Thursday, August 30, 2007

With gratitude

I have many people I could thank, pretty much every darn day of my life, and just typing this sentence makes me think of a dozen immediately. This is not a general gratefulness posting, but in the past 16 hours or so I have had reason to be grateful for:

1) Grumperina's great tutorial on cabling without a cable needle. I'd tried tutorials on this before with no luck (dropped stitches mostly), and tried to figure it out on my own and got a headache. Duh. Her easy approach made it possible for me to cable while walking, which was my main reason for wanting to try it (I love to knit while walking, especially between meetings). But there was a huge bonus: cabling without a cable needle is much faster. I didn't expect this at all!

As you may have suspected, I cast on for Khaki Cables (shockingly, in just about the same color indicated in the pattern, though that's coincidental) on Tuesday. Here's where I am after last night's bout of cable-needle-free zoomin':


I love this pattern. The best thing about it is that it's really easy to memorize the chart, believe it or not. So I haven't had to carry that around with me (well, actually I lost my photocopy sometime yesterday morning, and haven't made another yet) while knitting. Another thing that makes walking while knitting possible!

2) Elinoire's mother, Nancy, who gave me some of her tomato seedlings a few weeks ago. Nancy has a thumb so green it glows in the dark, and nearly every cutting she's ever given me has been a winner. Now, I am THIS close to fresh cherry and pear tomatoes, all grown in pots (because despite having over 1/3 acre of land, I have nothing arable to grow on yet):



Mmmm.

3 comments:

Jen said...

Fresh tomatoes are the best! We used to have a garden at the last place we lived. All summer, supper would be pasta with a "sauce" of chopped fresh tomatoes, peppers, and whatever else was ripe that day.

Nice start on the sweater. It's amazing how sometimes just finding a different person's explanation of how to do something can make all the difference in the world.

Earin Marybird said...

I've taken a quick look at her tutorial and now I will take a longer look. Faster is better! I love the repeats, so fresh.

1/3 an acre and no place to grow? I've never had much luck with pots. What kind do you use, how often do you have to water and fertilize? You will love the tomatoes. Nothing in the store comes close to home grown.

Anonymous said...

I've been wanting to try cabling without a needle; it's good to hear how easy you find it.

The sweater is looking really nice!