Cassis, Saroyan, and High Road

Last week I did take pictures of my current projects as promised. I was even going to post on Friday, but I just didn’t feel up to it with everything going on in Japan with the earthquake and tsunami. I just felt like anything I said would have been insignificant compared, so I decided to put it off until this week. Then, I knit so much on one project, it needed a new picture! Oops! (The pictures aren’t my best, but in an effort to blog more and keep my projects updated, I’ve been using my point and shoot more often lately.)

As soon as I finished my Seneca sweater, I knew what sweater I wanted to cast on next: Cassis. I’d been seeing this one around Ravelry for a while and after seeing a number of people knit this, I knew I needed one of my own. One of my goals with knitting 12 sweaters this year is to primarily use stash, so the first thing I did was go stash hunting to see if I had something appropriate for it. The Knit Picks CotLin I bought with the intention of making Jali (then decided the cables didn’t work with the yarn) came to mind and I even had a swatch already knit from my Jali attempt that had the exact right gauge! Seemed like a perfect fit and I cast on as soon as I had Seneca blocking.

I started this February 26th and I’m well into the body. I decided I’m going to make this with longer sleeves and I’m adding waist shaping. I debated about sizing since I’m between the 42″ and 44″ sizes, but went with the 42″ size. Since the fronts are meant to overlap by about 2″ and I don’t plan on wearing it closed all the time, I think it will fit me better overall this way.

Cassis

I was on the fence for a while with how I felt about the Textured Shawl I’d started in Malabrigo. Ultimately I decided I didn’t want another triangle shawl and the textured pattern (while nice) was annoying to knit for me. I just had this feeling I wouldn’t wear it much, so I frogged it. After frogging, I went in search of another pattern for this yarn. It was calling me to make it into something, so after some searching I decided to knit Saroyan. I started this on February 27th, but after a week and a half of working on it I found that I’d not read the directions properly and did the increases wrong (they aren’t done on row 3 and 11 of the pattern repeat). I realized this on March 10th when I reached the point where I would work straight. I waited a day to decide what to do since it was late at night when I realized my error. The next day, I frogged it and started over. I’ve worked on it non-stop since then and I’m three repeats away from finishing it!

Saroyan

I should be able to finish it tonight and get it blocking. I’ve already got my eye on the next project I want to knit once it’s finished: High Road. This is from A Verb for Keeping Warm’s 2nd shipment. I’ve wanted to knit this since I got it. The construction is interesting and I love the color of the yarn. It’ll be a good project to work on when I can’t work on Cassis since that sweater is getting rather large and hard to cart around easily.

A Verb for Keeping Warm
Yarn: Metamorphosis, Pattern: High Road

I’ve been doing a lot more project planning lately then is usual for me, but that’s not such a bad thing. Sometimes I feel at a loss for what to knit and other times I just know what I want to work on. Just the way things go sometimes!

Since I’m working on planning a trip for some training, I’ll just throw this out there for folks in the DC area: I’ll be visiting in April. If you want to meet up or hang out while I’m there, let me know and we can figure it out! Still not solid on the dates since I’ll be taking personal time as well, so if some days work better then others, I’m sure I could plan my trip accordingly. 🙂