Alright, I admit it. I have kind of a thing with Caitlin Hunter’s designs right now. I started in May last year with an innocent little Tegna sweater, and then there was another Tegna, and then I decided to try a sweater with some Fair Isle work in it (ahem… I’m talking to you Sipila), and before I knew it I had gone down the Caitlin Hunter rabbit hole. In less then 18 months I have completed 8 different sweaters from this designer, and I’m still in love with every single one of them.
Top row from the left: Tegna, my autumn hydrangea, and Sipila. Middle row from the left: Mums, Koivua, another Tegna, and Nordiska. Bottom row from the left: Sturgill, Marettimo, Zweig, and some coneflowers.
A few week ago a good friend from my old knitting group contacted me to let me know that she had a gift for me. What? A gift? This was completely out of the blue, and generated a little guilt on my end as I didn’t have a gift to give back. Since I’ve given up going to my knitting group lately as I’m staying more at home these days to manage my symptoms (more guilt!), Diane finally popped her gift to me into the mail. Completely mystified I opened the envelope to discover…
A note from Caitlin Hunter herself!!Diane took a picture of Caitlin writing the note!
Best gift ever! Diane, thank you so much!! Opening that envelope was a joyful as finishing off one of these sweaters and popping it on for the first time. I am so happy and grateful that you thought of me.
I have one more Caitlin Hunter sweater in my queue that I’m hoping to get done before the end of the year, a Soldotna Crop sweater that I will be making a little longer than crop. I have a bunch of homespun yarns that are just chomping to be made into a Soldotna. I know, I am a little out of control, but I’m having a lot of fun, so don’t judge me. 🙂 If I manage to make my yarn destash goals this year it will be partly due to Caitlin’s compelling sweater designs, so this is a good thing, right?
It’s going to cool down this weekend so I’m totally going to rock one of these sweaters. Have a great (knitting) weekend everyone.
The last few weeks have been full of air alert days; smoke from the fires in the western states and Canada has given Colorado breathtaking sunsets and trouble for people with lung issues like mine. The cats and I have hunkered down inside and surrendered to good books and great knitting. Okay, that’s me; the cats have settled for demanding salmon and lots of attention. Thankfully there are some naps, too. Seriously, this isn’t really a hardship when you consider how devastating these fires are for the communities and agencies battling them. I hope that things improve soon for all those impacted by the fires, and in the meantime I’m staying busy inside. Just look at the sweater I finished yesterday!!
Isn’t this just a perfect sweater for summer? Cute, but fast and easy knitting for warm indoor summer days.
This is Marettimo by Caitlin Hunter. The minute I saw it I knew that I needed to make it! I was just finishing up a Tegna sweater (also by Caitlin Hunter) so I knew I would like the comfy shaping of this sweater too. Bam! Before I had finished the Tegna I was stash diving and hunting for yarn that I could use for a Marettimo.
Look at what I found! All of these were already in the stash (left to right): Indigo (Chasing Rabbits), Solis (Malabrigo), and Marina (Kim Dyes Yarn). I had to buy one more skein of the Chasing Rabbits yarn, but for the most part this was a stash buster.You can see haw all three yarns are used in this lace detail at the bottom of the sweater.
I had just bought a new tablet from Amazon and enrolled in Audible books, so I listened to a couple of books while I stitched away, and in two quick weeks I had finished another couple of Maggie Hope mysteries (by Susan Elia MacNeal) and the sweater. I like Maggie Hope: intrepid British spy and math-loving code breaker in WWII settings; right now she is undercover in Berlin carrying out a dangerous mission… see why I’m knitting at a blistering pace? In case you are wondering, the titles that I’ve been reading are Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, and now I’m sailing through His Majesty’s Hope. I’ve already scored the rest of the books in the series from the library…
Yesterday I finished weaving all of the ends in and popped the sweater on over my clothes. Not a bad fit, considering…
It will look so much better when not layered over another shirt. Still, pretty darn nice! My project notes for the sweater are here.
