Staycation

I have a case of the "o-woe-is-me's" because my fam went to the lake and I stayed home.  It's really only a superficial case because while I miss their guts, I know that my decision to stay home was an unusual combination of hedonism and self-discipline.  How can this be?  Because I am knitting my butt off, not to put too fine a point on it (even managed to button up a whole pattern, sample and all - yeah, it was two weeks later than I planned, but still...).  And also because I am luxuriating in the uncommon stillness of the house.  An eerie quietude that gave me the willies pretty quick, and caused me to tune in to the Nightly Business Report on PBS, just to break up the roar in my head.  So while Jim Lehrer is a real Dreamboat, he's only white noise to me tonight, because I discovered a way cool trick.  Okay, I didn't discover it, so much as attempt it for the first time, but I am still pretty jazzed that it worked just like all the books said it would:

So the trick is this:  If you change needle sizes, you can get really useful gauge changes that cause things to have shapes that totally look like they were on purpose.  Yeah, I know:  That's only like rule number 3 of knitting (the first 2 are: 1. Get some String-Like Substance, and 2. Throw the cat/laundry/spouse off the Comfortable Chair) but sometimes I go back and make friends with the basics after missing the point, say, a kajillion times.  This is one of those junctures, and I am totally blissed out.  See the curviness on that neckline?  Wicked!  And I didn't even have to throttle block it into submission!

In case you are like me and called in sick/bored/hungover on that day at Knitting School, I will outline the technique in a technical but impressive fashion; to wit:

The top edge of this neckband was worked on a size 1, the middle three rows on a 2, and the last three rows on a 4.

Then, just to be a total sassy-pants, I did the bind off with a 5, in case the excitement over my impending success caused me to tighten up my tension and wreck the whole thing.

Okay, here's a sneak peek at the right side, just so I don't forget how to take pictures of the fronts of things.

I held the completed project up to the TV to show Jim Lehrer, but he didn't seem too impressed.  One great thing about my family is that they can't knit as well as me, so they always act super-impressed when I finish things.  Evidently the esteemed Mr. Lehrer is totally bored by my needle-size-changing-gauge feats, because he just went droning on about the Middle East when I showed him.  I am totally unappreciated in my living room.  So much for hedonism.  
 

One Sleeve, Two Sleeve, Watch Me Knit a New Sleeve

Here is the elder of two sibling sleeves.  Actually, it's the wrong side of the elder of two sibling sleeves.  I am showing it this way for two compelling reasons:

1.    I think the "wrong" sides of things are really interesting:  Who's to say my wrong side isn't somebody else's right side?  It's like the difference between Flowers and Weeds.  Ask a child which is which and they will surprise you...

2.    This is supposed to be a titillating sneak preview, not a full-frontal sleeve expose', otherwise you would just read my blog and not buy my book.  Or so the theory goes.

I suffer from clinical bouts of Second Sleeve Syndrome.  It's the same malady that keeps me becoming a respectable sock knitter.  The crushing realization that I have to start all over again tends to suck a lot of the joy out of the completion of the first unit for me.

Here's a closeup of some groovy floats.  They don't call it "Stranded Color Work" for nothin - once you have the first sleeve done, you are marooned on the Island of the Second Sleeve until you gain the fortitude to either wait for your rescue or swim to safety.

Swimming to Safety:  Here's the hem facing of the second sleeve.  Yeah, sure I started, but it's a long way to the armhole.  The thing in the foreground is my stitch marker that fell off.

The body of this little gem is all done, so I have no excuse not to wail all the way up the sleeve and have it all over with.  This is also a benchmark project:  The last of 5 cardigans in my book.  Lots of people have stopped to talk to me as I worked on it in public, which I take to be a good sign.  Of course, it could be just the screaming green wool that I'm using for the main color (of the outside, that is).  It's a perfect example of my trademark subtlety and restraint.  Kinda like a freight train at a prayer meeting.

Lost in Translation

I was happily minding my own business two days ago.  I was not mining my subconscious for Great Ideas.  I was not daydreaming, free-associating, brainstorming, or otherwise soliciting the Muses for inspiration.  In fact, I was just working out what would be a nice secondary border to accompany those birds that are perching around the hem my current sweater.  I didn't want a smaller version of what I had already done, nor did I want to reproduce some part of the previous combination. 

That's when the Uninvited Idea barged in.  I tried to get U.I. to lay back down quietly in the background.  I asked it to wait its turn, hold on for a time when I was not already involved in active problem-solving.  You see, the Uninvited Idea did not have anything to do with the secondary border issue I was trying to puzzle out, and while it was interesting, and even tempting to spend a little time with U.I., I did not see how it was going to get me any closer to solving my accent border conundrum.  U.I. refused to listen to me, however, and went clattering around in my head, banging on the pots and pans I normally leave lying around the joint to catch inspiration drops as they fall (might need that later).  U.I. pounded on the ceiling, demanding attention, until I had to sit down with graph paper and a pencil, of all things, to deal with it.  Just a little attention, I reasoned, and the Uninvited Idea will quiet down and leave me alone.  U.I. was too big to fit into the drawing program I usually use, so there I was, all low-techy with scribbles and paper, and kind of annoyed that I was not fixing my border problem.  And that's when I realized that the Uninvited Idea WAS the fix for my border problem.  All I had to do was translate a phrase from English to Norwegian.

I don't speak Norwegian.  Not even the lyrics to Take On Me, which are in English.  For that matter, I don't claim to have more than a feeble purchase on my native tongue.  So I did what any technicious 21st-century doofus does and went Googling for a translation in the Internets.  Trouble with the Internets is they don't always (ever?) agree on anything.  The Norwegian equivalent to "pining", it turns out, is more like "wish".  Which is not at all appropriate, according to the friend-of-a-friend-of a 14th cousin twice removed who was able to respond to my e-mailed plea for help.  No, instead of "wish", I needed "yearn" or "long" since there is no such thing as "pining" in Norway (lucky buncha Scandinavians if you ask me).  Okay, I reasoned, each step brought me closer to using the Uninvited Idea to resolve what had by this time grown from a little border problem to a full-blown Border Skirmish.  And then there was the matter of the 3 or 4 other words in my phrase that had still to be addressed, in terms of gender, tense, and state of being.  Did I mention that the only person I even sort-of know who can speak Norwegian was out of the country?  Turns out she's in Norway, of all places.

With the help of my new friend-of-a, I think I have a reasonable adaptation (Like I would know if I didn't?).  At the very least, I can feel confident that I used every single resource (sorry, everyone I called begging for information) at my disposal, and several that were not.

I think you will like the way it turned out, and I really wish I could do show and tell for you now.  For the time being, I will leave you with this, and hope you like it when you see it in the book:

"Lengter etter fjordene"...