It's Sort of a Time Warp

Don't you love it when you're on such a relaxing vacation that you have trouble remembering what day it is? It doesn't happen often to me, but it does usually happen on this vacation -- yet another reason to look forward to it. I kept thinking that Christmas was falling on a Wednesday this year, so all week I've been a little mixed up. Luckily I haven't had anywhere to be at any particular time. We've been very lucky to have gotten consistently beautiful weather since we've arrived, around 80ºF and sunny, with low humidity and a light breeze. It's been great for exercising and sitting out by the pool -- though the pool heater was broken when we got here and didn't get repaired until Wednesday, so we didn't actually go in the pool until yesterday. I haven't minded one bit, as I've just been happy to be able to wear a single layer of clothing again and to need sunglasses!

I've spent most of my knitting time working on my cowl, which is now about 2/3 done:

I took some time to weave in ends after I'd finished the first repeat because there are an awful lot of ends, but I'm actually not minding it all that much. With so many short floats on the inside, it's actually pretty easy to hide those ends.

We had a quiet day yesterday, as you would expect. After a breakfast of waffles and fresh fruit, I went for an eight-mile walk while listening to an audiobook, and then I spent part of the afternoon floating in the pool and starting another book. We had a nice dinner and a relaxing evening. It was all very satisfactory.

This weekend we'll look forward to the arrival of my brother and his family, at which point the vacation will get slightly less relaxing because there will be two toddlers in the house. But I'm looking forward to spending more time with them and to seeing my aunt and uncle, who are going to drive over from the other side of the state for the day early next week.

I hope your holiday week has brought a much-needed pause and time for what matters -- being with those you love, whether they're family, friends, or both. I know it's been a rotten year for so many of us for a number of reasons, so I hope you're going out of your way to find joy wherever you can.

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!

I've Been Waiting All Year

Ah, vacation. I take time off so infrequently that I think I appreciate it all the more. We've now been in Florida for almost a week (we arrived last Friday evening), and as usual it has flown by. But I've been completely enjoying it. I've been staying up late -- for me, anyway -- mostly reading and sleeping in. I've gone for long walks outside and a couple of runs, one outside and one on the treadmill because it was pouring. I've enjoyed leisurely cups of coffee and good dinners. And I've been knitting!

I started a new sock design sample just before we left but also brought another skein of sock yarn for movie knitting, because we always go to the movies on Christmas Day. Appropriately, the yarn I chose was Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce in the colorway 12 Days of Christmas, though I don't think the colors are particularly Christmas-y. This is a 12-stripe repeat, with each stripe's color representing the item(s) mentioned for that day in the song. I cast on Christmas Eve and knit up the ribbed cuff so I'd be all ready to go the next day and then knit nearly 4 inches of leg in the movie.

I'm really enjoying the colors! The movie we saw, by the way, was the new adaptation of Little Women. I really loved it, but Rainbow had some trouble following it because she wasn't familiar with the plot beforehand. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to tell you that this version departs from the story a bit in that it jumps back and forth in time, so unless you know the general order in which major events happen, you are likely to be a bit confused. The acting is, on the whole, quite wonderful, though I find Timothee Chalamet a little young to be playing Laurie, at least in the later part of the story. Still, if you're a fan of Little Women in general, I highly recommend it -- and I probably don't need to tell you to bring the tissues.

The other knitting I've been doing is secret knitting for Rainbow for her final Chanukah present, and that means I've only been able to work on it after she goes to bed -- which, when we're on vacation, is much later than normal. That means that it's taken me longer than it normally would, but as long as it's finished before Sunday, I'll be okay. I'm knitting the Neon hat using a one-of-a-kind skein of FDW Cozy (worsted weight), and I'm ready to start the crown decreases tonight. In fact, provided I can stay awake long enough, I might even finish it this evening.

My reading has been quite good this past week. First I finished reading The Starless Sea, which I'd been anxiously awaiting from the library. I absolutely loved Erin Morgenstern's first novel, The Night Circus, and was a bit worried that her follow-up wouldn't live up to my expectations -- but it did! I will add the caveat that you need to read it knowing that there won't be an answer to everything and a lot of it won't make sense (or won't make sense right away), but it was so beautifully written that I can't even fault its very minor shortcomings. It was definitely a 5-star review from me, and if you want to hear more, you can read my review here.

