Shift

All of a sudden, it's summer. It's always hard to grasp how our weather shifts from snow flurries to sweltering heat in just a few short weeks. The heat causes me to slow down. I'm not particularly ambitious as a knitter or designer, and I move at my own pace, sometimes fast and furious, other times slow and patient. I've been puttering along with the Fusion Cardigan. Over a year ago I knitted the first one and wrote up a draft of the pattern. For the last month I've been playing around with the design, adding more flare at the hips and experimenting with different colourways. I intend to publish this later this summer (when Isabel returns home), and the pattern will offer up more than one colourway, with the opportunity (of course) to invent your own. I've never enjoyed knitting patterns that are written in stone--they make me feel that I am merely painting by the numbers, no matter how beautiful the design. For me, the fun is in creating something that's uniquely mine.
The colourway I've finally chosen for my own cardigan is this one, shown here blocking before the steek gets cut open. You can see the high tide mark where the water stopped. (The upper yoke was blocked earlier). This blocking-in-progress may seem to slow down the completion of the garment, but in reality it saves knitting time because fewer length alterations are required. I highly recommend taking the time to do this. In our current warm weather, it'll dry in a day.

The Kingston region is rich in wetlands and I took this quick pic while picking up some perennials at a local nursery. Can you spot the redwing blackbird (one of many nesting on this site)?

Another joy of this late May season is the very long twilight. Perfect for evening walks by the lake. A sure sign of summer...the sailboats are back. This pink sail is so eye-catching against the horizon!

And here's my shadow, very long and leggy in the late evening light. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, American readers. Hope your weather is as wonderful as our Victoria Day weekend was for us.