The last throes of summer: more Tiny Pocket Tanks

Every time I think that summer is fading into autumn, and the relief of cooler days, the sun pops back up and says “hey! How about a nice cup of 35 degrees?” and I have to pull out the summer clothes again. That said, unless we get an Indian summer, I expect that last weekend will have been the last bout of swelter for this year. So in honour of that, here is the last of my summer sewing, in the form of some more Tiny Pocket Tanks. 

Remake: Tiny Pocket Tank

My wee sister’s a bit of a globe trotter. As I may have mentioned before, I am not in the least bit jealous of this. Not at all. Not even one tiny little bit. The upside of this (not that there’s a downside, not even a green ugly head-rearing one) is that she brings back gorgeous fabricky offerings from far-off lands (mostly India.) I haven’t quite got her trained to select fabulous bolts of fabric, pack them up and send them straight to me in Switzerland (you she wouldn’t even have to carry them around with you her! ;) ) However, when she spent some months on the subcontinent a couple of years ago, she didn’t resist the call of the local markets, or the call of the clothes sellers who make up clothes in whatever size requested. She’s an inch or so taller than me, and proportionally very similar, so most of her clothes fit me quite well (although you certainly wouldn’t find me going through her wardrobe when she’s away. Not at all.*innocent face*)

Villa Garzoni once more

Autumn has set in again. As if we ever had a proper summer. Ha!
My kitchen smells of hot food cooking, my fingers smell of the cumin that I have been pounding in the mortar with the pestle (or was it in the pestle with the mortar?) There’s a bag of apples on the floor to be dealt with, jars of stewed plums in the cupboard, a bowl of stolen foraged hazelnuts on the table, and I’ve already dealt with the first excess of squash. My to-knit list is underway and growing, and all thoughts of light sleeveless tops to sew have been replaced with more sensible three-quarter to full length sleeved thoughts.

It seems to be a good time to remember that, although the summer never quite reached Switzerland, we did seek further south, and found her, living it up in Italy.

My Red Dolman

 

This is the jumper that I started knitting at the beginning of the summer. I finished it a while back, but in all honesty, I completely forgot about it, it hasn’t been a summer for sitting out long into the evenings which is what it was really intended for. More fool me! I did wear it a couple of times though, and managed to get a few snaps from The Long-Suffering Boy.

I knitted it to try and use up some cotton yarn (or 85% cotton, 15% polyester) that was in my stash, an impulse buy in a wool sale. I knitted it dolman-style, starting at the end of the right sleeve in the round, knitting up to the right shoulder, increasing as I went, attempted short rows for a bit of shoulder-shaping, and then divided for the front and back.

An Italian Break

We arrived back on Sunday after a 10 day break in a van in Italy, driving from the top down as far as Lago di Bolsena and back again, taking in, amongst other, Brescia, Collodi, Manciano and Assisi.

We faced ten days of battling with Italian road signs (which are more charitably passed off as a strange Italian sense of humour, and less charitably as a ploy to drive non-locals onto the more expensive toll roads,) our hair-raising fellow Italian road-users, Fantastic coffee, and the new knowledge that it is possible to get terrible pizza in Italy (as proved by a certain Pizzeria-Restaurant in Assisi.) Despite the ridiculousness of travelling to Italy in August in an un-air-conditioned van without a sat-nav or a clear plan of where to go, we survived our trip and haven’t completely ruled out doing it again.

Respect your Elders: Two Ideas for How.

It’s just about the middle of the elderflower season here. Since any blossom is only out for a short time, the differences in timing across the country is quite stark. For example at the weekend we took a wander up the hill (these are Swiss hills, you understand, not little English mounds,) to a village that is 530 ft higher than the city, and their lilac was still in full bloom, whereas ours was more than a month ago. And my boyfriend’s parents had the peak of their elderflower season a good few weeks ago, and their village is a good 700 or so feet closer to sea level than I am.

But I digress. Every year, I see the flowers on the elder trees and bushes and I think “oh I must make some elderflower cordial / champagne / gin / vodka.” I love foraging, the idea of making scrumptious things from natural ingredients