New Project?

Lately I have been in a knitting/crochet mood. I have multiple projects going on right now and am looking to add another. I saw the current edition of Vogue Knitting at my local yarn store and have been thinking about this pattern for almost a month.
It is knit in the round for part of the way on double pointed needles and then back and forth for the outer edge. I hate knitting on double pointed needles so my thought was to crochet the center part then pick up the stitches and knit the outer edge.

Yesterday I got a yarn catalog from Webs. Lots of cool stuff but this book caught my eye and would be the perfect place to find an interesting center circle.
Luckily it was in stock at the bookstore. I cannot wait to start trying out some of the motifs in this book. There are great instructions for each one and the pictures are absolutely wonderful. Now I just need to find the yarn I want to use...

Going through my stash

So, today I decided to try and organize/go through my yarn stash. I have a front living room that is becoming my craft area and right now things are just sort of stored there so to speak. I am notorious for buying one or two skeins of yarn just because I like it's color or texture or just because the wind happens to blow a certain way on that day. Needless to say I have a bunch of yarn that by itself is good for little else than scarves if I just use that yarn alone. After an hour of trying to organize and categorize I gave up and decided that a trip to Lowe's is in order tomorrow to pick up another organizer and I'm grouping all my yarns by color. That way if I want to make a shawl or scarf with different yarns I'll at least have it all separated by colors and can choose that way.

While going through the yarn I also found bags that I had stashed unfinished projects in. One of the things I uncovered was a piece I was designing as I was knitting it. Originally it was supposed to be a sleeveless top that I was making in the round from the bottom up that would have a cowl neck at the top. The bottom part would be done in a semi lace pattern then below the bust it would turn to a stockinette stitch and finish up in the cowl neck.

First off my original gauge I did was either different then what I ended up doing on the piece itself or I just measured it wrong. I'm betting on the latter issue. I got to the place where I thought I would be changing to the stockinette stitch and put it on waste yarn and discovered it was HUGE. After all the work I had put into this ripping it out was NOT an option or it would never be done. So I decided with the shape it was and the size it was it would make the perfect caplet. Instead of a stockinette stitch at this point I change to a k1,p1 rib pattern to help cinch in the top as well as some k2tog around. It was going well and I tried it on again and really wasn't happy with it and knew I needed to do a couple more rows of decreases. I was tired of working on it as well as putting the multitude of stitched on the needle again so it just got stashed away.

All of this was before I got my bust that I use for taking photos of my scarves and shawls. When I found it today and put it on my bust and realized that it isn't as awful and I thought it was and really turned out quite nice. It does still need about 4 or 5 rows with some spaced decreasing but when it's done I think it will be quite nice. Here is a photo of it in it's current state.