July means several things to me: my birthday and the years’ worth of memories of elaborate treasure hunts, games on horseback, camping, and astronomy that go with it; the reliable start of halcyon summer in the Pacific Northwest; evenings outdoors enjoying the long light (though twilight comes much sooner in Portland than in my hometown) fresh produce from local farmers; and in recent years, the Tour de France.

When I probe for the origins of my obsession with the world’s greatest cycling race, I come up with the confluence of nostalgia for my first trip to France in 1998, a bleak city winter in New York, and my husband’s foray into triathlons. I think it was in 2005 that we discovered you could find video archives of previous Tours online, and I think I was the one to suggest teasingly to Adam that watching Lance Armstrong power up an Alp or two might bring his training sessions on the stationary bike to a new level. Before I knew it, I was ensconced on the couch (at an awkward angle; there was no room in our tiny apartment for the couch and the bike to face the computer at once) with my knitting, totally absorbed in the new world coming through the small grainy picture on the screen. The drama of the mountain stages, the cat-and-mouse in the peloton pulling back a breakaway or setting up a sprint finish, the beauty of the French landscape (my imagination ably filled in what the video quality left to be desired). The titanic rivalry of Armstrong and Ullrich, the death-defying descents, the colorful commentators and tifosi. I was hooked. When one year’s footage was over, we went back to the previous year. Soon I was watching the stages alone when Adam was working late. We didn’t have a television for that summer’s edition, but by 2006 we’d moved to Portland. We settled in our new house on July 4th, just in time to meet our cycling neighbors and learn that the bike store where they work would be showing the live Tour coverage at 6 a.m. each day. I got up extra early the first morning and made fresh ginger scones to share with the diehards who stopped in before work. Then I mesmerized them with my drop spindle while we all watched the race unfold.

To my dismay, the Bike Gallery stopped screening the Tour after that first year. But by 2007 we’d inherited a television, and I could stumble down in my pajamas, brew some coffee, and leave the door open for the neighbors to come join me. If the stage wasn’t over by the time I had to leave for work, I’d catch the end of the prime time coverage that evening. And always, knitting was bound up in the experience. Of course I joined the Tour knitalong as soon as Debby told me it was in the works. Last year, I translated a French pattern and set myself the task of completing a complicated cardigan during the three weeks of the race.

And this year? I have to keep the details of my project under wraps, as it’s for publication. But I’ll tell you this: it’s a vintage-inspired cropped cardigan in an unusual lace pattern, and it is every bit as yellow as the maillot jaune. It’s like buttercups, crocuses, daffodils, and Cheetos in a blender. I love it unreasonably. Maybe I’ll show you a little corner of it here and there, just to be a tease. It’s only five inches long and already I’m fantasizing about wearing it in Paris some spring with a voluminous skirt cut like it’s 1959, strolling the hidden gardens, reading on park benches, devouring daintily nibbling pastries at sidewalk cafés. Or maybe lurking in a slinky dress in a dark bar with a glass of absinthe, conjuring the ghosts of Degas, Picasso, Hemingway, and Toulouse-Lautrec, because it’s a versatile little number. (I’m not convinced absinthe would be all that pleasant to drink, but just say it aloud: “glass of absinthe” – what poetry.) Or best – and most realistically – of all, cycling the streets of Portland. If I can only find some wicker panniers for my Bianchi Milano, I’ll be able to pretend I’m a stylish French girl riding home from the market with produce and baguettes. And just think of all the knitting I could stash in the bottom.