Summertime, and the knitting is…

…eeeeaaaaasy. I think I have enough data in Ravelry to pull a data set of all my summertime knits. It would be very interesting to look at all the projects I’ve started in the summer and completed in the summer. My hypothesis is that they represent some of the easier projects in my knitting corpus.

Before I left for Bali, I knit a really big swatch from my handspun Greynbow yarn, about 9x10”. I used a size 7 needle, and the result was a bit too drapey. So I knit another swatch on a US 6 and decided that one was “right.” US 7 swatch is on the left, US 6 swatch is in the middle. On the right is my original swatch worked from sample yarn I made just as I was beginning the project. It was a little bigger and poofier than I wanted, so I made adjustments in the spinning right from the beginning.

This photo shows how different the yarn can be from skein to skein. (It also varies within a skein, but that doesn’t show in these smaller pieces.) I decided early on to just embrace the wabi-sabi of this particular yarn and love the inconsistencies.

Once I decided on the US 6 needle, I entered all the swatch data into the CustomFit program and generated a pattern for the Drumlin cardigan, which is a simple v-neck buttoned cardigan with pockets. I felt like simple stockinette was the best choice for this nubbly, slightly variegated fabric. I printed the pattern, wound a bunch of yarn, cast on, piled everything in one place, and left for Bali. (Greynbow did not go to Bali.)

When I got back, it was time to regroup for Alaska. I thought the cool northern Pacific would inspire me to knit a sweater, and I was right. I finished the back of the sweater there and cast on for one of the fronts. But then I got home and just quit.

Today I pulled it back out to go public with it. I hope to get back on the horse. Maybe hours of Olympic coverage will inspire me to work on it more. This is the back of the sweater pinned out at the point of the key measurements. LOOK HOW MUCH EXTRA THERE IS AGAIN. Will I never rid myself of this CustomFit curse? Seriously, this might be the last time I knit a CF pattern. The area where there is ALWAYS too much is between the waist and the armhole shaping. I smoothed and smoothed and eventually got it looking like this:

It’s better, but if you look carefully you can see that it’s spilling over what should be its boundaries on the edges.

We’ve been home for 11 days now, and all I seem to want to knit are these squares for my epic sock yarn blanket.

I worked on ONE of those – a tiny bit – in Bali. I finished that square in Vancouver, the day before we flew home. Since we got home I’ve done the other seven. Want to guess how many I have in all? This little stack pleases me so much.