Coming back

Now it can be told. My big project was running for Director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. But I didn't win, so now I have time to do things like blog about knitcheting.

So. I have been keeping up on Ravelry, at least, so I've been putting up the FOs I've been accumulating, as well as a project page for what I'm currently working on. I have lots of yarn. And in that lots of yarn is lots of luxury yarn, which I've done a much better job of collecting than using. A year or two ago, during one of my "go through the whole stash" exercises, which usually happen before Stitches, I put together yarns that I had collected in smaller amounts into, well, not kits, exactly, since I didn't really have projects in mind, but in sweater quantities of compatible colors and weights.

Last week, after I had finished a spate of smaller projects and was, quite frankly, longing for the campaign to be over, I rooted around and came up with a bag that contained some bronze tussah silk from ArtFibers, some very light taupe merino from someone's sale bin, and some fingering weight alpaca in a natural dark alpaca-brown. I swatched the Dice Check pattern from Barbara Walker's second Treasury, and really liked the fabric I got with a size 10 needle.

Even though I was ready to knit a sweater, I wasn't actually ready to do anything complicated, so this project is an uncharacteristic one for me: knit from the bottom up, and I plan to work drop sleeves. I didn't even want to think about working the slip stitch in the round and dealing with the jogs, so it's going to be a cardigan. And I have a great fondness for color patterns worked back and forth with three yarns, so that you never have to cut, so that's what I'm doing.

I doubt I'll write it up; it's not an interesting construction technique, and the beauty of the fabric depends on these obscure and sometimes anonymous stash yarns. But I'm very happy with it so far.