Heavenly Net Loft

I recently made an extremely brief trip to Cordova, Alaska, and fulfilled a longtime ambition of visiting the Net Loft handcraft store there. Not just a visit, but a one-woman private browse. Wow. If this place isn't heaven, it's at least the waiting room. Such a stupendous store in such a remote place!

I first made the acquaintance of the Net Loft when I was scouring the internet for the last skein or two that I needed to complete my Winter Sunset cardigan. I tried them all--local stores, the giant web sites--nada. Then I saw this little place down at the bottom of my search. Cordova, Alaska? It's not even on the road system. Still, I had to try or abandon the whole project. Of course, you know the end of the story. They had my 2 skeins, saved my sweater, and were super nice into the bargain.

Then this spring I heard about an utterly fantastic knitfest being held at the Knit Loft in June. It's over now, but if you're quick, the info is still up on the web here. It wasn't just a little weekend do with a big name instructor; the list was full of knitting superstars: Bonnie Marie Burns, Donna Druchunas, Gudrun Johnston, and Mary Jane Mucklestone, to name a few. And there were more, some lesser known and some local, but all very very talented. Nor was it just sitting and knitting for a week. There were early morning walks; there were hikes and art tours; there was special yoga for knitters; there was weaving, spinning, felting, needlefelting, and more, and more, and more! You can see why I was seriously put out that I heard of this so late when all my travel time and budget for the year was committed elsewhere.

When I made my visit, Dotty, the principal organizer of the whole thing, was still recovering from it all. How does such a genius and major maven recharge her batteries? By taking herself to Shetland for Shetland Wool Week, of course!

But back to my browse. I took some pictures, but there are more and better ones on their web site here. Seriously. Click that link and at least watch the slideshow. Besides some stunning Alaska scenery, you will also glimpse some of their yarn displays, and let me tell you their yarns are truly unique.

Three Irish Girls dyes a whole lot of custom colorways just for them. Some reflect the scenery, the rocks, berries, and animals. Some reproduce exactly the colors and pattern of watercolor paintings by local artists. Here's a sample, and here and here.

And then there's the local librarian who dyes yarns in colorways inspired by books.  Skeins in the Stacks even have Dewey Decimal-inspired numbers indicating weight. And the Peter Pan color actually twinkles with fairy dust!

Snow Capped Yarns are works of art created by local dyer Shelly Kocan. The seasons, the landscape and its inhabitants all inspire her. There's a special range of New Zealand yarns in big skeins. There are selections of international brands like Shetland's Jamieson & Smith and Dale from Norway.

There's beautiful and unique jewelry, chocolates, teas, cards, knitting bags, fiber for spinning... If this were the waiting room for heaven, you just might have so much fun that you'd never actually go in!

On the right above is one of my eventual purchases, a big skein of New Zealand dk called "Copper Sunset", not reproduced here true to color, but good-looking this way, too. In daylight it's fuschia and a very rusty brown. Gorgeous!

One more thing to show you. Across the street from the store is the city library and museum. The anchor outside has been very thoroughly yarnbombed. (7-year-old grandson added for scale.)

Intentionally off the beaten path and definitely worth the journey!

A Light Bout of Startitis

I've been ruminating on what to do for a posh tropical wrap for the upcoming trip to Tahiti. A seacell/silk shawl or stole seemed right, and white was the first choice, but it was next to impossible to find white seasilk.  When I got some from a place that supplies it for dyeing I found out why.  It's natural color is a kind of yellowy brown-tan.  It's the color of white things that have aged from too much sun exposure (paper, cloth).  It might be an ironic match for yours truly by the end of the voyage, but I don't think we'll go there.  I quickly understood why it is mainly available in beautiful handpainted colors.  (I should get myself hand-painted?  I think it's called tattooing, and it's a specialty of the South Seas, but I don't think I'll go there, either!!)

Then I had a thing for fancy sea island cotton, which only comes in white, but the yarn was extremely thin and would have to be doubled, which would double the expense, and I just wasn't in love with it somehow.

 The skeins of seasilk actually look creamier in the photo than in real life.  Think dirty cream.  The cotton is laid on top of the seasilk for size contrast.  It seems more of a thick thread than a yarn.

