A-Swatching We Will Go! (And crocheting, too!)

Yesterday was a very productive day in my unemployed full-time knitter life. I started swatching for my argyle vest...which means I also learned how to knit with two colors at once. Turns out that like all things in knitting, it's super easy to do, it just looks intimidating. Aside from my first color work, this will also be my first time using steeks. Yay! Being able to work the entire thing in the round makes me happy. The pink/white I've used for my swatch doesn't have quite enough contrast to show off my skillz, so I'm going to play around with some more color combos using Cascade 22o in my stash, then I'll probably go to my LYS to buy more in my favorite combo. I REALLY want to do my chocolate brown/peacock blue mohair dream vest, but I calculated that the yarn I have in mind is going to cost roughly $100 (unless I find it cheaper online)...that's not only money I don't have right now, but also A LOT of freakin money to spend on yarn. So in my financially strapped state, I'll first do a test version, learn the pattern, if I like the way it looks on me, once I have a job I'll reward myself by splurging on the good stuff. I figure that this is something that won't really go out of style, it'll be very well made, so $100 isn't bad when you figure that if I wear it for 10 years, that's a measly $10/year. And in the year since I learned to knit, I've never spent more than probably $30 or $40 on yarn for any project I've ever done so far. (Doing some quick math in my head--my current knit/crochet sweater is my most expensive project so far in terms of yarn. I spent $40. BUT I bought enough to make the sweater AND a coordinating handbag because it was on sale for $2/ball, so that's really two projects. Butterfly was $36, but I'm getting two projects out of that yarn too, as I only used a teeny bit of the third ball. I'm not bad at budget knitting.)

Last night at knitting group I also got the crochet edging on one sleeve for my Vogue sweater finished! Despite me being new to crochet and still clueless when it comes to reading patterns, it's really easy (thanks to Lynn's help) and it's just a two row repeat that is easy to memorize and goes very fast. The pattern actually calls for an 8th row that doesn't give it really any more length, just a little picot edging. After attempting it, I was not fond with the way it looked--stopping after the last shell-type row looks much neater. One other slight modification I've made is doing 6dc for the little scallop/shell parts, rather than five like the pattern calls for. My yarn is a tad more thin than what the pattern calls for, so the extra dc filled up some of the space. Very proud of myself :) Now on to the next sleeve :)