I haven’t written here because I’ve been busy dealing with the destashing sale (thanks to everyone – it was a huge success!) and knitting like mad on the Jess jacket.  I only have one more sleeve, the collar, and seaming to go.  The buttonholes took me forever, since I’d never done a one row buttonhole before.  I finally figured out that it’s important to keep your yarn to the back after slipping the first stitch.

I’m starting to fear running out of yarn.  I’ve got maybe 3 balls remaining, and it will take nearly 2 to make the other sleeve.  It’s going to be tight – here’s hoping!

I’ve gotten some knitting in on the welt fantastic socks, but I haven’t been focusing on them.  I’m not doing the forethought heel from the book, because it looked like a lot of trouble for a slightly odd looking result.  Hopefully my pattern mods will work out.

I knit the leg to 7″, which is half an inch longer than I usually do, because the Austermann Stepp comes with just an insane amount of yarn.  I’m past the heel turn and I swear it looks like I haven’t used any of the ball.

Since the destash was such a success, I now get the joy of restashing.  I started out today, when this came in the mail.

 

Yarn pirate sock yarn in the Neopolitan colorway.  Isn’t it yummy looking?

My main reason for selling off half my stash was that I had lost interest in those yarns.  I have lots of new projects in the wings, but I wanted different yarns.  To that end, I’ve ordered Cascade Pima silk  for my Sahara sweater, in a pretty olivey green, and also some Classic Elite Classic silk for a pink Ms. Marigold.  Can you believe that I couldn’t find either of these yarns locally?  You would think that those brands would be pretty easy to find, but I can only find the cascade 220 wools and some random novelty yarns, after going to three local yarn shops.

My Sahara is going to be short sleeved.  I like the look of the long sleeved one, but with spring coming up I’d imagine I’ll get more mileage out of the short sleeved version.  My next project after Jess, however, is going to be the Not so Shrunken cardigan in my remaining silky wool.  It doesn’t look too complicated, and I’d like to finish at least one more warm-ish sweater before it starts to get warm.  I might try Ariann, but it looks like a more involved project… so we will see.