And then I was evaluating the micro area of my closet devoted to dress up clothing suitable for the tropics and realized that aqua would be a cool color that would go with everything.  Eureka!  A new quest began and ended with a kit that contains a pattern and this:

Handmaiden seasilk in Blue Lagoon.  I just had to wind the balls and cast on.  I love how the pattern is lace, but with cables on the borders.  And I think the stole shape will be more versatile (a mega-scarf?) than the traditional triangle-y traditional shawl shape.  I don't even care if I don't get the thing done before we go in July.  What with the small amount of yarn and its light, slippery feel, it would make a good take-along project for the trip.

Meanwhile, the neck and front edges are on the Winter Sunset.  Ends are being woven in; facings tacked down, and then, I think, the ends of the sleeves will need to be whacked off and the cuffs re-knitted to make a more reasonable length.  Great thing about having cut your sweater up the middle from stem to stern--you're much less shy about taking the scissors to it again!

Book Review: Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini

It's no surprise that this book appealed to me.  It's about a woman who decides to challenge herself by knitting a major fair isle sweater.  At this point non-knitters are already starting to doze off while knitters' ears perk up.  It's definitely a book for The Craft and not the muggles; it's about knitting, the knitting world, and issues important thereto.  That's OK--there are millions of us worldwide and the internet (dare I say?) knits us into a community however far we are flung.

 The danger in the subtitle comes from Martini's choice to make an Alice Starmore sweater, Mary Tudor, the cover girl on the book Tudor Roses.  Starmore is famous both for being a design genius, especially with fair isle colorwork, and for being very adamant about control of her work and name, to the extent of lawsuits against yarn manufacturers and web sites.  Anyone can probably do what they want in private with any published pattern, but does publishing this book invite the wrath of the designer?

The chapters follow Martini through the process of acquiring the book containing the pattern, the difficulty of finding the right yarns, the misery of multiple failures at merely counting cast on stitches correctly, the emerging beauty of the pattern's color changes, the satisfying rhythm of the later pattern repeats.  Along the way, she makes entertaining and relevant digressions into the histories of Shetland and Fair Isle knitting, Mary Tudor and her clan, Starmore's clashes with yarn makers and web discussion leaders, eBay sellers and yarn shops.  She travels to Nashville and New York to interview Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner of Mason-Dixon Knitting, to Toronto to see Amy Singer of knitty.com and  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot.

  The main question she toted along through the book like a big rock in her knitting bag was, "Does making a small change in a Starmore design (say, substituting a yarn for which the original no longer exists) still make it an Alice Starmore sweater?"  Ordinarily this is not something that preoccupies your average knitter, but Starmore has gone to extreme lengths to protect her "brand" and ownership of her creative property, and many of the pattern books are out of print. [an aside: This book may have increased the scarcity.  At this writing Tudor Roses is not available for any price on eBay or Alibris.] The original yarns have not been available for years.

The wisest answer was given by the good ol' Harlot:

I saw an Alice Starmore online, one of her cable ones, knit out of--just hold on to something to steady yourself--Red Heart acrylic yarn in the Fiesta colorway.  It was rainbow variegated.  It was blinding.  I bet when Alice Starmore saw that, it was so far from her vision that she was like, "please do not call this an Alice Starmore.  That is clearly your interpretation."  But she wrote the pattern.  They are all her cables.  And that person could say that they had not departed at all...

Sometimes I have bad, dirty feelings if I use, like, a pattern distributed by Berroco and not Berroco yarn...I probably only feel that way because I've seen a couple of my patterns knit in ways that I had never imagined and thought, "This is not my vision."

At that point I remember what my mother used to say to me, which is that one of the central tenets of a happy person is that when they give something away, they cease to care what happens to it.  I struggle with that.

Publishing is not giving away, and certainly no one should profit by stealing another person's idea or creation.  But publishing is turning your creation loose in the world and people will make of it what they will according to their own ideas and capabilities.  No matter how tight your grasp, you cannot maintain total control.  Hanne Falkenberg, the Danish knit designer has always kept control of her work by selling it only in kit form.  Alice and Jade Starmore now do the same by selling kits for many of the old designs plus some new ones on their web site Virtual Yarns.  (and I am developing a serious lust for Oregon, Beadwork, and Dunadd.)

This is a rather specialized book, and probably your knitting group rather than your book group would want to read it.  But to me it was as addictive as a detective story--I carried it around with me everywhere on the off chance I would have a few minutes to read a little bit more.  Adrienne Martini got up inside my head, added some great information furniture, rearranged some of what was already there, and stirred some cobwebs.  I now may refer to my Winter Sunset cardigan as my Winter Sunset inspired cardigan.