As soon as I finished that, I moved on to Alice Hoffman's The World That We Knew, which I know many of you have already read and recommended. I'm a little more than a third of the way through it, am enjoying it immensely, and hope to finish it up in the next couple of days.

I hope if you celebrated Christmas yesterday that you had a wonderful holiday, and whatever's on tap for the rest of the week, I hope it's bringing you joy! I'm signing off to try to finish a hat.

Adjusting Expectations

Before this vacation, when I was planning what knitting to bring, I really thought I'd be super productive and burn through all the yarn I'd brought. It turns out that I'm easily distracted, primarily by this:

It doesn't look like much, but that's the start of a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that we started a few days ago. I'll sit down at it, thinking I'll work on it for a few minutes, and an hour later I'm still at it. It's fun, but it's not something I can do while knitting, obviously.

Today we spent a good part of the day in the car, driving to and from the east coast of Florida to visit relatives. That meant more than four hours in the car -- prime knitting time. I took my socks and managed to finish the first one and get a good start on the leg of the second.

Sorry for the dimly lit photo; we went directly out to dinner when we got back to this side of the state, so of course it was completely dark when we got home. In any case, these are moving right along, and fingers are crossed I'll be able to complete them by the end of the weekend.

Meanwhile, the baby sweater has a little more on it since you saw it last. I have just a handful of rounds left in the green on the body before I start the ribbing at the bottom, and my goal is to try to finish that this evening.

Once again, the color is totally off

I think the sleeves on this will fly off the needles once I get the body done, so I'm not too concerned about finishing this in time to qualify for the Gift-a-long, but it would be great to get both projects done -- not to mention that I have yarn for other projects that I could be knitting next weekend!

One other distraction has been reading. I typically get a lot of reading for pleasure done during this vacation, in part because when I read in bed before going to sleep (my normal reading time), I can actually stay up a lot later than I can normally. I was about halfway through The Glass Castle when we arrived and I finished it pretty soon thereafter. It was a good read in terms of the writing quality, but it was also a heartbreaking read. Now I'm on to The Lake House, which my mother was finishing up as I was finishing up my book (one of the great benefits of vacationing with my parents is that I have a free source of good books!). I am thoroughly enjoying it, even though I'm not very far into it just yet. If only I could read it and knit at the same time!

Decisions Made

It's now the evening before we're due to leave for our trip, and I'm happy to say that I made up my mind about what to take with me.

The last-minute add-on is the bright Gale's Art sock blank you see on the left; that was one of my Rhinebeck acquisitions, and I've been itching to use it. I'm also taking two skeins of Knit Picks Felici that will become another pair of socks for Rainbow (the pink/purple/yellow skeins at the top), the green Knit Picks Stroll Tonal and the blue Baby Ull will become a Whippersnapper that is a baby gift, the two skeins of gray Lorna's Laces on the right will become a new sample pair of my Intrecciate Socks, and the gray and pale blue in the middle are Fibernymph Dye Works Traveler for a new design. I'm fairly confident this will be enough and that I won't get through it all, but just in case I do, I've discovered a yarn store that's about 20 minutes away from where we'll be staying, so I can always make an emergency trip if I need to.

Meanwhile, I finished my socks with the new heel last night. Rainbow helped me out with a little photo shoot today, and the draft of the pattern is all written up, so I'll be putting the pattern together this weekend and sending it off to my tech editor for after Christmas.

For those of you wondering about the shawl, I'm happy to tell you that it looks like it will be finished tonight. As of this moment, I have six rows and a bind off left to do. Ideally, I'd like to finish in time to block it tonight as well, but I'm not sure that will happen. Blocking can always wait until we get back, anyway. The important thing is finishing!

