He brought me two especially nice things today.

Did you know Kim Hargreaves just came out with a book?! That jumped into my shopping cart before I even had time to take a breath. And I got the yarn book on the lovely Claudia’s recommendation. Kim’s patterns are gorgeous, as usual, and I can’t wait to dive into the yarn book.
The yarn pictured is nothing much, really–a couple of balls of 4ply soft for endpaper mitts after seeing Julia’s gorgeous version, and some cashmerino for another indoor cap for hubby. Both projects will wait until after the remaining holiday knitting–which may not be so long, since HoJo is just zipping off the needles.

The fair isle looks good, when I stretch the ribbing out a bit, but I’m also anxious to see what a good soak does for it. I find that color work almost always improves dramatically with some water. The back should be easy-peasy, I think. But let me get your opinion, just for good measure:
The pattern calls for an identical fair isle stripe across the back, and no color work on the sleeves. This strikes me as something that will look totally bizarre (there’s no back view in the magazine), so I was planning on just continuing the ribbing up since I have extra yarn. What do you think?