And you may take this blog, print it out and decoupage it to your toilet seat.  Feel Free.  But if I see you're selling Ptarmigan Ptoilets on Etsy you will hear from my lawyer.

She Took Her Vorpal Scissors In Hand...

It was a wonderful weekend at the knitting retreat.  We all agreed that what happens at the cabin stays at the cabin, so suffice it to say that knitting was knitted,  we supped on delicious food and fine wine, set the world to rights, and laughed our bleeps off.  Personnel present for Sunday morning wool worship:

There's Heather and Anne,  with Judy and Lupe below:

And not forgetting Teo the Wonder Dog, Scourge of the Squirrels:

A momentous event took place at the retreat, namely the Cutting of the Winter Sunset Front Steek.  Thus is made a cardigan from a knitted-in-the-round sweater with no seams:

From the bottom all the way to the top:

And voila it becomes a don-able cardigan:

The astute knitters among you and wardrobe mavens in general will notice that in spite of all the measuring, planning, counting, and miscellaneous premeditation, the sleeves are a trifle long.  Sigh.  It looks like they need to get knocked back 1 motif.  I'm going to park that problem on the back lot while I put on neck and front opening edges and decide on what, if any closures will be used.  All of those will affect fit and drape.  Then when there is a final fit I can tell for sure what I will do about the sleeves.

That's one of the magical mystery things about knitting.  You don't know exactly what kind of garment it's going to be until you cast off.

Ready for the Big Snip

Here it is--both sleeves done (they're not short, by the way, they're just folded up).  Ready for the Grand Opening, cutting the center front steek to start the edging.  I was going to save the thrill for the knitting retreat this weekend, but I have to cut the main steek in order to reach the neck shaping steeks with the sewing machine to stabilize them, so the deed will be done tomorrow and I'll be working the edging on the weekend.  Still, it's cool to stand back and look at the whole sweater and how all those motifs line up.  I admit it.  I'm pretty pleased with myself.

But before I go,  I  have to do a little dance in celebration of the (at long last) coming of spring.  The picture on the left is of some incredible ice crystals in a puddle on the driveway.  Three days later and a few yards away there was this--little green things rising out of the just-thawed earth:

Good News and Bad News

So I've been beavering away on Winter Sunset. The good news is that I've completed one whole sleeve! Hurrah! Sleeves seem to be the bane of the knit-in-the-round sweater maker. You feel like it takes the same amount of time to knit a sleeve as it did to knit the whole body although there are obviously many fewer stitches. Maybe this is because you have to keep flopping the whole bulky sweater around and around as you go. Maybe it's because it's getting on for a gazillion times you've knitted the motif and although you're proud of having memorized it, it is getting a little boring. With all of it to do again on Sleeve #2. So imagine my pleasure at finishing the first sleeve and picking up and getting going on #2. Toodling merrily along until--uh oh--dun da dun dun--the bad news:
What you are looking at is the armpits of the sweater, the place where the fake "seam" is and the decreases take place. Finished sleeve is on the left; Sleeve #2 on the right. What's wrong with this picture is that on #1 there is an extra 1/2 of a motif. Eight extra stitches that don't belong there! Rats! Rats! And other cusswords that don't belong in a nice granny's knitting blog. [An aside: I learned to cuss at my mother's feet while she made our clothes on the sewing machine. Perhaps fiber work and cussing are natural companions.]

So my choices are:

1. Frog the new sleeve and re-pick up with the same number of stitches as #1. Make the mistake symmetrical.
2. Frog the first sleeve and pick up the correct number of stitches and re-do the whole thing. Make both sleeves without the mistake.
   
3. Don't frog anything, rejoice in the fact that the goof is most obvious in the armpit where nobody's looking, and try to adjust the shaping of #2 (fewer decreases).

The Yarn Harlot says, "Knitting is a human activity. It's OK for it to look like a human did it." That makes a lot of sense to me, so I'm choosing door number three. One advantage of this alternative is it's a potential boredom-canceller. I'm going to have to be on my toes all through Sleeve #2 to make sure the shaping is right. I could easily screw up the shaping--I'm only human after all....

Slice a Steek and Start a Sleeve!

