Happens all the time. I am knitting diligently away on some endless project, resigned to be knitting forever. I’m long past the point where I’m anticipating the end, and have become thoroughly absorbed in the process.

And then, suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, it is done. Finished. Complete.

I look up in surprise, my hands still making little knitting motions in the empty air.

And I wonder where all those stitches came from.

It’s magic, I tell you.

There are only so many ways to pose an empty sweater, so tonight you get the folded-neatly look (believe me, it’s about the only thing in the house that is folded neatly at the moment…). I’ve heard a rumor that a certain model may be stopping by this weekend, so maybe we’ll get some real shots, if I ask nicely.

As my hands groped and clutched the air in search of yarn, they fell upon the latest handspun. Withdrawal is a painful thing, so I cast on blindly for a new sweater, and now I have this:

It looks decidedly odd to me at the moment, but I am also pretty sure it’s exactly what I want it to be. I’ve decided to knit this one top down in anticipation of the need for optimal yarn fume consumption toward the end. It has a wide neckline with set in sleeves, and other than that, I’m not sure where we’re going to end up. Wherever we land, it will be with some of the softest, squooshiest, love-it-must-pet-it-est yarns I’ve spun yet.

Somehow I have a feeling that this one is also going to end sooner than I expect.

In the end, I decided not to frog the sleeve. After careful analysis, I determined that I really needed to begin the increases closer to the armpit, not just earlier as I approached the cuff. Fixing the error would have meant pulling back almost the entire sleeve, which I was loathe to do. Instead, I grafted.

I snipped a stitch, excised one stripe repeat, and grafted it back together again. And then, I grafted the sleeve onto the body.

I’m not sure that a one-sleeved raglan is any more appealing than a sleeveless raglan, but I suppose it will do for now. It is at least beginning to look like an actual sweater now, and I am much more at peace with the stripes. The second sleeve is begun, and is progressing about as quickly as the first, but there is hope for a finish reasonably soon.

And, delightfully, it is beginning to feel as if one could possibly need a sweater again sometime in the not-too-distant future. I am even wearing one now, as the cool evening air wafts in my window with a hint of fall. I’m not sure I’m ready for summer to be over, but my mind keeps turning to new sweater ideas as we inch closer and closer to the seasons where knitting holds sway, and I have a feeling that I won’t be too hard to win over.

One of the things I love most about gardening is the sense of creating abundance. I love producing more than we can eat, the joy of giving it to others who truly appreciate fresh vegetables, and the comfort of squirreling food away for the winter months that are coming so soon.

This year, my garden has outdone itself.

I think it’s partly the soil, partly the weather, and partly just pure luck, but I have never had a garden do so well. On Sunday morning, I picked this:

That’s three peppers, 7 cucumbers, three zucchini, 2 eggplants, and probably 5-6 pounds of tomatoes. And this is after it’s begun to slow down.

My neighbors and I have eaten all the tomatoes that we can, and there are just pounds more every day. So I decided to can. I peeled and diced the big bowl of plum tomatoes, and stewed them briefly to release the water. Then I packed them into quart jars and heat treated to seal.

I ended up with two quarts of crushed tomatoes, which were added to the growing list of canned goods from the summer. The extra juice found its way to my downstairs neighbors to become a gazpacho, because that’s really the only thing to be done with fresh tomato juice in my opinion.

Today, I picked the same amount of tomatoes, so it looks like there will be at least a third tomato canning session this summer (Sunday was the second for tomatoes, the fourth overall).

There is no bounty quite like a garden in August.

You may (or may not) remember that I have been working on an endless sleeve. I haven’t blogged about it much because it is, after all, endless and doesn’t make for exciting blog fodder.

A while back, I stopped to measure, groaned in despair, and then decided to just buckle down and knit.

Tonight, it looked like there was a shadow of a chance that it was getting close to time to decrease for the wrists.

I pulled out the sweater that I’m using as a guide, since there is no trying on of this garment.

The endless sleeve is now too long.

I think somewhere between the first optimistic measuring and the current too-long-ness, I forgot one crucial fact. This isn’t a set in sleeve. This is going to be grafted onto a top-down raglan. Yes, the underseam is still a staggering 23 inches long, but it isn’t quite the usual 34 inches from shoulder seam to cuff.

That means that the decreases start sooner, and they happen faster. That means that my too-long sleeve is also more than an inch too wide at the opening, preventing me from simply pulling back a few rounds and beginning the ribbing. It means that my endless sleeve, which is suddenly also too long, needs to be pulled back so that the decreases can be worked the right way.

In recognizing that there was no end in sight, I knitted past the ending, which now means that I am not at the end, despite having past it.

I think that must violate at least a few fundamental laws of physics. Or maybe philosophy is the only thing that can handle such strange twists in logic. Either way, I see ripping in my future. And further knitting on the past-the-end endless sleeve.

