So Much to Do, So Little Time

Happy Friday, friends! It's my last day of work for the year and also Molly's last day at school (technically; she has a noon dismissal and they're doing nothing but fun stuff today, so it hardly seems like it counts). I have a very long to-do list today, at the top of which is packing! I also would like to finish this hat before we leave, which seems possible, as I have something like eight rounds left:

This is a charity hat and not a holiday gift, so it would be a huge issue to take it with us, but it seems a shame to take up space in my luggage when it'd be done so soon. And that's why I'm highly motivated to get it done today.

While there's still most of my packing to do, I have at least figured out my knitting. I almost always overpack on the yarn options, so I'm trying to keep it simple this year. I'm taking the socks that are in progress (I just have the second sock to finish) and another skein of fingering for a hat that I can knit while we're at the movies or out and about. And I'm taking yarn to start a new sweater:

This is handspun Polwarth from an older Southern Cross Fibre club shipment called Plot Twist. Fittingly, I'm going to be using it for a pattern called Polwarth. As you can see, I knit a generous swatch, and while I didn't get gauge exactly, I'm close enough that it will work just fine (I'm off by one stitch over four inches, which means my sweater will be just slightly roomier). I used just one skein for my swatch, but I plan to alternate skeins when I knit the sweater so that I don't get such concentrated blocks of color. I still expect the knitting to be a bit busy, which is precisely why I chose a fairly simple pattern. So we'll see how much sweater I get knit in a couple of weeks -- and if I somehow run out of yarn, we did discover a yarn store not too far away from my parents' house!

Tonight we're having dinner with my brother's family so we can take their gifts to them before we leave, and I might have to insist that they open their hand-knit gifts just so I can see my nephew's reaction at his gnome. The Mister took our gifts to his brother's family the other night (Molly and I stayed home because she had homework she needed to finish) and he FaceTimed us while our nephews were opening them. They were both very enthusiastic about everything, including the hats I made them:

Those smiles make it all worth it!

I hope you all have a good end to your week, and don't forget that tomorrow is the Winter Solstice -- which means that starting Sunday, the days start to get longer again!