Rowan Felted Tweed… what’s not to love? Marika got a ball of this luscious purple, Bilberry, at Christmas with an IOU. I was thinking I’d whip her up some pretty fingerless gloves, but she thought what she’d really like was a sweater, and since I love Marika and I love Felted Tweed, I quickly assented. She picked out Kim Hargreaves’s Emily, a design I’d been admiring myself. And I haven’t knit a Kim Hargreaves pattern since I finished Charlotte, found the size medium was enormous on me, and gave it to my mother-in-law. Since then I’ve become a devotee of Elizabeth Zimmermann and other proponents of seamless knitting in the round. I mean, why be bound by the conventions of the garment industry when your materials can take you beyond producing separate bits of shaped fabric and sewing them together, and often let you try your sweater on as you go to see if it fits as you wish? But I don’t loathe seaming. Joining clean stockinet edges is actually sort of fun. So while I could adapt this pattern to work in the round, I decided to knit it just as Kim intended. I haven’t had a good seaming party in a long time, and there’s a jar of a friend’s homemade kahlua in the kitchen that ought to suit the occasion.

And now that I’ve liberated my #7 needle from Amanda’s endless shawl collar, I’ve already sailed through the hem of the front. At this rate I’ll be ready for my seaming party in no time. I noticed a funny thing about the sleeves: Kim has you cast on a terrific number of stitches and work up from the full blousey width to the sleeve cap, then pick up along the cast-on row, decrease, and then knit the cuff down. Why, Kim? I posed the question to two friends yesterday, and they were clever enough to point out that it might affect the structure and stability of the cuff. It made perfect sense to me — who among us hasn’t learned the hard way that there’s a reason designers tell you to bind off stitches at the neckline before picking up for the collar? I have several sweaters, including my Blue Thistle jacket, that want stabilizing with a chain of crochet around the shoulders because I tossed this advice aside and left the stitches live for the collar. But now I think more about it, Kim’s reasoning for the Emily sleeves can’t be the same, or else she’d have you cast on the smaller number of stitches at the top of the cuff and then increase in the next row.

Pardon the unblocked state of this hem, but the sleeve cuff looks basically just like this, as far as I can tell from the picture. The directions are more or less reversed since you’re working it from the top down. So can any of you think of a decent reason not to just cast on the stitches for the cuff, work upward following the body hem instructions, and then increase for the bloused sleeve? Is this pattern an example of Unnecessary English Fiddlyness, or Superior English Construction? After all, this is the garment culture that brings us Savile Row bespoke suits, the Gansey, and a healthy slice of our general knitting heritage, including Elizabeth Zimmermann herself. I know better than to toss such a curious set of instructions aside without forethought. Make your arguments, ladies and gentlemen! It shouldn’t take me more than a week to finish the front and then I’ll have to take the decision.

And yes, that’s a truly colossal pine cone on my dining room table, in case the scale of that first picture was messing with anyone’s head.

Amanda is almost done. I knit the two nicest buttonbands I’ve ever done–got ’em perfect on the first try. I had to ignore the pattern’s pick-up number because I made the torso longer than called for. Normally I’d pick up two stitches to every three, which works every time for directional changes like knitting sleeves down from the body, but here the buttonbands are worked on needles two sizes smaller to control the spread of the garter stitch. I had a funny feeling picking up two-to-three in this situation would give me a puckery band that would gather in my sweater fronts. I was almost tempted to pick up one-to-one, but that might have given me too long a band. I didn’t want wavy edges, either. So I went with three-to-four, and it was spot-on. Just one problem: I was so busy feeling chuffed at my knitting savvy that I didn’t put in any buttonholes. Sigh. Rip.

Now I’ve got beautiful buttonbands with holes for the beautiful buttons my father made. I chose this pinky Pacific madrona set. There are dark, stripey wenge buttons, too, that perfectly match the yarn, but I’m proud of my dad’s work and so I decided to let the buttons stand out as their own element. I love how the madrona wood glows against the wool. Only the shawl collar left to do!

