Harry Potter and Stashalong

Here's my Harry Potter scarf in progress. It's pretty much the only thing I have been working on lately so it's rolling right along. I haven't even been knitting the socks I'm pretending I'm not knitting. But I might pick them up soon and not knit them some more.

In Stashalong news I have a class coming up at the LYS where I will be getting help for any pattern that seems strange or challenging to try to knit on my own. Now, I could knit some of the things on the sidebar just to get them finished but I don't really need any help with those patterns - just more knitting time in the day! I don't want to waste my class time on stuff I could easily knit at home. So I went through the things I have in my stash and came up with these two:
I could do either Karlsro from CTH 1 in Silk Garden 208


OR

this Jacket from Noro 18 in Blossom #5



Both of these are "hard" because I have never knit a sweater all in one piece before. For these patterns you have to either divide and leave stitches for sleeves or pick up stitches or both. The Blossom jacket has the added problem of being knit in a circle from the outside in (I think) starting on huge needles and going down a size every couple of rows to achieve the effect of decreasing. The strange thing is that the needles that the pattern calls for don't actually exist in American sizes. I think the Noro pattern books are terribly written as well. (Not the ones by designers who work for Noro but actual pattern books put out by Noro.) On the Pro side: I've never worked with Blossom and have been wanting to. The con to that is that means possible gauge swatching. But the Blossom is gorgeous and I think the finished project (if it is possible to get a finished project from those crappy instructions) will be stunning! Another possible con is that this is yet another jacket - see sidebar for works in progress and works in finishing. Three coats and two jackets. Not one single sweater. I NEED to get over my jacket fetish and knit a damn sweater.

The Karlso has the advantage of being a well written pattern in a familiar yarn. Although I probably still have to swatch because the gauge is in some lacy stitch pattern. It's also slightly more sweatery. Still half-jackety because it is a wrap style but much closer to the goal of sweater knitting.

So what do you think?