I'm off on my first Winter Sunset Cardigan sleeve! Even though the yarn is "wooly" enough to hold together on its own, I decided to be super safe and machine stitch the steeks before I cut. Nothing calls for confidence like taking the scissors to your knitting. Picked up the stitches around the armhole and got going. There was a small disappointment that the pattern match at the fake seam decrease on the bottom of the sleeve isn't symmetrical for the big motifs. If you notice how the pattern works on the body of the sweater, two of them alternate, an X and a snowflake. I'd like it better if the motifs were the same on both sides of the decrease, but that's not how the stitch count works out. Also an error in how many rows to do before starting the decreases that isn't mentioned in the errata. The biggest size has the fewest rows and the smallest has the most. Lucky I'm making the middle size. Sleeve length in the pattern is the same for all sizes. This may be because the dropped shoulders add length to the arms, but I'm sure I'll be doing some measuring when I'm halfway down this sleeve. Everything's going so well that I want to be sure I'm making sleeves for neither a seal nor an orangutan!

And here's a little item from the Heap. A baby sweater made from sock yarn that was too pinky for socks that I'd actually wear, but a bright fashion statement for a friend's wee girl who should arrive any day now. Bonus booties from leftover yarn--just enough to eke out the newborn size!
All together now--AWWWWWW. So cute.

A Rummage in the Rubble

My first FO from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble! It is the Rainbow Yoke Sweater from Knitscene Spring 2009 using Noro Silk Garden instead of Kureyon for the yoke (same effect, fewer itchies), and an old old Adrienne Vittadini yarn, Maria, (and by old I mean purchased at the Knitting Frenzy going-out-of-business sale years ago!) for the main body. I love the Maria even more than I thought I would. It's 48% merino, 48% acrylic, and the portion that makes it truly amazing is the 4% Lycra. It's made by winding the wool and acrylic threads loosely around a Lycra strand giving an extremely stretchy yarn with a rough boucle sort of look. I had been afraid that the stretch would make for an unflattering second skin fit, but knit in the right gauge it just gives ease and comfort.

Now why would I abandon such a beauty with all done but the stitching up? Here's why:
I got all clever and changed the neck from a plain stocking stitch foldover to K2P2 ribs with a stst rollover top. Consumed with my cleverness, I didn't realize until I was done that the place where the purl stitches take off from the Silk Garden looks absolutely awful. And that's where I lost interest and got seduced by another project, chucking this on the Heap.

The resurrection entailed ripping out all the brown neckband and knitting the first row of the neck (or last row of the yoke) in a final stst row before starting the ribs. Hey presto no more ugly pink bumps showing through!

Ain't she a beauty now?
So now I have a great new sweater with a fancy yoke that was done with a single yarn--no bohus, no fair isle! And what, you ask, has become of the Winter Sunset Cardigan? Why, I'm up to the top of the body, ready to 3-needle bind off the shoulders, sew & cut me some steeks, and start some sleeves!

Sunset in the Daylight

There weren't enough people to show off to at knitting group on Sunday, so TA-DAAA:

I'm really cranking along on the Winter Sunset Cardigan and loving the way it's turning out. Only 22 more rows until I start the front neck decreases! And it's about time for something to change, as I've got the pattern down pretty well now and make mistakes only when I'm watching foreign language movies and have to look at the subtitles a lot.

Feel free to post paeans of praise in the comments.....

Blinding Insight In the Lamplight

In the depth of winter in Alaska one thinks a good deal about light. There's plenty of darkness to think about it in. Cranking along on the WSC, it suddenly struck me that much as I adore seeing the subtle colors of this thing as it develops, it's easy to work on because there are only two strands in each row, Light and Dark. And as long as you can keep your eesit for this row distinct from the ball of cream for that row, it's 3 lights, 1 dark, 1 light, 1 dark, 5 lights and no bother as long as you've got the right yarn balls for the right rows.

Now, the Shetland Islands and Fair Isle, where this brand of knitting was concocted or perfected, is on a similar lattitude to Alaska. And for sure it was developed in a world that was lit only by fire, right? In wintertime knitters were sitting by a peat-burning fireplace, an oil or a kerosene lamp. Less light even than all the bulbs and tubes burning in my house. (And I still can't see the colors properly except in daylight.)

