Two things of note:
1. I sold my mountain bike. Last post I talked about, this post I'm reporting that it's been done. It felt good, freeing, and honest. Not to mention that it opened up a lot of space in the back building. Now I can focus on my road bike and look into what it will take to get my cruiser project bike up to ride-ability.
2. Today I finished a knitting project that I started on my birthday last year. The rest of this post is devoted to that project: The (Winter)Green
Awhile back I stumbled across a sweater pattern called The Green by ANKESTRiCK on Ravelry. It was loose, it was fluffy, it was cozy, it was beautifully textured... I decided that I wanted to make one for myself. So I toyed around with the idea for awhile, eventually deciding that what I wanted was a summer sweater, and that a summer sweater would be made up of cotton and alpaca. I found two separate yarns that would achieve this, but then: I found Knit Picks Kindred, a brand new yarn at the time that combined cotton and alpaca, was the size I needed for the pattern, and had two lovely shades of green available. Having been a Knit Picks customer for quite some time, I knew with 95% certitude that green yarns would go on sale in March. So I waited.
When March 1st hit, I logged onto Knit Picks, and saw that only one of the two shades of green qualified for the sale, so that was the color I bought: Wintergreen. (By the way, if this yarn sounds delicious to you, it looks like it was only a short-run product; they're currently selling the final stock of it for a few bucks less per skein. And no, I'm not getting paid for this promotion.)
The overall pattern of this sweater is a slip-stitch rib that is such a breeze to knit, with collar, cuffs, and hem done in a twisted 1x1 rib, a texture that I discovered in the Fantastitch shawl that I knit last year and which I find absolutely titillating. This was the sweater that I brought on that cross-country road trip with my mother-in-law last year because, once you're past all the upper body shaping, the body is pretty mindless to knit up. The sleeves are similarly so, but in order to get through those I had to use removable stitch markers to keep track of my decreases. But the hardest thing to keep track of with this sweater? Which side is the front and which is the back!?! When I finished, I tried it on both ways, chose the side I preferred, and sewed a little contrasting thread at the base of the collar on the inside back so I don't have to keep guessing all the time.
This sweater sat dormant from about the time I got back from Michigan until the winter. I picked it up here and there, but only really got serious about finishing it when we had finished our move to Washington. I finished one sleeve, then a second, then undid and reknit the bottom hem. I had tried to cheat and not change needle sizes for the bottom hem the first time around, but didn't like how it looked. Thanks to my mom gifting me the correct needle size for the hem, I was able to try again, and lengthen it! So now we've been in this house for about half a dozen weeks and I've finished my first knitting project in this house and my first knitting project of 2022!
And I love it! Now, this pattern was designed to be much more loosey-goosey than mine turned out. I was in between sizes and I decided to take the smaller option to make sure I had enough yarn (pretty good call, I ended up with 1 1/2 skeins leftover), and that meant that I only had a few inches of ease, most of which disappears in my bust. Oh well. It's still got a nice drape-y feel, something that cotton and alpaca yarns are both known for, so no surprise there! I made the sleeves a tad long, which only adds to the snuggle factor. The whole thing is RIDICULOUSLY SOFT! And even though it's warm, it feels cool to the touch - basically my instincts seem to be proving right that this will be an ideal summer sweater! Now I just have to wait patiently for the summer weather to come so I can test it out!
Until next time!
may summer return very very slôwly ...
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