I’ve found that it’s particularly easy to soften your husband towards the idea of cafes au lait, brioches, and canelets if he’s spent the early hours of the morning helping you clean the house prior to the arrival of your entire family. He hardly even blinked when I suggested that the camera might accompany us for some retakes of Brigitte. So off we all went to St. Honore, which was hopping. Finally there was a hiccup in the stream of salivating customers, so we took these:

Brigitte, née Bergere de France Pull Ouvert, for the Tour de France Knit-along

Yarn: Bergereine, 50% wool, 50% cotton, 9+ skeins créole and 2 skeins gomme; The Fiber Co. Savannah, merino, cotton, and other natural goodies, 1 skein crimson

Needles: US #4 and #6

8-29 July 2007. . . a new land-speed record for sweater knitting by yours truly.

Modifications: Translated from the French, front cross reverse engineered from the (excellent) pattern photos after the written directions went up in smoke, back shaping altered to accommodate a full collar, new yarn substituted for the originally intended “curry” to make the sweater more wearable outside hunting season.

Impressions: I’m glad I gave this intriguing pattern a shot. It wore me out and my hands were sore for a week after I finished because I logged so many hours trying to make my end-of-Tour deadline. This sweater was a lot of work and probably would have taken me months to complete without the knitalong, but it seems to be pretty wearable. The bulk of the fabric and the torque of the zig-zag pattern made for rather hefty shoulders; I almost feel as if I ought to pad them out, 1940’s style. If I sort of tug and pat them into place, they’re not too bad. As much as the torsades (cables) were a pain with the interlocking yarns, I love the way they look.

I also love the effect of the twisted rib — too bad it’s such tortuous knitting for us throwers. Mr. G’s Fishtrap Aran was also essentially a whole mess of twisted rib. It seems I’m drawn to those snug, natty stitch columns, no matter how long it takes me to work them.

Speaking of tortuous knitting, next time I’ll reveal the big wedding stole plans. I think you’ll be impressed. Heck, I’ll be awfully impressed with myself if I can pull this one off by next May.

I try to keep this blog about the knitting, but sometimes the rest of life intrudes, in good ways and in not so good ways, and often in the two bound up inextricably. You see, Mr. G. is starting his own company, and has been pouring his soul and sanity and most of his waking hours and even many of his sleeping hours into the project since January. It’s a worthy business, designed to help people manage diabetes, because Mr. G has a lot of personal experience with the toll this disease can take and because he is the kind of person who always does what he can to make life better for others. The site won’t launch for another six weeks or so and he’s toiling away even as I type, but we needed a break. There was a lull in my schedule, so we packed up and went to the beach for a few days.

We took books and knitting and Mingus the cat. Now that we’ve turned the last page of Harry Potter, we needed something else to read together, and I proposed Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which Mr. G has never read. We made it all the way through The Golden Compass at the beach, tucking the paperback into a coat pocket (it’s always cold at the beach in Oregon) or my knitting bag to read in the coffee shop, while waiting for tables at restaurants, and during breathers on a beautiful hike. Mr. G is hooked and can often be heard to mutter threats at Mrs. Coulter even when we’re not reading.

I also cozied up with Elizabeth Zimmermann’s The Opinionated Knitter and particularly savored her journal entries about camping with the Old Man and KLINE the cat. KLINE, it turns out, was a much better traveler than Mingus. Poor Gus was spectacularly carsick coming and going, and if I’d taken any pictures of his miserable little face, ears at half mast, eyes pleading, drooling gobbets of slime by the pint as he clung to the bars of his traveling cage, I’d have PETA leaving bags of flaming poo on my doorstep. He loved galloping from one end of the beach house to the other and teetering along the ceiling beams, he thoroughly approved of the beds, and he was very content to be in our company, but I’m not sure the journey was worth it.

The car time aside, it was a perfect vacation. We saw a whole raft of harbor seals basking on the beach, elk tracks in the forest, rare butterflies, raptors, gulls galore, and all kinds of resplendent nature.  Our six-mile hike along Cascade Head, down through the Nature Conservancy land and back up again, was gorgeous (see links for pictures) — beautiful views of the dramatic coastline and back inland over the estuary to the misty hills. We watched movies — The Bourne Ultimatum on the big screen (sadly lacking in tasty villains… must rewatch Bourne the Second to salivate over Karl Urban) and the BBC miniseries Wives & Daughters, which I recommend to fans of Austen, The Forsyte Saga, et al., on the laptop DVD. I worked on an EZ February baby sweater for a little girl who’s supposed to arrive tomorrow, and finished the second sleeve of the Frost Flowers pullover.

