Even though one of us was missing from the table,
I was thankful for the beauty of the day. It's been 24 years
since I first rode down this street, past the house
 with the once- pink(!) front doors that would be mine.
I was pregnant with M at the time and was visiting a very
 creative fellow who lived in a charming 19th century cottage
further down the street. He painted a mural for M's nursery,
We became neighbors when M. was 3. Twins and their parents
and a puppy live there now. The family, the dad pulled
by the Golden Lab, were returning from a two-mile walk
 as I was heading home on Thanksgiving day. 

So many changes! An entire generation of children has vanished
 behind the wheels of cars into adulthood - including one of mine
 missing from the Thanksgiving table - and the new crop
 of babies is already into the middle and teen years.

Into the Knitting Workshop

Enough of this nostalgia. It is, after all, two days post Thanksgiving
and the frenzy has kicked into high gear. I will try to go handknit
 as much as possible this gift-giving season. We'll see how far I get,
 especially since the leaves, late to drop this year, still call me outdoors. 

Right now I'm nearing the end of the teapot cozy in
The Well-Knit Home. At last post  (see Nov. 20) I had completed
two foundation sections, each with three ruffles, allowing for 
splits that enable both the handle and the spout to peek through.
Now the tea cozy is all one piece, and I am decreasing every other row,
much as I would be if it were the top of a hat. 
Rather than bring out double-pointed needles - I can't find them
 in the correct size - I'm using two circulars. It always helps
 to use different-colored circs so you can better figure out
where you're going, and where you've been.  

Here's how to maneuver them: 

1. At the start of a new round, I've simply begun working with
 a new needle (metal) in a new color, aqua. The metal needle
feeds off stitches from the bambo circ on the left. 
 

2. Now the metal circ has traveled about half way through the round,
 replaing white with aqua as it goes. In the meantime,
the white stitches-in-waiting have slid slowly to the left tip 
of the bamboo needle to be in position for knitting. 
The cable of the bamboo needle hangs down to the right - a thin
 grey line with no stitches on it.  

3. In the photo above, all the stitches-in-waiting on the bamboo
 needle have been pushed to the left tip,
and the right tip has come full circle to begin
knitting. (Note the unused metal tip underneath the bamboo shaft.)
 You can always tell which needle to put in your right hand
 by looking at what's on deck on the left side and matching it up.

. . . of the teapot cozy have finally come together. Thanks to Suzanne
for her comments on the instructions, which should have explained
in more detail that you work a total of two foundation pieces,
each one with three ruffles - before joining them together.
Here, I've just finished decreasing across the right side
of each foundation piece - I just kept going across the second one
when I finished the first one - and I'm about to join
the two pieces together simply by continuing to knit what's on
the left side of the circular needle.(I will pause long enough
to put in a marker defining the beginning and
end of each round. To be continued . . .  

Seemly seams

As promised, here's the skinny on another "Invisible" seam,
this one done stitches to rows, which I used to join the body
(stitches) of the Joplin Coat to the sleeves (rows.) If you're trying
this for the first time, it helps to do it at a well-lit table where
you can spread out the pieces to be joined and concentrate
 just on the seam, not holding your knitting in your lap. 

Here, we begin with right sides facing, the "stitches" piece on the bottom
and the "rows" piece on the top. The guidelines, in
orange scrap yarn, mark the path the needle will take.
On the bottom, the guideline goes through the center
of each and every stitch. On the top, the guideline highlights
 the channel of bars between the edge stitch and the second stitch.

Insert the yarn needle back to front through the outermost stitch
at the extreme right of your "stitches" piece on the bottom.
Go immediately to the top piece and put the needle back to front
through the cast-on or cast-off edge at a point even with your guideline.
Pull the yarn through.

Return to the bottom piece and insert the needle front to back
 through the same hole you used to start the work.
Then bring the needle out from the back to the front
in the center of the adjacent stitch.

Return to the top piece, running the needle under one or two bars
 in the path defined by the guidelines. Because there are more rows
 in a given length than there are stitches, you sometimes will have
 to catch two bars rather than one bar to keep
the seaming on track with the bottom piece.

Here, the seam is starting to "disappear" in the knitting.
(Thanks to kitty for supervising this post.
Some day I'll have to photograph his good work
at the keyboard and the monitor.)

At least I should be able to follow my own advice,
 in this case a little tip about marking increases and decreases.
 And with all good intentions, I set out to do just that
 on the Joplin Coat - but my perennial problem is too
 much trying to do more than one thing at a time –
which results in knitting that is  uh, not error-free.
Since I love to rationalize, error-prone knitting in my mind
 is better than not being able to knit at all,
 especially in the day’s stolen moments,
 which is usually the only time I have to click along.

In the huge rectangle that is the body of the Joplin Coat,
I had been so immersed in the soothing rhythm of stockinette,
a mantra for the hands, that I didn’t want to leave
the needles long enough to even mark the increases
 for the arms of the sleeves, or the decreases for the cap.
So I marked them in the knitting itself with little bits of  scrap yarn
made into loops that go over the point of increase or decrease
 and can later be snipped off. (The changing colors of
the scrap yarn have no meaning.)

The markers give me a semi-permanent record
of the number of increases or decreases without my having
 to leave the knitting to place a mark on a piece of paper
or a row counter. And mistakes are easier to catch when the
progress is marked in the yarn. Which is how I discovered that
 I ended up with two different sleeve caps, neither of them correct.
 How I did this, I do not know, except that it had to do something
with tweaking the design of the sleeve to add  little width at
the upper arm so I can layer under the coat. Those extra stitches
 in the upper arm had to go somewhere, and they did not go
gracefully the first time around. 
 

I’m over it now. I’ve re-knit the sleeve caps and they fit into
the body of the coat perfectly. I’m almost done sewing them in,
and then on to the final piece, the all-in-one collar and ties.
 To be continued . . .