What am I doing?

Well, besides whining about my sprained/twisted ankle and can't ski this morning?

My brother and sister-in-law finished THEIR WIP, a beautiful baby girl, on Monday. So this means that the baby sweater needs to be finished before we visit next month. Carrie and I decided to make a larger size so that Baby would be able to wear it a bit longer, and so that she would have ample time to finish the project. Somehow it ended up in my basket, but that's OK. This is a sweater made from Sirdar Snuggly DK, colour 0260, from an older Pingouin magazine.

The back, sides and one sleeve are complete. Half a sleeve and the hood, and we're good to go.

We visited Jason and Coris down in Virginia for Christmas. They have a lovely new home. They are lacking a beautiful afghan for their living room. The Yggdrasil Afghan from Interweave Knits seems to fit the bill. I'm using Patons Shetland Chunky in Soft Teal, which will accent their colour scheme beautifully.


Jason and Coris -- I know it doesn't look like much just yet, but wait! It'll improve dramatically! This is one ball of yarn to date.

We've had a couple of customers inquire at the shop about Patons new laceweight yarn. It is 80% acrylic, 10% mohair and 10% wool, and dyed using a technique called "space dying." Basically, this means that the colour repeats are very l-o-n-g. Since Barb has an allergy to mohair, I was drafted to try the test piece. Dutifully I picked up a skein and tried to find a project.

I will admit to a fair bit of prejudice about this yarn. It just doesn't feel as nice as lace-weight alpaca. Why would anyone knit with this instead of alpaca? Eh? And this prejudice is perhaps why I've had to start a project with this yarn five times. Yes. Five times. I can report with full and complete honesty that the yarn withstands the rigors of repeated ripping and knitting. Beyond that ... well, I'm still not sold, but I AM knitting with it. This is the Double Bordered Scarf from Jane Sowerby's Victorian Lace:
I'm 32 rows into it, and finally starting to enjoy the process. I'll let you know how it all works out. In the meantime, this is probably going to be a Christmas gift for one of the youngish ladies in my lives. (You know who you are!)

I have committed myself to finishing the Great American Aran Afghan this calendar year. To that end, I knit up one of the remaining unworked squares -- the Jay Campbell square.
This square is worked from the outside in, circularly. Interesting concept, worked well, and the chart was impeccable. Don't know why I hesitated so long on this one.

Finally, we started a Knit-Along project at the store. The Arching Cables cardigan from the Fall Interweave Knits. I decided to use Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Flamme.
I'd been looking for a project for this wool so that I could showcase it at the store. This is it. A delightful project, not incredibly difficult but beautiful to behold. Here you see the belt, which took slightly more than one skein of wool. I'm just finishing the third ball here, so it will use a fair bit of wool. As Clairol would say, "I'm worth it!"

So ... what are you working on?