Here comes the Blinding Insight, which I'm sure has occurred to you by now, too: The majority of knitting time would have been in the winter when there were fewer outdoor chores to do. Wouldn't it have been a natural thing to limit your colorwork to two per row, a Dark and a Light, so that you could carry on without daylight and have fewer chances for mistakes?

This idea is suddenly so totally obvious that I don't want to check knitting histories to find out who has already thought of it. I don't care. It came to me independently, as it did to the first fair isle knitters (probably), and I like to feel a kinship with them as they sat before the fire, chatting, telling and hearing stories, or singing, and I sit before the dvd film with an electric lamp on my work, while we all create a dance of color in wool.

PS: Scandinavian knitting. Two colors, dark and light. Think about it.

PPS: I'm now halfway through the second pattern repeat!

My Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble

I am a process knitter. I love assembling the project--falling in love with the pattern, finding the right yarn, figuring out how the pattern and its techniques work, adapting the pattern to my needs/wants/desires/whims/fantasies, knitting merrily away on long winter evenings while my Netflix play on tv or computer. This means that when all the knitting is done I lose interest (or am seduced by the next project) before a product is produced. My dirty secret is that I have a huge pile of completed knitting that is not yet a product. That is to say, it has not been sewn up or finished into an actual garment. The collection I have amassed of this stuff I call my Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble. The phrase is one I cribbed from elsewhere. It's from the title of a book published by these guys. Go ahead and read some of the sample articles on their site. I promise they will make you laugh.

Back to my Heap. Here it is:


Now, aren't you feeling better about the two nearly-finished sweaters and the single mitten languishing in the middle of your stash? I thought so. Glad to be of service. The even greater embarrassment is that this isn't even all of the Heap, but when I started hauling stuff out of the stash closet a shelf collapsed, dumping books, sewing and knitting stuff all over, and I was frightened out of further excavation. What if it's only knitting that's holding up the rest of the shelves?

Back to the Heap again. You see how easily distracted I can be? I have recently realized that one of the uses of this blog could be to embarrass myself into diminishing this thing. Say, at the rate of one a month. If the result is a sweater or whatever that's wearable--swell. I have an addition to my wardrobe. If it doesn't fit, then I donate it or give it to someone and somebody has a new garment. Sound like a good idea? I thought so.

We'll see. Good intentions are all very well, but the road to hell is paved with couches.

Progress in the Afternoon

When the light got bright this afternoon I just had to mark the progress of the WSC. Crunching on toward the end of the first pattern repeat. And once I got outside with camera and knitting, it filled me with a crazy amount of pleasure to see how great the colors are and how totally appropriate the Winter Sunset Cardigan looked set in the snow against the spruces in the late winter afternoon. Melanie Elizondo, all is forgiven.

Department of Corrections

I nearly called this post "Smack Upside the Head" or "Duh". Why I didn't think of looking for the errata for this book I can't imagine. Head to the publisher's web site and there it is, a pdf ready to download. And confirmation of the flubs in all 3 charts, and a bunch of fixes for text that describes the armholes and armhole steeks. Goodness, am I glad I found this before I got any further!

So--lesson learned. Check for errata before beginning a complex project. This should tone down the dialogue a good deal, but it's still no substitute for thinking through the instructions of a pattern and having a little mental chat with the designer anyway.

And take a look--I'm out of the border and into the main pattern!

Dialogue in the Bleak Midwinter

These bleak midwinter days sure are hard on an Alaska knitblogger's photography. There are only about 3 hours in the middle of the day when it's bright enough to take photos that, even with a flash, show your knitting decently. So it's not always possible to get a picture of every stage that you'd like to illustrate. Ponder the irony of a pattern called Winter Sunset.


Reader, I've cast on. 346 stitches. And I commenced the 16 rows of bottom facing. And then I contemplated what the pattern had asked me to do and cussed at it. (This happened at night, ergo no photo.) What the pattern wanted was a 2-color checkerboard garter stitch. Really? I checked the book and rechecked it about 43 times. Can you think of a FATTER fabric than 2-color checkerboard garter stitch? For a facing? Melanie Elizondo (the designer), are you kidding me? What you want in a facing (well, certainly what I want) is something slightly smaller than the outside of the sweater, knit possibly in a smaller gauge (check) with fewer stitches (check) that will lie flat inside out of sight, doing its job of stabilizing and weighting the edge without calling attention to itself. If ever there was a formula for a foofy flaring bottom edge it is this garter stitch inside with stocking stitch outside. So rip it, rip it, rip it and cast it all on again and do it in checkerboard stocking stitch. I was tempted to be really radical and do an even thinner single color stocking stitch (or stripes?) but decided on this middle path.

