On the needles

I've been doing a little knitting these days, in between unpacking and work and writing and yoga and going to BEA and being terrible about responding to emails and feeding friends' cats and buying a 7' plant with my roommates for our living room and whatever else it is that's been occupying my time lately. A cake! I also baked a cake! And went on a date!

(The date was fine, but the cake is what I'm still thinking about...)

The top-down alpaca sweater is going pretty quickly. Since I took this picture, I finished the yoke and divided for the sleeves and body. I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn well before I'm done, but I'll use something else at the lower edges, preferably unevenly, and it'll all be very wabi-sabi and happy-making.

The opening is the neck.

At some point last week, I had to do the math for the body/sleeve division for the sweater and just didn't have it in me right then but wanted something to knit while I watched a movie. Most of my in-progress projects hadn't been unpacked yet, but I had access to a bag of yarn and my straight needles. So I started a scarf. It's a simple thing, but still interesting to knit and to look at and it shows off some pretty special yarn very nicely. In keeping with my mad love for asymmetry, it's stockinette with garter edges and an off-center garter rib.
This gorgeous yarn is handspun wool/angora from Claudia that I won as a prize when I donated to her MS Ride a couple of years ago. (She's currently accepting donations for this year's ride, should you feel moved in that direction.)