Copy that.....

 I don’t know if other knitters have this, but I do find it somehow quite difficult to buy a knitted cardigan or pullover in a shop. Not that it is difficult as such, but mainly because I tend to think, oh I could make this myself and that would be “better”. Sometime in the spring M spotted a pullover that she really really liked and I was going, oh I can make that…. Normally what happens next is that I forget about it, it just tumbles down the queue of things to make and items to explore… But M wasn’t going to let that happen, and every so many times, I got the question if I had started her sweater….Now this sweater was really quite straight forward . It was a raglan in broad white and dark-navy stripes. The white stripes were in stockinette while the blue ones were in reverse stockinette giving a texture and also a 

bit of colour work . The yarn seemed to be a thick & thinnish one, and a cotton most likely (I didn’t have time to study the label inside….). So I started with the yarn, I needed the colours but also that slightly thick & thin feature and after a search on Revelry I came to Zooey . It is a 60% cotton, 40% linen and really the perfect yarn for a sweater like this. It gives a slightly rustic fabric, and it is fairly light so perfect for summer wear. It does have that think and thin quality and due to the linen it has a very nice drape. It is quite nice to knit with. 

For there the rest, it was an easy design, I made a top-down raglan with some short rows to raise the back. To get a bit more stability at the top, I picked up the neck finish later on. Long sleeves and a slightly longer body complete it. all in all an easy pattern, easy to make, easy to wear and play in….

M is happy and with school very much started again, this is just the item to have for still sunny days and play time, as it is just not that super warm anymore. And it is big enough so that it can be worn at the beach in the next summer…..

 

 

Last days of summer……...

Summer pains

 

I love summer, when it is warm and the crickets are going at night, just wonderful. If asked what is my favourite time of year I normally answer spring, and it is but summer is great as well. One good thing about summer is, is that it isn’t as hectic as spring so often is. So much always happens in spring (and autumn too) and one hardly has time to enjoy it. But summer with the shutdowns (our work has a shutdown of administration and our “machine”) makes that things slow down. And that is good since one gets a real rest, and even workwise you can do all those things that one never has time for during the normal terms.

But the last couple of days I have been plagued by some summer pains, mosquitos and ticks… We live in deer country so the ticks are a major problem and pain. It has been a cold year so until now there weren’t so many around, but now with the nice summery temperatures they are out and hungry… So we are on tick watch all the time. And then the mosquitos. I am covered in bites now, some swell up and I start to feel a bit “under the weather”. Ah well nothing is entirely positive (or negative…..)

However, summer is also the time for BBQs (we have been eating BBQ basically the whole week….), eating outside and waking up slightly later as there are no children that have to be at school at a specific time. So everything is easy, and so is my current knitting. Plain stockinette with some stripes in Hempathy. I am knitting Dubro for my daughter, an easy summer tee with just a bit of a Japanese esthetic feel about it. Really it is what this time of the year requires….

Bright days!

The wait for the extra yarn was over this week, so after finishing my own cardigan I could also finish M’s this week. As I had only the sleeves left to do, it went pretty quickly. I always tend to pick up speed at the end, it needs to get worn… On the other hand, I also need to decide what to do next and that can sometimes be a struggle… Anyways, I have not much to see about this one, cotton again, a nice lace pattern for the main body, some small cables too! And just that little bit of frill to really make M happy. The only change I made was to use an I-cord bind-off instead of the rolled hem border in the original pattern. I think this makes the lace feel lighter.

I love the bright blue colour of this one, makes me happy!