happy autumn!

Saturday was a gorgeous autumnal day in Vermont: mist in the valley - chilly and breezy - air perfumed by fallen leaves and pine needles - overgrown gardens on the edge of frost. It was a perfect day for curling up with a steaming cup of lapsang souchong tea and wool knitting.

I spent the afternoon playing in a natural dyes workshop, but I'll leave that to another post. For now I just want to share the weekend's finished objects, festooned with a few blossoms from the garden.

Ipod Nano Cover
Pattern: just whipped up on the spot. 26 stitches, knit straight down with just one row of eyelets for a cord (which I later deemed unnecessary). i invented a funny bind-off at the bottom - a three needle bind-off would have been best.
Yarn: leftover Trekking XXL from my jaywalkers
Needles: size 1 dpns

Cabled Baby Sweater
Pattern: 'Bookworm Sweater' from Miss Bea's Rainy Day
Size: 1-2 years
Yarn: Rowan All Season's Cotton, 'Safari' (discontinued color), 5 balls
Needles: size 7 16" circular for the body and sleeves; size 6 16" circular for the neck
Modifications: Where to start? I started this sweater last summer but was finding it to be too short and fat. I started over, doing the body up to the arms on one circular needle, then dividing to do the front and back flat. I pared 5 stitches off each side of each side, which is to say the body was made with 20 fewer stitches than was called for (although 4 of those stitches accounted for not needing selvedge once it was done circularly). I only bound off 3 stitches for each side of the arms (i.e. 6 stitches for each arm in total). I lengthened the body up to the sleeves. Lengthened the sleeves. Shortened the neck.

In the end, I think it's a marvelous sweater, and it feels so satisfying to have finished a project that had been on pause for too long. I'm especially fond of the cable pattern with the seed stitch spikes in the background. If I were doing it again, I'd probably take the cable pattern and adapt it to a bottom-up seamless raglan sweater, because I found all the seaming and fitting of pieces to be slow and fiddly. But I'm really pleased!

As is Leila. Naturally, she sauntered over towards my knitting photographs to inspect my progress. I think this shot gives you a useful sense of scale.