Knitting and dining (not at the same time)

First, on the knitting front, I've made good progress on Ingenue from Custom Knits. I'm doing the sleeves now, which shouldn't take much longer. I'm doing skinny tapered sleeves because I'm not a big fan of flared sleeves. Also, I changed the sleeve/body ratio of stitches so that my sleeves are narrower at the top than the pattern's sleeves for the smallest size.

On the dining front, we traveled to Las Vega$ this last weekend and enjoyed some great dining. The photos here are from Japonais, in the Mirage. I mention this restaurant because I first heard about it via Robin's Yarn Crawl blog. She blogged about the Chicago restaurant, I clicked on the link, saw that it had a Las Vegas branch, and the menu seemed very interesting. There were three of us dining and we ordered everything to share. Some of the smaller plates were just barely big enough for three, but the larger plates were fine. Here's a photo of some Kobe beef and a rock on which you cook it. The beef was wonderfully marinated.

This is "Le Quack", one of the house specialties.

Here we have one of the sashimi appetizers.

And for dessert, we shared some sorbets in watermelon soup.

The waitress told us that the Las Vegas menu is about 70% of the Chicago one. It's a bit pricey, but it's definitely a special occasion kind of place.

A finished object!

This pullover is my own pattern. The yarn is Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK, which is very light yet warm. I’m very happy with this. I got what I set out to achieve, which is a simple top-down raglan t-shirt-like sweater with a little cable detailing.
I put the small cables down the raglan sleeve. I did fuss with a swatch a bit to get the concentric diamond pattern correct.
The neckline finishing is just a few purl rows rolled under. The neckline does have a small amount of scooping in the front, so it was not knit and joined in the round immediately – there were a few rows of castings on in front to get the scoop.
The only thing I would do differently would be to add about 1" more to the length, but I can wear it as is.

WIPs

It's time to review my works-in-progress. First up, I'm almost done with this top-down pullover that's not knit from any pattern. I wanted a pullover with some simple cables. The concentric diamonds in the front keeps it from being totally plain. The yarn is Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK, which is lovely to knit with. I fussed with the neckline a bit. I'm happy with this second attempt, which is just a simple purl border that rolls to the inside. My first attempt was a garter stitch collar that was supposed to fold to the outside, but it just didn't come out as envisioned. I'm going to just do some short sleeves. Long sleeves would be too warm.

Next, I've cast on for Ingenue, from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard. Just for ducks, I folded the collar and knitted it it along with the last row instead of sewing it down later. It looks good enough for me, although I probably would not like it if I were an absolute perfectionist because it does lead to some looser stitches at the junction. I included a collar stitch with the main stitch only on every other stitch.