Styling help!

Hey -- I have a Completed Knitted Garment to show you!!! Now if I could figure out how to wear it ...



This is Watershed, which I planned to finish before our trip to Colorado, so I would have a nice little coverup for those cold mountain evenings. Needless to say, I knitted it while in Colorado, and it did indeed keep my lap warm on those cool evenings.

All is not lost, however -- I will be going to the library this afternoon, where the temperature will be about 20 degrees cooler than the outside air. Usually it's about 30 degrees cooler, but we are having a rare spell of moderate weather, so the outdoors is not as furnace-like as usual.

But how shall I wear it? Specifically, would you leave the collar flat, as in the above picture and this next one?



Or would you fold it over?




I like them both.

We have had Big Changes around here:




These guys were about 5 weeks old at that point. Unfortunately the smallest one (in the middle here) died overnight. We were all shocked and saddened, and fearful for the others. But they have been fine -- energetic, healthy, and eating well. It just doesn't make sense.

And now I must go give the remaining two baths (fleas) -- wish me luck!

Summer cardi

My eye has yet again been caught by a summer cardigan, this time by Watershed. I like the way the fronts are designed to hang open, although I think I'd like the back a little longer -- probably to my natural waist.

The problem, though, is that I don't really have any appropriate aran weight yarn. I am swatching with La Laine, but it's really a light worsted and I can't imagine making it stretch to 4 st/in. But I have an enormous amount of yarn in the house & I don't really want to buy something new.

At the same time, I'm wondering why the designer and almost all projects on ravelry call for woolly yarns. I want to wear this in the heat of summer, over tank tops & dresses. Stores and restaurants are kept at meat locker temperatures around here (in summer; in winter they are overheated) so I need a little sweater but I am imagining a wool one feeling hairy and sticky. I'm thinking maybe Cotton Fleece, except that it's a worsted weight, too. (And of course, I don't own any.) What if I rewrite the pattern for 5 st/in? And make it longer? And change the yarn? And maybe the lace stitch? Hmmm.

colors

Well. Here's the two rovings, plied. Pretty, but browner than I really expected.



Although here it is on a sheep brown, and it does make a nice contrast:


Years ago I fell in love with the colors of paint on a bridge on the University of Minnesota campus -- the school maroon, but very weathered & sunbeaten. This reminds me of that bridge (in a good way) but it's not at all what I was setting out to make.

I make a quick additional roving of turquoise, fuchsia, hot pink & bright blue, and spun that along with the second roving, then plied it with the original roving:



It's certainly perkier but maybe too much so. This is the second yarn with the same sheep brown. I think those blue bits are too bright.





I wish I had enough free time to wallow in sampling. Right now it's just making me grumpy. And tomorrow I will be going to the only fleece fair I'm likely to attend this year, so if I want to be looking for something in particular I need to know what it is!

My daughter has just learned to tie her shoelaces (so I will buy her a pair of Sketcher Twinkletoes) and wants me to make a video of it. How can I turn that down? But I want to fool around with wool, too. Here's hoping the responsible mama side of me wins.

update

I've been carding the supplement to the fabulous-but-limited roving.



The largest bump is the original roving. Below it are two items I pulled from stash that I have been carding together to produce rovings like the two smaller ones. One has an outer layer of purple, the other of red, but both are a mix of approximately one part purple to two parts red.

You can see that the original roving is much brighter. My plan is to spin the two rovings (old & new) separately and ply them together. That will give me about 24 ounces of sportweight yarn.

But is the new roving too dull? I am about halfway through carding, and I don't want to recard & get it too blended -- this is one pass through the supercarder and I think another pass would give me very bland results. I could make another thin roving, though, and hold it together with the new roving while spinning. Hmmm. Or maybe this is just fine as it is.

I think a few more samples are in order.