Yesterday evening I donned my favorite stripey tights, a cute skirt, my Hourglass Sweater, and my best chocolatey Sherwood Forest boots, and I took myself off to the book launch party for Kristin Spurkland’s The Knitting Man(ual). Anyone who keeps a man of any size at home knows that good knitting patterns for blokes are scarce as good ideas in the White House. (Oops, did I just write that? Ahem.) Kristin’s new book, I’m delighted to report, goes a long way toward amending that. Her patterns are simple and clean, thoroughly modern but respectful of tradition. Click the link above for a peek at a few of the clever designs. And there are many of them in this generous collection. Mr. Garter took a gander when I brought the book home, and after he finished rhapsodizing over the handsomely shaped Saturday Morning Slippers (who knew the guy wanted slippers so badly? I feel so guilty that I never asked before!), he had praise for nearly every design. This is the kind of book that keeps on giving: the clean and inviting design of the book itself draws you on, and the good patterns just keep coming. Twenty-two are listed in the table of contents, but some are groups of patterns (a trio of individual hats, for instance) and many include additional directions for variations. Mr. G deemed the Everyday Sweater particularly alluring:

It’s just a brown wool pullover in stockinet — the perfect staple for gents who want a sweater to coordinate with all three pairs of their trousers and all twenty-seven of their geeky tech conference T-shirts — but the unexpected green square on the back elevates it to memorability and most likely to Favorite Sweater status.

Me, I’ve lost my heart this one:

It’s the kind of thing you’d knit for your sweetie just so you could steal it back. I’ve always been dubious about the faintly tacky hand of Rowan Felted Tweed on the skein, but the sample was soft as a bunny’s underpants — the stickiness was gone and served only to lock those colorwork stitches into place and to adhere the floats to the fabric. You could be nekked under there making your French-press espresso in total comfort.

It’s possible my first blush of allegiance to this book could have been influenced by the delicious handmade pretzels and free-flowing Bridgeport Ale at the signing, but the strong designs will keep me coming back for inspiration and counterchecks in my own work, and I feel certain that several of these patterns will be on my needles once the next wave is complete. Thanks and kudos to Kristin for her strongest book yet, and I’ll be looking forward to the next one!

After four halcyon weeks of September sun, the Oregon rain arrived last night. Yesterday I did my research outside on the lawn, basking in the warmth we know will never last, and managed one more evening lounging in a friend’s backyard as our bookclub met to discuss Cry, the Beloved Country. (Next up: Madame Bovary. We are the geek squad of bookclubs, and we like it that way.) Granted, we did our lounging fortified with hot toddies of whiskey and spiced cider and had a merry fire in the outdoor fireplace Eliza and her husband built themselves, but the night air was pleasant and dry. During the small hours of the morning, the first big drops spattered the skylight and spooked the cat, and he scuttled up to curl himself under my chin and purr us both back to sleep.

It was almost comical, the feeling I had when I awoke to the steady drizzle and the zliss of car tires on the wet pavement: “Oh, this is real life again.” As if the whole sun-dazzled summer had been nothing but a fever dream, and here we were waking to the wet reality of Oregon again. It wasn’t a depressing thought; we children of the northwest have a broad streak of puddleduck in our natures. Rainy days are cozy days, and the ancestral climate of knitters besides. Wool between the fingers never feels better than on the wet days when we can stay in our nests, perhaps beside the fire with a good radio program or an audio book or an old movie and a warm lap cat for company.

Of course, this is a workday, but a girl can fantasize. There are a few projects to wrap up, and a wealth of new ones to begin. I have a sweater’s worth of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed and a fresh design crooning to me, and I just received the wool for my next ShibuiKnits project, which must be finished by November. (It’s a sweater, using Merino Kid and Sock in the beautiful blue called Rapids. Can’t tell you too much more, although you’ll see a few teaser pictures next month.) Then there’s my brother. I love him, in the unforgettable words of Anne Lamott’s small son in her excellent writing book Bird by Bird, “like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops.” But you’d never know it from the state of the kid’s handknit collection. He has only this measley Fishtrap swatchcap (modelled by me – we look alike, but not that much alike):

The dude needs a sweater in the worst way. It’ll be like my contribution to his hope chest before he gets married next May. I have yarn (pumpkin orange Morehouse Merino 2-Ply), I have pattern (Teva Durham’s Irregular Rib Raglan with Toggle) — all I need is time and volition. Is it too much to think I could finish three sweaters before Christmas? Let’s hope for lots of rainy days. Meantime, I’ll leave you with my favorite anonymous rain poem:

The rain it raineth all around
Upon the just and unjust fella
But mostly on the just because
The unjust stole the just’s umbrella.

Any other favorite rain poems out there?

