Bandying About

Things are rolling again on my trim-athletic-dad's Christmas I.O.U. sweater.

I'm glad about that. I feel the need to hurry, as the trees are showing this suspicious white stuff. If it were really spring, I'd say they were alight with drifts of blossoms. But since I require it to still be mid-winter, when sensible people knit heavy sweaters, perhaps they're frosted instead with snow.

I was actually driving, this afternoon, down a fairly nondescript stretch of highway that just happened to have cherry or pear trees flowering along both sides of the road. For an instant, perhaps because of the way the late afternoon sun was lighting them up from behind, I honestly got the impression of a snowy day. The trees looked as they sometimes do the day after a snowfall. Not the heavy kind that weighs down the boughs, but a light snow that leaves them glinting and refreshed in the brilliant sunshine. It was a beautiful illusion.

Luckily, things are moving along again. I'm beginning to see the finish line up ahead.

I found some good hearty buttons that work well with the tweedy wool.


I also got busy and swatched the technique for knitting the bands on vertically. While it was a little persnickety, with much pulling up and tightening of loops, it did produce a nice well-fitted band with hardly any exertion of the little gray brain cells and nary a vestige of a seam on the back. With virtues like that, it was clearly a winner.

So I buckled down and got back to work, and got both the front buttonbands done, complete with buttonholes on the correct masculine side. All that remains to be done is seaming, knitting on a collar, finishing the pocket-tops and slip-stitching them down. And sewing on the buttons. And weaving in all the ends. And blocking the whole works.

Well, I guess there's a lot yet to be done after all. But as long as I'm moving again, we'll soon get there!