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.

How about a little detail?

Love the pattern, hate the yarn. I tell you truly that I will never ever use Crystal Palace’s Breeze again as long as I live. Not even if they were giving the stuff away. Here’s why:

• Discolors when you look at it crooked.*
• The finished fabric is stiff and doesn’t drape well.
• Splity.
• It is plied with a wicked twist that causes an occasional spate of awkward-looking stitches. Yes, I know that you can counteract this by knitting off of the ball backwards or some other wierdness. But at these prices, should you have to?

Any one of these qualities is a Deal Breaker for me. Taken together, this yarn has earned a spot right next to Wildflower DK on the Yarns Emily Hates List of Infamy. It’s not a very long list. I tend to love yarn.

I also finished up the Yoga Mat Bag from that Target kit!

See how much I can get done when I have the time?

I’ve also got a full length shot. Doesn’t the lime green look great with my turquoise shorts? I’ll get it in the mail to you quickly, Darling Sister. I bet it’s just what you wanted!

*This sweater is a remake of a green one that did some crazy fading. I had never even worn it! The swatch faded (which should have been my first clue about what would happen to the finished product). I’ve never had that happen before – or even anything close. I contacted the manufacturer to try and figure out what was wrong. After quite a run around, I ended up sending the sweater (with swatches and leftover yarn) to them. They sent me a new batch of yarn. I didn’t blog about this the first time because I didn’t want to run around screaming and defaming anybody. Not that I have that kind of Pied Piper Quality, but I take reccomendations from other bloggers seriously. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was me. Maybe I excrete something special that only affects Breeze. Plus, I am sure there are people out there who LOVE this yarn. There are lots of colors and it does have a cushier hand than many cottons. So, I tried again. There are already a couple of spots on the new sweater that are discoloring to purple. So far, the spots are in the seams so I may get to wear Remembering Honey at least once this time around…

We’re back! When taken as a whole, the week of SUUSI was a Great Success. We only had five bandaids, two bonked heads, one maintenance man who wanted to use a wet vac by the nursery, two no-show staffers, no vegetarian options at Friday’s picnic (not our fault), an incomplete t-shirt order, and one kid who thought it would be fun to hang from a dumpster truck WHILE IT WAS MOVING. I got very little sleep and did even less knitting.

Since we’ve been home I have swatched for Empire Dreams.

I heart Cotton Fleece.

I’ve got the swatches blocking alongside Remembering Honey – I finally finished that side seam.

I hate it when I have to use the flash. Everything looks so ugly.

The yoga bag is about like it was before I left. I am going to work on it a little more today while I catch up on all of the TV we missed list week. There is just No Time to watch the news at SUUSI – we did check the Tropical Update until Wednesday. After Wednesday, we figured no storms could get to Bay Minette before we got home, and stopped paying attention. Thank you for all of the good thoughts that created weather patterns leading AWAY from here.

The baby birds have gone. I regret missing their flight lessons. I am sure the cats enjoyed it tremendously (didn’t miss a second!) and that gives me some consolation. Kitty Boo has been given the name “Lucy.” After First Lady Lucy Hayes. This means we get to keep her. Which is great because we love her (she is wedged behind me in the chair – I have to sit on the very edge), but not great because I am beginning to think that we have Too Many Cats. I am trying to conteract the sick feeling in my stomach by reminding myself that we know someone who has eleven. She always looks so tired…

PS I am a Big Fan of the space program!

We got our power back this afternoon! Michael made a pitiful call to the phone company (after we received three automated calls to tell us our power was back) about how we didn’t want to be forgotten again (Ivan). So the Power Guys came over and lit us up. I heart Power Guys! I want to hug every one I see! Becky, I’m sure they are coming to light you up soon! Want to see the reason our power was out?

That’s the only tree we lost. Of course.

Not having power for MUCH longer that any of our neighbors seems to be our Hurricane Tradition. Our only other storm damage (aside from the usual limbs and leaves) was this disturbing leak.

Since Dennis came ashore in the daylight, and we had the western side (which means that all our wind was NNE)*, we got to watch the whole thing from the front room windows. Which was pretty cool. The cats lined up in the windows and Angus kept begging to go out. Kitty Boo slept through almost everything. Elizabeth’s yoga bag doubled in size.

The baby birds and their mom weathered the storm just fine. You can see their nest much better than before, and I am not sure that my Fluffy Ruffle Fern is going to recover, but mom and all four babies are just fine.

Now, I want to harness all of your prayers and well-wishes and focus them on another common goal: TS Emily and her little wanna-be buddies. We here on the Northern Gulf Coast would like a break. We would like them all to go to an uninhabited area of Mexico for a little while. At least until I get home from camp.

*That little jiggle straight North really lessened the impact for Bay Minette. The sudden track change combined with the compactness of the most intense winds caused us to miss the worst of it by about 15 miles. Atmore, AL (about 20 miles from us) took a beating instead. This is just too sad – they had tornados during Ivan and had a really rough time afterwards.