The right front of Elspeth went much better than the back. This is probably because I charted the whole thing.

The best part is that I made it with Sharpie which bleeds through paper. This way, when I turn it over, I have a chart for the left side too! Genius I tell you. Except that in spite of double checking, I still managed to make a mistake in the pattern. The corrections are shown in turquoise.

Lucy has been a big help with Elspeth. I don’t know how I’ve managed to knit anything without her.

We also been keping an eye on the weather.

I am a big fan of NOAA

It looks like we’ve lucked out this time. We’re still in the Cone of Probability (and here are some fun charts to look at. I am especially fond of the Strike Probability.) but Katrina appears much more interested in Louisiana this time. It all depends on how soon she turns North. The Hurricane guys are more confident about this projection (the steering currents aren’t very well defined) which is better for us but bad for New Orleans: being below sea-level complicates things.

This is what Elspeth looks like moments before she is ripped back to the arm holes.

I have had the worst time deciding when to stop making pattern repeats on the raglan armholes. I started by leaving them out if there wasn’t going to be room to make a complete slanty. But it looked like I had left something out. So I ripped. After studing the picture, I decided to put as much as would fit. But it looked like a mistake when there was only one YO. So I ripped. Finally, I settled on: If at least half of the pattern will fit, that is, at least two YOs neither of which interferes with the raglan decreases, I will put it in. Then I had to rip because I counted wrong. And one of the cats (I’m not naming any names. She knows who she is.) bit my yarn in half. Twice. AND they took my red scissors. They were on the table and now I can’t find them anywhere. I expect them to turn up in the dog’s bed in an attempt to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit. I finally finished Elspeth’s back yesterday.

At my present rate, I should be finished with this tiny, little jacket by late September. *weeping* That does not include the time I will need to spend persuading my mom to put the crochetted edging on for me. I forgot about the stupid edging. *gnashing of teeth* I suppose this is fine. It’s not like I’ve finished the dress I wanted to wear it with. I’ve gotten to a point where I need to turn on the iron. But when I turn on the iron, I need to be prepared to iron the pile of clean clothes that is waiting to be ironed and hung up. And I just don’t want to.

Want to see something else sad?

I like the new place mats, though.

Empire Dreams has been reduced to the sum of its parts. I wasn’t happy with the legnth before or after the place to put the bow. Since I need to legnthen it in both places and the bottom has that little scalloped edge (otherwise I could have gone back to the tie place and just made it longer and then added to the bottom) I decided to pull it all out. Naturally, I wasn’t able to make this decision until after I had sewn it all together. You haven’t really lived until you have un-seamed a sweater. As I ripped and pulled and wound and questioned what I was doing, I further justified my decision by telling myself that I didn’t really like how loose the gauge was and I should have made a smaller size and that maybe I wanted to put garter stitch on the bottom and leave out the tie all together. I’m not sure if I am going to remake the sweater in the book or change a bunch of stuff and just make a knit shirt to wear with my skirts. I’ve decided not to decide until i’ve finished Elspeth.

If the yarn for Michael’s cardigan comes first, I’ll be off the decision-making hook ’til next spring!

I finally managed to finish Tomato. It’s even got buttons!

With the width of the yarn and the simplicity of the pattern, I should have been finished days ago. I thought I was. Then as I was blocking the back, I noticed a YO that just wasn’t there. I didn’t pay as much attention to this “easy knit” as I should have. Plus, I was reading. Maybe I should stop doing that if the pattern isn’t straight stockinette.

There will be no reading with Elspeth! This pattern is WAY too complex - especially when you consider all the increasing on the front pieces! After a few false starts, I think that I have made a good beginning.

And I am about to make an ending of Empire Dreams. I added the neck band last night.

All it needs are seams! Which I should get to right after I put a casserole together for tonight. We usually eat miserably when Great Gran is out of town (she is still in Mary Esther) but tonight I am going to try to change all that. I am using a new recipe, so I can’t really say for certain that we won’t have a miserable meal. My backup plan is Bay Pizza. I’m thankful we live in town - Bay Pizza delivers!

I found my needles about ten minutes after we got here.

