Wha-ta-what?!  Cables for summer?!  Isn't summer all lace and linen and loose and languid?  Yes, but here in the Pacific Northwest you gotta have a summer hoodie.  For when the sun goes down and you are still at the baseball game or the picnic or the beach or out on the deck….right?  Or in the morning while waiting for the marine layer to break up.  A morning-cup-of-coffee-on-the-deck hoodie.

Joji Locatelli"s "See You There" hooded cardigan had everything I wanted — a comfortably curved fit, some textural interest, and, of course, a hood.  Not that I necessarily plan to pull the hood up onto my head, but because a hood says "hey, I'm super-casual, like a sweatshirt."  I could put a zipper in the front instead of the buttons and go completely sweatshirt…hmmmm.  Some knitters on Ravelry did that.  Some replaced the hood with a shawl collar.  Both looks worked.  But, at this point, I plan to stick with the buttons — because I like the vintage look of that — and, of course, the hood.

The designer used a merino/cashmere blend in the perennial and time-honored off-white.  My hoodie, however, is summer-bound, so I chose a Pima cotton/rayon blend in a bold orange!  Yep, wool is just too, well, wooly for Washington summers — or even late spring or early autumn.  I think it is the constant dampness in the air.  Not the suffocating humidity that blankets other parts of the country, but some odd coastal phenomenon that makes 48 degrees in winter chilling and 48 degrees in summer clammy.  

So, cotton/rayon it is.  Now, cotton yarns are not generally recommended for cables — and vice versa.  Because plant fibers have little memory:  they tend to stretch and stay stretched.  When I put those 3 stitches on my cable needle and let it hang while I knit the next 3 (for the nice fat cable), they sag and sway!  I can hardly get them knitted off that needle fast enough!  But that is only for the fat cables.  Most of the "cables" are actually 2 stitches knit out of order so they cross — no cable needle, no hanging and swinging.  Sarah and I believe that these crossed stitches will actually stabilize the fabric — so the sweater doesn't "grow" downward over time like cotton sweaters tend to do (remember the over-sized Shaker sweaters that gradually hung to our knees..?).

That said, I will confess that this sweater is a delightful monster to knit — kind of like your favorite two-year-old whose charming characteristics are simply the flip side of her maddening ones.  The aspects of the yarn that make it ideal for my project (shiny and cool with excellent stitch definition) make it challenging to knit.  It splits.  It resists all the knitting-2-togethers that make up the small "cables."  It tires my hands because of its inelasticity. 

By the same token, all the beautiful details of the patterning are like an intricate and strenuous dance!  Everything leans to the left or the right (and require distinct operations to make that happen) and each cable section is sort of on its own time schedule — so each right-side row is its own adventure.  Plus there is sleeve shaping (also directional — as the increases on one side of each sleeve slant one way and the ones on the other side slant oppositely).  I use a lot of sticky notes on my printed pattern!  All this twisting and turning is great fun — but does not make for a quick knit.  Especially when I make the mistake of working on the hoodie while watching a tense inning of baseball or discussing an online furniture purchase with my husband!  Blew right past my sleeve increases with that one!

It would certainly be easier, quicker, and cheaper to just buy a sweatshirt — but my vision of coffee on the back deck on a gray and clammy morning in my screaming orange knit hoodie, well, it will surely be worth it!