waiting for merino

my postman must hate me. or maybe he's a knitter and is stealing the lovely yarn i ordered for the poncho-a-long. or perhaps he is psychic and knows that i am not set on the pattern yet anyway, so what does it matter if i have the yarn or not? but then again, he could just hate me. but, on the off-hand that it is the psychic thing, i have done a rough sketch of what i think i want the poncho to look like:

the main color is a dark purple and the contrast color is a pistachio green. the colors are based on a house i saw while walking harley. the texture is based on a zip-sweater that my dad's mom made for him long ago. it is mostly purls, with 4 knits (on top of each other) every so often. boy, what a description, aren't i good with words? anyway. i want the knit columns to go up and down, so i will need to cast on a few stitches and keep increasing from there, and then decrease after the halfway point. the pistachio color will come in for some of the knits. anyway, maybe i should do a test strip first, just to let the postman know that i am really serious...