Hot Summer Knitting

Grapes and Geraniums on the Backyard Arbor

Spent a wonderful weekend with friends in our state capitol. We played so much that knitting didn’t get much love.  ;~) Oh, well!  It was 106 degrees Fahrenheit during much of the weekend. Long glasses of unsweetened ice tea were enjoyed in copious amounts. Ummm, refreshing!

The Red Summer Cardigan is progressing. The body is now finished and half of the bottom ribbing is done.  To remind you the sweater is being knit out of a cotton/nylon blend of Bristol Yarn Gallery’s Bradford in colorway # 113. That is RED. The pattern is Summer Cardigan #221 by Knitting Pure and Simple, knitted on size 7 Addi lace needles.

This neckdown pattern is fun to knit.  Even though the pattern is working up very fast, I am itching to begin the sleeves.  Three more rows of ribbing and then I will pick up the sleeve stitches and knit the sleeves ...one at a time.

I find that knitting two at a time is a tangle of yarn and actually slower for me.  So, I will take good notes and knit one before the other.

Speaking of tangles, this yarn, because of the bouclés, has many wads of yarn barf. It tangles and minutes have to be used untangling the yarn. Despite this, the yarn has been a delight to knit with ..... until the fifth skein. This current skein has had four, one-foot long places where the yarn wasn’t plied and was only one ply.  This took time to cut the unplied section out and weave in the ends.  Boo!

No other knitting has occurred, but I have spent the time that I was knitting straight on the body to dream up a few new designs I want to try. Maybe a new sock or a mitten or maybe something else. We will see what the coming weeks bring.