It was a low-key Fourth of July weekend with family visiting. We talked, listened to birdsong and went for a couple of walks in scenic places (a beautiful garden and a shop-lined street). The only knitting I did was a test swatch for the Green Soleil, a project I decided on last week.
The gauge is a tiny bit looser than that in the pattern, but this is a two-sided swatch and the project will be knit in the round. You can see from this picture that my purl and knit rows aren’t all that well-matched. Knitting in the round will eliminate the purl rows, so there! I decided to use metal needles too. In my experience with socks, I have found that I knit a little more firmly with metal. That’s enough information to go ahead with the project, I think.
This yarn, Patons Grace in the “Ginger” colorway, is a mercerized cotton. I like it a lot, although I haven’t completed any projects with it! I bought a skein of the “Azure” colorway long ago and knit a swatch of lace with it. It was so pretty that I used it for the background of my blog header. I also went out and bought 11 more skeins without even having a project in mind. My stash consists of 6 skeins of the “Ginger” colorway, 3 of the “Azure” and 3 of “Spearmint” (a variegated colorway that matches the others). I struggled to find a project that would suit the yarn and the colors and started a cardigan last summer. It turns out that I didn’t want stripes. On Thursday, I converted that UFO back to yarn and started the swatch for this new project.
On the afternoon of the holiday, my sister-in-law pulled her easel and some canvases out of her car and offered to paint some portraits. She painted me and my other sister-in-law before the day’s light gave out. Hey, if I was going to be sitting for a while … might as well knit! So the beginning of this project is captured in paint. Dorothy took a better picture and will probably comment on it in her Daily Painting Journal, check it out!
