Every year Mr. G’s family does a Christmas exchange. I find these things pretty hit or miss, depending on how much care the participants put into considering each other’s character, tastes, and needs. Not that I have anything against gift certificates  or money, but I like it best when the gifts are really personal. This year we drew Uncle Bill’s name (we floated some more creative ideas, but it turned out all he wanted was a gift certificate to Cabela’s) and when our package arrived, it was from Cousin Brian. And let me tell you, he hit it out of the park. His thoughtfulness revived my faith in the value of this kind of exchange. In our box were items Brian had gathered in traveling the country: apple butter from his friends’ farm in North Carolina, coffee roasted in Olympia where he lives now, soap made by a friend of his, and three skeins of yarn from a pueblo where he stayed in New Mexico. It was beautiful sheepy wool spun at a little place called Tattersall Mills (and it must be really small, as they have no web presence whatsoever): a chunky dark single-spun Debouillet still rich with lanolin, a soft Aran-weight gray Jacob 2-ply, and a bulky marled light and gray Jacob.

This struck me as the kind of gift that needs to be shared, so I’m sending some of it traveling farther on — to Deer Isle, Maine, where my friend Betsy is spending the winter and where it’s cold enough to merit chunky woolen hats.  Betsy is a rare friend who writes beautiful letters (yes, with pen and paper) and sends tiny accordion books bearing poems she’s chosen just for you, or sketches of things she’s seen in her adventures. She also leaves you little jars of cherry liqueur she’s put up from the trees at school, bakes delicious muffins and breads with surprising ingredients like green tomatoes, and can help a goat give birth and intubate the runt to feed it when it’s too weak to survive on its own. I admire her greatly and she’s just the kind of person it’s worthwhile to knit for, and I thought she was most deserving of this special wool. I grabbed a pattern from The Knitter’s Book of Wool, which seemed the thing to do with an unusual farm yarn, and the Blue Hill Country hat was quickly born.

I doubled the length of the ribbing for extra warmth over the ears. But I couldn’t send it out immediately. By the time I’d finished photographing the hat, this was my view of the box I intended to pack it in:

This hat took only a few hours to knit, but I love the thick, warm, stretchy, rustic result. The Jacob wool is soft enough that I hope the ribbing won’t be itchy against Betsy’s forehead. But the Debouillet has clearly had minimal processing and should be good for repelling the snow and damp.

Here’s what else is a warming thought: my husband comes home tomorrow after ten days in New York and Boston. I quite like a bit of solitude now and then, but I miss my partner and best friend when he’s away. As my neighbor Sarah, who’s finally moving to DC so her young family can be together all the time instead of just for a few weeks a year, told me last night, it’s easy to find a routine on your own and to forget how to be together. I’m fortunate that we aren’t apart all that often, but two busy people living parallel in the same space can suffer the same thing, and it’s a good reminder to make the most of it every day. Hurry home, honey.

I’ve been struggling to assemble as many cohesive thoughts as a blog post requires, and I’m still failing. So I’m serving Blog Scramble today instead.

Weekend redux: Quilting/knitting night with friends in Vancouver. Started a Hill Country hat for Betsy since she’s in Maine and it’s been so cold there. Didn’t do any quilting because fifteen minutes of flailing about the house searching for my red embroidery thread didn’t turn it up. Saturday I helped out a friend of a friend whose little girl has a disability that prevents her from walking, but not from wishing to ice skate. I happily agreed to help hoist/propel/carry five-year-old Nuha around the rink in Beaverton. She wasn’t sure about the pinchy tight laces and ended up satisfied with a couple of laps, so it wasn’t a lengthy outing, but the grin on her face was more than ample reward for the effort. Afterward went to Katrin’s house for knitting; finished Betsy’s hat while watching Whip It, which kind of made me want to roller skate, despite having trying it before and being disappointed that it’s not as much like ice skating as you’d think. Found the red embroidery thread when I got home, in plain view right on top of a work basket full of quilting stuff. Sunday morning I packed the dog and all the quilting stuff in the car, went to sing at the cathedral, then spent the afternoon sewing with Mr. G’s mom. Got a lot of work done on a new quilt for a special baby whose mom isn’t ready to announce to the world yet, but who will arrive at the end of the summer. I’ll have pictures soon. It’s another making-it-up-as-I-go sort of quilt, although this time I’ve got inspiration from here. I’m making stylized trees instead of Alexandra’s leaves, and alas I have no beautiful Liberty scraps to employ, but on the whole it’s shaping up to look like something my grandmother would approve of, which never fails to make me feel proud. Mr. G’s mom taught me about paper piecing and sent me home with a roll of freezer paper. Stayed up too late watching the second installment of Emma on Masterpiece. This is my favorite film interpretation of the book to date, as I think Romola Garai is perfect for the role and Michael Gambon’s portrayal of her father makes it far more apparent than in previous adaptations why Emma is who she is.