This is what happens when you cast virtue aside and wantonly flaunt your credit card at Blue Moon Fiber Arts and Crown Mountain Farms, and maybe a couple of other madams vendors at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. It’s not quite Rhinebeck (I missed my Spiders, the fried artichokes, and the sheepdogs especially, although there were some beautiful Irish Wolfhounds having their own convention at the other end of the fairgrounds), but I did get to do these things for the first time:

1. meet up with Katherine in person
2. pet a baby camel and a Wensleydale ram
3. load up on Sock Hop

Speaking of which, let’s identify the lovelies above. From left to right: Sock Hop in Secret Agent Man and I Got You Babe; Socks That Rock Lightweight in Rare Gems and Blue Brick Wall; Sporfarms Merino/Silk in Frostberries; Sock Hop in two shades of My Boyfriend’s Back. I tried to stick to my goal of not buying yarn I don’t have a pattern in mind for. The two pairings of Sock Hop will become not socks but Elizabeth Zimmermann baby sweaters — maybe Baby Surprise Jackets, maybe Bog Jackets, perhaps Baby Surplice Jackets. I love garter stitch to show off handspun that’s plied this way, and I think some subtle stripes in these closely related colorways will be pretty on babies. What babies, you might ask? It’s true that I’m still finishing up some knits for the most recent crop. Bran new baby Flynn across the street has two hats ready for him, and I’m trying to get his little baby pod zippered and seamed this week. Wee Jordan hasn’t received her February Sweater yet because we haven’t managed to connect with her parents, but it probably won’t fit until next month anyway. The fact is, my friends and relations seem to be taking a breather from the baby manufacturing. It’s like half time. It’s like the last wave has receded and pulled all the little pebbles dancing down the beach after it, but a larger wave is building. The babies are coming, I just know it. This is what happens two or three years after a wagonload of your friends have gotten married, and I aim to be prepared. Armed with my Sock Hop haul, I can garter stitch away on little projects to my heart’s content and store up ickle sweaters like so many squirrel nuts.

The lovely Sporfarms merino/silk was a souvenir for Katrin, who couldn’t come with me to OFFF because she had to work. And the Socks That Rock? Lord knows there’s plenty of that in the stash, thoroughly marinated and aged to perfection, but I liked these two skeins together so much that I couldn’t resist them. The Rare Gems are mistakes or experiments that aren’t replicated, and mostly I don’t find them too attractive. But this one looks like sunset over the desert, and I thought it was particularly harmonious against the blues of Blue Brick Wall. I was thinking of Kate Gilbert’s Syncopated Caps when I picked them up, but then I started to think of interesting designs for syncopated kneesocks. I hereby vow to knit a second Drunken Bear kneesock — and a second Pomatomus — before I cast on a new pair, but I’m looking forward to them.

And now to go knit like a fiend and finish up Star Wars Hat the Second and Wine and Roses Mitt the Second so they can go to their new homes this week. Sorry the posts have been thin on the ground of late; I’ll try not to let the week get away from me this time!

It’s that time again. The children have reconvened to spread merry tumult and germs in the schoolyards, and those of us who work in the schools are settling in for the long voyage of the academic year. For me, a vast new project: shaping our little school’s curriculum for publication. I spoke with my dear friend Curtis today; he’s a newly minted professor unveiling the complex delights of Chaucer and Keats to a cohort of first-years who have almost certainly never worked so hard nor learned so much. I envy them: Curtis is a smart and passionate guide when it comes to literature (and apparently they think he looks like someone hot on TV). I’m going to reread The Eve of St. Agnes this week just so I can pretend I’m back in the classroom with him. Vicarious study of literature is the best I’ll be able to do this year; my two-job schedule won’t permit me time to take classes this term. Remembering the tingles I got when I set foot in a university again last year, I regret it. But it makes me all the more excited for my cousin, who’s going back to grad school after giving over the last seven years to raising her boys. Surely this grand occasion calls for a present.

Wine and Roses mitts from last winter’s Interweave Knits. The yarn is the scrummy Jade Sapphire 2-ply cashmere silk specified in the pattern – we got some in at the store and I knew I was going to have to make these lacy mitts with it. My cousin likes deep aubergine purples, so I think these will be a nice accessory to her fall wardrobe. They’re also a little symbol of her new modicum of release from constant parenting, since silk and cashmere are not exactly the fibers of choice for handling small sticky boys. For one weekend a month when she jets off to California for her intensive classes, she can slip into these luxurious adult handwarmers, and have her fingers free for taking notes and paging through tomes of Jung and Freud.

It’s thanks to Megan the Knitting Philistine and her Fiberlicious yarn photography movement that I thought to pose my work in progress with actual eggplants. It’s also thanks to Megan that the mailman brought me these:

My first order from Good Soapworks of Athens! I could smell them before I even picked up the box. I chose the warm spice and citrus scents I love for dark winter mornings: sweet orange, clove, cinnamon. Since I was out of bed at five this morning to catch Brazil vs. China in women’s World Cup soccer, I got a foretaste of the coming months – rising in the dark when even the cat prefers to stay snuggled in the blankets. It’s a downside of the return to school all too easily forgotten during the summer. But my spicy and soothing new soap will help pry my eyes open and wake me more pleasantly. And speaking of the cat…

My fur is all up in your knitting. Mwahahahaha!

And pssst…speaking of fingerless mitts, the Axel Mitts are now on the Patterns page as a PDF at last. (Thanks for the reminder, Kristen, and for the Rockin’ Girl Blogger nomination!) Happy fall knitting!