The light was less than optimum (understatement), and it took a few tries, but DD#2 and I got shots of the projects for the Winter issue. I herewith present:

1. A lace and cable cowl (you'll have to forgive me—I haven't yet named all of these designs). The cable is in the ribbing at top and bottom, and the lace pattern makes up the body of the cowl. The yarn is Helen Hamann Luxury Alpaca held double and knitted on size 5 needles.

The model didn't want her face on my blog so I had to promise to pixelate it.

2. An afghan knit from Berroco Vintage® Chunky. A few years ago when my friend Susan's daughter went off to college, I knit her an afghan. DD#1 pointed out to me that it was really only fair that I knit my OWN daughter an afghan when she left for college. So I did. She picked out the color (Dewberry) and I picked out the cable pattern. She used while she was home from college and pronounced it "very warm." It was a quick knit on size 9 needles (for me, those are baseball bats).

3. A sock. I'm a bit disappointed with the way the cable pattern recedes here; the yarn is Fortissima in a really subtle blue-gray marl, but apparently it's not subtle enough. I think the next pair in this pattern (because I love the cable stitch) will be in a solid color.

4. And finally, a sweater. This sweater requires a bit of explanation. You may remember that I was working on this sweater a few weeks ago and discovered that it didn't really want to be a raglan, so I ripped it all back to the armholes and stuck it in time-out for a few days. In the meantime, I happened to be in my closet rooting around and I found this:

It's a sweater my parents brought me from a trip they took to Amsterdam (there is a whole box of pictures at my mother's house labelled "Trips Our Parents Took Without Us," because my sister and I always got left at home). Anyway, I love this sweater. I adore the color even though I can't wear it, but what I love most (and had forgotten how much I love it) is the boat-neck. Call me crazy, I like them a lot (not so crazy about the dropped sleeves, however—the cable looks untethered on them).

It dawned on me that making the sweater-in-progress into a boat-neck style would solve a lot of issues I was having with the cable pattern and the neckline, so a boat-neck it became. I ditched the dropped sleeves and went instead for a slightly oversized set-in sleeve, one of my favorites for ease of motion when wearing. The result is this (the sweater is about 2" too big around for me, but I am the only model handy):

I am still wearing the sweater even now, because it's just so darn warm and comfy and that's a great attribute for a sweater to have here in Montana. You might recognize the cable pattern as being from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs. I put it on both the front and the back, but you could easily make this a less-challenging sweater by working the cable pattern only on the front. The yarn is Rowan's PureLife Bluefaced Leicester. I still have really mixed feelings about Rowan yarns; this is probably the last sweater I will do in any of their yarns. I really feel like they sacrifice yarn integrity for softness and that's not a compromise for which I am willing to pay money.

I still do like the original cotton boat-neck sweater, so I may design something similar for this summer.

You know, every so often I get bogged down in thinking I am not accomplishing anything. I've decided that when I start to feel like that, I just need to look at this blog page and remind myself just how much work went into the knitting and designing (and in some cases, re-designing) of these projects. This represents a lot of hard work over the last three months.