A Monday Afternoon Pick Me Up

Many moons ago, before I made my "no new yarns/knit from stash this year" pledge, I ordered some custom-dyed yarns from Katy over at Yarn Chef. I'd been eyeing her gorgeous laceweight for a long time, but kept missing out on getting enough for planned projects. So I contacted her about a custom order, based on some colorways she'd dyed up in the past, and found her to be very nice to work with. The yarns arrived today, and they are even more spectacular in person than their pictures online can suggest (and I'm sure her pictures are better than mine). Here's a picture of a few of the skeins, including lichens (the green), calm (the bluey/lavendary), and malted (on the right):


Below are Dew and Golden Afternoon:


Here are some close-ups:


(This picture gives a more true representation of Malted than the picture above.)

I had been in a pretty unhappy mood after the weekend, and this yarn definitely cheered me up.

Even though school has started, I don't feel like I'm accomplishing very much. I AM accomplishing some -- laundry, shopping, cleaning, getting ready for a get-together on Thursday, lunch with friends -- but not enough of other things, like knitting and exercise. The Fall schedule is in full swing now, with baseball three times a week, tennis two times, two piano lessons, stuff at temple two days a week... I'm probably forgetting something, too. I think there's only one day a week when there's nothing going on after school. Hopefully the boys will be able to keep up without getting worn out.

I have been working on the Back to School vest a little. I'm about 10 or so rows away from the underarm shaping and splitting the back and the front:

Here's a closer picture of the main cable:


I'm pleased that with all the cutting and pasting I did to create the pattern chart, nothing seems to have gone wrong. I need to decide what to do with the neckline. Should I add ribbing to it or make it self-finishing? I'm pretty sure at this point that the armholes will have ribbing. Designing on the fly :)