What I did on My Summer Vacation

The several hundred photos I took over the summer bear out my impression we had a really great time! I'll go on about some of our adventures eventually, but today, I'll stick to knitting!

The end of June saw the conclusion of 6 months of knitting monogamy. "Elmont" and I needed some time apart. I needed some knitting fun and I managed to find quite a bit of it.

Hands down, most fun, is the project pictured below - the start of a BT "Slade" cardigan designed by Michelle Wang that I am making for My Beloved. I ordered some untreated Blue Faced Leicester from Georgian Bay Fibre in this inky colourway "Grondine Swell". 

'Much, much more to say about this later. I couldn't be happier with this one.

These are Briggs and Little "Tuffy" intended for dog walking mittens for me this coming winter. In high contrast to the purchase of the sweater yarn above, 'minimal in expense and consideration. 'Bought on a whim! Current plan - make a pair of these.

The skeins are sitting on my new mini blocking board. I can't imagine why it took me so long to put one of these together for blocking swatches without pulling a huge blocking board out for a 6" square!

The handsome fella pictured below is hemp and many hours over the summer saw me knitting then ripping then reknitting this stuff (and a slew of other lightweight cotton remnants often held triple just to keep up) on 15 mm wooden needles. I wanted the whole works to become a bag of some description and slowly but surely I am getting there.

While the summer yarn remnants sat about the cottage awaiting inclusion in the Big Bag project I was inspired one day to stitch a couple of hostess gifts to accompany locally made soap.
 

First a little wash cloth in soft, summery, bleached green garter stripes.

Then a rough and tough, monogrammed loofah envelope in garter stitched jute twine.

And I also knit up an FO! Another spontaneous undertaking, its "Quick Sand" by Heidi Kirrmaier in Berocco Maya's "Aqua" colourway. (Despite the reflected rosy glow in the photo below, its a cool watery blue chainette cotton with 15% alpaca.)

This became a real go-to piece to keep the sun off bare arms in the heat or the chill away on cool evenings. Several great modelled shots of it are currently "trapped" in a tablet and zipped in an email to myself from said tablet so more on this one later for sure.

I hope you had a great summer too and I hope you are as keen about the Autumn knitting season ahead as I am!

Happy September!