Happy New Season

I'm one of those people that doesn't do very well with New Year's Resolutions.  Old habits are hard to break.  I have success for a few weeks, then life happens and I'm back to my old ways.  One of the ways I've developed to deal with this it to treat each new season as a New Year.  I then make a resolution or two and try to get as far as I can with it.  The Autumnal Equinox is the most recent 'New Year'.  

I celebrated the new season by going to Wool Gathering with a friend.  This was our first time there.  There were over 3 tents of vendors with lots of yarn, roving and raw wool to look at.  This fair didn't have as much raw wool as the Great Lakes Fiber Fair.  I considered this a positive because I have no desire to process my own raw wool.  Here are the goodies I brought home with me:

8 ounces of Merino roving from Ohio Valley Natural Fibers in colorway Chocolate Covered Cherry.

8 ounces of Merino roving, also from Ohio Valley Natural Fibers, in colorway Galaxy

2 ounces Angora roving from Sheephaven Hutchworks.  This stuff is so soft!!!!  My sister has recently spun angora.  I'm going to get her advice on how to work with this.

 A skein of Poems Socks.  I was dazzled by the long color runs.  This will become a scarf someday.  My friend was surprised I picked these bright colors.  I'm usually more muted.

Color Changing Cotton from Wolle's Yarn Creations. This will become a scarf or small shawl.  This color is more along the lines of my color palette. In fact, when I bought this I was wearing a top that was the same color as the center of this skein.

Like any good 'New Year's' celebration, the next day usually isn't too fun.  Unfortunately, I was hit the next day by some sort of stomach bug.  I spent all day Sunday on the couch napping or watching football.  It took about 3 days before I felt completely over the illness.

My resolution this time is to finish a few of my projects before casting on a new one.  I'm nearing the end of My Blue Loop.  I am doing the garter stitch border rows now.  After two more rows and then the bind off this will be ready for blocking.  I'll have to dig out my blocking wires to get this shaped nicely.

I learned a lesson with this project.  When doing a K2TOG on a knit and YO stitch, the position of the YO matters.  This scarf has 4 sections of these rows.  For the first two sections I must have had the YO sitting to the left of the knit stitch.  When I did the K2TOG on the next row, I first put the needle through the YO and then the knit stitch.  As you can see in the bottom of the picture below, the stitches are funny looking and lean a bit to the left.  Because I tend to let projects hibernate for a while, when I came back to this and did the third section, I must have had the YO on the right of the knit stitch.  It took me a few rounds to realize my stitches looked prettier and leaned to the right.  I made sure I did the fourth section this way also so that the scarf will look symmetric.  My hope is that when I block this, the stitches in the first two sections with lay a little nicer.

After I get this scarf off the needles, I am picking up my Taize shawl and getting that thing done.  I'm in the homestretch of it also.  Getting these two projects finished will give me liberty to cast on ButtonBox. I have a gauge swatch in progress.  It looks like I'm going to have to adjust the pattern because my gauge is larger than the pattern's.  I want to make this right so I'll be consulting a few of my expert knitting friends to get advice. My goal will be to have that vest finished by Christmas.