Well, it’s just crazy that it’s been 5 months since I last posted. I’ll blame it on 1) politics and the insanity we’re living through distracted me, 2) the cold winter froze my brain, and 3) the store was busy all through the cold weather and made lots of paperwork for me to do. Or it could be sheer laziness, but we’re not going to dive into that.
Plus I’ve been obsessed with a beautiful cable-encrusted hoodie that is finally almost finished but has taken months to get anywhere. I’m knitting it on size 4 needles, there has been not one stitch of TV-watching-easiness until now (I’m on the hood – hooray for some pure stockinette, finally), it’s in a dark denim blue, and so it’s been slow. Meanwhile I made a couple of great summer-ish tops that I love, one pretty easy and one (again) not so easy but worth it. Will the hoodie be worth it? When an obsession takes hold, you just have no choice, right?
So here’s Orinne, one of the tops I made:
I made it in this summer-y coral just to cheer myself up in the dark of late February. I lengthened the sleeves to just below elbow-length. Closeup of the leaf design on the yoke – pretty!
Here is Berroco’s version, short-sleeved, also very pretty but I wasn’t going to knit it in black.
Berroco actually has a great set of designs this season. Brookline is the other top I made.
It’s done sideways and, while the lines are simple and the cables are easy and repetitive, keeping track of increases and decreases and what row to cast on for the body and what row to bind off, and what row to start the neckline shaping and so on and so on, made it more challenging (and more interesting) than you would think. There’s quite a bit of finishing too, which might make it a good class. I made it in Noro Sonata (thus the color shadings), but Berroco shows it in Remix Light which is a nice 3-season blend:
And we have lots of colors in Remix Light:
and it would also be a great in a light wool such as Patagonia to wear in the fall.
And speaking of classes, I think we all just needed a break for a while. We’ll get back into it, I promise, and I’ll let you know about them.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, along with swatching some new yarns for fall. I don’t know yet what will happen to prices. They’ve gone up – will they come down a bit now that the Mad King’s tariffs are illegal? I’m trying to be quite judicious in what I order for fall, but I think the best we can all hope for is that things stabilize. But don’t bet the farm.
On a happier note, here is Ruby settling in for a nice night’s sleep:
Good girl! See you soon.
