Oh..... why not?

The Rainy Day vest finished up on the weekend, and I'm very pleased with the final result. Photos to be downloaded later this week, subject to expedient behaviour on the part of Canada Post (insert hysterical laughter).

Meantime, here is a bit of eye candy from our trip up Whistler mountain at the end of August:

I have always loved the saturated colours of high alpine lakes. This one yielded a lovely palette, and I've got a design in the works for later this week.

I have until now resisted the whole poncho/cape/gargantuan-blanket-around-the-shoulders Thing. Not entirely because I didn't like the look, but because it seemed like a heck of a lot of knitting for something that was bound to become glaringly unfashionable the moment it came off the needles.

But I have Aran on the brain of late, and the fall runways were overflowing with spectacular cabled capes and capelets. I have a load of steely blue worsted weight Briggs and Little in the stash from an irresistable ebay sale last year - it's not soft enough for anything next to the skin, but it does make marvelously crisp cables. I need a "wing it" project to balance the meticulous planning required by the other designs currently in the works, and I'm thinking of casting on a neckline's worth of stitches and having a go at a split circle, adding new cabled "spokes" whenever the space between the existing spokes gets big enough. Not unlike the spontaneous doodling of Mandalas (though I didn't know that's what they were) I used to do as a child. Like all impulsively started projects, it has greater than average potential for disappointment - but what's life without a little risk? Perhaps I'll achieve equanimity in the process.