long gloves don’t take much. Rowan Felted Tweed would make a delicious substitute; I’ll definitely be making myself a pair in some leftovers I’ve got on hand.

Also, the Minaret Opera Gloves I started in Malabrigo Sock Cordovan (be still my heart and look out my husband — I could totally elope with this yarn):

Delicious rich brownness not captured here… the sun had already gone away again.

That’s what my husband’s family used to call the end-of-the-week, use-up-the-leftovers soup his mother would make. And that’s the kind of post this is going to be. With the official Blue Garter photographer out of town, I have no new documentation of the vest or the armwarmers–we’ll try later this week if the gloomy light of a rainy Portland March permits. It was a busy week of evening meetings and extra choir performances for Ash Wednesday, but I did squeeze in knitting time. Want to see what happens when you let a riot of only-possibly-complementary colors loose on a swatch cap?

This might be the ugliest thing I’ve ever knitted, or it might not. I can’t decide. Sometimes I look at it and have to look away; other times I think it might be kind of awesome. I think it’s the chartreuse green causing the conflict. If I’d gone with a soft salmon pink, a paler cousin of the first background color in the OXO motif, the whole thing would have been more harmonious. But I like those peerie bands in hellebore colors in isolation. Ah well, it’s a swatch cap, and I don’t believe these colors have a future on a sweater of mine, but the hat kept my head warm when Lark and I went out on a singularly blustery walk with Katherine and her husband and their Sheltie, Merlin, this afternoon. Which is the point of a hat, right?

It was a wet and wild day out at the Sandy River delta, made more memorable by the presence of a number of dead fish cast up on the shore. One was quite a ways from the river and rather fresh; the doggies examined it with interest but refrained from eating it on command. I picked it up with a poo bag and lodged it in the crotch of a tree (Daniel took a cell-phone picture) because I didn’t want anyone else’s dog snarfing it down–there are nasty and even lethal parasites to be got by the consumption of rotting fish. Then there were more fish on the river bank, but Lark was busy doing her high-speed wave-herding and swimming after sticks and Merlin was intrigued enough by Lark’s behavior that we avoided them.

Once home it was time for a big mug of cocoa and Sense and Sensibility on Masterpiece Theatre. And a Tomten sweater! I cast on for the March Tomten KAL that’s kicking off among the Zimmermaniacs on Ravelry. I have a giant bag of inherited Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8-Ply, the yarn I used for Asa’s Twisted Tree Pullover (see Patterns tab), in a soft and manly blue tweed that wasn’t earmarked for any particular project, so I dove in. It’s a DK rather than an Aran, so I’ve altered the numbers a bit, but I think it will turn out well. And that’s not the only thing I started this weekend. I began to mess about with my big stash of Raumagarn and Hifa 3, experimenting for the 1920’s-style Fair Isle pullover I want to knit. But this startitis was balanced by virtuous completion of the Manlified February Sweater for my getting-himself-born-any-minute nephew (okay, it still needs buttons and a couple of ends woven in, but I’m close) and further work on that languishing Baby Bog Jacket I started last summer. It’s EZ Central around here!

For the literal aspect of the post title, I did make Garbage Soup for supper. After a scan of the refrigerator, I settled on parsnips, potatoes, and leeks, then added garlic cloves, a nubbin of ginger, bay leaves, a chili pepper, a pinch of saffron, a splash of milk that needed using up, and salt and pepper. Let it all simmer away while Marianne was pining for Willoughby, and then when OPB took a pledge break I gave it a squiz with the Soup Squizzer (which isn’t really called that except by me). But you know, it’s a sort of electric bowling pin with a wee blade at the business end, and you plug it in and stick it right in the soup pot and it squizzes away and purees your soup without any sloppy transfers of one portion and then another into the blender. Genius. This one is rather ancient and came from my grandmother’s house, but it works just fine. It’s my new favorite kitchen implement. I had a bowl of soup and heel of bread ready for supper by the time Edward was free to declare himself to Elinor. (I love this story. And I must say the Masterpiece Edward is superior to Hugh Grant’s interpretation in the Ang Lee version. That movie is great, but Hugh Grant was miscast. I like the two Colonel Brandons equally.)

That does it for Garbage Soup. Wish me sunlight so I can bring you details of the newly finished and newly begun projects!

Hello, I am blurry.The weather gods don’t care about your paltry FO’s.

We’ll call this a preview of two Blue Garter knits to receive more thorough blog coverage soon: sock-yarn-stash-buster-supreme Confectionary Vest, based on Deborah Newton’s Confectionary Tank from Interweave Knits Summer ’08, and slightly fancy alpaca armwarmers of my own unvention. When I can get a better picture of them you can have a look and tell me whether I ought to bother scribbling down a recipe for them. Anyway, both knits fit! And it turns out they also match. This is coincidence; I didn’t think, “Hmmm, I should really knit some detachable sleeves for my vest.” Because it’s not like there wasn’t enough sock yarn still left in the stash to make actual sleeves and call it a Confectionary Sweater.

A shout-out to the Monday Morning barista at Urban Grind Pearl – the same guy who praised my Amanda cardigan when I first wore it out on an excursion. This time he said, “So now I have to ask, do you make all your knitted items? Is it a hobby or do you do it professionally? That’s the most professional finishing I’ve ever seen.” You rock, barista man. Urban Grind is totally going to be my first stop anytime I have a new handknit to display. You’re great for the ego.

I really did mean to show my Madrona speed swatch on the blog last week, too. We had some higgledy-piggledy internet at home, unfortunately. Here it is now:

Pretty wild, right? For the sake of the exercise, I intentionally chose colors outside my usual palette, colors I wasn’t sure could work together. I loved the transition of rust to dark blue-green and the russet against the ice blue, rejected the forest green against the pinky-beige, and wasn’t sure what to make of the top end where the dark blues/greens start to play against the sea foam green and hot pink-orange. I thought it was dancing on the edge of ’70s Fugly. But Janine identified that very section as the part where the swatch really lifted off. So I set myself the challenge of editing the swatch to include all the colors in that section. I was supposed to continue the swatch, playing with the post-edit survivors in a motif. But I could hear Elizabeth Zimmermann in my head, and she was whispering, “Just make a swatch cap, dear! You have just enough yarn! Who cares if it doesn’t come out beautifully? It will keep your head warm at the very least.” Stay tuned to find out what happened next.