I'm seeing red...

in the red lace and cables capelet!
I think I gravitate towards the color red. Since I've started knitting (2.5 years ago!) I've made Kiri, Lotus Blossom, Shedir and the mystery project using red and burgundy yarns. I see any dark red yarn, and I think of what it could be knitted into (like the dark red Donegal Tweed I've been eyeing on eBay). Finally we've had some actual sunshine, it's like spring out there, so I snapped a few shots of one of the front halves of the Lace and Cables Capelet from Vogue Knitting Holiday 2006. I pinned it to the bed to have a better idea of how it will look when it's blocked, and I'm pretty pleased with it. Here's a detail shot...
Usually I'm not a fan of bobbles, but these are 3-stitch 2 row bobbles (not including the finishing row), so I've decided to keep them in. It's a simple enough chart to follow, though I put in stitch markers in a few arbitrary places to keep track of where I am in the pattern. And it's useful to know how to yarn over into a purl stitch properly, because there's a fair bit of that going on here, and it took me a while last year to figure that out. As we all know, to y0 into a knit stitch, you hold the yarn like you're going to purl, and then wrap the yarn over the needle and knit. To yo into a purl stitch, I used to do the opposite: hold the yarn like I was going to knit, then come over the front and purl. Wrong! (It actually dosen't look wrong, but it's not so easy to work on the next row). You're supposed to hold the yarn like you're going to purl, but wrap once before you enter the stitch, then make the purl stitch. You get more open yo holes that way, and it's easier to work on the next row.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't have enough of the Christmas Market yarn to finish, so I bought some yarn to complete the project from eBay. I'll never find that stall again (until maybe next Christmas), so I figured some black Rowan Yorkshire tweed (color Darkly, now discontinued) would fit the bill. Here they are together, and I think it's going to work. The tweed has some rusty and reddish flecks, so they'll go together. The way I have envisioned it, is that the lace will be red, and the cabled parts (the part where it joins at the shoulder and the collar) will be black tweed. Then, to resolve the color discontinuity, I will probably do a crochet chain with picots edging to tie it all together, so to speak. I figure I'll either look kind of like a Victoriana-inspired goth, or a clown. Either way, I don't care.

Ivanova