Switching It Up A Bit

Remember these yarns?  I succombed to buying them a few weeks ago.  Normally, I am a creature of habit.  I see a pattern, I make it in the yarns shown, NOT!  Well more times than not, I don't.  A lot of times I do find myself going with the same colorways, but not this time.

I had been eyeballing a vest out at Dunlap since last Winter from Berroco.  I love it in the yarns and the colorway that it was knitted in.    But, I really did not think it would look all that great on me, so I let others knit it.

When I saw the above two yarns paired together on the shelf, I just knew I wanted something out of them together, so what the heck.

I've been pretty much knitting on the vest ever since I bought the yarn, with just a couple of side tracks.  I did add three inches to my vest so it comes down over the belly and when I roughly tried it on Friday night, I was pretty pleased on how it fit and where it comes to.

It's funny how the yarn just happens to come out of the skein.  I am not paying any attention to it, just knitting and letting the changes fall where they may and of course the knots holding binding them together.

I added four more rows of garter around the bottom to hold it down from rolling up.  It will need a little more coaxing in blocking when I am all done, but I am confident that it will behave.

I am just loving the way this turned out so far.  The downside was the sewing up of the side seams.  You all know how I love knitting in the round so it took me all of Friday night to sew up the seams, which made me ever aware that I really need some better finishing skills!



I'm working on the collar now and really get to see how the colors are coming out of the skein. 

I have toyed back and forth on ripping it out and letting the stockinette side be the outside of the collar instead of the purl, but at last thought am going for the purl side even though the changes are really noticeable there.  If I decide to do that, then I would also maybe slip the first stitch to keep it from curling ever so slightly and look well more finished, I do so like a slip stitched edge.

Also toyed with leaving the knots show, but have decided this morning to pull them to the back when done.  There are not enough of them to be a design element and they would just look like I didn't know any better.

And then this morning, I had a thought?!  Dang, got to stop thinking-what if I took the one skein of Ultra Alpaca I have left and knit the collar out of it and then used the Venus to accent it in garter just  like I have the fronts, sleeves and bottoms.  Oy!  I am giving thought to that.  Then I could do the stockinette side showing.  I would probably then have the whole second skein of Venus to do a scarf from.  And it would solve that slight curl problem.

See what sleep does to a knitter?!  I think I am really liking that idea...help me?  What do you think?