Alas, I stole the needle to work on Emily, from Kim Hargreaves’s Heartfelt – The Dark House Collection, for my sister-in-law. So I may need to knit up the Emily front before I finish Amanda. Fortunately, Emily has been flying along. An evening watching episodes of All Creatures Great and Small on Netflix movie viewer (huzzah for the Mac version! huzzah for James Herriot! I feel great affection for this 1977 adaptation of the delightful book series), the inauguration ceremonies (huzzah doesn’t even cover it!), and a faculty meeting or two and I’m up to the armscye shaping. I’m using Rowan Felted Tweed in that deep purple called Bilberry. Because Felted Tweed is such a light DK (in fact I’m not even sure why it’s classed as such–I’d call it sportweight, myself), this will be an airy, weightless little sweater, but if I do a good job I think Marika will love it.

And speaking of last Tuesday, it’s hard to capture my excitement about the new president in words. I think I’ll always remember watching the inauguration (probably the first time I’ve done so, if you don’t count brief clips that played on the evening news), and I hope it will be an event my generation talks about into the future (Where were you when Obama became president?), looking back on it as a pivotal moment for our country and the beginning of a time of worthy work and greater care for each other. Watching the cameras sweep out over that jubilant (if half-frozen) mass of humanity packed onto the Mall, watching sixty middle-schoolers take it all in and hearing them discuss the peaceful transfer of power, I’ve never felt prouder of my country.

As you may know, Portland saw some unexpected Weather during the holidays. Many of us relished the taste of a proper winter, although we were ill equipped to get about except on foot. We tromped around our neighborhood, ferrying groceries home on a Yankee Clipper sled from the ’50s that’s been patiently biding its time in the garage, shopping for gifts more locally than ever, since the mail wasn’t even getting through. We stayed cozy with visiting friends who were nearly stranded with us for Christmas, making candied orange peels from Parikha’s recipe and muffins with the last of the blackberries I picked and froze in August. And day by day, we ventured farther out. The reliable folk of the Trinity choir managed to straggle in for practice before Christmas Eve services, and as I sorted my music, something black and white and woolen under the chair of an alto caught my eye:

I pounced. Where had these come from, I asked? Did someone make them for her recently? No, they were 80 years old, worn by her father for skiing in his youth near Spokane. The family wasn’t from Norway, but they must have had friends who were, because these are unmistakably Selbu mittens. In fact, they’re very close cousins to these:

Remember my Trøndelag mittens? They’ve been languishing, but these are the mittens I cast on last winter after seeing an alluring picture of a pair in a museum in Norway. The pine boughs and central motifs (Terri Shea says they’re spiders weaving webs among the branches, but given the Christian symbolism that appears in these mittens, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re also crosses – look at the negative space) are identical, although mine are worked at a finer gauge and include that compass-shaped motif on the sides. Terri Shea’s NHM #8 bear a related design, with the Selbu rose in the center and a simplified compass:

The exact chained-rose thumb pattern appears on a number of other patterns in Selbuvotter. All this makes my nerdy little heart sing: historic mittens, glimpsed in the wild! (I’ll leave you to imagine the extent of the geek-out I inflicted on the alto section, and then on the tenors when I demanded my husband take pictures with his phone.) But let’s take a moment to appreciate that those mitts are EIGHTY YEARS OLD. I noticed a little hole in one cuff and a bit of wear to the cast-on edge, but otherwise they’re in perfect condition.

Warm woolen mittens are definitely on my list of favorite things. Mine just happen to match this:

Sarah’s February Lady sweater: 2 skeins Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in “Corbie,” collar modifications ala Darkandstormyday

Katrin’s February Lady sweater: 2 skeins Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in “Bleck,” way off gauge on US#6 needles to compensate for the silk relaxation effect

Back in the fall we hatched the plan to knit these for each other for Christmas. We bought our own yarn, made our preferences for special features and fit known, and each friend set to work. We surprised each other with closure systems. I asked Rebecca to make some fabric-covered buttons that would work for Katrin’s sweater, and after an exchange of swatches chose this sweet sheer fabric that had belonged to her grandmother (photo borrowed from Rebecca):

I love how the silver of the button form shows through to echo the soft lavender-grey stripes of the garter stitch. Rebecca has more cute print buttons in her Etsy shop; I’ll definitely be ordering from her again for future cardigans. Meanwhile, Katrin outdid me by far: not only did she find a beautiful pin I can use to dress up my sweater, but she also constructed these brilliant cufflink-style closures I can swap in.

Two happy girls!