The best (knitting) purchase I ever made in my whole entire (knitting) life

Oh! There's something I forgot to tell you about yesterday!

Update: If you click the photo, you can see details - or just click here to go directly to Patternworks: The Circular Solution.

Knitting, the Long View

It's tiresome to read a blog that begins each entry with "well, it's been a long time since I posted, but . . .," so I won't begin that way. I have no intention of discontinuing Fig and Plum, but I must come to terms with posting just about once a month. Oh well. We'll just have to agree to take the long view, non?

So anyway. I was cruising Flickr the other day and there was Jenna's pretty, lush-looking Metro Cardigan (pattern) looking squish and done up in Camelino, a yarn that was new to me. But lo, it's on sale at WEBS! Usually I'm pretty good about not buying yarn on impulse, but I can't resist a lovely rustic brown in a soft yarn. So I bought 10 balls in Sable, which you see above, which to me, are calling to be a cabled pullover for fall.

While I feel like years of J. Crew catalogs demonstrate that comfy cabled pullovers exist in the world, I found surprisingly few patterns on Ravelry that I liked. Seems like many cabled sweaters are an excuse to display cables, sometimes in designs that do more for the cables than the wearer. And lord knows, I don't have room in my dresser for that kind of project.

After a lot of searching, I may have settled on the Acer Cardigan [Ravelry] by Amy Christoffers, a new-to-me designer. (Oooh, and look at these cute goldfish mittens!). The idea is to (possibly) convert this into a crewneck because, you know, nothing can ever be easy.

But, I get ahead of myself. There are two long-term projects on the needles that I've actually been working on that need to be finished first. One is a Baby Tomten started about a year ago for a baby that's now four months old. Good thing it ended up way too big! Here's a progress shot from a couple of weeks back:

It's basically done, though, so I'll post an FO shot soon. Insane that it's taken so long, but there have been bizarre setbacks, which you'll hear about in the next post. I'm eager to share the solution I found for attaching the loops for toggle buttons.

The other exciting knitting is that my navy cowl neck, started back in (gulp) 2008, will almost certainly be finished by Rhinebeck.

This one also had its share of setbacks, mostly that I lost my notes for the pattern and didn't have the brainpower to redo them, and I wasn't sure of the best way to accomplish the slightly curved front neckline I wanted while working in the round. Of course, the answer is short rows. I'm almost to that part of the sweater now, so cross your fingers it works. If it does, look for a short lady in a sweater with a huge, comfy cowl neck tramping around Sheep & Wool this year.

I can't believe Sheep & Wool is still two months away! My girls and I have already started planning, most importantly by planning an amazing country getaway for our first ever upstate overnight Rhinebeck adventure. We've found a great place an even better place, and we are psyched!

Okay, a couple more random things to share. I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along this awesome recipe for one of my favorite decadent-feeling dishes, seared scallops:

Seafood dishes with pan-Asian-ish sauces usually bore me, but it works perfectly here. But even more than that, I'm proud to say that Chris has finally learned exactly how seared a seared scallop ought to be. I mean, just look at them. Yum. Here's the recipe.

I'll leave you with a snap of a glorious New York sunset from last week, which appears to be, like, the most photographed sunset in the city's history. You know it's good when I'm not the only idiot standing in the middle of Vanderbilt Avenue trying to capture it.

Until next time, mes amis!