I finished a new project a few weeks ago, but haven’t been able to show it to you, because I have been very busy (1) working, (2) travelling, and (3) working while travelling. In the month since I last posted (which is the longest break I’ve had in 13 years of blogging!) I’ve been sailing along the lake in Geneva, strolling around medieval French and Swiss villages, overseeing the busy start of a new semester, researching and writing, and teaching MBA workshops in Johannesburg. It’s been hectic. Despite all of that, I managed to finish knitting Dune:

If you recall, in an earlier post I remarked that this was an incredibly boring knit: a tiny bit of shaping at the shoulders and then endless rounds of stockinette at a very small gauge. I am still in that post-covid state, alas, where boring is better where knitting is concerned. And, as you can see, while the knitting itself is boring, the finished project is rather nice:

Dune is designed by eri shimizu; the pattern is called Dune and Foresta, where Dune is the cap-sleeved version and Foresta has long sleeves. This is the second of her patterns which I have knitted; the first was Flores, which I blogged about here. In both of them, I ended up cutting out significant amounts of ease. (If you look at this post, you can see a false start I made with this project, in which the garment would have been voluminous with a capital V; I ripped back and got rid of 4 sets of increases totalling 32 stitches. I think I ended up with a nice amount of ease – it is still roomy enough to feel cool on a hot day, but not so much that I am swimming in it.

While exceedingly simple, the pattern has some nice details, first in the small eyelet increases at the shoulder and the shaping along the clavicle:

It also has a nice line down the back formed by a narrow asymmetrical cable:

The pattern calls for i-cord edging, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, I left it out. I finished both waistband and sleeves with twisted ribbing, and I left a rolled edge at the neck. I find this kind of funny because in general I hate rolled edges. In fact, I once wrote a post called Annoying Things in which I wrote a long list of things which annoyed me. Top of the list? Rolled edges. (I still consider it a very funny post. It is from 2016, so it goes back quite a way, but still resonates. I suppose the fact that I just left a rolled hem on this tee means that even crusty old set-in-their-ways knitters are open to change. Yay me; I am resilient!)

The yarn I used is a 55% linen 45% wool blend called Kalinka 21 from Karen Oberg. I absolutely adore this yarn! I have used it before to knit my wonderful Treit (which you can see here). I will most certainly use it again. The linen and the wool take the dye differently which creates a richness of shade, and of course, the linen gives it great temperature control and drape while the wool helps it bounce back into shape. It has all of the lovely properties of linen tied together with the loveliness of wool and is also dyed by someone who has a similar colour sense to me. What’s not to love? I used less than 3 skeins to make this top.

I’m getting a real kick out of how lush and green our garden is right now. Our neighbours all have yards that are manicured with a ruler for that golf course look, and I believe they are all secretly appalled by our overgrown mess. I love it though, and right now it’s perfect! I had fun taking these photos yesterday and couldn’t resist surreptitiously taking a photo of Doug taking photos of me:

New top, lots of flowers, a peak of sun, a lovely cup of coffee, Doug trying to confiscate my shawl (and looking good in it); could anything make this weekend better? Well, yesterday I received new yarn in the post! And on that teaser, I’ll say good-bye!