This past weekend, I flew down to Atlanta to visit Branden. I left on Friday, and I got back last night. It was a good weekend, but it was far too short.

I had hoped to get some knitting done on the plane, but somehow it just didn’t happen. Instead, I tumbled headlong into a book and didn’t re-emerge until the plane was landing. We didn’t do too much; went to the Farmer’s Market, met some of Branden’s new friends, went to the aquarium, and mostly just spent some time together. All in all, a good couple of days.

Unfortunately, fate has decreed that the coming back should be rough in more than one regard. The flight was easy, but just after I got to the airport, I noticed this:

My e-reader was packed next to my knitpicks needle case, and the case has a snap on it. Apparently at some point the snap focused the pressure in my bag on a single point on the screen, and now my reader is no more. Guess that’ll teach me to read too much and ignore my knitting.

This morning, I stopped to spin for a few minutes on my way out the door. This (combined with me leaving for work for the day) must have ignited the fury of a jealous feline in the household, because I came home to this, laid out across the livingroom rug:

It’s a bad picture of a rather torn-up roving. It’s not utterly destroyed, but it certainly won’t be as pleasant to spin now, and doesn’t encourage me to feel glad that I am now home to be with said cat.

On a more positive note, the weather has cooled down dramatically since I left, and it was downright beautiful outside today. The garden is doing well, and is still flooding us with produce. I picked about 5 pounds of tomatoes today (it was the second harvest of the day, as my neighbor had already been out to the garden and gotten her share). Most of them got chopped up for canning.

That entire saucepan became 2 quarts of crushed tomatoes, and one quart of juice. It’s amazing how much they shrink when heated. Since I needed to get the canner out for the tomatoes anyway, I also canned up the 5 quarts of pickles that are my response to our enthusiastic cucumber plant (second batch this summer). We will not have a pickle shortage this year.

And that leaves me with these:

Which is a mostly manageable amount of tomatoes for eating, if you ignore the fact that there will probably be just as many tomorrow. I will never underestimate the fertility of a midwest garden again!

So I’m back, vegetable spoilage has been averted, and the temperature has dropped enough that it is reasonable to continue fibery pursuits. Now I just need to hide them from the vengeful cat…

I have, believe it or not, been avoiding spinning lately. I left my wheel in its bag for three whole weeks after the last spinners’ guild.

Why, you ask?

Because I am currently knitting an endless sleeve, and don’t want to feel any more desperately behind the stash expansion.

But then, about two weeks ago, the wheel reemerged. I plied, then I spun, and then I plied some more. On Saturday, I set the twist for the next sweaters’ worth of yarn.

And then the wheel was looking at me. It was out, and it wanted to be used. How could I resist?

Every once in a while, the universe likes to send me a reminder that I’m not really in control. Sometimes the reminder is subtle, sometimes it is not.

Fortunately, this time it is at least gentle.

I kicked off my crafty weekend with a dye day. A friend of mine has been wanting to try her hand at throwing color on fiber, and she came over for the morning on Saturday. I have another friend who has been very nice about giving me rides all the time, and she helped me pick up the loom, so I wanted to make her a small skein of handspun to show my appreciation. Her color is green, and sometimes purple, but not the tone of either that I tend to wear. I go for blue-greens and saturated colors, she loves the yellow greens that remind me of baby leaves unfolding in the springtime.

I knew roughly which green I wanted, and went over to the sample cards to pick the potion to get it. We decided on a mixture of three dyes for the green, shot through with a very strong solution of burgundy. Something to evoke pale green and dark lilac.

We made the solutions, painted them onto the yarns, rolled them up in their cellophane cinnamon rolls, and steamed. Then we waited impatiently while the fiber cooled enough to touch without felting. As with watched pots, hot wool cooling in August takes quite a while if you are standing around waiting for it.

Finally, the fiber was cool, and it was time to see what we got.

Acid green and almost-brown.

That last picture doesn’t quite give you a sense for how day-glow that green is. This one is a little better:

I still like it, and I like it more and more as the days go by, but it is definitely not evoking lilacs.

I’m ok with this, because I really enjoy being  just on the magic side of control when dyeing, but a leeettle closer to the mark would have been nice!

I think I will spin it anyway and see what happens. It may turn into the most glorious skein I’ve ever made. Or I might overdye. But I will not get too excited about being able to dye whatever I want. Instead, I think I will glory in the unexpected.

The other piece of roving was much closer to what I’d planned, though again not exactly on the mark. This one I dyed first with black, hoping for a medium grey base. Then I added concentrated burgundy intended to be an accent color. What I got is a burgundy with a little bit of grey.

It’s hard to hold a grudge, though. Do you see that color?

…and ready to go.

(Sorry for the horrible after-dark and in-a-dark-corner photo.)

