A lot of circles

Finally got a chance to photograph a few of the projects in the works. Everything on the needles at the moment is circular! I've got now two baby yoke sweaters in the works and one finished:


I'm quite pleased with how this one came out, though there's some noticeable difference in the dye lots of the two skeins of "Grasshopper" -- most noticeably where the button band meets the collar.

Then there's a really simple garter yoke cardigan, using some leftover Knitpicks Felici self-striping yarn and Knitpicks "Bare":


And then there's the one that caused me the most consternation: a "fair-isle" yoke sweater using a super-secret trick to make it look much more complicated than it is to knit (which is why it's "fair isle" instead of fair isle). I had to rip and redo this yoke a number of times until I was satisfied with the way it looked.


And even when I was satisfied, I went back in and duplicate-stitched one row with the MC yarn (Knitpicks Stroll in "Tidepool Heather") because I was afraid there wasn't enough similarity between the yoke section and the body section (which is the old standby Knitpicks Essential/Stroll Kettle in "Grasshopper" and Lorna's Laces in "Gold Hill" -- the same two colors, in other words, that I used in the mosaic yoke cardigan pictured above). That combo looks quite different in single-row stranding rather than mosaic knitting, huh?


But it looks quite nice now! I'm busily knitting these as I write up the patterns, hoping to publish all three in one packet (they all have the same gauge and measurements). It's my hope that knitters could work from the garter-yoke one through to the "fair isle" one, gradually becoming more comfortable with stranded knitting. Then they could graduate to my Sock Yarn Stranded (which also has the same gauge and measurements) or to any other fair isle pattern! I'm a little frantic to get the pattern finished by the time Sock Summit is over, because even though I'm not going to Sock Summit, I figured that people would come home loaded up with beautiful sock yarn and be looking for projects to knit with it!

Then lastly, to continue the stranded knitting fiesta, there's one of these:


Which I am sure you all recognize as a Selbu Modern in the works, using a popular color combination. It took me a while to hit on the right color of blue, and I'm still not satisfied with it -- I was looking for "Tiffany Blue" or robin's-egg blue, but this is a little greener than either of those colors. I was inspired by haveyouanywool's version on Ravelry. She used Louet Gems fingering, but that was a little out of my price range and I don't like working with it -- too heavy and not springy enough for my taste. This is Knitpicks Essential/Stroll in "Glacial," a discontinued color, and the red is Valley Yarns Huntington (color 4150). I think in combination the two yarns look better than separately, and the Glacial looks sufficiently Tiffany-esque to cut it. Last year I had so much fun knitting and then wearing my Chevron Beret that I figured another pretty beret was just the ticket for getting ready for hat season!