It's a long way 'til the end

Fiery Bolero is going well. It's alot of stockinette at a small gauge so it's taking a while, but it's an interesting pattern. There are a number of similarities to Lara in the Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk book. Instead of knitting from cuff to cuff in one piece, the bolero is knit from back to front in one piece. Bliss does specify the cable cast-on for this piece; a tidbit of information she neglected to put in the Lara pattern.

Fiery Bolero requires you to cast on at the back and then cable cast-on on successive rows. This will create a curved back when the ribbing is added at the end. Then you knit part of the back and cable cast-on the sleeves and then separate for the neck and fronts. The really tedious part will be the ribbing. The plus is that you knit the ribbing before seaming which means you only have to worry about 300 stitches for going around the fronts rather than the close to 500 for the whole thing ;>

As far as the yarn, I do like Cathay. It has a lovely sheen and I think that I will enjoy the drape of the finished project. I have some of the now discontinued Bliss cotton/silk which knits at a larger gauge (18 sts/4") and does not have the viscose in it. Cathay is an improved blend. The viscose adds some much-needed bounce to the yarn and makes it more forgiving of small stitch imperfections. I'm also knitting the Flower Basket Shawl in Cathay in a dark pink. The problemsare that the yarn can be a bit splitty and that whoever wound the balls was insane. I have had to rewind every single ball in both colors before they are usable.