In between cleaning today I worked on a few different fair isle patterns for the remake of the infant sweater. I came up with three patterns, making sure to follow all the rules of a good fair isle pattern:

• only two colors per row.
• each color should span no more than five stitches.
• use each color evenly (this is more of a design constraint than a fair isle rule).

I think I like the third one best -- especially for a sweater whose base will be white. I think I'd use the second one for a hat - its more solid, and I think a band that solid on a white sweater might be too much.

(1)	(2)	(3)

Debbie Bliss Cathay Yarn

I got some gorgeous yarn while I was in Washington. We stopped at a cute shop called the Wool Station in Bellingham. They had a nice selection of washable wools, cottons and other blends. They had some nice novelty yarns, but they focused more on simple yarns with great textures and colors -- my kinda yarn. I liked it.

As I mentioned before, I bought some Debbie Bliss Cathay Yarn in orange (04), yellow (05), green (06) and off-white (02). I really like the colors together. They've got a bold color but with a soft hue (I really have no idea if those statements make sense together... but it sounds about right).

I decided I wanted to make a neat fair isle pattern for the sweater. I really like the pattern I designed. But honestly I think I made it WAY too complicated... or maybe -- if I do it as intarsia instead of fair-isle, it'll be easier. The problem is that it's taking WAY too long to switch between so many colors on each row. Intarsia's not going to help that... It may help clean up all the stranding that I have on the back of the work (and in turn help me loosen up the guage)... but it really won't help the slowness issue... ugh.

At this point I'm thinking I should frog the whole thing and start over with a simpler pattern. Maybe I should just do a nice bold zigzag like I did on this hat. Or maybe come up with another fair isle pattern where I limit myself to only two-colors per row. I really do like the look of this pattern... but I just don't think I have the patience to finish it. Plus, with how tight the guage is getting, I don't think it will fit right -- and it'll kill me if I put this much work into it and it turns out crappy.

Ahhh... what to do what to do... I think I'm frogging it. (For those of you who don't know -- to "frog" a piece of knitting means to unravel it. I've heard its called "frogging" because you rip-it rip-it rip-it.)

The over-complicated fair-isle pattern.	The front of my sweater so far, notice the guage gets tighter when I get more stranding in the work
	The back of my sweater so far, there's a LOT of stranding.

For the west-bound half of my trip this week I made my first baby layette set. I'm just about finished with my light green sweater I have to sew all the pieces together and attach the buttons -- but that was too little work to bring so much fabric on a plane. I'll finish it when I get home. So instead, I grabbed some scrap yarn to play with on the plane.

This outfit is from the same book: Natural Knits for Babies and Moms. It's actually not listed as a full outfit -- but the daisy's tie the whole thing together. It turns out the scrap yarn I brought was 3 different sport-weight balls of white yarn. Luckily they're all the same guage and shade of white, but definitely different textures. But -- this way, when the baby spits up on it, I won't feel bad 'cause I know its just cheap acrylic scrap yarn. Nonetheless, I'm happy with how it turned out.

I'm working on a fair isle-ish pattern for the next baby sweater I make. I bought some Debbie Bliss Cathay yarn at a cute yarn shop in Bellingham, Washington. I think I'll use the same basic sweater pattern as this sweater -- it'll give me plenty of space to have fun with my fair isle pattern. Hopefully it all lines up and turns out all right!

The Zucchini-fairy visited my neighbor this week. Their garden exploded with them. So they were nice enough to give us a couple. They're HUGE.

Last year, at while I was in Salt Lake for Climb4Life, Betsy made this great zucchini bread, and was kind enough to send us all the recipe. So, tonight I gave it a try.

The recipe is called an Orange Nut Zucchini Bread, of course -- I made it with no nuts so that I wouldn't kill my husband... so it became an Orange no-Nut Zucchini Bread. It was a nice day, so I took a walk to the Acme to get the orange and some baking soda. I was quite proud of myself: I walked to the grocery (didn't drive) and I brought a cloth grocery bag (no plastic bag), plus -- hey -- exercise!

At the Acme they had some ok-looking small-ish oranges. But then... next to them, I noticed some really pretty big oranges. I knew I needed 2 tablespoons of orange zest and a quarter cup of orange juice. So I figured I could just buy the one big orange, instead of two small ones.

I got home, and started to grate the zucchini, zest the orange and beat the eggs. Mendra walked in and asked if I'd bought a blood orange, because the flesh looked pretty red.

I thought back... I didn't see anything about a blood orange... and its a pretty small Acme... I wouldn't think they'd carry them... then I started feeling kind of silly, and walked over to look at the receipt.

So... now my Orange no-Nut Zucchini Bread, has become a non-Orange no-Nut Zucchini Bread. I just got the bread out of the oven. It actually tastes pretty good (of course, it would be better with walnuts). I have the rest of the weekend to make the recipe correctly and use all this zucchini. Hopefully everyone enjoys getting zucchini bread gifts. I promise to make it with the right fruit!

I still can't believe I bought a grapefruit and not an orange. I'm such a dork.