I forgot that Great Gran STILL hadn’t finished that Gatsby sweater she started last winter. She had pulled it out as part of her Bazaar Knitting.* She was planning to finish it and give it to the church to sell as part of the fundraiser. I nearly had a heart attack:

E: “But that’s good yarn! They won’t get back the amount of money you spent on just the yarn!”

G: “I’ll never wear it. It’s too bulky. I may as well give it to the church.”

E (pitifully): “But that’s really expensive yarn…”

Now I am the proud owner of (roughly) eight skeins of red Gatsby and Great Gran has gone to work on some plastic-canvas picture holders. Dinah is helping by keeping the box lid from blowing away. At present, the Gatsby is still in cardigan form, but I plan to unravel it and add it to my stash. Great Gran has made a ton of things for the Bazaar since she’s been down here.

Here we have a capelet, a belt/scarf, three pairs of baby booties and at least a dozen baby hats. Her current project is an afghan.

I retreived my #10s from the defunct cardigan. It turns out that I didn’t really need them after all: I had to go up a needle size (wierd for me) to get the gauge for Tomato. I made my swatches Wednesday evening and started the back Thursday morning. As of this moment, I have finished the back and one front.

I forgot to take a picture of the parts spread out. And since I am using M’s laptop, I don’t have time to take one now - he insists on “working” most of the day.

I should be finished with the second front by this point, but I have have been reading while knitting and that slows me down. Especially when I have to back track for mistakes. Well, really just one mistake. But I didn’t notice it until I got to the neck and had the wrong number of stitches. The book underneath Tomato is called Path of the Paddle. It’s all about canoeing techniques (which you could probably figure out from the title) and is quite good. We didn’t bring the canoe with us this time. This turned out to be a Good Decision; it’s rained for Two Solid Days. Good weather for knitting. As long as you don’t mind damp yarn.

*The sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church of Bay Minette received substantial roof damage and consequently a lot of water damage during Ivan. When they were inspecting the Ivan damage, they found substantial termite damage as well. The water heater also broke and caused a substantial ceiling collapse. They are going to have to take down the entire building and build a new one. Hence fundraisers like a yard sale this weekend and the Bazaar that will be held in October.

I worked my way through several movies (I liked Hitch and A Series of Unfortunate Events) and a lot of TiVo-recorded programs to bring you this:

The front and back of Empire Dream!

I’ve learned a new trick: if you make a row of *K2tog, YO* a little ways up from the bottom, when you fold the edge up to form a hem, it makes a neat little row of scallops! I want to use this on a cardigan button band - maybe I will try to design a sweater…

Ooooh. Ahhhh.

I love making things for myself, it all goes so quickly. It would have gone even more quickly if I hadn’t experienced some minor setbacks. The first one was when I realized (after 7 inches worth of knitting) that I had cast on the wrong number of stitches. The back went swimmingly after that. When I started the front with a new ball of yarn, I noticed a pink dot (five rows back). I ripped, cut out the offending dot, reattached the yarn and kept going. At this time I believed it to be a Random Event. An event that was possibly caused by a cat. A Gilmore Girls later, I noticed another pink dot (three rows back). I repeated the correction procedure. Then there was a black dot. I think my yarn must have gotten splashed with dye from another lot. There were two more pink dots and a black dot after that and I was very glad to finish that ball and start on another. I never would have even noticed the spots if it wasn’t for the light colored yarn.

Speaking of light colored yarns, we are running down to Mary Esther (my cousin is minding the girls) to visit Great Gran for a few days. It is a well-know fact that off-white is not a good color for Travel Knitting. Thus, after much internal debate, I’ve decided to take the makings of the Red Lace Vest in the 2005 Knit It! Which is apparently not available right now, I googled but Lion Brand was the only useful link.

I am making it in Tomato Red, just like in the picture.
From this day forth, we will call the sweater Tomato.

The only thing I don’t have is a button. I have such a hard time with buttons. The Must Have Cardigan still doesn’t have any. I hope to wear that sweater some day.

PS I hope to get Tomato’s gauge on 9s - I can’t seem to find my Denise 10s. I wish I could remember what I was knitting when last saw them.
PPS Thank y’all for all the kind comments about Honey! It’s nice to have a support group.