What Happens When Boys Get Involved.

Jess: Crap!
Chris: Hm?
Jess: Dammit, I screwed something up in this sleeve! I did too many repeats at every 16 stitches. I'm going to have to rip back.
Chris: NO!!
Jess: ?
Chris: NO!!
Jess: Well, I want it to be right. Why are you getting so upset?
Chris: Do you want to get it right or do you want to BEAT LISA????
Jess: Get it right?
Chris: . . .
Jess: BEAT LISA!
Chris: I thought so!

Postscript: And that, friends, is what happens when boys get involved. In the end, there was backsliding: it was done right instead!

Shallange!

It's another four years to the next summer Olympics, another 300-some-odd days until the 2009 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, and you're experiencing competition withdrawal?

Well, you've come to the right place!

v.

Like Venus and Serena, like Eli and Payton, like, well, that pretty much exhausts my knowledge of sporting siblings, these two Tangled Yoke Cardigans grew up together and shared the same dream. In this case, completion! About a year ago, my friend and fellow Spider Lisa (An Abundance Thereof) cast on for a Tangled Yoke Cardigan. Hot on her heels I cast on for mine. They flourished briefly, then, tragedy struck: knitting ennui. Both cardigans disappeared into obscurity, taking dead end jobs working the cash register down at the DQ and seeing the light of day only when Lisa or I happened to dig through our piles of works-in-progress looking for what the heck happened to all our US 5 circulars.

Lisa's TYC has suffered setbacks as recently as last month. She contended in the Ravelympics, and friends, let's just come out and say it, missed the mark. My TYC, on the other hand, demoralized and out of shape, didn't even have the guts to compete. But inspired by Lisa's progress, although non-medaling, somehow she made it back to the top of the WIP pile and she's grown pretty quickly over the last couple of days.

Galled by her Ravelympics experience, Lisa's TYC now has a new ambitious goal for completion: September 12. And mine, spurred by her cantankerous coach - no, not Bela Karoli, but me - has proposed a challenge: my TYC will reach completion not only by September 12, but before Lisa's.

It's on!

I'll admit it's especially ambitious on my end. Lisa has completed lower body and one sleeve. Personally, I think she's juicing. At first glance, my TYC is ahead:

But I've got some big challenges to power through. Namely:

Yeah, the usual. My gauge is SO INCONSISTENT that the sleeve I made like 10 months ago is a totally different size than the one I just started and am about 2/3 of the way through. The gauge is totally different. What's more, the new sleeve appears to be on gauge whereas the old is quite significantly below it. It's like I didn't even measure it! Thankfully, the body seems to be just about right, and shouldn't be a huge problem. But sleeve #1 is going to have to be re-knitted. So in the end, that puts my TYC well behind Lisa's, with the additional handicaps of my 12-hour days at work and general knitting laziness. It should also save some time that I have decided to eschew the whole "tangled yoke" portion of the TYC, possibly in favor of an enormous felted or knitted flower brooch. And I make up in spirit and determination what I lack in gauge skills and time! Or at least let's tell ourselves that.

Here's wishing Lisa's TYC good luck and wind at her back. Oh yeah, and eat my dust, Lisa's TYC!

ps - Intriguing. Has anyone ever seen Sunday Knits in person?

pps - Today's title brought to you by The Cosby Show [thanks, Nettie!]

On Cowl-Neck Sweaters and Quinoa

Do not be shocked - two posts in one week!

You all have been so helpful in suggesting cowl sweater patterns that I have compiled here some of your suggestions as a helpful reference for those seeking a hiding place in their pullovers:

Francis Revisited
Cowl Pullover
#20 Cowl Neck Sweater
Trumpet
Mohair Cowl Pullover
Heart

I'm still mulling what to do. The sweater I envision is based loosely on an old sweater of mine, where the cowl tilted perfectly forward - not floppily but just enough to leave neck and collarbones exposed. This was accomplished, I think, by a curved neck at the base of the cowl. It was similar, in that respect, to Simply Marilyn, a sweater that gets a lot of flack from folks who've made it, but which I actually wear a lot. Marilyn's neck shaping is achieved with short rows. The neck opening here would be narrower, but the cowl would tilt forward in the same fetching way.