This afternoon smoke is filling the sky again and I have been digging through the stash with the ever helpful MacKenzie. I have more yarn out and have cast on the next sweater, and would you believe that it is ANOTHER Caitlin Hunter design? I can’t wait to show it off!
Have a great weekend everyone.
Evening edit: Look at what I found after watching the evening news which had an article about the air alerts from smoke and ozone. This interactive map from AirNow has lots of info about air quality and how to stay safe.
The Mother of Cats has been knitting like crazy on her new Tegna sweater.
I’ve been really helping the Mother of Cats out with her knitting. It’s a lot of work, but someone (ahem… me!) needs to keep their eye on things while she’s working. MacKenzie told me to chomp her yarn to keep her on her toes, but I’m a good boy. I like to be right in the action without actually sitting on the yarn.
See what I mean?
It’s important that I take a good look at her work from time to time to make sure she’s staying on task. I figure that if I check things over every half hour that’s good enough.
The rest of the time I nap!
The Mother of Cats made really good progress on the sweater and got it finished this morning. It is so cute! She took it right outside and grabbed some pictures of it before the afternoon thunderstorms started.
It looks pretty darn good, doesn’t it? This is what you get when you have quality cat support for your work.The lace detail is my favorite!
Before the Mother of Cats had finished this sweater she had already started fussing over the yarn for the next one. “So many sweaters, so many choices”, she keeps mumbling as she digs around in the yarns. I think that she has finally made up her mind and has settled on some blue yarn for the next sweater. But first, she is going to make some socks this weekend. Oh. Socks. I don’t do socks. MacKenzie kind of specializes in socks. I like the sweaters. And bugs. I’m a pretty big fan of chasing garter snakes, too. Why can’t the Mother of Cats let me chase garter snakes in the house?
Sigh. Guess I’ll have to make due with my toy mice.
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The sweater is Tegna by Caitlin Hunter. This is my second Tegna sweater, this time in cotton/linen blend yarn. Here are the project notes for this one. I was so proud of my work that wore it this afternoon to go grocery shopping; there was a horrible accident at the check out lane that involved a dropped bottle of soy sauce and a carton of fresh strawberries: my beautiful Tegna is now soaking in the sink… Such is life.
Chasing a moth while I was reading in bed. This was truly a duck and cover moment for me…
Yellow Boy is the indoor bug hunter extraordinaire… anything that moves in the house gets caught and eaten. When he is short of entertaining wildlife he pulls out his toys which usually get abandoned at his food bowl. On the morning of the picture he had pulled out all three of his toy mice.
This is all the fault of Ravelry designer Caitlin Hunter. I’m busy knitting away on her Tegna sweater (for the second time… I made one of these last month and I discovered that I needed another) and I have gotten above the lace section at the bottom and am now cruising through the plain knitting section.
See. Cruising through the simple stockinette rounds. Easy-peasy, but kind of boring…
I have really picked up speed now that I am above the lace. Woohoo! I may have this done in another week depending on how much I wander off to knit other things like socks because, well, it is just a tad boring… my mind wanders. I start to dream of other projects and about things that I want to do. I think about books I want to read. I think about mowing the lawn. I think about what I want to cook for dinner. I start to plan the next sweater and then I go on a mental wander of yarn stash. Hmm… what is in there? What should I knit next?
I take knitting breaks to drag out yarn in the colors and weights that I think might work for my next project. I go back to knitting, and then on the next break I head back to the stash to pull out another couple skeins that I just remembered. I have literally woken up in the morning thinking of another possible yarn/color combination. The yarn, stored in plastic lock-top bins, starts to stack up next to my knitting chair. My mind wanders more…
Today I dragged out 4 skeins of wild fuchsia painted yarn that my BKB Deb convinced me to buy a few months ago out to the back deck to look at it in the sun with different contrasting yarn combinations. I’m thinking of colorwork here…
Choice #1Choice #2Choice #3
I fussed and worried about my choice, kept looking at how the yarns played with each other, and finally decided on choice #2 as it calmed down the wild colors a little and blended better with the dark undertones in the main color fuchsia yarn. So, what will this be? You are looking at my next project, a Sipila (by Caitlin Hunter) long sleeved sweater that should be done just in time for late summer/early fall.
