Sweater Weather!

It’s fall!!   I really can’t put too many exclamation points on that one.  I love fall.  It is my favorite season.  For one thing, my husband and I are both October babies.  For another, I always associate fall with the start of a new school year, and I am geeky enough to admit I enjoyed school.  Fall also means the start of the football season.  I wasn’t a big football fan in high school, but at that point in my life, football was synonymous with marching band, and I loved being in our school’s marching band.  As an adult, I enjoy watching football on tv (although I still complain during college games when we have to listen to some blathering announcer instead of getting to watch the marching band!).  But what I really love is settling in to watch football on tv with a couple of skeins of yarn and some knitting needles in my lap!

And of course, the very best part of fall is that it’s finally sweater weather!  (Or at least it was, for a couple of days.  I wore a pair of hand-knit socks to our county fair this past weekend!  But the cooler weather will be back soon.)  I’ve got a bunch of projects in various stages.  So far, my plans for this fall knitting season are rather ambitious!

First up is a cabled-yoke cardigan of my own design.  This sweater was inspired by this gorgeous yarn I purchased at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival in May, Spirit Trail Fiberworks “Minerva” (a 50% Tussah Silk / 50% Merino blend) in the colorway “Storm Clouds.”

I am blaming this sweater on my MDSW partners in crime, Hope and Carla.  Hope, because she talked me into buying the yarn (admittedly, not a hard sell, as I couldn’t seem to put it down once I’d picked it up!), and Carla, because she found the bus trip we’re taking to Rhinebeck in October.  No self-respecting knitter can go to Rhinebeck in a store-bought sweater!

I’ve been knitting madly, but since I’m designing this one myself, there may have been a wrong turn or two (cough, the first version of the yoke, cough), and now I’ve got… urp… 22 days, 17 hours, and 20 minutes to finish it.  But who’s counting?

Guess I’d  better get back to my knitting!