I think I have said before that I have a tendency (as do most of you) to over pack stitching projects when headed on vacation. It is just really frightening to imagine being without knitting, should I somehow knit through all of the yarn that I brought. Today I leave for Prague (yay!) for a week. In addition to the 8 hour flight to Munich and then one hour flight to Prague, there are all the cold nights in bars and restaurants to fill with good solid stitching time. I have narrowed it down to four projects…I think:
Socks
Sock projects fit into small purses and pockets and are super handy for discreetly stitching during a tour of a brewery, for example. I rummaged through my sock stash last night and selected one skein of String Theory self striping yarn in the fibre space colorway that we had awhile back and one skein of a sport weight hand dye that I picked up at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival a few years ago. I figured that if the tiny needles on the first one make my hands hurt, I can change to the US#3 and sport weight yarn. Both will be simple ribbed socks, so no pattern involved here.
Sweater
Nothing says vacation like a new sweater project to cast on. I am teaching a lace pullover class on the Peabody sweater from Brooklyn Tweed and really should get it knitted soon! I wanted to use one of the new colors of LOFT, so I am double stranding it. My first swatching attempt resulted in a horribly tight fabric on US#6 needles…which I shouldn’t have been using anyway because the pattern calls for #7. i have no idea what I was reading. So now I have to try #7 needles. This will probably happen on the plane. At least my husband won’t be there to yell about my need to soak a swatch on an airplane. Traveling with other people who carry sharp pointy things can be handy. They don’t judge.
Mittens
Yeah, remember those fair isle mittens that I was knitting for this trip? They look exactly the way they did when I posted about them last. The fair isle mitten curse continues…it is my hope that I will knit a thumb and part of the mitten on the airplane. The handy fold down tray thing is pretty well positioned for fair isle chart reading. It’s not like I have anything else to distract me for 8 hours.
The other random thing
The problem now is that I am here at the shop and tempted to grab more yarn and throw it in my bag for some last minute emergency project to knit to keep me warm while in Prague. I already did this two nights ago when I whipped up a pair of One Cable Mitts in BSA Worsted Hand Dye. It took about two hours. Right now I am thinking that the Elizabeth Hat by Jane Richmond would match them nicely and give me a “set” in theory..not that I have ever had a matching set of anything. I can have dreams though, right?