Here is the sweater all packed up and ready to be taken out later when I start knitting.
But wait… I also found this fabulous Uncommon Thread yarn in the colorway Brasselthwaite lurking in the back of the stash.
Look at this yarn! This is dying to get knit up into a sweater. Look at those shades of blue.
At first I though that this yarn wanted to be a Zweig (by Caitlin Hunter) sweater and I matched it up with a yummy gold cashmere blend yarn that I bought from Western Sky Knits to make the lace yoke for the sweater.
See, won’t this look great? I love how these colors go together.
Here’s the problem… I have all of this yarn that I’ve dragged down to the knitting arena to go through during knitting breaks. I keep finding colors that I really liked. I kept thinking of different combinations of colors. I had my heart set on some colorwork. Gee, Caitlin Hunter has some really nice colorwork sweaters…
Seriously, doesn’t this look like the makings of a kick-ass Sunset Highway sweater? All of these yarns are part cashmere and the same yardage in each 100 gram skein. It’s a sign. I have to make the Sunset Highway!
If I knitted a Sunset Highway I could use the Uncommon Thread for the body and the other three colors would make the colorwork yoke. I really like these colors… I really liked the idea of making the Zweig… I have a lot of skeins of grey yarns with little flecks of color… can I maybe fade them together to make the Zweig, but if I do that , what will I use for the lace section? Hmm… I wonder what is in the stash?
I am knitting like the wind now on the Tegna, and as I stitch I mull over my sweater options. So many sweaters, so much yarn. My goal is to use as much yarn as I can from the stash without heading off to the LYS to buy more. I’m trying. Really, I am. I am determined to have a stash that has shrunk by the end of summer.
So, I have gone down the Caitlin Hunter sweater rabbit hole. Just a little bit…
I am having sweater troubles for sure. May you all have the same. 🙂
The Mother of Cats and I are still staying inside every day because of the heat. You’d think that she would devote herself to helping me cope with the unacceptable weather, wouldn’t you? I mean, look at this fur! Nope. She just turned on a ceiling fan for me and went about her business. I’m not sure she really loves me… She spends more time babying her plants outside then she does me. How could I come in second to a rose? Ridiculous!!
She has managed to get one of her tea roses to bloom.Her hydrangea that she bought this spring really got cooked by the heat (check out those crispy leaves…), but it has put out some new blooms too. Yep, you guessed it. She fusses over this plant more than me too!
When she isn’t outside ignoring me and feeding her plants she spends her time downstairs knitting away on new projects. She started two new ones this week, and would you believe that she started another Tegna sweater?
She even made a swatch this time. This yarn is cotton and linen and she wasn’t sure about the gauge (whatever that is… Yellow Boy wants to know if it is a kind of bug…), so she had to try out different needle sizes.I helped her with that!I closely supervised her work, and after a week look at what we have accomplished!Ta-da! Looking good, huh.
She took a break from the sweater over the weekend and made a sock. So cool. So perfect to sleep in my bed with me. Did she put cat nip into it and let me have it? Nope! I’ve discussed this before, but with the Mother of Cats it is always NOPE!!
This is the yarn that she started with……and here is her sock. She plans to make the second one this coming weekend.
So that was the whole week. She did go off and leave us from time to time, and there was some reading, but whatever. What is important is that she spends her time with me.
Tonight we are back to knitting the sweater. Finally I am getting the attention that I deserve: grooming, petting, cookies. Lots of cookies!
I’m such a good boy. Do you see how much I am helping the Mother of Cats?
Can I have some cooking now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
I bought this cotton/linen yarn to make a cute lacy summer top but I was not able to get the gauge that I needed, and because of the lace it was going to be hard to adapt the pattern, and knitting tightly on small needles hurt my hands. Total fail. The solution? Another Tegna! I am so happy with the first one I knit and I think that this one will be a nice layering piece as fall arrives with the longer sleeves I’m going to put on it. My Ravelry notes are here.
