kubota garden, and a finished drops jacket

this weekend we went to kubota garden. i'd never been before, and it's hard to believe this huge, beautiful spot is just a 15-minute drive from where we live. the japanese maples were flaming red, and all of the other plants were in the midst of their downward decay into winter-ness, which i think is so beautiful. i'm eager to visit the garden again in winter, spring and summer; if it's half as gorgeous as it is in the fall, i feel i'll be going back many, many times. here are a LOT of pictures!

























i also used our visit to kubota garden as a backdrop for taking pictures of my drops jacket, which i finished early last week. i didn't really get any good shots, but here is one, plus another one in my living room.





pattern: drops jacket
yarn: rowan yorkshire tweed chunky in damp, exactly seven balls
needles: size 11 denise needles
buttons: vintage plastic

as excited as i initially was about this project, i ended up feeling disappointed in the end result, and feeling like i should have known better than to use such a chunky yarn. my disappointment is two-fold: i think the finished sweater is way too bulky and wildly unflattering, and also, the finishing of the sweater turned out very poorly. i shouldn't have used the chunky yarn to seam the sweater, but i did, resulting in very bulky seams. also, the yarn kept breaking! i liked the yorkshire tweed though - the tweediness itself is beautiful, and it created a soft fabric. i will probably still wear this as a house sweater, and maybe occasionally out. it's very warm, and it does have those cute vintage buttons working in its favor! at least i feel like i learned some valuable lessons with this sweater. next time will be better!

now that the drops jacket is done, i'm back to work on the back-to-school u-neck, and have also started three (!) other projects. i'll show those off, plus some pretty new yarn, later this week!