I have cast on all my Spring/Summer knitting — except for a baby sweater (I have sternly told myself that I need to finish the bunny slippers I am kitting for the grandkids before I start that — I am on the ears…).  Some of my S/S knitting is conveniently on the needles from last year — haha!  But I a couple of have new projects too: a cotton t-shirt sweater, a “fade” cardigan (more on that in a moment), and a cotton lace shawl of my own design in Concentric Cotton yarn (which will move from color to color as I knit through the 929-yard cake).

Oh, I love me some Summer lace knitting!

The t-shirt sweater is also Concentric Cotton by Hikoo — so it will be all kinds of fun to watch the new looks emerge as I knit.  

And the “fade” cardigan.  Yes, well, I had not really planned on starting a wool cardigan this week… But Sarah and I were working on our Pelagia Fiber Arts schemes and plottings this weekend — which led to Sarah saying how much she wanted to start the Comfort Fade Cardi we had planned to do together (as a sort of 2-person knit-along) which led to us digging about in our “yarn for projects” bags and finding the Apple Fiber Studio yarns we had bought at Vogue Knitting Live specifically for this project.  And it was all so lovely!  And Sarah was clearly on a mission here — she was going to start that cardigan!  And I couldn’t let her do the knit-along without me, could I? (a 2-person knit-along without the 2nd person…?!)

So, we added some swatching to our plotting and scheming.  And since the cardi uses several different colors of yarn that “fade” from one to the next (by the magic of knitting with the 1st color then knitting the 2 colors in alternating rows and then knitting the 2nd color solidly and so on) there was also a lot of arranging and re-arranging of yarn skeins to decide on the color order for each of our cardis.

These processes have actually taken several days — the swatching and color deciding — because the yarn we wanted for the cardis is a little bit thinner than the yarn called for in the pattern (which we knew when we bought the yarn — but we were pretty sure we could make it work even if we had to play with the stitch count numbers). Well, we were able to make it work — even without re-writing the pattern (whew!) — because the cardi is reverse stockinette (which means it looks like it is inside-out) and the stitches look great in this yarn at the gauge needed for the pattern.  So, yay!

The color deciding took time because while the pattern calls for 4 colors of yarn, we (no surprise!) decided to do it in 8-9 colors each!  So, we have been playing around with that all week.  Now, the yarn is on the needles and the knitting is underway 🙂

Our weather her is gorgeous!  I have fresh yarn on my needles!  Let the Deck Knitting Season begin!