In the midst of another afternoon of work, laundry, nose-blowing, and tea-swigging, I noticed some pretty light in our bedroom. I threw on a skirt, bundled my scraggly hair into an arrangement that could sort of bear passing scrutiny from one angle, swept all the magazines off the top of the dog crate, prodded my husband out of bed, and thrust the camera at him. Because a gal’s got to take a chance to shoot a new sweater when she can. We didn’t even get to a pose that would show you the back before Mr. G had to croak his way through a business call and I had to pick up our daughter from school, so you won’t have seen the last of this cardigan, but for now… it’s something, anyway.

This is the Mitered Cardigan from Knit One Knit All, the new compilation of previously unpublished Elizabeth Zimmermann designs in garter stitch. The yarn is Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 in a grey that makes me think of gulls. It came accidentally to the knitting shop where I used to work and the owner let me have it at cost rather than paying to ship it back; it’s been resting in my stash ever since. It was lovely to knit and I’ve still got several skeins left to play with.

Like so many of the wild and wooly ideas born of EZ’s fertile brain, this cardigan is unique. One knits a long strip of garter stitch, turning corners according to the instructions, to construct a sort of cardigan frame. Then one fills in the torso and adds sleeves. It’s not for beginners, those who fear math, or those who shun gauge swatches. As experienced as a knitter as I am, and as careful as I thought my calculations were, my sweater wound up about two inches shorter than I’d expected because I didn’t take the time to make a swatch that really mirrored the construction of the sweater. If you want to make this yourself, I encourage you to first knit an actual mitered corner in garter stitch, pick up stitches along one interior edge of it, and then work stockinet back and forth, saddling those stitches to the vertical edge of the garter strip. Only by measuring the resulting compression of the garter stitch will you be able to get the fronts of your cardigan the length you want them. And it’s all or nothing with this sweater — there’s no way of employing your usual tricks to solve fit problems after the fact. You’ll pretty much have to rip the whole thing if you don’t get it right the first time, or at least be willing to chop it into pieces and graft them back together with fabric added or removed as necessary.

When I started knitting last summer, I had my own bright ideas about improving the fit that weren’t entirely well advised. I added too much waist shaping, for one. Well, I added my usual amount of waist shaping, but my gauge was tighter than what I’d swatched; the result was too snug a fit at the waist. And then I went and grew a pregnant tummy, so it will be six or seven more months before I’ll know whether I can actually button my cardigan all the way down. I also thought I’d get a little fancy with some extra fabric at the bust and then a pleat to gather it back in. The extra fabric was a good idea; I’m not crazy about the pleat, which isn’t really big enough to look like more than a pucker. I’ll do that differently next time. I love everything about the fit of the sleeves, though.

The sweater looks pretty much identical in all the pictures we took, so it wasn’t a very successful effort as a documentary of things knitted. (It also hasn’t been blocked. Oops. I promise the fabric will be smoother next time you see it.) But just after we staged this impromptu shoot, my friend Kristen began writing a series on the male gaze in knitwear photography, and from that perspective I find scrolling through our pictures rather intriguing. The post I’ve linked is about the spouse as photographer — apropos for me because hardly anyone else takes pictures of me. The top photograph is a view of myself I never see. But my husband must see it all the time as I’m concentrating on a set of complicated stitches, reading a book, working at the computer, interacting with our small child… I suspect I spend a great deal of my time gazing downward. Is my brow usually more furrowed? Do I look less tranquil? Very likely. The next snap is one I wouldn’t post unless I were thinking about what the camera captures, but it’s the girl I see in the mirror these days: two months of illness and two trimesters’ worth of weariness in the shadowed eyes, a weak smile that doesn’t reach beyond the lips. Her face isn’t even quite in focus, although the sweater is — truth inadvertently revealed by a fixed-length lens. This girl is spread thin and not living fully into herself. I’d like to see the back of her as soon as possible.

In the presence of a camera held my someone other than my husband, I imagine I’d have been artificially perky, more conscious of the self I was presenting, more eager to please the viewer.

This is the one I’d choose as the most flattering presentation of myself — letting the light make the best of my cheeks, my brow, my mouth, the downcast gaze hiding those ugly shadows and puffy lids and projecting poise and serenity too often absent in my life as a young mother. And then there’s this one, which is my favorite…

… because there’s more of me in it. It was taken before the two where I’m looking down but after the tighter, tireder shot. I’m about to say something tart to my husband, who’s just told me my belly looks distracting and I need to cover it with my hands and also put my shoulders back, which I’m going to do because he’s right even if he isn’t always tactful. The flare in my nostrils and the tightening of my lips and jaw rather spoil me as any sort of inviting picture of womanhood, but they’re true. And because my husband-photographer loves me in spite of my broad saucy streak, he gets to capture that.