Next I realized that the pattern does not call for what always serves turned edges well, namely a purl row to define said edge. At about this point I realized that Winter Sunset Cardigan is not going to be a pattern, but a dialogue between Melanie E and me. She will present her ideas and I will evaluate them for reasonableness and liklihood of good results, and then proceed with what experience tells me is a reasonable course. This is not going to be a quick knit.

Darker shade of pale

This is old news, but I still want to show off, so bear with me. The items above were my contributions to the faaaaabulous prizes in the attendance promotion for one of my water aerobics classes. The prizes have to be something you've made yourself or gotten for free. Scarves are a synthetic pink/blue/silver ribbon yarn, two furry ones (they are so fluffy they almost look like real fur) made from and elann.com eyelash, and a black kettle-dyed merino one. Also in the group is the linen string bag you've seen previously, plus a water bottle from I can't remember where, a cookbook that I got as a prize elsewhere, and a pair of commercial snowman socks that are cute, but wouldn't fit my clodhoppers. They are all by now gone to their new homes, to ladies who have been maintaining their committment to fitness!
On to the real reason for the post. More swatcherama for the Winter Sunset fair isle cardigan. I took Lori's advice, bit the bullet, and got me the original background yarn. You see above the three tan colors I have now swatched. On the left the KnitPicks Palette in Oyster, on the right KnitPicks Palette in Camel heather, and in the middle the winnah, Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift 2-Ply in Eesit, all photographed on a background of snow for best contrast with the ultimate white. It even looks like the gauge will still work with the mixed yarns; I will know for sure when the washed and blocked new swatch is dry.

Nerdlinks: Eesit is one of the wonderful Shetland names for natural fleece color. Others are Moorit, Shaela, Awt, Emsket, Mooskit, Sholmit. The yarns are here; examples of the fleeces here.

I promise that the next time I bore you with this sweater I will have actually cast on! Aren't you thrilled?

The Ptarmigan Goes Fibrous

For a long time I have followed knitting blogs, laughed at, learned from, been appalled by, bored by, frustrated by, energized by, inspired by, and enlightened by knitting blogs. For almost as long a time I have itched to have my own. Now that blogs are becoming passe and twitterbook and inyourfacespace are all the rage, here I am finally knitblogging. Thank goodness my self esteem is not founded on being the vanguard of the latest trend.

I pledge to myself (and you, O mythical reader) that I will post at least once a week and that said self-imposed structure will surely help me document my projects and egg me on to challenge and achievement with this craft.

For starters we have my Big Project To Be, the Winter Sunset Cardigan from Jamieson's Shetland Knitting Book 1. I have been inspired by FAIR*ISLE to do another big fair isle project. Trouble is, I am too cheap to use the original real Shetland yarns. That would be at least $130 plus shipping, I figure. Only about $30 (plus shipping) to use Knit Pick's Palette yarn, and Palette is softer, not as scratchy as Shetland wool. But of course, Palette does not come in the same shades as the original yarn. That and potential difference in gauge mean serious swatching. So I have swatched. Seriously. That's them in the photo at the top.

The big problem is the main background color--none of the Palette options are really satisfactory. The original Shetland is a color named Eesit, a heathered tan named for one of the many natural color variations of Shetland sheep. Clockwise, from upper left, I have tried Oyster Heather, Marble Heather, Camel Heather, and Iris Heather. The photo makes Oyster look like a match to the photo, but it's not. Oyster is not different enough from the Cream contrast stripe (despite what the photo makes it look like). What I need is something between Oyster and Camel, but it's just not available.

Swatching has helped with a couple of things, though. I know I need to go one needle size down to get gauge, and I like Oyster for the light contrast stripe in the darker colors. I still haven't made up my mind about the main color yet. Camel? I really don't want such a brown sweater. Iris is ok, and I really like the variation in the heather, but the other contrast colors (aquas) don't work well with it. Marble is probably the best of the lot. Knitted up it looks more of a steel blue-grey, darker than I'd like, but the aquas really pop with it.

Thank goodness I'm not in a rush--I can let this all marinate a little while longer. There's plenty of pre-Xmas knitting to be done before I can even think about casting Winter Sunset on. What do you think?