Jon's Knit Blog

Very Yellow.

PPD is longer than the last photo, and, because of the center front decreases, narrower, too. It's past the 4" mark. And this lovely item has joined Alison's Spring Fling. (See the button! It's my first knit-along.)

This is my second all cotton project. I have knitted before with a cotton-wool blend fiber (Colinette Prism, which I think is a ply of wool and a ply of cotton wrapped around each other, but it knits more like wool). And the Cancer Hat (which is going to the intended recipient's son tomorrow) is also all cotton, but has a very different feel to it than the PPD. The issue may be the fact that there is so much switching between purl and knit stiches here with the polka dot pattern that there's something about the tension that I'm just not getting right. When I stretch out a section of the fabric on the needles, there's a bit of a buckle happening in the vertical line that has evolved between the dots. Hopefully this is something that will disappear when I block it...

I didn't spend the whole day knitting, though (I'd hope if I had, the project would be longer than four inches). I got a delivery from amazon.com which included two lace knitting books ("Lace in the Attic" and "Modern Lace Knitting Two" which includes the pattern for the Rose of England knit by Sheila. I have a hankering to knit lace (I have a hankering to knit any yarn that will stay in my apartment long enough, who am I kidding), and that book contains a gorgeous pattern that made me want to buy some cotton crochet thread and really tiny needles. It's a lace picture of a daffodil on a tea-cloth. Seriously cool. God, I'm lame when I think lace knitting is "cool."

I also got a Kaffe Fassett book (Family Album) and a Brandon Mably book, too. I don't even want to knit most of the Mably designs, but the patterns and colors and photos are great. The Fassett book has some amazing kids sweaters, and I plan to figure out acceptable yarn substitutions and (eventually) knit something fun for my fabulous little nephew who is currently about 7 months old and lives in London. Heck, maybe I should even set up a kiddie-sweater intarsi-a-long for sometime this summer. That would be a wicked thing to do. Pure evil... Who's with me?