Smooth Sailing

Last November I started on this sweater...


the Belted Wrap Jacket from Interweave Knits Winter '05.

For reasons that I can no longer remember this sweater went into hibernation. I picked it back up after finishing the February Sweater and have been steadily working on it for the past few weeks. Even though I don't knit on it every day I've managed to make good progress.





I casted on the last sleeve yesterday and though it's a year late I'll have this completed before Christmas which brings up another dilemma.

I'm struggling to decide on what the next sweater will be. Mom has given orders that next project must be for me and socks are excluded. I don't know what the problem is but I get bogged down in color choices and pattern details. Do I knit a cardian versus a jacket? Patterned yarn or plain? Textured, lace or smooth? I've got oodles of yarn choices which further complicates the problem. In the end, I may end up dumping slips of paper in a bowl and pulling out one.

I'm trying to narrow my yarn choices and at the moment I'm considering the following:

1. Silver Thaw
2 & 3. Noro Silk Garden Reds or Purples
4 & 5. Plymouth Galway Sage or Plum
6. Debbie Bliss Merino Aran Mauve or Olive

This is where the tendency to purchase yarn in sweater quantities makes for an obscene number of choices. How in the world do you narrow it down? I still have others under consideration but these are top choices for the moment.

At the recent halloween sale at the lys I purchased most of Elsebeth Lavold's books, so the alpaca that's in the stash is also fair game. One sweater that I like in particular is Zarah. It is knitted using EL's Angora which the lys has on sale. I'm considering subbing some of the Indicieta Alpaca that's already in the stash therefore another choice for the list. Either way I go I'll have made a decision by the weekend so that I can have another project to take to the beach.

If you have any suggestions for cardigans I'd be happy to here them. I've added several to the Ravelry queue which didn't facilitate this process. The more choices you have the harder the decision making becomes.