Progress Thus Far

A few weeks ago I finished the red cardinal ornament.  It came out well.  I gave it to my friend and she loved it.

I finished the front on the pullover below.  Because I shortened the v-neck a little, I have to lay the back and the front together to see what length contrast band I really need in the back.  Once I have that, I  can go on to the sleeves.

I'm using different yarn, Park Avenue by Lily Chin.

For contrast color I'm using Great Adirondack Caribou doubled in Blossoms.  It was discontinued by the company and out of all stores online.  Fortunately it was on Ebay.  It looks very nice together.  The original contrast color was a textured  yarn with mohair.  Since I want to wear this top without a shirt underneath sometimes I couldn't use a yarn with mohair.  My knitting friends think the sock yarn will help keep the rest of the sweater from stretching out as well.

I have been struggling with a vest.  I'm knitting it out of a random dyed yarn by Tekapo.  I bought it because of the colors:  teal, royal and lavender.  I had knitted it partway in a different pattern but when I found the Short Length Vest by Mari Lynn Patrick in Knit Simple Magazine, Holiday 2010, I tinked it and started the vest in this.  Because of the variegation I've had to alternate balls of yarn throughout. 

I'm knitting the two fronts together and alternating four balls of yarn because of the pooling.  It was working well before I discovered that I was missing a stitch in width.  I tinked it back to the beginning of the increases and discovered that one front was one stitch short.  I worked in one extra increase on one size, completely forgot about it and confused myself when I started to knit it again.  I tinked it and got a wonderful mess of yarn.  I straightened it out yesterday, started knitting again in group and knit about 3 inches.  The color is pooling just on one side.  *Sigh*  I'm not happy with it and I know what I'm going to do, again.  It feels like this vest will never get done.  Is it any wonder that I'm losing my enthusiasm for yarn dyed in variegation right now?

Right now I'd really like to knit without problems.  Yesterday a friend gave me two beautiful skeins of dark turquoise bulky merino yarn from the Periwinkle Sheep.  I'm trying to make the 220 yards go as far as they can.  I'm going to try to knit the Autumn Leaves Shawl by Susanne Visch.  It might work.  Working from the end gives me as much control as I can have in working this.