Monday, December 21, 2009

Traveling

I don’t know why this is, but whenever I travel I always get anxious about what knitting I am going to take with me. Does anyone else do this? Perhaps it is a cover for the fact that I am an anxious traveler. I don’t mind the waiting; I don’t even mind the lines. But I hate flying so much. The slightest bit of turbulence and I freak out. If God wanted us to fly, she would have given us wings.

Normally I say socks are the perfect traveling project, their small (so easy to pack), sock yarn seems to go further than other weights, many sock patterns are easy to memorize and really who couldn’t use another pair of socks. But, I have been knitting a lot of socks lately. And I think I am ready for a break.

But now is the question what should I take. I have been going back and forth about this a lot the past few days. Yes, socks would be easy. I do have a few pairs I could make as gifts, even a few pair I could make for myself. But on the other hand, I haven’t made a sweater in a long time. To be honest, it’s more like I haven’t finished a sweater in a long time. I currently have a top down sweater on the needles, but it is so big, that it would take up most of my suitcase. And there isn’t that much left to do on it, just the sleeves. So that is out. (Let’s not talk about the other sweater I was making, I pinned together the other day – not good.) I have been lusting over the Tea Leaves Cardigan and I have some Road to China Light that I can make work for it. Or I can go back to my Rosamund’s Cardigan in (now :-( discontinued Gobi) that I started earlier in the fall. Although I know it is too big for me, I wish I had someone else to look at it for me, before I recast-on. The other choice is the Vine Lace Cardigan. I love this pattern. I have some Malabrigo from a couple of years ago that would work nicely. Too many choices.

I also haven’t swatched for anything (although I guess I can use the Rosamund that I already started as a “swatch”.) But, what if I bring the wrong needles with me? What if I start something and I don’t like the yarn I am working with? What if I don’t bring enough yarn with me? What then?

My back-up plan is socks. But I really don’t want to make any more right now. Any thoughts? Quickly? Did I mention my flight is tomorrow morning?

2 comments:

Passionknitly said...

I certainly get this way. I always over pack yarn because I freak out that I'm going to be bored when I travel.

I think Shawls are perfect. You can usually get great mileage with a little amount of yarn and lace yarns are usually small enough to pack a couple of them with you.

In other news, I'm going to cast on for the Tea Leaves cardigan as soon as I get back from RI in the new year. I'm going to knit it out of some nice alpaca yarn I got at a farm. We should have a pretty big KAL for that one...

kara said...

Good luck deciding on a project and have a safe trip!