New projects

Since I recently finished up a couple of projects (Owls and Amelia, which still needs buttons sewn on before I get to show it off here, but which I washed and blocked the other night and HOLY CRAP I LOVE IT), I've started a couple more. This past weekend, I cast on for Yank, Bonne Marie's awesome peacoat from the latest Mason-Dixon book.
I'm using some coned Italian wool from School Products that I've had for a while and had been despairing of ever using to its full advantage. It's weird, difficult yarn. The strand is perfectly round and very dense, almost hard. It feels more like working with heavyweight mercerized cotton than wool. The actual color is pretty close to this shot, at least on my monitor, a deep, slightly green-toned grey.
It's very smooth and has an oddly cool, dry hand, so is suited to something tailored, but looks like crap in stockinette, which is the stitch in which I prefer my tailored knits to be executed. This coat is going to be perfect, I think, since it combines a tailored shape with a simple texture pattern works with the sculptural quality of the yarn without looking forced.

I knit almost both fronts over the weekend and have moved on to the front bands.
No idea if I'm going to have enough yarn. I'm pretty sure I bought a kilo cone originally, but as I said, it's very dense and I don't know what kind of yardage I'm dealing with. I have enough of the same yarn in black to do the collar and bands if need be, but I'd really prefer not to.

And speaking of unusual yarn, I bought 16 skeins of this stuff at one of my favorite thrift stores (Baltic Bazaar) a year or so ago. It sounds like a lot, but each skein is only something like 27 yards. Judging by the labels, these were mill sample skeins, the kind that reps would leave with yarn company decision-makers to play with and decide if they wanted to buy and relabel.
It's a strand of fuzzy mohair-blend yarn wrapped with a length of bias-cut cotton fabric.
I've started a simple spring scarf with it. I wanted to do something with a deconstructed feel, since the yarn lends itself to that — the edges of the fabric are already fraying a bit and will continue to do so; you can see little threads sticking out already — so am knitting some dropped stitches into the plain stockinette fabric.
I'm doing it all by eye, putting in a yarn over at the point where I want the dropped stitch to terminate:
and eventually laddering the stitch I created out of nothing (with my God-like power!), back down to that point. I'm pretty happy with it so far; the carefully constructed appearance of deconstruction tickles my fancy in a most pleasing way.