I have stepped away for a few weeks to enjoy my new baby girl. As a gift to you dear knitters I offer you a mini-series of guest posts by some treasured folk from the knitting industry. They share with us what knitting in the summer means for them. Enjoy! "Even after seven summers on the East Coast, my inner Pacific Northwesterner still finds it difficult to adjust to the heat and humidity that haunts us over here during the summer months. My knitting practice took some serious time to adjust to this as well.

The main problem, for me, posed by the East Coast summer was how to reconcile my obsession with wool. Would I be able to give it up while weathering the summer heat? While I felt obliged to try, my early attempts all failed. Though I love wearing cotton and linen, when I knit with yarns made from their fibers, knitting’s magic always seems a little blunted. I know the same isn’t true for everyone, but the secret to my summer knitting survival was to accept the inevitable – for me wool and knitting are inextricable.

When I stopped feeling obliged to embrace plant fibers in the warmer months, my summer knitting started looking just about the same as my knitting from the rest of the year, perhaps with the addition of an air conditioner and some iced tea as accompaniment. Large, billowy projects and thick, rustic yarns were usually put away in favor of finer fabrics and lighter yarns, but I’ve never looked back and longed for anything other than my wool.

Since I began operating a small American yarn company and heading up a design team, my summer knitting has become all about swatching. These quieter months provide a great opportunity for designing, and with fall and winter around the corner (at least on the “industry” timeline) the timing is perfect. Things in summer finally slow down just enough for my creative brain to come out and start making some noise again. It has now become a time I greatly look forward to – when I’m free to play and dream about my favorite seasons... which always seem so far away when the first bite of heat sinks its teeth into this city."

- Jared Flood