I am slowly making progress on my Arequita Tunic. The front and back are both well into the hip increases now, and are starting to look less like a crop top and more like a tunic:
I have had two challenges in making progress. First, I’ve made mistakes in the intarsia a couple times, namely, the rate at which I’m decreasing the purple and increasing the pink. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way around it but to frog back to the point at which I made the mistake. Luckily, the linen/wool blend is pretty sturdy and doesn’t show that it’s been reworked a couple times.
Secondly, we finally got a proper heat wave for this summer. We had a couple back to back hot days at the beginning of the summer, but Friday kicked off what’s supposed to be a full week of hot days and only slightly cooler nights. Like, the “low” of the day is around 6am, and by 9am it’s time to draw the blinds and close most of the windows again. By noon the cat won’t do more than poke her head out the door before realizing the balcony is far too warm. I can’t tell you how thankful I am for a) thermal blinds that reflect the sun away from our apartment, b) really good insulation and c) low energy light bulbs that don’t generate much heat. Otherwise, we’d be sweltering in darkness. As you can imagine though, knitting a wool-blend tunic doesn’t seem quite so appealing. Luckily, the way the knitting belt hold the needles seems to keep some of the warmth of the growing tunic out of my lap.