Looking Ahead, Part 2 - Works in (sort of) Progress

Is it strange to be looking ahead when I have two sweaters in the super-active queue already?

The hot pink sweater came off the needles and went straight to the blocking boards Tuesday night which meant that a navy sweater got cast-on Wednesday evening.

I have vowed to get some WIPs taken care of in the new year. I start way too many sweater and then just abandon them. There's really no rhyme or reason to how this happens: both fingering and aran sweaters, both cardigans and pullovers, both plain and advanced, there's no rhyme or reason as to why one sweater gets started and finished almost without break and others spend years in the WIP pile.

My Fisher Queen WIP is in the lovely madelinetosh erin (which I hoard as a rule) in thoreau

and it is going to look excellent with my J. Crew cream colored wool mini skirt

and it's early to the waist of the body AND on super big needles! I have no excuse not to power through it.

Or how about the ubiquitous (in my social knitting circle) Grace? It's in one of my favorite colors, madelinetosh's brothers grimm (whose discontinuation god himself can't explain), will perfectly match one of my fave summer dresses from Anthropologie

and be amazing with nearly everything else I own (ok so I own several dresses from Anthro that will go well with a cardigan)

AND I solved my problem with the cardigan which is that I didn't like the plain shoulders next to the lace rest of it so mine has lace all over the yoke. It is also finished to around my waist.

There is no reason, I repeat no reason, why I don't have a finished Cocktail(Dress). I am making it in the phenomenally amazing Duck Duck Wool Singleton in metalware and this photograph DOES NOT DO THE YARN JUSTICE

because the yarn legit glows. To prevent attention from being drawn away from this awesomeness, I've used madelinetosh merino light in onyx and dirty panther, aka black and as dark as grey can be without being black, as the contrast colors. It's so friggin' cool. To say nothing of the fact that this is a wheelhouse dress like no other - I own at least 1 million pairs of shoes that would go with this (1 million might be a slight exaggeration, but I do own quite a number of shoes I can wear with this dress). Including, should they go on super duper extra holycrap sale, these eminently covetable (and seriously unaffordable) Gucci booties which, I assure you, look ridonkulous on.


On another tangent, do you ever find that while you love a designer, you haven't actually managed to knit any of her (or his) patterns? This is my monumental problem with Julia Trice (aka mindofwinter). I have stashed for her patterns, swatched for her patterns, and the closest I've come to knitting any of her patterns is the 3/4 of the yoke of Yukiya Pullover that sits in a pile with the other accusatory WIPs. And again, I couldn't be more fond of my yarn choices: I'm using various Buggas in grey, black, and red - so again, just my kinda thing. I think I'll don a cheapo black tank dress from H&M or Forever 21

(this is among the best 7-13 bucks you can spend - I own gobs of these cheap, disposable dresses which are totally camouflaged by a blazer and completely wonderful on the kinds of vacations I take - size up, this stuff is made for tweens - in fact, I took a break from writing this to purchase 5 more), and wear booties or knee-high boots.

I wasn't going to admit to all the WIPs I want to get through in 2015, but I think it will keep me honest, so here goes. I've had Cromarty on the needles since 2012 and despite the fact that I'm making it in a decidedly purple yarn,

no longer have the black pants it would go with (they were from Uniqlo and died a sad, though not wholly unexpected, death-by-hole), and really don't know when I will ever wear it, I feel compelled to finish it. This, realistically, might not get done in 2015.

The same cannot be said for Birchbark which I would happily have worn today with my flippy bcbgeneration skirt

and my riding boots

and which is going to make me so happy in this wonderful Polo & Co. neutral,

so why is it not already mine?!? I would also wear it with the jeans I need to buy from Old Navy

now that I know the secret to Old Navy jeans is to bring 10 pair of the same size into the dressing room and buy the one that actually fits because their quality control is shite.

And finally, 2015 will be a WIP success if Northdale becomes reality. I have a couple of inches knit and it's so much fun, but also tedious, time consuming, and not something I can do mindlessly. I also don't know what I'll wear it with, though guessing a navy skirt isn't the most ridiculous guess one could have.

I'd also like to say that there won't be a Part 3 of this series, but there will be, because we haven't tackled things I want for 2015 that I have managed not to cast on and abandon - and believe me, I have a list for that too.

Tubes

Dress: Idlewood by Cecily Glowik MacDonald; Orange Flower Aran Merino Superwash in Woodsmoke; my notes and modifications on As Far As It Goes
Shoes: Ariat riding boots; similar style (and these have held up through a lot of hard use - I've had the zippers replaced, but the shoes themselves have been workhorses - see this photo of them with wildlife...)
Lips: Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Natural in Aubergine N50
Nails: Butter London in La Moss
Bracelet: Breil stainless steel; similar styles like an olive branch bangle, or something thinner and stackable in gold

Let's get business out of the way first: this photo was taken Tuesday and I had every intention of also writing a post on Tuesday...

I'm sure I'm not alone in impulse purchasing yarn for which no project yet exists. (Please tell me I'm not the only one.) This one-of-a-kind color needed to come live with me, but once at home didn't quite have a purpose. I had loved knitting my first Idlewood even though the yarn pilled terribly, and I love a good knitted dress, so eventually these two ideas coalesced and a project was born. It doesn't hurt that the project is on size 10 or 10.5 needles, so it really does fly. And the dress itself is great. As you can see, it will go with flattish equestrian boots and on my original project page I have it styled with my dressy boots (and perhaps a useless but delightful pair of opera length black leather gloves). However, all that fun quick knitting has, in both cases where I've knit this pattern, resulted in a pilly garment over not that much time. Interestingly enough, this yarn is 100% superwash and my other Idlewood was 80/10/10, so it's not like I can blame the cashmere.

The other problem I have is entirely my fault, but intentionally my fault, and that is because I wanted a very open cowl at the neck, there's very little fabric in the dedicated shoulder area, which means the damn thing falls off my body. Now the enormous cowl prevents this from being accidental nudity, but it is annoying to have to pull your dress up every so often. On the other hand, I have yet to exactly figure out the proper construction which gives a nice open cowl and provides enough support. My Obsidian does a better job, so I might look to it for any future cowl work.

Yet I still heartily recommend the pattern. It's super easy and super pretty and really is just a giant tube. A word of caution, though: consider putting a label in so you know which way is up. On my sweater version, because the cowl is nearly as long as the body, I cannot count the number of times I've put it on upside down. Seriously.