free lunch

Today we're having our first official day of snow. I have to say that I think my own Snow Sky is much prettier - the clouds outside look something like dooms day is coming. Definitely not a pink snowflake to be found.

I decided that I wanted the sleeves to have the same pattern as the body. If I had followed the original design, they would have been brown with pink crosses. It still would have been pretty, but I think it would have made the sweater a little more casual. I'm also going to do a set-in sleeve in the round, because I really want to have the pattern continue throughout the sweater, and I couldn't figure out how to do that with the saddle shoulders in the pattern. So far all of this is working out to be easier than I thought, which makes me nervous - either I am creepily expanding my knitting IQ, gaining common sense (!), or have made a large error somewhere. Please tell me if you see it lurking somewhere...either my new-found common sense, or just some old paranoia, is telling me that there's no such thing as a free lunch or an easy fair isle solution.

I'm a little burnt out with this sweater right now, so I'm going to put it on hold and crank out a few more simple designs. I raided the yarn store today and found some nice black cotton yarn made by Butterfly, and burgundy cotton yarn made by Lana Grossa. I also finally found a set of sock needles that go below US 1 - in fact, I now have US 0 and 00! I have some devious plans for these tiny needles - pictures will follow if any of them work out well.

And I want to give everyone who commented on my Hourglass Sweater and Norwegian Socks a huge thank you. Your compliments meant so much to me and were such a nice surprise in an inordinately tough week.