Envy... and new projects

I've spent a lot of down time in the past week reading knitting blogs and getting quite envious of what other knitters are doing. I pretty much started salivating at some of their fo's (finished objects) -- especially when they were able to work with nice, fancy yarn that frankly I can't afford, at least not when I'm just putzing around. (Click here and here for two of my current faves in blog reading.)

I also discovered a new favorite pattern website -- Knitty.com -- which, perhaps unsurprisingly, J discovered before me. (Wow, he must really like me to be spending his free time researching knitting topics!) After browsing through the current issue and the archives, I've started my lastest excited-to-knit-it-but-it'll-probably-just-sit-in-my-closet project, the oh-so-francais clopatis, in Saucy claret. (Isn't that just the most delicious name? I probably would have bought it for the name alone, aside from the fact that it fell nicely into my price range when I was searching for clopatis yarn)

I suppose I should back up and mention that after reading all those blogs and finding all those lovely patterns, I just had to go make a trip to Knit One to stock up on yarn. Bought the Saucy claret (mentioned above), as well as some Cascade 220 in a dark gray to make a felted wool scarf for J for the holidays and some other mystery yarn for another project I'm planning to undertake. It really is amazing how much time I can spend in that store, and oh my, do I want to just buy everything. Found a fabulous alpaca/cashmere yarn that would have been perfect for J's scarf, but I don't think he would have approved of my spending nearly $30 a hank on it. After that, the mercerized cotton Saucy looked like steal! Plus, it'll wash well and still have that nice sheen to it.

Spent the weekend at J's, and he was very pleased to see me using my Jordana Paige bag. I was on my own most of Saturday (J went to test drive cars), so I got a lot of knitting time in. I'm through about 3 rounds of the straight rows of the clopatis, and I'm loving the effect of the dropped stitches. I'm interested to see how this patter works out with other fibers (from really chunky yarns to crochet thread). I'll have to hold off on those experiments for a while, though, until I finish up the holiday presents.

For anyone who is wondering about it, no, I have not finished my cabled baby cashmerino scarf. Here is the current progress:
I've got less than the last skein of yarn to go, but I've been more excited by the latest projects I've started, so I've sort of let it fall by the wayside. I'm justifying it to myself by thinking that since the weather's gotten so cold, I haven't been wearing the coat I wanted this to go with in the first place. I've resolved to finish it once and for all before the end of 2005, because frankly this is a smaller project and I just can't deal with the amount of time this is taking me -- I'm a fast knitter! This project is totally bringing down my average time to complete a project.

Still reading Villette; hoping that with the holiday weekend coming up, there will be a lot of time for reading and stitching.