What's it gonna be when it grows up?

About a year ago, one of my LYS had a 40% off sale. About 6 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca jumped off the shelf and into my arms. Colors were chocolate brown, taupe, and green. I didn't have a project in mind when I bought them, and I've since learned that some alpaca is just too fuzzy for me. Kinda like knitting with a kitten around your neck or something.

Did that stop me from adding to the stash? Hell no! I've now got 5 skeins of taupe, 3 skeins of chocolate brown, and 4 skeins of green. I've been mulling these colors around for a while and all I can come up with is color blocks in a sweater.

This morning it came to me. This



is going to be an Adult Surprise Jacket when it grows up. Now to figure out how to do the striping. This catches my eye, but do I do the stripes in big blocks or thin blocks? I'm also thinking of doing the body in two colors and then the border in the third color.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Fantasy land

I'm ignoring the booties. I find myself thinking that they'll finish themselves out of obligation and guilt for all they've put me through. Nice fantasy of mine, eh?

And while I've been in fantasy land, I've discovered the magic that is Dream in Color Smooshy:



The colorway is Cocoa Kisses, and it's much much more decadent than the picture shows. The most amazing part is that the cuff is 9.5 in. long and fits my size 10 foot quite well, although I'm making them for someone else. Think about it -- 9.5 in. cuff on women's size 10 foot with ample yarn left over to repairs, etc. This has so much yardage!!!!!!

And then yesterday while at L & B, some CoolSpun Cotton by Kertzer jumped into my hands and at $1.99 a ball, I knew it was destined to become the potholders I so desperately need.



I'm using EZ's potholder pattern from Knitter's Almanac page 20 (using double-knitting). Just another example of her fine fine genius. How did her mind dream this stuff up????

Pi anyone?

So I've had my eye on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi Shawl for a while now, but it wasn't until I bumped into someone (a new friend!) on Ravelry that I decided to jump off and do it. She had stumbled upon someone who varied EZ's increases to 4 simple increases EVERY round. I'm knitting EZ's Pi in st st with 4 increases every round (see the pretty increase spirals)!

I also opted out of EZ's start method instead I used a simple join in the round. I like the hole. What can I say! This is such a very addictive pattern to work up. I have a really hard time stopping. I'm also using it to bust through stash. There's a little bit of everything in here.

In other news, I designed my first sweater -- for a dog. This time, I think the recipient dog will be more appreciative than my own yarn-chewing Schnoodle. I knit it top down in one piece, and while it's a very basic dog sweater, I'm very very proud of the fit and the engineering that I did. I don't have any pics of the dog wearing the sweater yet, but here's some of the FO.

I measured the dog's neck, multiplied that by my gauge, cast on, joined in the round, and knit a long turtleneck. Then I made some increases. When I got to the leg holes, I worked the piece flat in two pieces, binding off two stitches for each leg. After the leg holes were the desired length, I joined the two flat pieces and knit in the round a bit longer for the stomach before binding off and working the back flat, ending in 2x2 rib. See?

Back to Pi...

I did it!

I did it! I did it! I did it! I finished my BSJ. Is it perfect? Far from it!

Do my increases look like eyelet? Yes!

Will I pretend the eyelet is intentional decoration? Yes!

Are they supposed to look like eyelet? No!

Do I give a damn? Hell NO! (considering that this is my fourth attempt at mastering this pattern! )

I also have no doubt that I couldn't have done it had I not found a magical cheat sheet on-line (sorry, copyrights don't allow me to post the link here, but I found it on Google).

I am soooo proud that I was able to fold this error-filled piece of something into this:






I have sewn no seams or buttons. I don't care. For tonight, my little BSJ is wrapped up in a towel out of reach of Max-the-yarn-chewing-wonder dog. I will curse my inability to understand the EZ's desired method of increases tomorrow when I sew up the seams. Tonight I am a near genius for finally kicking this pattern's ass!