Up for the challenge

Boy have I been busy lately. At work, when it rains, it pours. Everyone is done with the holiday festivities and late January they all come beating down my door. At home, things are the same, but my husband has been super busy at work and stressed out, and on top of that, things like this happen (the woman in the article was his law client) and he has put his work aside to address them.

Things are starting to calm down. We've booked a vacation for early May!! We're gonna do one of those out-west things that I never did as a kid. Right now, we're flying into Phoenix, seeing the Grand Canyon and then hitting Vegas for a few days. After that, we're still not sure. We have about a week between Vegas and when we fly out of San Diego. We want to see Los Angeles, but aren't sure yet what's worth seeing....

On to knitting. Sahara is done, ends woven in, blocked and folded in my closet. Hopefully Saturday I can get my photographer outside with me to take some pics.

In the meantime, I've cast on for 2 new projects. I contemplated doing knock offs of these a while back, and have decided I am up for the challenge. Part of the fun is figuring it all out, right? Well, first I am making a version of a cabled yoke cardigan from Karabella. I drew out a schematic and have hopefully calculated it all correctly. There's not much progress to show, but I am working from the top down and am ribbing away at the yoke.

I like the buttons though. They were $3.99 for 2 at Joann's, so I only bought 2 with a coupon. I'm waiting for a sale or more coupons to come in the mail. Am I cheapo?

The other new WIP is Beau, for my beau. I decided to make this one easy on myself and follow a basic crew neck sweater pattern for a guy and add in the stitch details. Here's my sketch of what I think it should be. I spent time zooming in on pictures on the internet and counting stitches and rows with my pencil tapping along the monitor screen.

And here's what it looks like so far.

I will surely show more of these when they get more interesting. American Idol and 24 have helped increase my knitting time, and there will be even more when Lost comes back next week.