Evidence of surprise knitting, that is.

A colleague is having a baby in July. Last week it occurred to me that July is in the none-to-distant future, and I’d better get a-knittin’.

This is the Babies And Bears sweater from Cottage Creations, knit in Cascade Sierra in colors 47 (turquoise blue) and 48 (lime green). (Such nice Persistent Illusion colors, eh?)

This sweater was a really fun knit. I love knitting baby things, anyway — they are so little and cute! And I so rarely have a reason to, except for charity knitting. “E” is for excuse also. The Babies And Bears sweater is knit in two sections from the ends of the arms in to the center. The two sections are Kitchenered together up the back while the rest of the stitches remain live. Then the hood is knit starting from the still-live neck stitches and Kitchenered at the top. The trim is added last from the still-live stitches around the edge, and then you bind off at the very end. I hate picking up stitches, and with all of the stitches remaining live until the end, this construction kept the picking up to a very minimum. It was fun, fun, fun!

Maybe, just maybe, there are a pair of little socks in some leftover-and-stashed Cascade fixation in a bright turquoise (ball band long ago lost).

Sorry about the craptastic chair shot. I had to take pics indoors rather than out in the yard because it’s raining.

It’s raining because this is Portland and it’s Rose Festival time.

Similar to the teaser faux-spring in February, we usually have a teaser faux-summer in May featuring a week or so of lovely warm days and clear crisp nights. It lulls even the long-time residents into putting away their winter coats and heaters and digging around in the basement (for those that have them) or garage (for those that don’t) to find the fan that was stashed away last autumn. Then Rose Festival comes and the rains return. It’s not as cold as it is earlier in the year, but it’s not all that warm, either. The jackets and sweaters come back out. The fan goes back to the basement / garage.

The weather sucks until after the 4th of July. Then we have a couple of truly hot, hot weeks. Everyone runs out and buys air conditioners like crazy because, you know, it’s apparently impossible to live through a couple of hot days. And the power demands spikes up while everyone attempts to keep cool. For a couple of weeks. Then the weather moderates and we have lovely 85-degree days all the way into October, with just a spot of rain occasionally to wash everything down. September is Portland’s way of rewarding us for living here through the long, dark winter.

I did turn my furnace off for the season. But I haven’t dragged out the fans yet. And I don’t possess air conditioning (and not likely to get it). So my summer preparation is fairly minimalistic.

PI updates continue, now and again. You might notice a little share this link at the bottom of each post. Clicking on it brings up a little tabbed window — one tab has a list of social bookmarking sites and the other lets you forward a link in email.

Toys.

Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes after my little prat fall last week. I am well on my way towards being as good as new — or at least as goos as I ever am. . All of you who related your own harrowing tales — Ack! Please be careful, gentle readers!

And greetings to fans of Defect Defect arriving here because they played at a placed called The Knitting Factory… I love my kid, but this might not be the site you were looking for. Google carefully.

P.S — yes, the sweater is for a boy. If the baby were a girl, I think hot pink trim would have been just too cute, don’t you?