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 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.

 My Triquetra fingerless gloves are done.  What started out as a pair of fingerless gloves turned into a bit of a fiasco.  I started knitting these based on a pattern and gauge of what I thought was a similar yarn.  Well I learned that lesson, with an Andre the Giant sized glove.

Frog time.

I got the gauge right, with two sizes smaller needles.  I re-knit the right glove, added the finger stubs, cast off, and…  I didnt’ like them.  This yarn is way bulkier than I expected. The gloves are so heavy and think, that I couldn’t use them for typing like I was planning.  After putting them away for a few days, I decided to just make them into full-on gloves.  I set the right one down, and knit the left.

The left glove came out so good, I decided to frog the finger stubs on the right and start them over.  I was originally going to just join the yarn and finish the stubs.  However, there were holes and loose spots where I picked up the stitches, so I frogged them out.

Now that I’ve got them both done, I really like them.  I’m very happy with how they came out.  I love the yarn (Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran) but this stuff is way bulkier than it looks.