The Asymmetrical Cardigan grows. Slowly. I’m a touch over halfway done with it. Will it be complete by christmas? No way. By New Year’s? Probably not. It’s going so slowly and has become so massive that I may not even bring it up north for the holidays with me.

I’m a bit (read: extremely!) concerned about running out of yarn. I weighed everything last night, and I’ll have right around one skein (200ish yards) to knit the collar, buttonband, and sleeve cuffs. The sleeve cuffs are pretty long, and things are going to be tight. I received the extra skein of Malabrigo that I ordered from ebay, and it’s also a wonky color – it contains much more forest green than what I’m using. But I may have to use it for the cuffs in a pinch.

But the thing that really concerns me? That the right front is two different shades of green. I can barely look at that photo because it pains me so. There’s no way in hell I’m ripping it, though.

So, I’m looking to the future. I joined the Stranded Colorwork knitalong, and it’s all I can do to not cast on for the Anemoi Mittens. My darling Webs had a closeout on Rowan Cashsoft 4 ply recently, and I happened to have a gift certificate for the amount of 4 balls plus shipping, so the deal was sealed. It’s soft and squishy and yummy! I was originally planning on a more tonal color scheme in Koigu, but you can’t beat the price of FREE!

However, I’ve never done fair isle before. I’m thinking that I should start out with something a bit simpler and larger gauge for my first project. Enter Center Square. Remember how I was so not dying to knit anything from the most recent Knitty? All lies. I went through my stash of oddball worsted weights to see what I could use, and came up with this:

Wow, that’s a lot of red, blue, and black. You can click the photo to get all the details. I settled on two colors of (mostly) alpaca – yarn I’d probably never use up otherwise (because, hello, Houston was 79 degrees this past Sunday!). We have some teal Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk and blue Plymouth Indiecita Alpaca. Both are actually DK weight, which means I’ll have to futz with the pattern and swatch. I think that I’ll be able to get away with adding 4 extra circles around, and I’ll wind up with a hat that doesn’t streeeeetch so much around your head.

Coming up next – how hard is it to photograph a black hat? Very!