I'm taking the plunge!

Whether it was a wise choice or not remains to be seen but I joined the Lotus Blossom Tank KAL (knitalong) yesterday. Gah, I hope I can pull it off.

So my swatch finally dried, abeit a little wonky 'cause DH moved the swatch (not very gently obviously) so it tweaked into a little parallelogram. I tried to untweak it so it's a little better, but the angle of my photo now makes it look like a trapezoid. Doh.

Given my horrible swatching experience w/my Tahki cotton classic and Butterfly Super 10, I knew there was no way I would get 5.5 st/in on the #5 needles called for in the pattern. So I first started to swatch w/#8 needles and actually found I was 1/2 stitch to big. Frogged and swatched w/#7 needles and got gauge thankfully.

Now I need to either swatch the lace portion and see what I get or just cast on the 230 stitches (ugh!) for the 39" size. I'm hoping the bamboo's got ease as the next size up, 44", would be too wide. I also need to lengthen the tank as it'll be much too short, especially at the bust line for me.
As for my other WIP's, The 2nd secret baby gift is almost done. Hope to finish it today. And I may use my Cascade 220 in periwinkle for the pinwheel blanket border but I need to do a test border on my little swatch to see if it'll work first. And to keep me on track, I started the Branching Out gift scarf over the long weekend. Got 2 repeats in. So far so good! Keeping fingers crossed I don't have a major mishap before my August deadline.