In which we have two agendas: firstly, to kick off November with a little contest. As always, I waited until the evening of the 30th to carve my Hallowe’en pumpkin. The challenge? Identify the source of the inspiration for this year’s carving:

Hint: It’s a movie. I’ll take the title or the director’s name to be a correct answer. You have until Wednesday the 7th to enter your guesses, at which time I’ll put the names of all those who got it right into a hat and select a winner. What’s on the line? Something tasty from the Blue Garter stash, of course! Since I can’t seem to stop adding to it, I figure I’d better spread the love around to my loyal readers now and then.

And secondly, the epic project reveal. The winter before last, we lost Cousin Saucy, as my branch of the family always called my mother’s cousin Sandra. She went in for a knee-replacement surgery, and during her recovery a blood clot went to her brain and left her in a coma from which there was no chance of recovery. We had to let her go. Last year’s trip up into the San Juan Mountains in Colorado was our memorial to her, and we left her ashes at the mouth of her father’s silver mine. Saucy and I had a kinship of the mind and soul, not just of genes, and she was a big influence on my young life. She was a horsewoman, a farmwife, an archaeologist, an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, a bookworm, a historian, and, as it turns out, a knitter. According to her sister, she didn’t do much knitting after her sons were born, which was back around 1970. But she kept a stash of yarn, and I inherited a load of it.

(Thanks to Mr. Garter for the artsy photo shoot, since I’m never home during the daylight hours!)

Vintage Norwegian Raumagarn 3-Ply (at least that’s what I think “3 tr.” means – correct me if I’m wrong, Norwegian readers!) from, if I’m interpreting the shade card correctly, 1966. Forty-year-old virgin wool! And it didn’t take me long to figure out that I have basically all the colors for this:

A quintessential 1920’s Fair Isle sweater! This picture is from Ann Feitelson’s tour de force The Art of Fair Isle Knitting. I’ve got my shades of sheep colors, my blues, my red/oranges, and a dash of mustard yellow, and the picture is clear enough to serve as a template. The colors are best here:

I’ll never know what Saucy intended to knit with this wool, but I think she’d be deeply tickled by this project. We never did get to go pony trekking in the Scottish highlands together (although she did go with her son), but she loved the country and would certainly have approved of an historical Fair Isle recreation. It’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t have had something like this up her sleeve, since the colors are so exactly appropriate. And Scotland may well have been on her mind in the latter half of the ’60s, as our mutual favorite historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett were being published. It’s all I can do not to cast on a swatch cap right now, but I must be disciplined and finish my Shibui sweater first. And since the Quintessential Fair Isle may top out the list of my most Meaningful Handknits, being sort of sacred to the memory of someone I loved, one really mustn’t rush it anyway.

In the spirit of more regular posting, a previously undocumented FO: Lady’s Shooting Stockings. These were a long time coming. You last saw them here…

(Don’t try this at home, kids.)

… twelve thousand feet up a Rocky Mountain. These are already well-traveled socks, and I have every confidence that their adventures will continue in their new home with Jen. They were a birthday present earlier this month, and the completion of the second sock is really all I have to show for Socktoberfest this year. Really, it was more of a sweatery October. But here are the specs:

Gentlemen’s Shooting Stockings from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks

Trekking XXL in some long forgotten colorway, one skein

US #0 needles

I really thought these socks were for me. But Jen and I met over a sock exchange, and she’s such a good friend and such a masterful and inspiring knitter that I figured it wasn’t by accident that her birthday coincided with the finishing of Sock the Second. She’s got size 9 feet, like me, and she’d already admired them during our carpools together. (Get thee a knitting carpool buddy if you possibly can.) So off they went to her, and now I’m down to only two mateless swingin’ single socks. I’ve been very good and haven’t started any new ones, but I did buy Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters with my sample-knitting money today, and I am awfully curious to try out her wild new ideas. Ms. Bordhi hangs her hat in my hometown, so it’s always a good chuckle to see familiar people and circumstances turn up in her books. She designs socks to commemorate a midnight ride on the sheriff’s boat for her grandson’s birth; I nearly debuted on a little Cessna because the pilot was on his way to the wrong mainland airfield. Ah, island life. I do miss it.

