The Urban Aran Cardigan is complete.

Specs:
Pattern: Urban Aran from Patons Street Smart
Yarn: Gjestal Naturegarn from elann (not currently sold). Its a thick single similar to Lamb's Pride Chunky
Needles/Gauge: size 10 for the ribbing, and 10.5 everywhere else

Cardiganization: To turn this pullover into a cardigan, I copied jared and added 3 knit stitches to each side of the front opening and slipped the first and last stitch on the WS rows. This worked really well, the slipped stitch wrapped around to the back for a clean edge.

Zipper Installation: I referenced Bonnie Marie's zipper tutorial. I found the most important part (in addition to basting) was to place the zipper teeth just inside the edge of the knitted fabric. This way, there is no gap between the knitted edges and the zipper is not visible.

Size: Even though I dropped 4 stitches from the sleeves, they are still on the big side. Might try re-blocking. Overall, this is loose sweater. It very warm though!

First there were the endpaper mitts.

Specs:
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette from SQ and Drops Alpaca from Kris (thanks, yarn providers!)
Pattern: Eunny's Endpaper Mitts
Needles: Magic loop with size 1 and 2 needles.
Cast on: I did try the recommended turkish tubular cast on, but after 3 tries it was back to the one in the Knitters Book of Finishing Techniques.

I held the green alpaca in my left hand, for correct color domination. Before these mitts, I used to switch hands depending on how much of each color there was in a round. oops.

Next there is a start to the Anemoi Mittens. These are not going quite so fast because of color indecision (not to mention corrugated ribbing). The current white with navy is a bit off in some indiscernible way.. other options are the green alpaca and maybe brown.. the brown might be it.

ps. completely unrelated, but anyone battling spam? After installing akismet a couple weeks ago the number of spam comments making it to my inbox has gone down to zero. available for MT and Wordpress.