The End of One Year and the Start of Another

On the last day of 2007, while driving back from our place in California to Seattle, my car turned over 20,000 miles about ten miles before we got to the hotel where we would spend the night.

That seems significant, but I should point out that I've owned the car four and a half years old and it's made three trips to California and back, so that mileage mainly means I don't drive much.

We spent New Year's Eve watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies while eating too much chocolate and drinking champagne - just what we'd have done if we'd celebrated at home rather than in a Holiday Inn Express along I-5. Usually we try not to drive back over the holiday, but this year the way the storms lined up our window to cross the passes fell then. We checked in about five, so got off the road well before most crazy drivers got on it.

I ended the year with two active WIPs: the Jaeger Biscuit cardigan and the hat for my nephew. I'll probably finish the hat tomorrow. The cardigan hasn't progressed much in the last couple of weeks, but should get back on track now. I have half a sleeve, seams, and button bands left.

Tonight I cast on for my EZ EPS V-neck as part of the informal KAL and Ravelry group started by Margene. My plan is a basic saddle-shoulder sweater. I realize the v-neck will make things a bit dicey as EZ really didn't do them, but that's what I like and will wear. She did do Henley's so I know I can make this work.

I decided last year that I want to mostly knit sweaters like ones I buy and ones I wear regularly. I'm sure I'll knit some things just to learn something or try something new, but I'd like that to be the exception. I wear basic, classic stuff in nice materials.

As part of my knit-what-I-wear campaign, I bought Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 for this sweater. That's a sock yarn - a beautiful, hand dyed, washable, 6 1/2 spi sock yarn. I expect to be knitting on this long after everyone else in the group finishes theirs.

The beginning of my swatch in this photo contains the cast on (a sloppy long tail) and six rows of knitting. If I fudge a bit I can get this to measure a half inch. The body of the sweater will end up between 250 and 300 stitches. And every inch will require somewhere between 15 and 20 rounds.

But it will be gorgeous, based on my tiny bit of fabric so far.

Once I've done an EPS sweater, I plan to try one as a zipped cardigan with a collar and cables - out of DK weight. I'll have cables running up the sleeves and saddle shoulders and a set of cables on either side of the zipper. I want to do the collar double-knit if that doesn't turn out too tricky.

Oh, and I actually put that project photo on Flickr and then entered the sweater in my Ravelry notebook. And it didn't take me all night to figure out how to do this. Ta da.

My list of 2007 FOs will need to wait until the next post.