I also miss knitting socks. There’s something so satisfying in seeing them take shape, and there’s very little fiddling with sizes and math and gauge to make them turn out right, unlike my up-against-the-deadline Shibui sweater. Just pleasurable knitting, round and round, with a stitch pattern for interest, and those exquisite wee needles making a beautiful fabric. Call me perverse, but I love my #0’s.

Up next: more finished objects! Yay! And an epic project is born…

Gah! Ten days gone without a post! Granted, I’ve been on the road, and I don’t travel with a laptop because I haven’t had a working battery in about eight years. But every now and then unexpected friends and relations reveal themselves as readers here, and it makes me remember that distant folks I love do check up on me in this space. And that makes me want to be a better, more consistent poster. This blog needs to become something more than it is now: I hardly know what, but I’m giving it some thought. I never remember when my blogiversary (should that be anniblogary?) is, but Blue Garter will enter its third year in the next few months. I want it to have more knitting content – more patterns, a proper gallery of finished handknits – but I want it to have more personal content, too. I want to improve the quality of the writing. I’ve meant to do these things for a long time, and my several jobs and mountain of knitting projects tend to interfere, but I know I could make more productive use of the time I do have. None of this, however, is your problem. So let’s forget the soul-searching for now and cut straight to the good stuff: squishy little edible people in handknits.

Hello. I am seven weeks old. My new hat is way too big for me.

And, dudes, I’m pretty sure my blankie is 100% acrylic.

Good thing I live across the street from someone who finds me irresistible and will knit me merino sweaters as fast as I can spoil them with bodily fluids and mashed banana. 

The way the knitting is going these days, I ought to consider changing the blog handle to Blue Ribbing. Where did all this blue wool come from, you might understandably wonder? I’ve been holding out on you, I’m afraid. So let me introduce you:

On the right, in the ice blue: a new sweater design for Shibui. I can’t give you all the details yet, but what you’re looking at here is the torso, worked in Merino Kid. The upper part and the sleeves are in Sock in the same color. Cross your fingers for me that it all comes together as neatly as it works in my head and sketchbook.

In the middle: most of the back of a pullover, also my own design, in Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed. It looks like a lot of work, but it’s been flying along beautifully. And I’ve just joined the third ball, so I’m getting much better mileage out of this stuff than I expected.

The blue blob on top: Ana hat kit from Fleece Artist and Perl Grey. It’s a sample for Knit/Purl, a sort of hat cum ‘do-rag. I’d like to draw your attention to the last line of the instructions — and I quote: “wear your bandana K or P side out / boho chic 4 ever”

I couldn’t make this stuff up, people. But let’s talk about the yarn for a moment. Fleece Artist Woolie Silk 3-Ply. 65% wool, 35% silk, DK weight. Often I find that wool/silk blends, while beautiful and lustrous, feel a little dead on the needles. It’s the silk: no liveliness. But Woolie Silk seems to have gotten the blend just right; its 3-ply construction is tightly spun, and the hand is pleasantly wooly, but you still get a wink and glimmer from the silk. The stitches leap from needle to needle like so many chamois bounding over an Alp. The knitting is fast and smooth, and I found myself tearing through the stockinet rows as quickly as I’ve ever knit in my life. I also began to drool at the thought of a whole sweater in this stuff. I can’t wait to see what colors we’ll be carrying in the store.

And no attempt to catalog the works in progress would be complete without an appearance from You Know Who:

Felis interruptus: Mingus being Mingus

That’s all for now, folks. Someone needs to pack her bags for an obscenely early flight to… Boston! For… another wedding! And I haven’t even shown you what I got at A Good Yarn the last time I was there…