I have been disciplined lately, and have hardly cast on anything!  Woo.  But, I do have two new design projects share. One is for Classic Elite, which means I can’t tell you much; the other is an indie design project with splufty yarn from New Zealand, and I can tell you alllll about that one.  Also, I have gift project to tell you all about, because I cast on and finished in two short weeks.

First off, the least informative project: a shawl design in Alpaca Sox.  I can show you a closeup of the yarn:

… but I can’t say much else.  The finished design and pattern will be available sometime in mid-2015.

Second, I have some sumptuous new yarn all the way from New Zealand. Outlaw Yarn’s Bohemia Sport is 45% Polwarth, 45% Alpaca and 10% Possum fibre.  It comes in 15 keen colors (or colours, as the NZers say), including two that I’ve seen in person:

Here’s what they have to say about Bohemia Sport:

The Polwarth provides excellent stitch definition, stitch memory and sheen, the Alpaca gives a silky drape and the Possum content is perfectly balanced to bring a subtle marl and soft halo to the knitted yarn. Possum has similar qualities to mink. The fibres are hollow, light, non-itchy, extremely warm and (unlike angora) Possum is pill resistant. Alpaca is an extraordinarily fine fibre with microscopic air pockets creating unique thermal properties. Its durable, non-flammable and non-itchy containing no lanolin with a smooth cell structure.

I’m designed a mobius-based cowl with Bohemia Sport.  Think garter stitch with some slipped stitches. The mobius will transition into a flared tubular cowl so it will lie nicely around the shoulders while still being snuggly around the neck.  Here’s a sneak peek of that:

Last but not least, I made a sweater in just two weeks!  Ok, it was a Julian-sized sweater, and it was bulky yarn on size 10 needles … but still!  I bought three skeins of Wynter in Crimson, and two skeins of MountainTop Blackthorn (one each of Seal and Beaver Grey).  (Oh, I also got myself some #10 Signatures, so now my set is complete!) I ended up needing a fourth skein of Wynter, but that is only because I changed my mind about how much striping I wanted to do.

Here’s my youngest boy, Julian, who commissioned the sweater and collaborated on stripe placement:

He asked for a red sweater, I asked if I could add some stripes.  Halfway through we agreed that stripes on just one arm would be cool!

I used Ann Budd’s Top-Down Sweaters book as guidance — I added some short rows to shape the neck, and altered some lengths to suit my actual child.  (Fab book by the way! Super useful.  Saved me much math.)

I love how the sweater came out, and especially how much Julian loves it!  I think he’s worn it every day since I finished it.