This old house
Saturday October 27th 2007, 11:59 am
Filed under: Knit

back of old house(I knew my folks would want to see this. They’re turning the old living room windows into a walk-out onto the soon-to-be wooden deck upstairs.)

I knitted a scarf for the woman who bought my folks’ old house, one that had the name of the street incorporated into the lace pattern. Now, I’ve used this particular baby alpaca yarn and that pair of needles together dozens of times, but somehow those two stitch patterns came out looser-looking than many. No, I didn’t swatch. I know. I was pretty sure of myself, and yes, when I knit it again, I will tighten up the gauge a bit.

View out a bedroom window

But the perfectionism of the knitter isn’t what matters; what does is that I designed it just for her, I finished it just in time before we left Maryland, and I got it over to her new house, where her contractor in great delight promised to get it to her, along with the copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” I handed him with an inscription thanking her for loving the old house and the woods behind it. I told him that in the spring, before the neighbors’ ivy had overwhelmed the ground cover (which, thankfully, he’d pulled completely out), there had been a field of mayapples under the trees to the right in the spring, with box turtles living among them. Box turtles love mayapples. I told him that one time we kids had brought a snapping turtle inside by mistake, and Mom had told us to take it right back outside, now! My brother Bryan, part of the conversation, said in surprise, “I didn’t know we had snapping turtles back there!” Box turtles, sure. I only remember the one snapper ever.

Read the book, I was thinking at the contractor as well as the new owner. See some of why those turtles mean so much to me.

Amanda’s green yarn is going to be the next rendition of that pattern. Right now it and the newly gifted Superior and my sister’s Christmas present and that lovely rose laceweight from Stitches East and and and are all vying for attention like toddlers jumping up and down, going, Me, Mommy, no me! Knit ME next.

All right kids. One at a time. Don’t everyone try to speak to me at once.

new homeowner’s baby alpaca scarf


4 Comments so far
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I know what you mean about vying projects. I knit for my sis-in-love, but that project is a little hard on my hands, so I take breaks from it to knit other things. My husband’s socks have only 30 rnds to go, and I’d finished all but one UFO… then Lynn gifted me with fiber… and one of them demanded to be knit right away. Thankfully it is different knitting than the other two, so it slides its way into the spiraling sequence of changes easiest for my hands to work on.
It’s based on a shawl from ‘Knitting in the Nordic Tradition’ (pg 81 in my copy) and its yummy. I hope I can bear to put it down when it’s a different object’s turn!

Comment by Diana Troldahl 10.27.07 @ 1:55 pm

WOW, that is gorgeous!

Comment by Amanda 10.27.07 @ 2:30 pm

You make me laugh, only because we all have the over confident moment when we don’t swatch. And it seems to me perfectionism is a knitters trait. The scarf is beautiful “as for the toddlers” which one has the most urgent need? What a great place to have grown up with the woods so close. Now I completely understand why you wanted to thank the woman for loving the house.

Comment by vicki 10.27.07 @ 3:28 pm

I get “Me next” every time I open the fiber closet.

Every time.

“Shhhh, soon,” I tell them as I quickly slap the door shut.
Beautiful scarf.

Comment by Sunflowerfairy 10.28.07 @ 6:41 am



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