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! For both of us, our summer knitting looks almost exactly like our winter knitting, as we tend to constantly knit with the cooler seasons in mind. Summer knitting, though, comes with more interruptions - many of which are welcome ones! Courtney's summers are now occupied with feeding the chickens, tending the garden and watching the sunset and hanging out by the river well into the nighttime. For Kate, this summer has already looked a lot different than summer's past. For the last few years, she has spent her spare time at the local city animal shelter and fostering dogs, knitting in the evenings once everyone has been walked and fed, but this summer she will be spending her spare time - or, really, all of her time when not at work! - wrangling her infant daughter, Charlie.

Courtney's summer knitting often involves socks, something she rarely knits other times of year. She's a sweater knitter, and begrudges the summer heat and turns to smaller accessories. She's already begun obsessing about knitting her 4 year old son a new back-to-school sweater for September...though she has yet to cast on.

Kate's summer knitting has already begun, and when not swatching and designing for Kelbourne - her mind and hands are already working on garments to be published next winter - she has turned to creating outfits for Charlie to wear come fall. She recently finished Hannah's Tiny Rock Coast in the 6-12 month size out of the Fibre Company's Canopy Fingering in the color guava for her to wear once the weather cools in September. She's also on a sewing kick, and has been obsessively making her "Big Butt Baby Pants", a knitting pattern by Rae Hoekstra. Ever with her mind on yarn, though, she recently finished a pair of pants for her to wear with small lambs printed on them to help teach Charlie exactly where some of all her mom's yarn comes from. {And who can resist lambs on pants?}

Regardless of what the day brings, knitting is always on our minds, and we're not far from a pair of needles and yarn.

- Courtney and Kate