pepperknit

Perhaps the most self-indulgent eye candy friday of all, but it actually has some knitting content, and most eye candys don’t. Check it out: My mom knit the sweater I’m wearing! Yes, this is a photo of me. It was my own idea to push up the cuffs so high, she tells me (I have zero recollection of this). I’m about 4 1/2 years old here; the photo was taken–or rather, developed–in July 1982. I just love the colors in this shot.

Edited to add: I just realized that this shot is totally Project Spectrum appropriate!

Thanks for all the Leyburn love! The recipient was thrilled, and she is as excited as I am that others want to make the socks as well. Those of you who’ve encouraged me to submit some patterns have definitely got me thinking; this means I can’t show you what’s on the needles right now (and is practically an FO), so I ought to get knittin’ on something else in the meantime that I can show. But today is Eye Candy Friday. A Project Spectrum-worthy entry, too! I took these last Saturday, when the weather was starting to get warm and feel like spring. Tamar and I ate lunch in the park and took a long walk; it was one of those excellent New York afternoons.

Project Spectrum-style:

I’m going to just go ahead and post my Project Spectrum post for July now, even though the month is only half over. Because there’s no way I’m going to discover any purple or even knit with it. It’s not that I dislike purple, don’t get me wrong. It’s a perfectly nice color. But I’ve discovered that it’s practically nonexistent in my life.

I’m sitting here on our first floor, a long room that is living room, dining room, and kitchen. This is our primary living space. I spend probably 99% of my waking at-home time in this space. I’m looking around . . . looking . . . no. No purple. Wait! the spine of that Moosewood Cookbook is purple (New Classics). I never realized that this color was so absent for me.

So I looked through all my old photos. I had to go back to my trip to Taiwan from more than a year ago, to a trip to New York in April, and my time down the shore last summer.

Sorry purple. I tried!

(I love love love my photo of the table of amethysts; this was in the Jade Market in Taipei. You can pick a size/shape of stone and tell them you want a strand of whatever length and they’ll make it for you. I took another photo of pearls all layed out like that, too. See that photo here.)

I kind of can’t believe June is over. No more noticing blue things around town for ProjectSpectrum!

What’s next month? Purple? Oh, crap.

I’m so happy it’s finally May, and the Project Spectrum color is green! My life is exploding with green. Orange and yellow made for a really tough month—it was a real challenge to find those colors in my world. Green, however, could not be any easier.

From the cushions on the couch to my work bag and nalgene bottle (even the bookshelf that I painted!), green is one of my main life colors. Heck, it’s even the color of my dishtowels (no photo of those) and the undies I’m wearing today (ditto).

I once went on vacation for two weeks in August, and I asked a coworker if he could stop by to water my plants once or twice. He said no problem. When I got back the first thing he said was, “My god! I came over to water your plants, and every time I turned around there was another one to water! Your apartment isn’t even that big!” Since then, the boy and I have moved into a far larger apartment and combined houseplants—plus bought more! This is a miniscule sample—there are at least a dozen more scattered around the house.

It seems a cheat to just take photos of trees and plants that are obviously green, but they’re just bursting with color right now. It was kind of gloomy today, which made the greens that much better. See the rest of my green photos here.

The best green thing in my house is this painting, made by a friend in high school:

He was my boyfriend’s best friend and, independently, a very good friend of mine. I was hanging out at his house one day and admired the painting. He immediately gave it to me. Inscribed on the back is: “To a woman I will never forget and will always love.” He was such a good guy, and we just recently go back in touch with him. I take comfort in his inscription, and this painting is always the first thing to go up on a wall in a new place.

In other green news, a package arrived today!

That’s Wool of the Andes in Fern to redo the Sunrise Circle Jacket, Wool of the Andes in Chocolate to make myself a Sunrise (I can only hope it’s as good as KnitAnnie’s), some Essential sock yarn in green to make socks for an old friend, and some Color Your Own sock yarn for Kool Aid experimenting!

There’s also a size 1 Addi circular in the box; it was all I could do to keep from casting on for socks during the middle of the day!

After finishing Kiri, I had a little PPD: post-project depression. I didn’t want to knit anything else. But, of course, I had a baby to knit for–our friend BK’s baby shower was Saturday, so I whipped up (if by “whipped up” I mean took an inordinately long time, compared with my speed on other projects) a Nautie for the upcoming baby girl.