Adventures in Yarn Shopping

Our vacation is starting to wind down (we leave on Saturday), and after a very active first few days, we had a relatively quiet day today. We all slept in and then took a trip to the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory. It's a quick self-guided tour, but it was something we'd never done before. We had lunch at "home" (the rental condo) and relaxed a bit, and then this afternoon I convinced the Mister to take me and Rainbow to the nearest LYS, Adventures in Knitting, which I'd spotted the very first day we arrived when we went to the local supermarket to stock up on food for the week. Don't let the fairly mediocre Web site fool you -- it's a great shop!

There was a wide variety of yarn to be found -- Berroco, Plymouth, HiKoo, the Fibre Company, Swan's Island, Madelinetosh, and other more mainstream yarn companies in addition to some more rustic yarns spun from sheep from farms in Brewster, Mass., and Nantucket.

They also had a large selection of buttons, needles from Addi and Knitter's Pride, and a sizeable wall of tools and notions. I petted and squished many skeins but was determined to buy something local that I couldn't get at home or online. This fit the bill perfectly:

This skein of 90% superwash merino/10% nylon is from the Cape Cod Yarn Co. and is exclusive to this shop. The colorway is called Seaweed, and it's a generous 480 yards -- plenty for a decently sized shawl or a pair of socks. I also bought a little something for Rainbow:

We found these teeny skeins of My First Regia in the back, with the sale yarns (they're marked $4, but they were actually $3 each). Each skein is 25 g and about 115 yards, so that should be plenty to make Rainbow a pair of socks -- something she's been asking me to make her for a while. I think when we get home, I'll make a template of her foot and make her a pair of toe-up Fish Lips Kiss Heel socks. They'll probably only fit her for a month or two, but at least they should be fun to knit!

I'm moving right along on my projects. I now have one sock done and am well on my way on the leg of sock number two, and I'm more than halfway through the sleeve increases on my tee. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be not so great, so perhaps it will be a good excuse to get in a bit of extra knitting time. If not, we have the long drive back to Boston to catch our flight home on Saturday, plus the flight, plus the drive home from the airport. I'm determined to meet my Stash Dash goal, even if I have to spend every last minute knitting!

Thinking Ahead

As I get closer and closer to my vacation, I find I am spending more and more time trying to figure out what crafting supplies to take. Knitting is a given -- I'll take a pair of socks for the actual travel, and likely a larger project as well, though I'm undecided as to whether to take my Driftwood Tee (as it's unlikely I'll finish all the knitting before we leave) or leave it at home and take yarn to start a new project (namely a Wonder Woman Wrap using some of the yarn I bought at SSK). Obviously I want to finish up the tee as quickly as possible so that I can count the meterage for Stash Dash and possibly wear it while we are away, but then I have to think about blocking and seaming (though I suppose I could just put some pins in my checked bag). But I worry that I'd finish it up too soon and then would be left with just socks to knit on for the rest of the trip. I suppose I could take both -- a couple of skeins of fingering weight yarn and a circular needles don't take up that much space -- but I'll probably wait until just before the trip to make a final decision. Plus I have to decide if I want to take a spindle project with me or not. Sometimes I think packing the craft materials for a trip is harder than packing clothes!

In any case, I have continued to make progress on my Kerameia Cowl and have just about finished -- I just need to finish binding off the last 20 or 30 stitches and weave in my ends.

That means I need to get another lunchtime knitting-suitable project ready, so I've wound up two skeins of Fibernymph Dye Works Cozy to start a Rainbrioche hat.

After doing a breakout session with AmyBeth on brioche knitting at SSK, I'm feeling up to the challenge of trying some brioche with shaping. I will likely have enough yarn for two hats, so I may just reverse the colors and knit a second one (for me, Rainbow, or some unknown gift recipient) while I'm at it if the first attempt goes well.

The weekend ahead looks like a good one for crafting. Rainbow is going to sleep over at her grandparents', so I'm hoping to take a trip out to Knitsburgh Yarn Shop to visit and see what's new since I was last there. There should also be a lot of plying happening over the next several days, as I finally finished up the third bobbin of Charollais singles (for now, I'm ignoring the fact that there are three more bobbins to spin) and started plying last night. I hope whatever you have planned for the weekend is fun and gives you lots of time for crafting!