And the pictures

First, a Finished Thing:



I finally finished High Street Vest 2.0 - this one is knit of Noro Taiyo Sport with a sport-weight Regia Silk (a long, long ago Elann purchase) as the ribbing

This is a better photo of the vest but perhaps a worse photo of me:



(Ugh. I shoulda sucked in my gut)

Here's the back. Two different skeins, and it's knit flat, so the striping pattern differs slightly:



It's nice - it's warm enough to be cozy but not so heavy that it will be uncomfortably hot. This pattern has higher and tighter armholes than many vests so it looks a bit more fitted.

And then there are the yarns:



This is the aubergine yarn. I found and purchased a Ysolda Teague cardigan pattern that has some sort of "organic" looking cables (as one of the two choices for the front cable) that I may well use for it.

And the shawl yarn:




The colors in that are an unusual combination and I really like them. I'm going to hunt through my shawl patterns but at this point I'm leaning towards a big rectangle, with garter stitch borders, and some kind of lace pattern in the middle - kind of in the mold of Cheryl Oberle's "Bird's Nest Shawl" but with a different, and more all-over, lace pattern. Maybe a fairly simple and "symmetrical" pattern, so I can just start at one end and work towards the other end without having to do it as two halves and graft it. I kind of am envisioning it as a zig-zaggy lace pattern and I think I have a stitch pattern book with something called Ric Rac Lace in it that might suit.

Also, the book - As we were going up to the checkout at Barron's I saw it on display and I said to Laura "I NEED this." Well, not literally but it's exactly the kind of book I like: Natural history, with a tie-in to something I loved greatly as a child. I haven't started reading it yet but have looked in it - lots and lots of nice photos of that area, including some close-ups of common species. And I am very happy to find out that the Poohsticks bridge is an actual thing. (Poohsticks is greatly beloved. My father even explained a way of measuring the speed of a stream to some of his intro environmental geology students as being like playing Poohsticks).

And yesterday, I went to BPAFF.

And, yeah....bought more yarn. I think I'm actually  better at being careful in my spending when I'm with someone else. (Also, a few times my dad told me, going into a quilt shop, "I'll pay for what you're getting" and I fiind I wind up buying LESS when someone else is footing the bill. Just another way I'm weird....also, the few times I've been on dates where the guy made it clear up front he was buying, I often chose something less expensive than I might have had we been going Dutch)

But oh, so many lovely fingering weight yarns:



The top right yarn (the gold one) is part-bison. It is for socks FOR ME. I am going to use some kind of knit/purl pattern, maybe a checkerboard or basketweave type pattern.

The green yarn is probably going to become a tight-fitting cowl (those are almost more useful than scarves are in the cold, as the ends don't blow around, and if you're in a cold office, it looks a little less odd than leaving your scarf on). And the blue-green yarn is for mitts.

The other two yarns on the top came from Quixotic Fibers, the place in Whitesboro that I just found out about this fall and haven't gotten to yet. (Whitesboro is not THAT much farther than Pottsboro is, and doesn't look like it's quite as far as McKinney (and also less heavy traffic than going to McKinney would have). I plan to get there some time, especially since I just saw a sampling of what they offer. I think both of these are their house-dyed yarn. The bright red, even though I am not normally a "red" person, I saw it from across the hall and decided I wanted it. I think I'm going to make cabled, or cable-and-lace socks of it. And the blue and green, I don't know, but I just liked the colors in it so much - the color is called Tidepool.

(The red yarn is called Hoochie Mama, which makes me laugh, because I am about as far from a Hoochie Mama as you can get and still be female. I am probably even less Hoochie Mama than I am Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I once described myself as the antimatter equivalent to that (if you put me and any of the characters Zooey Deschanel played in a room together, there'd be a big explosion and we'd both disappear) But it's a really pretty red, and maybe I need a pair of red socks.)