Poor garden. Even though the heat goes on it is more humid now and plants are doing better. I feed everything in the hopes that roses will bloom again; so far only the tea roses in pots are responding well. That hydrangea is in a pot as I can’t decide where to plant it. I think that it is going to need shade at least part of the day. Poor thing; it really got fried in the first location I tried out. I’m wondering if it can winter indoors in the pot with a grow light on it. Hmmm…
The socks are another of the vanilla sock pattern Dave. I’m having fun playing with the colors. My Ravelry project notes are here.
Gosh, I just love a good shawl. I like them to add as an accessory, or to wrap up in to stay warm. I’ve been making them in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but last winter I realized that I wanted one that would cover me up to keep me warm while I was reading or knitting. I wanted it to hug my shoulders and stay where I put it, and I didn’t want to have to fuss around with a shawl pin. Something beautiful, but very warm, snuggly, and useful. Brioche would be a plus.
I hunted on Ravelry and decided that I would give What the Fade?! a spin on the old knitting needles. Into the stash I dived, and with MacKenzie’s help I found 6 skeins of yarns that made a smooth fade that would go with almost everything that I wear.
Ta-daa! Don’t these look like they would make a great fade?
I’ve been knitting and blogging about this shawl for a whole month. MacKenzie has been exceptionally helpful along the way, and a couple of weeks of cold and rain really hurried things along. Yesterday I finished weaving in all of the ends and steam blocked the final product. Doesn’t this look great?
What’s not to love? This baby is big, and exceptionally squishy. Project notes are here. Here’s a close-up of the details. This shawl scores really high on my happy knitter scale.
Now that it is done, let me sing the praises of this shawl’s design. It is hard to see in the picture, but there is an I-cord edge along the top of the shawl which made it really easy to make the color changes and to weave in the ends. What is even less obvious is how that I-cord edge stabilizes the brioche and garter stitches to make the shawl stay put while wearing it. The bind off is also an I-cord edging, which was tedious to do but so worth it in the finished product. To maintain the squish factor the final shawl is gently steamed and tugged into shape, which was really easy to do. There are supposed to be tassels, but since I live with ill-behaved cats and want to wear this while sitting around knitting I have decided to leave them off.
MacKenzie is totally in love with the shawl, of course. I found him sleeping on it where I had left it folded up ON THE TABLE!! He must have special wool seeking cat radar or something…
I’ve started two more projects to keep me busy that are more for spring/summer wearing. Look at how cute these are going to be…
Behold the start of a Close to You shawl that will be a nice little item to drape around my neck on cool evenings to go with summer tops. Here are the project notes on Ravelry. The yarn is Magnolia sock from Western Sky Knits. I bought it during my feeding frenzy at their booth when I went to the Interweave Yarn Fest this spring; there was no name on the yarn label, so it is a mystery color.My newest summer top will be this powder blue Tegna sweater that I’m making out of some soya cotton that I found hanging out in the stash. Here are my project notes on Ravelry.
I fussed over the yarn for the Tegna for quite a while. The pattern sample was knitted with a fingering weight yarn that had some mohair in it, and the gauge called for 22 stitches in 4″ (and 28 rows). I fixated on the fingering weight. I was confused by the size 2 needles that the designer used. Finally I realized that this dk weight cotton yarn had exactly the same gauge on size 6 needles. Okay. This is a nice color, I told myself, and I should do it! I fearlessly cast on and started knitting away with total faith in the label (reckless is my middle name…) and I am happy to report that after 3 inches of knitting I am able to check that gauge and I am spot on!!! Clean living, good attitude, and lucky, lucky stars. I hope that I have enough yarn to make it a little longer than the pattern calls for, but I got so lucky with the stash yarn I really can’t complain.
I found some plum colored cotton/tencel yarn that might work too. It’s slightly heavier in weight, but what the heck. This is a sweater with lots of ease. What could go wrong?
Yarn, Books & Roses 