January 1

January brings Camellia blooms to southern California. We planted 10 Camelia Japonicas (Jordan's Pride) trees in summer 2000. They are 8-11 feet tall now. Don't the big, fat buds just fill you with anticipation?


The picture in the nursery link above shows a much more deeply hued flower than we observe. Ours are a more delicate pink. Some are striped. ( Gardeners call them "peppermint".)






Oh, yeah! I stopped reading and started knitting.

After much dithering, I decided to go with the "Bergmar" motifs on pages 24-25 of The Best of Lopi. Only two colors are used on any given row. However, the first row has a seven stitch float! I tried twisting the yellow behind the purple with uneven results. It shows in some places.

Note that I carry the dominant color continental style and drop the secondary color, throwing it with my right hand as needed. I also knit the tube inside out. Hopefully, by leaving the floats on the outside diameter of the tube, the tension will not be too tight.

Here is a close-up of the yoke.

This is the progress so far. Knitting the sleeves first and then joining to the body for the yoke made me nervous. I didn't want to get stuck with the wrong length sleeves after putting in all that work. So I used a provisional cast-on with waste yarn. After I try the completed sweater body on, I can decide how long to make the sleeves. EZ was right. It is fun to go round and round on the decreasing yoke with the pattern developing before my eyes. I really am getting along "like a house on fire".

I put the cone of blue cotton yarn that I used for the provisional crochet cast-on just to show off. If you live in LA, the Marukai 98 Cent store in south Torrance on Hawthorne Boulevard is selling entire cones of cabled cotton yarn (in ~10 colors) for $7.98. Although the only thing the label says is "Made in Japan", it looks and feels like the stuff I bought last summer for Plum Blossom. The wrapper for that yarn said 100% Peruvian cotton made in Japan.

That's all folks.