decoy, cloud, distraction

Sounds like a duck hunting trip. Not!
In reverse order:
distraction so I get the Sundance catalog. Curse them! This is the collection that started me on a three year binge of beaded jewelry making not so long ago. Its innocent enough , you page through it, admire the goods, the graphics, think " hmmm, I can make that, I'll just go grab me some turquoise and leather and silver teeny tiny beads..." next thing you know you're selling jewelry from a gallery and your family is constantly stepping on microscopic beads that got away but just kill when you're barefoot. I think we all agree it so much nicer to step on snips of yarn fluff.

Which is all to say, there's Ann bravely leading her future search gang to perfection (you go girl, I'm with the group in the cocktail lounge but really...we support you!) and I see my own private (almost) perfection sweater,if I added a little shaping to the bod, there at Sundance . Go take a look, I would love patterns for half of these.
Which brings me to decoy. Over Thanksgiving, my jolly houseful was pretty much a "Who's Who of Getting Handknits from Me Soon" so I resorted to decoy knitting and hid the gift yarn.
I've been thinking of it as my back assward sweater, my starting point was to make a sweater to go with the button I bought. So you can see why that sweater from Sundance caught my eye.Now that I've got the back almost done, I'm not so sure about them together. No matter, as soon as the fiesta broke up on Sunday, it was put away...

...as I pulled out the gift projects and that brings me to cloud. The tube scarf in KidSilk Haze. >After 4 inches I thought I'd go stir crazy working on this, then something kicked in. Its meditative, its weightless, it flows effortlessly from the little light needles, you can knit 3 stitches or 300 or 3000 without jerking your gray cells to recall if there was a YO or a decrease or a buttonhole to do. Its not the knit that you can escape into but its just right for this week. And we all float on, OK....