There hasn’t been much crafting going on around here lately. I’m still settling into the rhythm of being the sole chore-doer in the house, and it’s amazing how much all those little tasks cut into my evening time. Unfortunately, I see little hope for the proposition that the cats can step in and take care of their own food, fur collection, and litterbox, and I have yet to convince the dishes to wash themselves.  And, it has been hot. Luckily, the week of mugginess seems to have broken, and there is a pleasantly chilly breeze coming in the windows, so I have hope that some knitting will get done.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on (slightly) cooler hobbies. The little loom is now warped, and though the big one still sits unfinished, progress has been made. I was away last weekend, so I didn’t get to finish cleaning the reeds, but I’m hoping to get to that in the next few days.

I did finish plying the yarn for the mulberry-colored sweater, so I really do need to get hopping on a design now. I ended up with just over 1000 yards, which has me a little worried since the last sweater was kind of a tight squeeze at 1300 yards. This yarn is fluffier, though, and I will probably knit it at a looser gauge, so I’m hoping that there will be enough. Only one way to find out, really.

Finishing the plying has freed up the wheel to work on other things, so I also have my eye on some spinning to come in the next few weeks.

So, despite the current lull, I think things are moving along nicely. I have one crafty weekend coming up, and I’m hoping that I’ll even manage to end it with both some crafting accomplished and some chores complete. How’s that for ambitious?

Which, unfortunately, is not destined to remain sleeveless.

Unless, of course, sleeveless striped raglans are suddenly in style.

I’ve been procrastinating on casting off the body stitches because I wanted to teach myself the tubular cast-off and hadn’t gotten my act together, but I finally sat down last night and just did it. I really, really like how invisible it is, and how stretchy. This may become my new go-to cast off (at least until it is replaced by the next shiny one that I see). I like grafting, and the bind-off was really an easy pattern to follow once I got the hang of it. I’ll save photos of the edge for when there is actually light. I have no excuse for needing to take a flash picture on the livingroom floor…it was a beautiful day today and there were any number of more attractive photos that I could have taken. But I didn’t. So the pretty shots will have to wait, I’m afraid.

I’ve started the first sleeve, and it is moving along quickly (I’m knitting it separately, so there’s nothing to see in the photo above). I’ll have to see how the sweater looks on a body to decide if I’ve really converted to a stripe-liker or not. I really like them in small chunks, but as an overall pattern I’m not too sure yet. I was a little nervous doing a raglan-style with the stripes, too; it seems like they might make for small-looking shoulders. In this photo, it looks a little bulgy and misshapen, but I’m pretty sure it will block nicely. And some sleeves might help to balance it out, I suppose…

So at this point, I very much like the yarn, and the stripes are keeping it interesting to knit, but I’m not too sure overall of how I’m going to like the final product. The fun of experimenting lies in always pushing boundaries, though, so I remain hopeful that it might turn into something I really like, rather than just something I’m ok with.  (At least I know that the recipient will be ok with just about anything I give him, considering the evidence of sweaters past…)

As someone that has lived all of her life on the coast, I have always been free to enjoy the electric thrill of a heavy thunderstorm with no real concern for my safety.  Watch the storm come in from inside the house, and it’s perfectly safe to sit back and enjoy. It was a bit of a comeuppance, then, about a month and a half ago when a perfectly good thunderstorm was interrupted by my neighbor knocking to say we were under a tornado warning. We gawked a bit at the thought, and began to gather ourselves together to head to the basement just as the sirens went off.

Over the next few days, I talked to several people about the possibility of tornadoes here, and they all assured me that they were extremely uncommon and that we get about one warning a summer in this area.

Well.

Last Wednesday, I was out doing some errands and decided I really, really didn’t like the look of that sky. The wind was blowing like crazy, and it was hot, humid, sticky air. I came home quickly, and sure enough, we were under a warning again. One of the guys in my lab was over at the Minnesota border for a camping trip that night, and he said that there was a touchdown within 15 miles of their campsite. (Fortunately, there was also an old military barracks from the cold war, which has to be the safest possible place to be in a storm.)

Around 3:30 today, another warning was issued for the northern part of our county (we’re in the mid-to-southern side). The radar showed the storm quite a bit north of us, and there was no sign of it here, so I took the bus home as usual, and got back just as the big, heavy drops began to fall. So far, there have been two touchdowns tonight. One was about 15 miles north of here, and the other was 60 miles due west. Another high risk area was heading our way from the West at about 30 mph a few minutes ago.

Thankfully, the cats and I are safely stowed in the basement (much to their chagrin…they hate carriers, and especially hate being rudely thrust therein in a hurry to leave the house).

Thankfully, I have knitting and a computer to keep me busy while we wait it out, but living in the midwest definitely puts a whole different perspective on a summer thunderstorm.

***As I finished up the last paragraph, I got the email saying that the storm has moved past us, and we’ve been downgraded to a tornado watch. They’re not promising that it’s over, but the worst is past. I, for one, am very glad to see this storm go.