Fall has come late to Chicago!! Somehow there are tulips involved as well....

I can't believe that as I write this on November 13, there are still leaves on the trees. I don't think they normally last anywhere near this long. In fact, my mother maintains that they are usually gone by Halloween. Weird. Anyway, here is some badly shot proof of the changing/falling leaves in our area. I really didn't do that great a job capturing how bright and wonderful the leaves are. They're just electric right now. It was hard to shoot, though, because of the position of the sun, my laziness (not wanting to leave my porch), and the fact that I didn't want our SUPER paranoid neighbors across the street to think that I was trying to photograph their house or something....
If you click on them and blow them up you can sort of see how pretty they are.







Of course, the fall tulips I spoke of in the title are the ones I'm knitting. I speak in the plural, but you can only see one here. This is the 6-9 month version. I am awaiting now the kit from Coldwater Collaborative that will bring me the 6 year old version. I am finishing the current sweater for a baby that is due in December and the bigger one will be for her big sister so she can feel good too. Hopefully they will both get some use out of these sweaters!

A note on the size: I do have the 6-9 mo pattern, but I have knit it in smaller gauge. As far as I can tell, no baby in the plains is going to need a sweater from June to September, so I think making it available now is a good idea. Of course, since I don't know what size newborns are, or more importantly, what size this one will be, my choices in making it smaller are definitely arbitrary. I've got my fingers crossed. If nothing else, hopefully she can wear it in the spring . . . so long as I haven't made it too small . . . which I don't think I have. But we won't know until December, will we?

So, here it is:












It's going together nice and quickly, which is encouraging since I have to make a much bigger one soon. And hopefully I will have learned from my mistakes. Heh.

Here is a blurry close-up of the i-cord bind off. I was pretty nervous about that part, but it was super simple and it's kind of a fun way to finish!








I made a couple mistakes as I went a long. Big surprise. I have to admit that for the first time, I didn't really fix most of them because most of them were not big enough to notice. I hope. I did do something that is noticeable, though, and that is that the parts that I picked up on the insides of the cardigan front are not equal -- that is, the seed stitched parts on the left and the right front insides of the cardigan are not equal because I didn't go as far up in picking up stitches on the left side. Hooray. I would have fixed it, but I would have had to undo so much at the point where I discovered it. I am hoping very much that when I do the i-cord around the neck, along with the i-cord strings for tying the sweater, I will be able to hide that somewhat. And of course, there's always that deeply delusional hope that I will be able to block out the difference . . . . Ha, ha, ha. Man, I hope so. If it's horrible in the end, I'm sure I'll rip it all out. I don't like having messed up stuff to give out as gifts, that's for sure.

Two notes about the pattern, both of which may have been obvious to smarter knitters than me:

1) when I picked up stitches for the cardigan front panels, the instructions said to pick up three stitches for each four rows. At first I thought maybe I should do this with the outer-most stitches, but those were slipped and I didn't quite know what to do, since they didn't represent the number of rows and it would have been hard to count. I tried it for a second and found that the stitches were waaayyy too loose and looked terrible for picking up the stitches. So, I quickly moved instead to picking up stitches from the column of stitches just inside of the slipped/outermost column. This worked much better for counting and for the tightness and visual appeal of the sweater. It is probably obvious to some that this is how to do it, but I had to think and try it before I decided to change my approach, so it's possible that someone else could have the same problem.

2) in the first row of color change, my instructions say "slip 1st stitch purlwise, k1, p1*, repeat from *...*." I wrongly slipped, k1, p1, all the way through that row because I assumed (though perhaps the "1st stitch" part should have given it away) that the ** would include the whole thing -- I had to make something up since it was unclear. Later I looked at the top of the instructions and for some reason that part is repeated up there. THAT one had it correct: slip 1st stitch purlwise, *k1, p1*, repeat etc. Don't make my mistake.

Lastly, this week, I'm going to give you a gratuitous shot of my cat Bobcat strutting down our street because it's such a lovely shot. Enjoy. :)