And it’s probably not inappropriate to wear a saucy expression while modeling an Elizabeth Zimmermann sweater… I like to imagine that great lady could answer back with the best of them when the occasion required. No one who wasn’t a little bit flippant could have turned the knitting world on its head as she did. Mitered Cardigan being an accurate but unpoetic name, I’m calling mine Heart Elizabeth. Because I do. In sickness and in health.

… but I, apparently, just want a shot of pure color.

I went to the Madrona retreat last month with the goal of finding a non-Merino DK wool for Kate Davies’s Deco cardigan. Browsing the websites of vendors in advance, I cast my eye on Sweetgrass Wool’s Mountain Silk, a Targhee/silk blend that looked promising. I first gravitated to the lichen and straw shades — a bright leaf-colored cardigan would be just the thing for the season. But I found myself unable to ignore a warm pinky orange, which is not in my usual palette at all. I’m not even sure it’s a color I could wear, but I thought I’d check it out at the marketplace and make a decision there. Sadly, it turned out to be much more pink than orange, and I was surprised to find I really had my heart set on a hot orangey red. I actually walked clear ’round the market afterward thinking maybe I just wouldn’t buy anything this year. (Go ahead, laugh.) Then I saw them: loose hanging skeins of the most vivid coral red, a flash of scarlet peeping out from a forest of muted earth tones, like cardinals in the conifers. They were an order of magnitude brighter than anything I’d pictured adding to my stash or to my closet. They were a color my grandmother would have chosen. They were perfect. “They’re probably Merino,” I sighed to myself. They weren’t. They are Polwarth wool with a bit of silk, and home they came with me from the Artful Ewe booth. (I’d link their website, but there’s no yarn to be seen there. Visit if you find yourself in Port Gamble, Washington some weekend, though. I mean to.)  The Polwarth sheep is, to be fair, three-quarters Saxon Merino in its ancestry, but includes Lincoln genes to add stoutness and luster. This yarn, called Argentina, is soft and svelte and springy, but whispers of a sturdier character as you knit. Particularly at the tight gauge Kate dictates in this pattern, I expect it to wear very nicely.

My beginnings have grown far past the attractive slip-stitch hem you see here. Non-knitters may now tune out if they haven’t already: I’m about to get really geeky and technical. A note on working this stitch motif, if you’re thinking about making this cardigan yourself: I found I was having trouble with “rowing out” in my reverse stockinet stitches immediately left of the slipped columns. The strand behind the slipped stitch doesn’t provide enough tension on the first of the purl stitches to hold it in shape, so it loosens up and crowds its upstairs neighbor, and your knitting appears to divide itself into bands of two rows. This is a not a sweater I mean to wear to the dog park, if you know what I mean. I want it to look its absolute best so it can class up my wardrobe. So the rowing out was bugging me when I swatched. But I found I could solve it entirely by wrapping the yarn clockwise for the first of the purl stitches. This maneuver uses less yarn, so it winds up adding the necessary tension to even out that stitch. It also twists the mount of the stitch, so you must knit it through the back leg on the return row, but that’s no extra effort. The near cousin of this problem came to visit once I was out of the hem section; for the body of the cardigan the slipped column is flanked to the left by a knit stitch. You don’t see the bands as you do on the purl side; instead you get an uneven column of V’s BIGsmallBIGsmall up the work. It’s just as unsightly and detracts from the clean line of the slipped stitch. I’m not sure if the wrong-way wrap trick would solve it for a knit stitch — it might well — but it’s a more awkward maneuver for a thrower like me and would also involve purling through the back on the return row, which I don’t believe is anyone’s favorite. My solution is to slip and knit as usual on the front side of the work, but then on the purl side to lift the strand onto the left needle and work it together with the slipped stitch. There, now, that’s far more than you wanted to know. But maybe it will help some frustrated perfectionist out there…

I’m adding a wee bit of length to this cardigan because 12.5″ from hem to underarm sounds really, really short for my long torso, but I’m worried about running out of yarn, so I’m going to let it be a more cropped style than I usually wear. That’s an excuse to look for some cute, high-waisted, vintage dresses like the ones Kate seems to have in her closet, right? Oh, and apparently this poppy red is some kind of Color of the Year, which I totally didn’t know when I chose it. I feel so trendy in spite of myself.