Now it’s back to work, proofreading a manuscript, and then the family arrives on Friday. We’re having a party to celebrate my little brother’s engagement and his 25th birthday. Yep, I’m getting a new sister next May 24! And I couldn’t have picked a better one myself. She’s a knitter, too, and she’s already asked me to knit her a stole to wear on the big day, so we’ll be talking yarns and patterns this weekend. The wedding colors are lavender and green, so I’m hoping I can knit the stole in one of those rather than in white (how many white wedding stoles should a person really knit in one lifetime? At least two, I guess, if that’s what she wants…). If you’ve got suggestions for patterns, leave ’em in the comments. I want to hear your wedding handknits experiences and cautionary tales.

So, baby things. I started rummaging through the stash, trying to make decisions about what to cast on for the neighbors’ September sproglet. We know he’s coming with boy parts, and since the EZ February sweater with the gull pattern is a little on the lacy and feminine side, I’ve been thinking about substituting another pattern for the body. (Gull stitch is only a suggestion from EZ in the pattern; most folks have taken it as gospel and there’s nothing wrong with that. Check out the umpteen darling iterations on Zimmermania.) There are a couple of good candidates in the stash for this; the frontrunner is some Fly-Dyed Monarch Fly Super Sport Monarch (my vote for most redundant yarn name ever, but tasty stuff) in a handsome dark teal color. I’ve also been toying with the idea of knitting Wee Neighbor Lad a blanket. In the inheritance stash is an armful of venerable Reynolds Saucy cotton in a perfect little boy blue. When I investigated the sack o’ Saucy, I found this:

Behold, a sadly unfinished sweater back, adult woman size. Ah well, I thought, the style’s past its expiration date and I’m sure Mr. G’s mom has totally forgotten she ever knit it. I’ll rip it out if I run out of intact balls during the blanket knitting. (You may remember this is what I did for Mr. G’s Fishtrap Aran – I still have the better part of the back of its former incarnation lining a box the cat sleeps in.) But then I had a flash of inspiration – what if I folded it like this?

Sew the bottom together, insert a zipper up the middle from the hem rib to the arm holes, continue for a few more inches at the top with some shaping for a little hood, pick up sts in rib around the opening for his little face, and voila, a baby pod! It’s already 21″ long, which I understand to be about the length of your average newborn. And the pattern should be cute and quilty:

If this works out, I will feel insufferably clever.

Thanks to the most intensive four days of knitting I’ve ever logged, Brigitte was all done at 9:17 last night. That makes Mamie the winner – narrowly – over Elaine: congrats, Mamie, and thanks to everyone for playing along. I’m picking out some choice items to pop in the mail tomorrow morning. These little contests are fun, so I’ll have to dream up another before too long!

But without further ado, Brigitte:

I thought she’d feel most at home if she debuted in as French a setting as possible, and I always like the chance to consume some authentic pastries. So Mr. Garter and I whiled away an hour or two at St. Honore, boulangerie-patisserie extraordinaire. (I promise that chausson aux pommes was not as big as my head – it just looks that way in the photograph.) I made Monsieur mon mari take je ne sais pas combien des photos and then – quel horreur – some sort of “card error” ate all but two of them! This is the better of the survivors. Zut alors. I’m praying it was a random glitch, and not some kind of flash card death spasm. Won’t Mr. G be thrilled when he learns we need to do a reshoot? I’ll dangle a quiche for bait. Camera gods willing, I’ll have some better pictures in a day or two, and we’ll do the summary judgment then. (Who are the camera gods, incidentally? There’s sure to be a patron saint of photographers, at least… ah, it’s St. Veronica. I wonder if she takes burnt offerings?)
In the interval, a distraction:

Meet Signy. She’s my new Husqvarna Viking Emerald, a birthday gift from myself and from my grandmother. She and I are going to have all kinds of fun together, just as soon as I acquire a wee extension cord so I can reach her accelerator without stretching my leg halfway across the Fibordello.

And what to knit next? I’ve been so monogamous with Brigitte these three weeks that I hardly remember what else I was working on. (This is always dangerous: the siren song of new projects grows louder and more seductive in the wake of a major accomplishment, I find.) Back to the Frost Flowers, I guess. Interesting coincidence that its front construction produces a pullover that looks like a cardigan, much like Brigitte. And several friends are spawning offspring in the next month or two, so we all know that means baby sweaters. I recently stashed a little Dream in Color Smooshy Sock Yarn in the luscious In Vino Veritas (don’t think I’m missing the irony there, TdF KALfolk) colorway that I think will make a darling EZ February sweater for the coming girlbaby. Simple stockinet and quick knits for little people should be just the ticket to relax and soothe my crampy hands after the epic strain of finishing Brigitte.