More Color Therapy

During the day on Tuesday, David sent me an e-mail with the January pattern for my Club Dragonfly...I couldn't wait to get the yarn and hardly hoped that it would be here before the end of the week.  Imagine my surprise when I checked the mail and a package was there...I immediately opened it and found this gorgeousness:

How lovely to have something so bright and cheerful and beautiful during the middle of what is turning out to be one of the coldest winters I remember.  (not THE coldest winter I remember...that was 1997 in Kentucky and I thought we might die of the cold then).  This year, it's so cold in Mississippi our aloe veras are dying on our screened in porch while sitting next to a heater.  It's been below 20 more days than I can count, and we're looking at a 10 day forecast with  more 20s and 10s and...oh my!  I'm so glad I have a good house and a good heater and a good job so that I can pay not to freeze to death because it's really cold out there and we aren't built for it down here.

But back to my color therapy.  I was so excited to get this package, and it took me a few minutes to grasp that the thing inside the zip loc bag was actually a knitting bag...with dragonflies all over it--quite apt.  More on the bag in a minute.

I couldn't decide whether I was excited about the pattern or not.  I've had a love-hate relationship with colorwork.  Sometimes it's awesome, sometimes I hate it.  I can't figure out if it's me, the pattern, the yarn I chose or what.  I liken it a lot to cross stitching...reading the pattern, selecting the right color, and making a picture with thread/yarn.  Initially I thought I'd love it...and the first colorwork I did (back in March) I got rather addicted and couldn't put it down.

But then there were these mittens, that while I was super excited to start working on, once I did, I hated them.  hated hated hated them and ended up cutting and not even bothering to rip out.  I've done another hat which I loved and love wearing it in all this cold weather...that double layer of yarn formed from color work truly is very very warm.

So, it was with some reservations and Plan B (striped socks), that I cast on the 192 stitches to start this lovely cowl.  If you look at the pic real carefully, you can see a B&W printout of the pattern.

I have to tell you that I'm thoroughly enjoying this pattern so far.  The yarns are beautiful, and I seem to be in the right frame of mind to do colorwork.  So, I'll plow ahead and see how far I can get in my January Club Dragonfly before some other colorful project distracts me.

Oh, and the bag?  It's a Yarn Pop bag.  It has a hot pink interior a bright green zipper and it just lovely.  I want to get a bag for every project I am working on...I'd need about 30, so the accumulation will be a little while :)