Bronchitis. Sinusitis. Busted ribs from so much coughing. Stomach virus. That’s been our existence since January. This morning Mr. G fell down the stairs and simultaneously bumped his head on the door frame, which pretty much sums it all up. I have a new sweater and a new hat to show you, but putting my face within reach of a camera has seemed like a laughably poor idea. I think we are all finally on the mend, but outside there’s steady rain, and the photographer is still in bed with his cough and sore muscles anyway. So today you get Ada in her comical (but very effective) rain suit.

Apparently we’re not quite a size 2T yet. But getting another year’s wear out of this will be no bad thing. It’s the perfect protection for those times when you need to plop down on the wet sidewalk and exclaim over a “wom” braving the trek across to the dirt on the other side. (Then Mama picks it up and we admire its pinky-brown squiggliness before Ada directs its careful placement in the “gwass,” safe from wheels and boots.) The rain suit is made by a company called Tuffo, if you’re interested.

Speaking of boots, my girl is thrilled to have a pair she can put on by herself. She clomps around the house in them just because she can. I’m delighted her feet finally grew big enough to fit the smallest size. It took her a little while to get accustomed to the little heel on these; she looked just like John Wayne climbing off his horse and swaggering into a saloon the first few times she tried to walk in them.

The long soak of the Northwest winter isn’t over yet, but there are daffodils starting and fat buds burgeoning on the magnolias. The hellebores are at their plum-and-ivory best. The red currant is unfurling its new leaves and fountaining pink blossoms at once. Spring is so close we can smell it.

It’s hard to believe that this new season will be capped with the arrival of another child in our family. Pregnancy is a wondrous time (and I’m fortunate that it’s pleasurable for me, health wise), but it’s very different when there’s a first baby already absorbing all the focus and energy you can give. Carrying Ada, I could turn inward and revel in every fluttering movement, submerge in my imaginings of who she’d be and who we’d become as a family of three. The new baby seems to sense already that there’s competition for Mama’s attention. This child knows kung fu. Ada kept her head down and pranced back and forth across my abdomen; this baby rolls and flips and unleashes breathtaking flurries of sharp blows. The common response when I tell people this is, “Oh, it must be a boy!” I have to raise my eyebrows at that. If there were any scientific evidence that boys are more active in the womb, wouldn’t we all have read about it? And whence this notion that boys are more active at all? I work at an elementary school. I watch the children at recess. Yes, boys are generally the ones playing football and soccer. But the girls are fearless and nimble as monkeys leaping across the bars or practicing flips and cartwheels, and I see both sexes racing across the grounds in games of Tag or goodness knows what imaginative play. I ran as swiftly and climbed as high and played as hard as anyone when I was a child. Three more months will tell who this baby is; I’m not making any judgments in advance. But I’m trying to steal moments to soak in his or her lively presence.

This rose and a pitcherful of its friends grew outside my house. In January.

There aren’t many patterns I’ve knit three times, but when you need a pretty little cardigan for a wee girl, it’s hard to go wrong with Elizabeth Zimmermann’s gull lace and garter. This latest incarnation of the Baby Sweater on Two Needles from Knitter’s Almanac is for a baby born in Costa Rica last October, which shows you just how back-logged I am on knitting for my friends’ children. Thank goodness it blocked out like a champ — I thought I’d be lucky if a four-month-old could be stuffed into it for as long as a week, but now it looks like it might fit her next fall!

This yarn is Deep Stash. In fact, in stash terms, it basically dates from the paleolithic. It is so old the internet doesn’t know it ever existed. (Okay, a few other knitters on Ravelry have some, but nothing comes up on Google so I haven’t been able to find out just how ancient it is.) I inherited it from my mother-in-law, and I’d been doubting whether I’d ever use it — cotton and viscose blends are not my cup of tea, and this one proved to be just as splitty and unpleasant on the needles as I’d foreseen. But the yarn, made by Crystal Palace, is called Helena and so is the baby. How could I resist? And I have to admit the finished cardigan is pretty charming in that antique ivory, with the vintage buttons that match so perfectly…

(What I’m going to do with the other seven balls, I have no idea. They’re a brighter white than the three I used here. If shiny, splitty cotton-viscose yarn really floats your boat, drop me a line and I’ll mail them to you.)