when green is all there is to be

I am working on knitting a sweater for my nearly-two-year-old daughter. It is the first real thing I have ever knit (knitted?). See, I don't even know whether the past tense of "knit" is regular or irregular--a novice I am.

Lessons I have learned while knitting this sweater:
1. Next time, use big needles and big yarn. (Maya told me I'd discover this one.)

OK, so that's the only lesson so far. But let me tell you, it's a vital one.

I have so far managed to finish the back to the point that I have the neckline on a stitchholder:



and I am halfway through the easy (pre-neck) part of the button side of the front:



Aside from a few panicked moments when I thought I'd dropped a stitch (I have no idea how I would pick it up again, Debbie Stoller notwithstanding), things have been tripping along rather well. At least, until last night, after I took the above pictures...accomplished knitters may already see what I would not see until many rows later in the evening, which was that I reversed in the middle of a row. I ended up having to unravel quite a bit, and had some very scary moments there when I had a terrible time catching the stitches from the seed stitch portion of the row. But, all is well now, and I'm ready to start up again tonight, once I've amply recovered. I still have high hopes of finishing it up in time for her birthday at the end of the month, but that will take a few more evenings with this



and fewer puttering around with things like these



I also need to learn to photograph flowers properly sometime.

Wine with dinner:



Oh, and I'm also supposed to be writing a book this summer.