I sat down tonight to do some election night knitting while watching the results.  I decided not to work on the sweater I’ve been working on for, well, way too long.  Instead, I decided to work a little more on my “next” project.

I’m planning to knit myself a Shawl Collar Jacket by Wendy Baker, from Knitting for Him.

This past weekend I picked up two different color balls of yarn for this project.  I knit several gauge swatches to get the needle size right, then I focused on deciding which color to use.

The choice was between Dark Grey Welsh and Black Welsh (which is actually a bit on the red side).  I really thought I was going to prefer the Black Welsh.  But after knitting the swatches, I’ve changed my mind.  I think the cables really stand out better with the Dark Grey Welsh.

Like I said in my last post, I’m not allowing myself to buy the yarn for this project until after I finish my current sweater project.  So, this is all I’m going to do for right now.

I just might knit a larger swatch of the Black Welsh, just to make sure.  We’ll see.

I’ve been working on my sweater for a long, long, long time now.  Now that I’m knitting and blogging again, I think it is time for a FLAK update.  I checked back to see what my last update was.

WOW!

It was in February.  I’ve made a lot of progress since then.  I worked the start of the front.  I picked up and finished both sleeves.  I joined the body and worked about 7 inches.

I’ve got about 7 inches left to go in the cable pattern, then 2 inches of ribbing.  Once that’s done, the only thing I have left to do is the neck ribbing,  and hide all those darn yarn tails.

My goal is to finish this sweater in 2008.

I’ve really enjoyed this sweater.  However, I’m ready for it to be done.  Mostly because I want to wear the darn thing.  That, and I promised myself that I’d finish this one before I’m allowed to purchase yarn for my next sweater.

I knit a couple of baby sweaters when I first learned how to knit.  They were mostly stockinette, and I remember thinking how much work they were.  Well, they’ve got nothing on this baby.  This thing is a lot of fun to work on, never a boring moment with all those cables.  But it is a lot of work.

Unless plans change, my next sweater will be cabled, but in a much, much larger gauge.  Think size 11 needles and chunky yarn.  I’m expecting it to go much faster.

The bottom looks pinched because I’m using a circular needle that’s a few inches too small.  I tried switching to a longer needle, but that kept puckering while I was knitting.  It annoyed me, so I switched back to the shorter needle.  Besides, I really like working with my Lantern Moon!

I upgraded WordPress today. I was running an incredibly out-of-date version.

I also decided to change the look of the blog. The whole old layout was getting to be kind of drab. So I found this layout, and decided to personalize it a bit. I hope everybody likes the yummy hand painted Malabrigo I used as a background.

We picked it up at a wonderful yarn shop in Traverse City, MI on our last vacation.

They are supposed to be a hat and mittens for Gwen.  She picked out the colors, and couldn’t decide which one she wanted.  So she twisted daddy’s arm, and we got both.

It has been quite a long time since I’ve posted.

I really haven’t done much knitting at all over the summer.  Now that the weather has turned cold, I’ve picked up the needles again.

I finally started (and finished) a project I’ve wanted to do for quite some time.  I made a Jayne Cobb hat!  OK, actually, I made two.  May adorable daughter wanted one.   She doesn’t have any idea who Jayne Cobb is, she just likes the silly hat.

And here is an action shot:

How’s it sit?  Pretty cunning, don’t you think?