And Relax!

Greetings from southwest Florida! It's a bit chilly for the location (currently 64ºF) but sunny, and I'll be headed out for a run soon to see how far I can go without having to deal with hills or much in the way of traffic.

We arrived, amazingly, on time on Saturday evening after a very bumpy flight down. There was so much turbulence that the flight attendants only managed to get up once to give out water and bags of snack mix because the captain kept telling them to sit down and buckle up. I am very thankful that Mo decided to try taking Dramamine on this trip (she often gets terrible headaches when we fly), and she actually ended up sleeping about half the flight and felt fine for the part that she was awake. Although I started a new pair of socks in the car on the way to the airport, I didn't end up knitting on the flight much of all, in part because of nerves and in part because I had a teenager leaning on my arm. But I got a bit more done on them yesterday, so I can share them with you:

This is the yarn I won from Lisa at Fibernymph Dye Works that she custom-dyed for me. I'd told her two colors I liked (blue and gold) and one color I didn't want in my skein (white/undyed), and this is what she came up with. I'm not in any rush to finish these socks, but I figured it would be good to have something easy and mindless for when we're out and about.

There were a couple of things I'd wanted to finish before we left, but I only managed one of them because I ended up getting a ton of work thrown my way on Friday (which isn't needed until we're back in January, so I'm not sure why there was such urgency). What was finished was all the mini skeins, which you saw plied but not yet all washed and tidied. I was able to throw the second half in to wash on Friday, and as they were dry Saturday morning, I measured them and twisted up all 24:

I am still showing the photo in black and white until all 24 days have passed, as I'd really hate to spoil anyone. My yarn looks to be overall in the neighborhood of sport weight, and I have approximately 700 yards total, which is really quite impressive. I'm thinking that these would make a great cozy shawl, so perhaps in the new year they'll get knit.

The project I didn't get a chance to finish (but which was wrapped up rather quickly yesterday morning) is the charity hat:

Though I did follow the pattern for the numbers, I ended up doing the brim completely differently the second time. The pattern has you work the brim using what is essentially single-color double-knitting: you slip every other stitch every round. It looks nice and creates fabric with a double thickness, but it doesn't stretch. At all. So for the second attempt, I did a provisional cast-on, knit until I had four inches of fabric, folded it up on the inside, and created a hem by undoing the provisional cast-on one stitch at a time and knitting it together with a stitch on the needle. The brim was technically supposed to be four inches, but as that meant I would have had to knit eight inches, I decided to make it half the length. I used up some mini skeins and some leftovers, about 450 yards total, holding the yarn double. This is going into the charity pile.

Although I still have to knit a gnome (and I may very well wait until the full pattern is out to start), my main focus for my vacation knitting is finishing up languishing WIPs. Specifically, I want to make a lot of progress on my Birch pullover, which I had not touched since Mo and I were in Florida for spring break. But I weighed and wound off yarn for the sleeves before we left so that I can blend the skeins on the entire sweater, and I have picked up the body again.

If you click to enlarge the photo, you'll see my mermaid progress keeper (though she's upside-down here) marking where I was when I started knitting again last night. I think I managed about an inch while we were watching "The Sound of Music" on TV -- which is really more knitting than you'd think because this sweater is knit in fisherman's rib, which is quite condensed vertically. Now that I've sorted the yarn issue, I'm hoping I can just cruise along on this; I really just have to knit the body until it's long enough minus the ribbing at this point, so there's nothing to pay attention to other than the stitch pattern. Apologies in advance, but you're going to be seeing a lot of this sweater over the next two weeks!

I hope your week is off to a good start and that it's a short week for those of you who are working. I will try my best to take some photos to try to share the sunshine and the warmth for those of you in the cold!