You’ll Come a-Swatching Louisa With Me

Visualize, if you will, a swatch of the "Impressions" that is two repeats wide and five repeats long. I suppose it would help if I told you repeats of what: Feather and Fan, obediently knitted up on the size 6 needles which the ballband suggests, rather than the 3's that would have given me gauge. Breathtaking!

Visualize, I say, because I have already frogged it after making a mental note to design something with that yarn on those needles, in the pale green colorway, to go with my dark mossy green slacks. One more reason to acquire a digital camera of my own and to ponder the wisdom of knitting swatch #2 from the opposite end of the ball and retaining both swatches, at least until I can get over to Secondborn's house to take advantage of her talent -- strike that! -- to allow her the opportunity to serve my reading public.

I then turned my attention to the "Sari Ribbon". I wanted to see what it looked like in the same pattern. I played awhile with the DP's [Brittany, size 15] that I used for the I-cord fluff on the Rust Fibonacci Sweater. Highly unsatisfactory, either using them singly or creatively cobbling three together with a rubber band to approximate a size 35. So after work I hopped into the car and drove to my downtown LYS -- oh frabjous day! -- to see what might serve better.

Oh frabjous-er day! I am now the awestruck owner of my first Addi circular. Specifically, a 16" Addi Natura in size 10.75, which has got to be the knitting equivalent of a Bentley and a chauffeur. Fanning, fanning!

The Results:
Smooth and sinuous cable cast-on
Crisp stitches with just the right amount of scrunching-of-the-ribbon
Sleek brass ferrule joining bamboo to cable
Stitches flowing effortlessly from one needle to the next
Sanity restored [OK, the jury's still out on this one]

I've only knit two and a half repeats in the "Sari Ribbon", as the swatch is approximately 11" wide. I can imagine front and back panels that are two repeats wide and grafted at the shoulder over a handful of stitches, with the rest of the body pickeknittednd knited sideways in an assortment of her other yarns, most definitely including the "Impressions".



I will go to all sorts of crazy lengths to avoid seaming things together, but I can also wrap my mind around the concept of knitting the side panels conventionally, because it would be easier to incorporate one of Nicky Epstein's edgings at the hem, to echo the curves of the Feather and Fan panel.

At this point I am sitting down at a mental tea party with Kaffe Fassett, Anny Blatt, and Louisa herself. [I am *amazed* by her SnapDragon sweater, which is of course utterly unsuitable for my body type.] They are bickering affectionately about color and texture and where I should go from here.

This is swatch #2 in the "Impressions", which I noodled around with while standing in line to pick up LittleBit's schedule at the high school last Thursday night. She was somewhere over Atlanta at the time, and I was not particularly minding the hurry-up-and wait, because my hands were busy as I nudged my tote forward with alternate feet. [My own skewed take on the phrase "soccer mom".]



I took another vacation day -- you know, I could really get used to taking each Friday off -- because LittleBit missed her flight on Wednesday. She called me at 4:01 to say "My plane just took off, and I'm not on it; my ride didn't show up." The 10:55 on Thursday night was the best Plan B for all concerned, and I knew that I'd be no earthly good at the switchboard on Friday with only three or four hours of sleep. Plus, I hadn't seen LittleBit for a month and a half, and we had some serious "and then he said"-ing to do.

Her dad will have to take her next Thursday night for a new photo ID. And of course there will be the raft of paperwork that each teacher will send home over the first week of classes, but it's not like grade school, where we had to fight five hundred other moms for the school supplies. (Good things come to those who wait.)

My little lark is back in the nest, safe and sound; it was lovely to hear her humming as she dressed and puttered about this morning. We will have one more summer like this, and her senior year, and then she will be winging out of the nest for good.



This is "Impressions" swatch #2 with the "Sari Ribbon" threaded through the eyelets. I'm not sure if this is what I want to do. I'm not that crazy about swatching, and I just want to get to work with these yarns. Decisions, decisions.