On the hottest day of the year thus far, I sat inside in the air conditioning and knit with 100% Pure Wool from the Shetland Isles. Crazy, huh?


But before we get to that... I finished the Summertime Cardi.





Several people have asked if there is a pattern. And unfortunately, there is not. I just made it up as I went along. If you are familiar with knitting sweaters from the top, you can approximate your own. Instead of starting with enough stitches for up around the neck, I picked a lower point along my back and then added about 1/4-1/3 more stitches from that number to each of the sleeves. I increased at the seams until it would connect comfortably under the arm, then I set the sleeves aside on separate needles and cast on enough stitches to each side of the fronts to equal the back. The ribbon is just woven between the knit stitches, no eyelets for me! I went back and added a few rows to each sleeve and then bound off, and then knit down the body until I ran out of yarn. Again if you find a good top-down sweater pattern or read "Knitting from the Top," you can probably figure out how to make your own cardi.





Of course, I'm not perfect. And like many of the pictures in the knitting mags, the pose deceives the viewer of the imperfections...





Yep, it's a shoulder-slider. I haven't decided if I care and if I do, what to do about it.


Are you still wondering about that Shetland Wool from the beginning? I finally broke down and had to get the Baby Surprise Kit for myself. No, there are no babies that need knitting for, but I've seen this on a lot of blogs and Ravelry, and I wanted in on the trick of how its constructed. This is how far I've gotten, and I'm stumped as to which part of the sweater this is going to be! (If you know the secrets of the Baby Surprise sweater, please don't spoil my discovery! If I get the thing finished and am still stumped, then help will be nice. But right now, I'm enjoying being befuddled by the makeup of this sweater.)





I wasn't entirely keen on the stripes until I saw that picture. I'm alternating colors every 2 rows (you could probably tell that!) and knitting on a size 3 addi that I really wish was a bit longer, but it's ok.


Tomorrow is Stitch n Pitch at Shea! Hopefully the Mets will crush the Braves and hopefully I'll get about half through the foot on the second Summer Solstice sock.