New project in progress

On Monday, as I was travelling to my knitting group, I decided to take a break from knitting some crazy socks (1x1 cables on size 0s are not condusive to relaxed hands) (pics to come when I've got a little more done), and stepped into Noe Knit to pick up some yarn and needles for a hand-friendly project. I bought some Cascade 220 (a yarn I was reticent to try, but it's turned out to be one of my favorite yarns) in dark plum, beige, gold, and mauve. Naturally, I was intending to make some sort of Fair Isle hat.

As it turns out, the size 7 circulars were too long, so I cast on way more than was necessary for a hat (I'll just felt it, right?), and was winging a design. In which I offset an entire row by one stitch. No problem, I'll just design past it, right? So I get home, do a little Internet browsing, see the whole "multiyarn shrug" thing, which made me browse the free shrug patterns, where I found a simple pattern that I decided to modify to suit my current purposes: Fair Isle.

So, I ripped the work I'd done at knitting (no problem for me- I've had to rip Fair Isle before, and Cascade 220 is very forgiving), and started a new project. Behold: a tapestry-like Fair Isle shrug. (OK, it's the sleeve, which I've worked on since I took the picture earlier today.)

In the first pic (sorry for the headache-inducing angle), you can see how the design is turning out- the cream is more prominent than the purple, but the purple is going to be all the edging. Also, this pattern is great because it's not directional, so I don't have to make two sleeves and graft them together to keep the visual flow. In the second picture, you can see how it sits on my arm. The wrist is pretty tight, but not so tight I needed to rip it. One interesting thing about having a totally basic pattern and running with it is figuring out what kind of increases and where. So far, it looks OK, but I'm not looking forward to the decreases- I'll have to learn, finally, which ones do what, and in what direction.