What's there not to like about miles of stockinette?

Especially at a loose gauge on big needles? It goes super-fast!
This is the front (or back, haven't decided yet) of Klaralund. I threatened to cast on last weekend, and this is how far I've gotten in 3 evenings. Not bad... I may be done in 2 weeks. I contemplated knitting this in the round with waist shaping, and changed my mind. While I am a bigger fan of narrower stripes, I also wanted to offset the one 'surprise' color that doesn't look so good on me, the orangey brown that shows up at the top of the lower hem garter edge that I offset with the red. Don't get me wrong, I like the color. It's the same color as my couch! And the red is the same color as my tablecloths, on small side-tables right beside the couch. Do I need to think outside of the color-box a little?

So what did I do? I knit from 2 different balls which start and end on different colors, alternating balls every 2 rows. (I attempted this trick with BSJ 2, but less successfully). And selecting balls which start and end on different colors wasn't hard, the striping of the balls in my bag is pretty random, and some balls have knots which join some very different colors. I also wound every ball and organized them so that orange-brown wouldn't end up near my face. I'm quite happy with the result. Here's a gratuitous stripe close-up.
As you can also see, I added waist-shaping too. While I'm not such a big fan of pullovers (this will be number 2, the first one was Menja) I prefer figure-flattering ones and I love hourglass shaping. So I think this will work out for me. Assuming it dosen't end up way too short. I was a good girl and blocked my swatch, but I think I'm knitting tighter on the real thing. My stitch gauge (pre-blocked) matches my gauge swatch, but my row gauge is coming out short, so I added one inch to the length before knitting the upper garter-stitch border, and extended the upper border a bit too.

All in all, I love Noro Kureyon. I don't think I will ever buy Sik Garden again (the recommended yarn for this pattern) because I find the mohair extremely scratchy, there are way too many twigs, loose threads and chunky bits that have no dye! In fact, for all my future Noro designed projects (I'm thinking of making Rocktorp next winter) I think I'll just swap in Kureyon. There are twigs and knots too, but it's not quite so bad, and my favourite knitting medium is pure wool. And the colors are fantastic. This easy project is knitting heaven! And I'm quite sure that this pattern would look very nice in a solid-colored or a tweedy yarn because the garter texture in a few places looks very nice.

Now I have to block all those baby sweaters sitting in the yarn box, the latest celtic knot swatch (sitting around now for about 2 weeks) and post it!

Ivanova