It's one of those perfect winter days:  sweet sunshine and cobalt skies soon after a heavy snowfall, when the drifts are still clean and unmarked, and you can just tilt your chair back, turn your sunglassed face to the afternoon light, nurse your apres-ski draft, and watch the bunnies and the boarders to your heart's content.  Aaah... Oliver is a little young for the beer, but everything else--right up his alley! Inserting the zipper (by hand, not machine) turned out to be a breeze, but I do have a couple of questions regarding the fit:  I'm concerned that the neck opening will be a tad small, and the sleeves could probably have been roomier.  Unfortunately I have to send him off to his namesake in San Francisco before these questions can be answered, AND before I can get a photo of him with a warm body inside; he's too small for my peanut , and too big for the teddy bear.

A perfect opportunity to get a little knitting in, especially when you don't give a rat's ass who wins.  (Although the commercials are kind of fun.)  Thanks to the Steelers and the Seahawks I've made significant progress on Oliver, and here's the proof.  I like the front band much better with a row of twisted stitches setting it off.  The neckband will be folded in half and sewn in place, so I thought I'd try using cotton for the part that will form the lining, to protect my nephew's tender neck from the wool.  Anyway, that's why it's a slightly different color.  On the back, I'm liking the way the vertical and horizontal patterns meld, but will reserve final judgment until I finish the second sleeve and the bottom band. One disappointment:  I've had mixed success getting the travelling stitches even (and I love them so!), especially the ones that cross to the left;  I noticed that Eunny mentions this problem in a recent post.  I first tried following Barbara Walker's instructions for crossing the stitches while both remain on the needle, but I found that for left-leaning crosses, I had better luck when I took the first stitch off the needle, held it between my fingers, knitted the second at the very tips of the needle, then put the first stitch back and knit it.  Pulling the yarn tight and keeping the stitches at the very tips of the needles seem to be important in keeping those crossed stitches more uniform.  (And luckily for me, as Eunny noted, wet blocking helps.)

I'm aware that yesterday was the day the large rodent emerged to look for his shadow*; I was thinking more of the movie "Groundhog Day," and how every day can seem exactly like the one before.  Ever have that sensation of running in place?  I'm feeling the pressure from trying to complete a number of knitting patterns for a book proposal--self-imposed deadlines, to be sure (oh, to have an editor- or agent-imposed deadline!), moving targets, but looming no less for all that. And so, instead of working on Oliver, I've been working on swatches of different color combinations; figuring out yarn requirements for sizes from 3 months to Men's XXL; and double-checking to make sure that garment dimensions follow the CYCA's Standards & Guidelines for different sizes. Speaking of the CYCA, I did receive a nice email from Mary Colucci, their Executive Director, in response to my missive about improving knitting pattern directions, as well as an encouraging email from Interweave. *And what's up with that?  Anyone as far north as Pennsylvania (home of Punxsutawny Phil) knows full well that we'll be lucky if we only have 6 more weeks of winter!  2?!  Yeah--in Georgia, maybe.

Well, Oliver's first problem was that he was too short; pictured is his center back panel, with the bottom edge on the left.  Since I left the top stitches for the neckband live (which makes for a more stretchy neck edge than if they're bound off), I could normally have just knit a little further, but by the time I reached an attractive stopping point--the end of the larger diamond--it would have been too long.  So I changed the repeat on the pattern chart so that it begins with the large diamond instead of the small one; the new chart is shown at left.  If I stop at the top of the third large diamond, the back panel should be about an inch longer than before.  Panels like this are another reason pattern directions should give length in rows!*  If Debbie Bliss had done this in her pattern for the Cotton Aran Sweater I knit for my son, it would have been clear that a certain number of rows had to be worked for the pattern repeat to end as pictured in her book.  And then I wouldn't have had to change the neckline from a crew to a V so the repeat ended at least semi-attractively. Anyway.  On this photo of Oliver's front, the entire border ribbing area is circled.  The border rib doesn't stand out from the body of the sweater, which is as I intended; however, I don't like the way the border ribbing meets the mirror cable panel, which affects both the center back panel and the center front edge.  I'm going to try a garter stitch border instead.  *So far the response to my rant has been less than enthusiastic; okay, so it's been nonexistent.  That doesn't mean I'm going to give up.  My next step?  Letters to the individual members of the CYCA's Standards Committee.  (It's not too late to jump on the bandwagon!)

No, I'm not feeling blue, but I am working with a lot of blue lately.  The husband's scarf in navy is languishing while I work out the design for "Oliver," a zip-front (a first for me) cardigan, knit sideways (another first).  "Oliver" will be sized for a 12-month-old infant so it should knit up fairly quickly (famous last words).  Knowing I wanted to knit this sweater from side to side, I chose a few possible pattern stitches, and started swatching, using Tahki's Cotton Classic in "electric blue"--isn't the stitch definition nice?  The top photo is "mini lattice" from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs, going into 1 X 1 rib at the top (note that the rib is actually wider than the pattern stitch), and the middle photo is "jewel cross-rib" from BW's 2nd Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  I finally decided against both of these and in favor of using "mirror cable" (also from Charted Knitting Designs) as an accent panel.  It's pictured in the bottom photo; I was also playing with background stitches, going from (left to right) garter to stockinette to reverse stockinette.  The reverse stockinette seemed to set off the panel most effectively.  As I pictured "Oliver," the mirror cable panel would run along the tops of the arms and shoulders.  I played with using a simpler version of the mirror cable along the body, but decided a simple repeated baby cable would be better--this would be a small garment, after all, and I didn't want the stitch patterns to be overwhelming.  Usually a garment knit side-to-side is begun at the end of one sleeve, continued across the body, and then completed at the end of the other sleeve.  Thinking about this brought out my latent anal tendencies; it bothered me that the increases for one sleeve will be decreases for the second sleeve, since it's being knit in the opposite direction--and even more bothersome (because more visible) the same will be true of the neck shaping:  decreases on one side, increases on the other.  I've always found it so pleasing to have those decreases marching in step along each side of the neck and armholes...which is one reason I decided to make this a cardigan (other reasons:  I've been wanting to try using a zipper, and easy-on/easy-off is always a plus with a baby). Next decisions:  start from the sleeve end, or start from the center and work out?  And what to do about the center back seam that would now be necessary?  I answered the latter question first:  I decided to add a vertical "mirror cable" panel down the back, both because I thought it would look nice, and because I didn't want a seam going right down poor Oliver's spine.  At first I thought I would knit outward; this would allow me to pick up stitches from the sides of the vertical back panel, minimizing the thickness of those seams.  But darn it, then the neck edges would have to be formed by increases, and I just think decreases look better!  At left is the sweater schematic, looking a little messy, what with the center back panel, and the center front bands...and the shoulder panels...and the bottom edge ribbing...and the neck shaping...and the row and stitch calculations.  What to do?  Just start knitting, for heaven's sake!  So I did (more blue, this time 100% merino--and yes, I did swatch in this yarn before beginning).  At bottom is the sleeve; the proportions look a tad bizarre, but a) the sweater is unblocked, and b) the bottom of the sweater will have ribbing added.  The left side appears as knitted, while the right side has been doctored:  I thought another mirror cable panel might be nice--especially since the first one won't be fully visible from the front, as it lies along the top of the shoulder--so I copy/pasted to add one on the right.  Hmmm....