Tuesday morning we leave for Knoxville.
I decided not to take the blue sky alpaca pullover on the trip, mostly because it is at a stage where it is large and cumbersome and because I had hoped to finish it first, but that is not likely to happen. Even so, I am thinking spring knitting for this trip and alpaca thing will not take that long to finish when I do get home.
Saturday was packing day. I am one of those weird people who, in ideal circumstances, likes to have everything packed and ready to go well in advance. I don't forget things that way, and I am not running around like a maniac tearing the house apart. I really do not like returning to a house that looks like a cyclone-ravaged disaster area, which is the likely result if I put things off until the last minute. I also planned to pick my knitting projects and knit swatches, but I actually didn't finish the swatches for the second project until today.
I am taking two projects with me. This may be too much, especially considering that the last couple of trips I have not gotten much knitting while I was in Knoxville, and I did most of the driving. I am hoping that G and I will share the driving this trip and that will, of course, add to my knitting time.
I will be knitting it of Brilla in this lovely deep green color:
It seems that my gauge is getting tighter or perhaps just more consistent because I automatically cast on with smaller needles for the swatch, which is usual for me, only to have the swatch turn out too small. The pattern calls for 7 skeins and I have 8. I hope that is enough to lengthen the sweater by about 2 inches. The instructions say the longest size is 23" but that the sweater is about 2 inches shorter when worn because of the width-wise stretch.
I could have sworn I had a photo of the yarn as well, but can't locate it now. It is dark gray, similar to the color in the photo; it might even be the same color.
This swatch was easier since I knit Granite last fall with the same yarn at the same gauge. I did make a new swatch just to be sure.
I sat and made the swatch this morning while I was reformatting my old Ipod and downloading some audiobooks onto it since G has decided he wants to try listening to books on tape and learn to use the Ipod so he can listen to music while he walks It was a rather pleasant way to sit and do that kind of otherwise boring task. And it looks like our "computer" classes will be expanded to cover computer, Ipod, and Kindle, as he is also having trouble seeing the typeface on most books and finds the large print on the kindle much easier to use, even though he doesn't like holding the device as much as reading from a regular book with pages.
I don't really intend to start either of these projects until we are actually on the road. Any knitting tonight or tomorrow will be on the bulky alpaca. When I return I will have these projects to finish up and it will also be time to finally face the UFO corner.
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