It was a long labor of love, and after a year, it returned to the source. My golden fields sweater project is finished, astonishingly on the anniversary of starting it, brought back to the inspiration, the golden landscape of summer that I love so much.

One year ago almost to the day, I was on a walk with Juno and we stopped at this very same rusty fence post. I took a photo of her in the wild grass, and posted it in High Summer. The place, and the photo somehow deeply inspired me, I craved to capture the connection I felt to the golden fields in August. When I got home I started blending all kinds of colors and spinning samples, striving to grasp the emotion and the colors of the sun toasted grass in high summer, and then committed to knitting a sweater from yarn I began to create yarn to color match it.

I am very pleased that the colors of the sweater seem to touch the spirit of the golden fields, and at one point the breeze blew the sweater off of a little branch I had hung it on to photograph, and it landed on its back in the grasses full of stickers and thistle stuff . . . it received of kiss of approval from the actual field!

I woke early this morning and realized if I worked fast that I could finish it, and take it up to photograph on this anniversary. So early I did the minimal finish work of grafting the underarms, weaving in the ends, sewing on the buttons, and decided rather than wash & block it, which would give it the smooth appearance of a new sweater not yet worn (and what I always recommend), instead I decided it would suffice to just steam it lightly, and keep its rustic appeal. Really though, it was because I let impatience win over! And before the sun got too high, I put on my walking boots, took the sweater, hanger, and camera, and walked up to the open space near my home where I often take photographs of the landscape.

This rustic cardigan was a lot of work and you can see all the process in posts from beginning to end in My Summer Fields Project, scrolling down through the posts about blending of wools on the drum carder, spinning the yarn, and finally the knitting from my own pattern Calidez Cardigan. I’ve even made a gallery of the best photos of the making of this project…