Trouble is, I do not do seamed sweaters much anymore, and I do not pretend to be able to design one. Ideally this sweater would be a seamless or even top-down raglan, but it is not clear how to engineer the crucial neck-shaping in the right way in the round. The Francis Revisited pattern has the simplicity I seek, and I suspect the #20 Cowl does too, but I do not think they have the requisite neck. Maybe the stitches could just be split when it's time for the neck, as with a sock, but would that affect the raglan lines? Hmm. I need to think it over some more.

In other news, I have been on a quinoa kick lately. Guess that doesn't really qualify as "news" (but if the fact that Sarah Palin's favorite food is moose burgers is news, then maybe this is too).

On the left is a Quinoa Curry Cucumber Salad that's become a new staple Chez Fig + Plum. It's a modified version of a Martha Stewart recipe. I threw some leftover chicken into the version above, but it's totally unnecessary and the recipe is otherwise vegan. On the right is Pineapple Cashew Quinoa Stir-Fry, a recipe from Veganomicon which was passed on by the incomparable Virginia. Like Virg I made it without the pineapple juice, and it was a total grand slam. One of the reasons I'm partial to quinoa is not its merits as a superfood, although they are many, but the utility of its leftovers. It's the perfect thing to bring to work for lunch.

Well, I'll be sure to keep you abreast of developments in the cowl-neck arena. Rhinebeck looms!

Get Thee to B.G.!

PSA for you New Yorkers: Brooklyn General is having a fabulous sale through Labor Day. As the helpful BGer Illana noted upon ringing me up, "you got a smokin' hot deal!":

I picked up a bunch of yarns for baby things, as there is no shortage of babies to go around, which suits my small-project kick just fine. Up there you see six balls of Sublime Yarns Organic Cotton DK, which is new to me, and down below, three balls of Wool Cotton, a yarn I have used before and really liked.

You might find it an odd color for baby things, and maybe it is a little. But I think babies look great in dark neutrals, generally. This could be a reaction against my two years working at the Gymboree in the mall during college, which was nothing but opportunity after opportunity to Dress Your Child Like a Clown.

Progress on the BSJ (did I even tell you I was working on a BSJ? I don't think so!) is stalled. I was making it out of leftovers of this and that, but then - ironically, since it is a leftovers sweater - I ran out of the Chestnut Telemark I am sort of depending on as my main color. A ball is on the way. Not much of a hurry for this one, since it's a gift for someone whom we won't see until October.

Yep, there it is.

Sigh.

Notice anything about that picture? A little hazy, perhaps? Turns out it was taken with a broken 50mm lens, which promptly fell to pieces when I investigated what was going on. Oh well. The Amazon reviews warned that it might give out after a year's hard use. And so it did. [Takes a moment to contemplate the role played by disposable, mass-produced goods in killing society]. Guess I'll be ordering another one.

Last thing, I think. I'm looking for a fairly simple sweater pattern with a GIANT, I mean GIANT cowl neck, the kind you can pull over your head and disappear into, the kind so giant you can kind of pile it up over your face. Know what I mean? It's for the navy Morehouse 3-strand I bought at Rhinebeck last year, which MUST be used before this year's festival or I will be shamefaced walking 'round the grounds. Any suggestions? Think BIG!

p.s. - Chris got mentioned on Gawker! Well, not by name. And they were kind of making fun of him. But they weren't as mean as they usually are, and any publicity is good publicity!
p.p.s. - Sorry to have been out of touch! Things have been a little more lively 'round the old Flickr account, if you feel compelled to catch up :-)