Chargin' right along

Progress has been made!

I'm currently at the mid-back of my "Short-Sleeved Cardigan with Ribbing" (proper name), which I'm calling the Jewel cardigan, after the yarn I'm using, Cascade Jewel. The wide bits are the tops of the raglan sleeves, and the holes you see are from the increases along the raglan 'seams.' I am LOVING knitting this cardigan. I love the yarn (check out the subtle varigation, and the texture), I love the size 10.5 needles (actual progress!), and I really love that I won't have to seam anything when I'm done knitting. The only finishing will be the buttonband, and I'm good at picking up stitches so I don't foresee any procrastination with the finishing on this sweater.

Thank you to Marisol (go check out all her pretty green Project Spectrum yarn!) for directing me to the Fitted Knits Knitalong, which I've joined. It's full of lovely projects and inspiration!

Anne-Marie, Jennifer, and I drove down to Sea-Tac for the Seattle Knitting & Fiber Arts Festival on Saturday, and it was SUCH a HUGE disappointment. To all of you that I tried to talk into coming with us, be glad you didn't bother. I went to this fiber festival last year and thought it was great, even better than Madrona (mainly because the market included more vendors), so I was looking forward to it, but it was awful. There were only a few vendors, and really only a couple of them were worthwile. I was hoping to find solid(ish) sock yarn, some Cookie A patterns, and anything else that really struck my fancy. Well, I got the patterns, at Crown Mountain Farms (they had lovely yarn/fiber as well, but nothing I needed), but that was all. Jennifer bought two skeins of sock yarn, and Anne-Marie bought a shawl pattern, and that was IT. Truly a poor showing. We did make up for it at Little Knits, where I bought additional yarn to finish my Jewel sweater (not breaking the yarn fast) and some of the same yarn in purple (This is borderline fast-breaking. I have three skeins of this yarn in the stash, and I bought three more because she is closing out this line, and I realized when I started the blue sweater that three skeins isn't enough for much, and if I'm going to have the yarn I should have enough to DO something with that's not just a scarf/hat, so I bought more in the same dye lot, which I won't be able to acquire later, so that the initial skeins don't just incubate in the stash forever. I realize that was a horribly punctuated, run-on sentence but I had to justify myself.). I also bought a great Jo Sharp magazine/book (Jo Sharp Knit: Issue 2) at Little Knits that has LOADS of lovely and wearable garments, and an adorable hat (go look, I'll wait) that is going high on the must-knit list. Back in Seattle, Anne-Marie and I went to Acorn Street, where I used my gift card from my birthday last May (given to me by Dave, a man who knows how to keep a girl happy), to acquire some yarn for my next project, but I will save that for another post. Oh, that is ALSO not breaking the yarn fast, because the gift card was a GIFT, and it had to be used by this May or it would start losing value. And gifts are totally allowed. My birthday is May 11th. Just so you know : )