Wednesday news: Daffodils are up. Trees are budding. Apparently we might have thunder and lightning today, though. I have just finished introducing a class of seventh-graders to Chiradza for the African marimba. Lunch is a kale salad like this one, except that I had manchego in the ice box, not pecorino. And my bread is a light rye, which also gives a different flavor. It’s good, though. I’ve added half an avocado that wanted eating.

Inspiration: I want to drop everything and knit Lene Alve’s new little swing coat, Minni. Go on, have a look. I dare you to resist the adorableness. Somebody please have a girl baby, okay? Or multiple girl babies? Because I love Lene’s Lilliput, too.

… And trepidation: Madrona is really soon. And in an effort to stretch my abilities and learn Big New Things, which I always like to do at Madrona, I’ve signed on for a drop spindling class with Amelia Garripoli. I haven’t touched my spindle in months. I definitely need to do some warm-up sessions before I’m ready to expose my limited skills in public.

Knitting: a bulky version of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s curled-tip, thumbless Jogger’s Mittens, to go with the hat for Betsy. Also, my stripey baby sweater is about two-sleeve-inches shy of seaming party time. (It will be a brief party, as there are only two seams.)

After long and indefensible procrastination, I have posted new versions of the Columbia beret and the Twisted Tree pullover on the Patterns page. There is now a smaller size of the beret available for those who have smaller heads and/or want to wear the hat as a true beret and not a beret/snood. The new version of the Twisted Tree pattern simplifies and corrects an error in the sleeve increase instructions. As always, please contact me right away if you notice a mistake or any confusing directions in any of the patterns!

When my mother asked for a new sweater to replace one she’d lost, this wasn’t what either of us imagined. The sweater that went missing was a patchwork of pictorial intarsia and textural panels in earthy colors. I wasn’t going to try to recreate that, but it was difficult to work out an alternative that suited my vision and my mother’s. She’d mention a feature of one or another of my sweaters that she liked, but bringing them together was a challenge. So I did what any sensible knitter would do: I spread out my Elizabeth Zimmermann library and together we pored over the many wonderful designs involving colorwork. Three & One caught her fancy, and I could see ways to add the waist shaping and shawl collar Mum had requested, so we were off to the races. We chose the yarn: Cascade Eco Wool for the base and Cascade Rustic for the accent colors. Ten months later, the sweater is finished.

At some point (well into the knitting, mind you) it occurred to me that I was trying to make a fitted cardigan by stranding a bulky wool with an Aran-weight wool/linen blend. How was this sweater not going to be Michelin-Man bulky and far too warm? But my parents are active folk; when they are not working on their new house they are usually to be found outside doing all the chores that come with living in the woods. And the chilly damp of the Pacific Northwest guarantees this sweater can stand in for a jacket in fall and spring as well as winter.

I thought I’d give it a test run yesterday just to make sure. I had a little vacation in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the weather was unexpectedly fair, so we took the dog for a special outing to the Sandy River delta, where she can run full tilt for as long as her mighty heart and skinny legs desire (which is a very long time… owners of other energetic dogs always thank us for bringing “the rabbit”). There is often strong wind at the delta, and yesterday was no exception. My fingers were quickly raw and I wished I’d worn a warmer hat, but the Three & One was perfectly cozy. (It was even cozier after the walk when we retired to Bakery Bar for coffee and fried egg sandwiches on homemade biscuits. The day was warm enough for sitting outside in the sun, and there was no wind in town.)

It wasn’t until I saw these photos that I realized all was not quite right. Look again… I’ll bet you can spot it, if you haven’t already.

Yeah. I don’t know how I did it, but I sewed all the buttons on half an inch low, and as a result the pattern doesn’t match up across the fronts. I’m sure Mum would wear the sweater and love it anyway, the way Dad wears his gansey with the too-tight hem (my first bout with the tubular cast on wasn’t a resounding victory), but this is not something I can live with. Snip, snip, snip. Off came the buttons and their backing buttons, and up they all moved. Problem solved.