Basketweave Cowl Idea - WIP

I know I mentioned a basket-weave cowl in my last post. This is the very start of it. I'm very pleased with how the stitch pattern is working out - it looks nice and cushy and also a classic looking pattern. I'm working it up in the remnants of the brown eco-cloud. This project is also a way to work on my ability to connect something with a Kitchner stitch. I've cast on provisionally and it's really hard! Well, I mean, it isn't - once I got it, I got it, but until that point, I struggled. You can see the provisional cast on in the second photo. The grey yarn holds the loops for the kitchner stitch when the cowl is long enough. I do think I missed a loop somewhere along the way - something seems to have gone wrong. Of course, I am currently stalled out due to lack of yarn. I sometimes have to not buy yarn so that I finish other project which are languishing in a variety of w-i-p piles. I can think of four off the top of my head. Scratch that, five! I'm sure there are others that I would notice immediately if I went downstairs. 

I am a little stalled on my Abigail handwarmers. They look really pretty but I had hoped a) to have them done by now and b)to give them to my mom for her birthday. But as I've worked on them, they just don't seem right for her! BLARGH. This is very frustrating as I literally have three rows left on the first hand plus I think 7 on the thumb. So I should just get on that - and now I will know the pattern a little better. I am discovering that as much as I love the snowflake/star/flower of fair isle, I really dislike not doing pattern repeats. To do the "cuff", you knit the given pattern twice, which means you have to really pay attention to the pattern, and that makes the knitting a little more frustrating. I have to be sure to have the book, and I really have to do a good job of tracking where I'm at. As I sat in the airport in Denver last weekend, I noticed that I skipped an entire row in the hand pattern, so some of my diamonds don't have points. Oops.

On an entirely unrelated note, I am trying to figure out a good schedule for blogging. I am finding that I am very tired after work, and sometimes leave projects sitting for weeks on end. I think that if I could get into a blogging routine it would by necessity force me into a knitting routine - I don't have much else to write about! Plus, I enjoy both knitting and blogging, and unfortunately, that means they are often the first things to fall off my plate of "important things I must do this week". One of my new years resolutions was to work on that; looking back over January and February tells me I haven't been doing the most awesome job of that. So wish me luck while I try to be better about scheduling my life! There are so many interesting things for me to do with it, if I can just make the time to do them!