Frogging Without a Net

Remember yesterday I said I was thinking of adding a narrow stripe of orange between the two purples on LC's sweater?  Well, I got to the body part, picked up the orange and knitted four rows, then picked up the dark purple and knitted two rows before the end of the work day.  As I tucked it into my bag to leave I realized that four rows of orange were going to make a STATEMENT in such a small sweater, way more of a statement than I had in mind.  I mulled it over on the drive home and through supper and cleanup, pulled it out of my bag and knew what I had to do.  I turned on all the lights for the best view of my daring yarn trick, tugged out the needle, catching all the stitch markers, then pulled out the dark purple and one of the orange rows.  Then I carefully tugged out the next row of orange while catching the released orange stitches with the needle one at a time.  I didn't bother with whether the stitches were mounted on the needle correctly, I just wanted to catch them before they went anywhere.  Then I picked up the dark purple to carefully knit the first row, adding the stitch markers back in, and making sure with each stitch that the right leg of the stitch came first.  Ah, much better.



This morning I got an inkling of why I was determined to put that orange stripe in the purple sweater.  See these grape hyacinths around the orange tulip?  There's the sweater inspiration right there.


Sometimes you just need cake.  Chocolate cake.  I have been craving chocolate cake.  I almost bought one at ALDI last week but I didn't want to spend the five bucks.  Last night I printed off an old Hershey's Cocoa recipe from 1979 called Wacky Cocoa Cake (made with vinegar, baking soda, and oil instead of eggs and water), dug out my mother-in-law's old fluted cake pan, and this morning I mixed it up.  I'll serve it plain with powdered sugar available for shaking over it.  Yum.  Chocolate cake.  (it's just out of the oven and too hot to cut, dang it)  (one of these days I'll remember to "flour" the pan with cocoa so its outside isn't this weird white)

April 28--Martin Johnson Heade, Portrait of a Young Lady.

Jane in her pleated dress
stood by the window
cloaked in shame and shadow
while sunset spread
its brazen light
across the forbidden sky.
~~~~~

Don't ask me what that means, I haven't got a clue.  Oh hey, the sun's shining.  That'll make running errands later a whole lot nicer.
--Barbara