BK and his wife live in Virginia, and the boy and I were already planning a brief trip to Columbia, so we went to the baby shower first. It was pouring rain the whole way down, but I happily finished up Nautie’s face in the car. I also went a little crazy with the photos. I got a bit bored being in the car for so long . . . [new glasses!]

Pattern: Nautie, from Knitty
Yarn: Knit Picks’ Crayon in Project Spectrum yellow and orange
Needles: Addi Turbo circs size 5
Started: Sunday, April 15
Finished: Saturday, April 22 (in the car, just about an hour before arriving at the party)
Recipient: Baby girl of high school friend BK, due May 20
Notes: I flubbed the pattern at first–it’s a 4-row pattern, but in my brain I made it 5, so the distance between increases on the inside of the shell are longer than they’re supposed to be. This made Nautie bigger, but that’s fine with me. He tucked into my lap/arm very nicely for the drive after he was finished. I only did 7 hanging beardlike things, because I got sick of making them (the pattern suggests 8). Oh, and I didn’t have black felt so I just embroidered on eyes using black yarn. I found the knitalong just a few days ago, but I was almost done and it seemed not worth it to join.

I find this the most delightfully creepy gift for a baby. I thing it’s impossibly cute, but in all honesty, it’s a little scary. I picked orange and yellow because I am vehemently opposed to giving girls pink things just because they’re girls, and I much prefer gender-neutral colors. The dad-to-be (a perpetually good-natured guy) good-naturedly laughed at it, the mom-to-be (who I don’t know very well) made one of those faces that are like “uh, ok, not sure what I think of that,” and that’s ok with me. The best part about it? After BK held it up for all to see, he set Nautie down on the arm of his wife’s chair, and there Nautie sat for the rest of the present-opening. So about half of their “here’s what we got!” photos have Nautie sitting in the center. Hee!

I took some photos around the city and around the house of red and pink things. It was an interesting exercise; I have rather little red or pink in the living areas of the house, though I always think of red as a color that compels me. In walking around the city, my eyes were drawn to taillights, stop signs, and the like. Here’s a few things that I captured.

I’ve played with lace a million times before: A friend and I used to whip out Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, pick something pretty, and play around with swatching it. But I’ve never made a complete object out of lace, and I’ve certainly never experienced the magic of blocking lace–which I didn’t even know was the way it worked until I started reading all your knitting blogs!So my plan is to make Kiri, from All Tangled Up. I’m going to be in a wedding in late May in the mountains of Virginia, so the evening will likely be cool. The dress I bought is a halter-type, with a mostly bare back, that falls just past my knee (i.e., it’s not a lot of coverage). So I need something. And a lace shawl feels totally “wedding” to me–it may be the only location where I’d find such a thing appropriate. (While I find them aesthetically quite pleasing in photographs while blocking or being held up to the light, they’re just not my style for attire.)

I ordered Knit Picks’ Alpaca Cloud in Peppermint (yay peppermint!). The lining of the dress is a similar shade of pink, and I’m in love with the color. Note that this will also count for March’s Project Spectrum!
[Now if only it would get here! I placed the order Monday; per the Web site, it just shipped yesterday. I doubt there’s any way it will get here today, which means I can’t start it this weekend. (It’s delivered to the office.) Oh well.]

I spent a lot of time looking online to try to pick a shawl that I felt had the right balance of delicacy and coverage. Although I think I might have preferred a lack of a center line as on Birch, there was something more delicate about Kiri–must be the scalloped edge. Plus, I found MeowGirl’s finished Kiri, done in alpaca cloud, and I knew it was right. How beautiful! Her blog partner, Kitty Kitty, also completed one, and it too looks fabulous. Once MG confirmed that the alpaca cloud makes for a very warm shawl, I ordered the yarn. (Oh, and the kiri pattern is free. Not a small consideration.)

I printed out the pattern and have read through it. There’s some apparent weirdness, which I hope won’t screw me up and confuse me. (”Skip written instructions to written instructions to cast-off instructions”? I think I know what is meant, but seriously: Could this be a more elusive phrase? Remember that I’m an editor, so things like this especially bug me.) I joined the Yahoo group KAL, just in case I need help.

I’m in that “want to check the mail every two minutes” mode of obsession right now. I want to knit this! (This may be the first time I genuinely have two projects working at once. I have a few abandoned projects sitting next to the couch, but I will continue to work on the Sunrise Circle Jacket. Though since I only have the back to complete, I should be done by the end of the weekend, depending on how I spend my time.)