Lots of Catching up to do!

It's been a long time since my last post! At the end of June we took our trip out to Minnesota and helped to build a new room on Brennan's Gradma's house. It was a lot of fun! But of course it slowed down my knitting. I did finish Bardot before we left, though.

Bardot is from the Rowan Beach Cool collection. I modified the pattern to be knit in the round, so all I had to sew were the sleeves. This is a very wearable top! I love the neckline and the little cap sleeves. I had a panicy moment today when I washed it (yes, I know it says hand wash, but the gentle cycle has worked fine in the past) and had significant shrinkage in the vertical direction. I did manage to pull it back into shape. I hung it upside-down from a skirt hanger and it is currently drying that way. Hopefully, it will be fine.



While in MN, I got some wonderfull handpainted cotton! It is Peru from the Great Adirondack Yarn Co. in colorway Painted Desert. I had such a hard time deciding on a colorway, but I'm very happy with the Painted Desert. This yarn is so soft and doesn't really feel like cotton! Plus is is a heavier weight, and was great for Knitty's W tank. With the leftover, I was able to make Glampyre's One Skein Wonder. I was unsure if I would like the little cap sleeve, so I added about three inches to each sleeve. That ended up being a really lucky guess, since after the ribbed trim, I only had about 5 feet of yarn left!

Here are some pics:



Currently I'm working my way through the second side of Orangina. I completely jumped on the bandwagon with this one. I'm using Rowan 4-ply cotton in Aegean. (Yes, I know.... another blue one!) The lace pattern is easy to remember, but a couple of times I made a mistake and had to rip out a ocuple of rows to fix it. About midway through each side, it just seems to take forever! It makes me remember my initial pledge that I would never do anything that was on needles smaller than size 10! Boy have a I broken that! Here I am using 3's! I'm really hoping to finish this soon, there are a couple more summer things I'd like to do before it gets to be fall! I think the next thing will be Grumperina's Tivoli T. It's amazing how popular that pattern has become in a short time. Every finished Tivoli has looked really great - It seems like another really wearble top. I think I may use some of my cotton ease stash.... but what color? hmmm...