And suddenly its summer. Summer in the Ruhr area means temperatures rise spontaneously over 30 degrees with lots of rain and thunder. Oh fun… it feels as if we life in a tropical greenhouse only the air is charged with exhaust fumes.
And in this wet-hot climate what better to do than knit some warm clothes like socks or a turtleneck sweater or a wool cardigan ?

This is my little roundup of yarny projects which I am currently working on between all the sewing.
Let’s start with the socks.

You know I have a colossal tiny problem with second things, second socks, second sleeves, second buttons – ahem wait – I already have problems to sew on the first button. But I now my shortcomings and I am always on the hunt for methods to deceive my lazy self. This time I thought why not start two socks at once. I did not use the cool method @Jluvs2fly and @muscara explained (I still want to try this), no I simply knit alternately between two socks ?.

But althogh I again used the top-down method, I learned something new:
First: knitting two socks at the same time seems to be the method for me, to overcome the second sock syndrome.
Second: I learned a new technique for the heel and gusset which I so far really enjoy.

This technique was invented and written down – you can download the pattern for free! on Ravelry – by Michaela Richter. It lets you knit the sock completely in the round, so it is perfect for stripes ? which can be easily continued over the heel. The only downside of this knitting in the round was for me, I hade to change my style of knitting. For the heel cap and the gusset, you have to purl…. As I normally knit combination style, this was a problem, as you cannot knit combination style in the round. In combination you twist the stitches in one row and de-twist them in the next. While knitting in the round this de-twisting step is missing and you end up with stitches which are turned in the wrong direction.
So, I re-learned the standard purl method for this pattern. I still don’t love this movement and my purl stitches are still too loose in this knitting style, but I am able to ignore these imperfections.
As you can see on the photos I am nearly done with one sock and the second is now ready for the heel. Hopefully my determination to finish them holds up… ?

The next long-time project is this knitted cardigan which I made out of wool I dyed myself. Meanwhile I find the color scheme a bit aggressive, but – sigh – this could be owed to me looking for such a long time on this unfinished cardigan. Some weeks ago, I was in the mood (as @marblely would perhaps say ?) and I picked it up to finish its second sleeve. First problem I encountered were my cryptic notes. No idea why I wrote them down so confusing. But I managed to work through them and knitted happily, only to notice that my tension is much looser than on the first sleeve – ahhhhhhh…. And now I am short before the sleeve cuff and the problems culminate: both sleeves seem to be at the same length (before the cuff) but following my notes I should do about 20 more rows before decreasing for the cuff. My reaction was putting the cardigan to sleep in the famous box of shame. I am still unsure what I should do with it.

• Following my notes and knit more rows.
• Hoping that blocking will make both sleeves the same length.
• Knitting it again and using smaller needles for a tighter tension (no way I will unravel, I just wrote this to look nice)
• Or just stop with the sleeve, decrease and do the cuff ???????

  

  Then there is the crochet cardigan which I may have casted on against the better knowledge that I first should finish all my other projects (and there are a lot in the box). But I so wanted to crochet again and testing if my finger could stand it without starting to hurt. And yes, I can do it, only for short periods of time or my fingers hurt again, but nevertheless, it is possible: Jippyyyy ?
  I have chosen a very soft cotton yarn which I purchased years ago at the Hamburger Wollfabrik. The yarn is untwisted and has some strange issues which led to a crazy cheap prize: if you knit the yarn in stockinette the rows are crooked. The shop could not explain why this happened, but luckily for me the yarn behaves completely normal in crochet. So I am proudly owner of this amazingly soft cotton yarn 😀
  I am using the yarn held double, which sometimes is a tiny bit annoying because of the many thin threads I must manage. If you unravel the yarn it can get tangled very fast, but I love the drape and touch of the fabric. I am using an older pattern which I wrote last year for a thick and warm wool cardigan the Loch Ness cardigan, which you by the way can download for free. I thought it a nice idea to transform the thick jacket into a lighter summer cardigan and wooosh here are the first photos. And I will try to write down the pattern as I go, as the lighter yarn and smaller hook leads to a different stitch count. I am also pondering to knit the ribbing this time (instead of using a crochet ribbing). I found some wonderful examples of knitting/crochet combos online and maybe I will try this out.

  

  And the last project was my mission to annihilate a rhubarb cake before it comes into existence… @phoenixwren will perhaps understand me :-DDD I made a cake for my husbands birthday, but couldn’t resist to taste the batter – you can never know if it is ok, so I sampled it several times, only to be absolutely sure the batter is to my liking ???

Thank you @crosheille for iniciating and @muscara, @shanibeer, @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on steemit. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. You can read more comments on this post on my steemit blog.