winter break project management

i have two weeks away from work, more or less. 34 hours of that time will be spent in the car, driving maine to chicago, round trip. i am driving-averse, so probably most if not all of that time will be spent in the passenger seat. that, plus lounging about at my parents' place for a week, plus another week at a scrabble tournament, means lots of knitting time. one of the luxuries of driving is that my luggage is not limited by one carry-on - i can bring all the yarn i want. it has been a busy knitting winter for me, and i'm still itching to do more. here's what i'm considering.

burberry cowl

slip cowl

dashing

• burberry inspired cowl (on the left) - i did one of these and love the way it sits. i think the high variegation of rios will look great in this cowl, and i'll have something to match my dashing mitts (on the right). rav project link. or is this the tuesday night cowl? now i can't remember. they seem pretty similar to each other.
• a plain garter stitch cowl - i have russian joined a bunch of odds and ends of purples and greens together, including some berocco jasper, cascade, karabella aurora 8, random stuff i dyed when trying out some potential yarn bases, and who knows what else. i'm hoping for something along the lines of this scrap-happy scarf (ravelry link), minus the fringe.
• slip stitch cowl (in the middle) - another one that i just did and love, and i still have more random scraps left that could easily be incorporated into another one of these. my rav project page. 

i guess everything i have planned at this time is for me... that isn't really intentional. i think i've made something for everyone i know in the past two months who i think might appreciate it!

deconstruction

i just realized that i could link this blog to my google+ account - maybe it'll see more action now that it's linked up. i've knitted a million things for xmas, but i can't post any of them until after people get them (although most of them are up on ravelry... more public details perhaps once they've been gifted and unwrapped). the last thing on the list is to create two stockings kind of like these for my coworker. the complication is that these take on some natural wave due, i think, to a thick and thin yarn rather than anything fancy like intarsia. i have to figure out how to either make my pattern replicate it with the uniformly spun yarn that i have, or come up with something that will complement these but be slightly different. i really don't want to just do straight stripes. any ideas would be welcome here.