A Pantry Ballet

Joseph Cornell : A Pantry Ballet (for Jacques Offenbach), 1942

The kookiest thing ever—those are plastic lobsters dancing with tutus and spoons—and I cannot get enough of it!

Silver Belle Progress Report

The peplum is done [do normal people even know what a "peplum" is? I had to look it up in the dictionary] and actually was done a couple weeks ago. I had to do a couple modifications, though: doing exactly what the pattern said left me with so many rows of regular 4x4 cabling for Panel B at the top (to get a length of 9.75") that the peplum flared out towards the bottom like a trumpet. Which I didn't like. I'm making the size s, which is apparently what the model is wearing, so how did they end up with only 2 rounds of the 4x4 at the top? I thought maybe my gauge was off (I must admit, I'm not too fastidious about swatching), because some other finished measurements didn't match the ones on the pattern, but I did the right yoke and checked the gauge off the seed stitch there, and it seems to be fine. Hmm. Anyways, here's the neck part of the right yoke:


The bottom part of the neckline also looks different from the sweater the model's wearing, but that might be because it's sort of stretched out on her or something.

And people have been asking about the yarn, so I thought I should say that I'm using really old Sympathie by Filatura di Crosa: 35% mohair, 45% wool, 20% acrylic in color #754.

And on an unrelated note: look, Charlene—your rose plant!

And my strawberry plant—my first strawberry. Or maybe second, but I forgot to take a picture of the real first one before it shriveled up and died, so. And now this strawberry is gone, too, because I ate it :] But it was so small it was hard to tell what it tasted like.

i own a piece of a farm

So I picked up my very first box of Eatwell farm-fresh veggies and eggs. Oh, I should've taken a picture of the eggs, too, but here are my heirloom tomatoes (and the gypsy peppers underneath) in the cardboard box they came in. The box also came with a melon, thyme, a brown bag of different kinds of little potatoes (authentically dirty, too), yellow plums pointy at one end, 2 red onions, a basket of cherry tomatoes, and a newsletter inviting me to a tomato sleepover at the farm! So cute. If I were the pitch-a-tent kind of girl. Or if someone pitched it for me.

Silver Belle Update: the bottom skirty part is done, and I've experimentally [that's not the word I'm looking for, but I can't think of it] knit one sleeve and am now up to the body part. I don't think I'm going to want the sleeve to be as fussy as it calls for in the pattern (and I'm thinking I might not even have enough yarn for it), but I figure I'll just knit it up and piece it together to see how it fits before I decide what to do with it. Anyone else making this?