A Fuzzy Harper Cardigan

I did not get out to the garden yesterday as planned. We bought a new-to-us diesel generator to replace the existing gas one and the electrician needed to come and do some wiring. I didn’t want to be on the other side of the property in case he needed something while he was here. I stayed inside and made another Harper Cardigan.

[Do I need all these cardigans? No, but I am rationalizing this by noting that making cardigans is giving me the opportunity to sew many different kinds of sweater knits, and that is important. I need to be familiar with how these fabrics behave so I can troubleshoot for students in class. Also, cardigans can be used as class samples or given away if I find I have too many. Sometimes, it’s about the process, not the product.]

I used another chunk of fabric from the Walmart remnant rack. It is fuzzy:

I dithered for the longest time about using the purl side of this fabric as the right side of the cardigan. There is a shiny turquoise rayon thread running through the purl side and I thought it looked interesting, almost holographic. In the end, though, I used the stockinette side as the outside:

This serged up quickly with no issues, although I did have to adjust the differential feed—the rate at which the fabric feeds into the machine—to keep the seams from becoming wavy.

I saw a hawk swooping around while I was working yesterday. My cutting table looks out over the driveway. We don’t often see hawks here because we have so many trees. I couldn’t tell what it was hunting, but I hope it didn’t get the bunny that lives under our porch.

I recorded another podcast episode yesterday afternoon. Yes, this is going to end up being a weekly podcast because I have a lot to say. Release days will be Tuesdays, I think. It seems to work well if I record late in the week and edit/write shows notes over the weekend. I got a little bit spicy in this one, too, although I keep the language clean. I have very little tolerance for people whose main goal in life seems to be sucking the joy out of others’ lives.

Today, I need to buckle down and work in the garden. I went out there yesterday afternoon to assess what needs to be done. And I spent some time shelling the beans that had dried out in the greenhouse:

These are Jacob’s Cattle Beans. This row of beans didn’t do as well as the others. I only got enough to can up about a dozen pints, but that’s a dozen pints I didn’t have before and I grew these. Beans are magical.

I’ll pull the rest of the bean plants and leave the pods in the greenhouse to finish drying out. More rows of beans are on the list for next season.

I have a completely empty week on the calendar next week. While I’d love to spend it sewing, I’ll be finishing up all of the canning. I have to get tomatoes out of the freezer and free up space for the pork that is coming in a few weeks. At least one of those huge, warty pumpkins will get processed so I have pumpkin for pies. And I might do a few more pints of green beans because the plants in my garden finally produced. We’ll see.