WIP Wednesday: Seeing Red

The yarn shop I frequent when I go home does this really cool thing.  Every week a certain kind of yarn is on sale.  It could be a brand, a fiber, a color, or whatever theme the owner decides on.  The week after Christmas it was green yarn (when I purchased the yarn for my Jaded Milkmaid, which was completed on Monday! I hope to get some pictures this weekend), back in January it was Cascade, and the week before Valentine's Day it was all red and pink yarn.  Obviously, I can't drive six hours to the yarn shop, but my mom was able to snag some yarn for me.

The lighting here has been really bad as of late, so this is the only picture I have.  Sorry.

Last week I went to the mailbox to discover six beautiful skeins of Berroco Remix in this awesome dark red colorway (for some reason I'm knitting a lot of red recently, which is odd because it is not one of my normal colors).  If you have not heard of this yarn, you should really check it out.  It's made out of repurposed fibers including nylon, cotton, acrylic, and silk.  I had looked at the yarn the last time I was in the shop, but decided against it because it was a little out of my price range.  Twenty-five percent off brings the price tag down enough that I'll be able to pay my mom back out of my next paycheck.

The gauge swatch pictured is for the Salem Hooded Jacket from New England Knits (yet another of my Christmas books).  I was originally worried that the yarn would be too stiff or course for a hooded garment, but knit up it has a surprising amount of drape and softness to it.  I knit the swatch on US size 10s and got what I thought was close to gauge.  I then cast on a sleeve on Sunday to have travel knitting, only to discover on Tuesday that what looked to big a gapey was.  I had misread the recommended gauge at least three times. I have since frogged the sleeve and cast on again using size 9, which makes me a little apprehensive because I'm a naturally tight knitter and usually have to go up needle sizes not down.

I'm hoping, obviously, that the yarn and pattern will still work well together.  I love the idea of knitting this sweater in such a soft tweedy red and am planning to put in a black ribbon for the neck accent.  It reminds me of a Buffy EU story in which the gang has  to deal with a former slayer who was involved in the Salem witch trials (obviously not cannon, but the story is from the late 90s and the show was hardly making cannon).  The current plan is to knit the sleeve and then see how I feel about it.  Wish me luck!

Also, check out other WIP Wednesday posts here.