Dear Ann: Reader Gale Zucker writes in our comments: “Have you pushed through the Honey Cowl time warp and can just, like, make them appear? That particular color just kills me.” Gale, I’m glad you asked. Yes, I close my eyes, visualize a Honey Cowl, lay my hands on 400 yards of hand-dyed merino, and when I open my eyes I am standing over the kitchen sink inhaling Soak fumes. Seriously, here is the current Honey Cowl. ...

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Dear Ann, O Baby! What a darling baby is Woodie. And how efficient were you to get her cardi made while she’s still small enough to have to roll up the sleeves? My sympathies on Boreal’s second sleeve. Git R done, asap, or that thing is going to die just one sleeve short of glory. But enough about your knitting. What about my knitting? I got a lot of solitary knitting time in trains, planes and automobiles last week as I...

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Dear Kay, Finished object update. A few weeks ago, I had a total tweed freakout regarding Jared Flood’s yarn Shelter. This spell sent me into a frenzy of tweed fever, to the point that I rooted through my lair in search of something, anything to knit that involved tweed. Fortunately, I laid my clammy paw upon an unfinished object, the Back Home in Vermont Sweater from Barbara Albright’s Natural Knitter. Rowan Felted Tweed. A...

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Dear Kay, Because there’s nothing better than frolicking on the chilly beach in your new wool and cotton cardigan . . . I hadn’t picked out buttons yet, so it was buttonless, which for this sweater actually matters. It really wants to be buttoned. It all fits. The seams were a real odyssey in connecting unmatching cables. I just sat down at a table with the thing and made executive decision after executive decision. The side...

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Dear Kay, Holy cow, I think my mom’s sweater is haunted! Get this: yesterday, while wearing the cabled fisherman’s sweater my mom made 30 years ago–back when she was, you know, alive–I found myself strangely drawn to the top shelf of my closet, that netherland where unfinished objects marinate until they either decay, spontaneously unravel, or otherwise meet some dismal fate. At a time of day when I usually scramble...

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So here I am flipping through the Peruvian Connection catalog, which any knitter looks at with admiration and head-shaking amazement (28-dark-color intarsia in meandering leaf patterns) when I come across Kaffe Fassett and one of his dotty-patterned cardigans. His dot patterns are my favorite, and this one is a steal at...

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Just about finished sewing up Moonbeam. The set-in sleeves went in better than I thought they would. A couple of sleevy seams and I’m done. Woopy! Grooming rant: Yesterday I took the fellas to the Opryland Hotel, the largest hotel east of Las Vegas. It is the first thing that people who have been to Nashville mention to me (“How about that hoTEL?”), and it is just about the worst place in the universe. However, a mother in...

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Got out the Rowenta this afternoon for a steamfest while the fellas made potholder upon potholder (David) and played Busy Town on the computer (Clif). I have noticed that the more I knit, the less attention the fellas get. Hmm. May need to think about that. Until then, here’s Moonbeam in a pre-steam mode: I’ve never knitted a ribbed sweater, and I’m amazed at how incredibly stretchy it is, horizontally, that is. Goes halfway...

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