Vacation Knitting

Well, the husband and I are driving to Dallas tonight to catch a plane tomorrow morning for 5 kid-free days in Jamaica! Woo hoo! Naturally, I have a cold. But the most important packing consideration for the trip is, of course, what knitting project or projects to take. I'm still in stash-busting mode, so I'm going to take that cheap, er inexpensive, acqua Sinfonia yarn and make a (silk purse out of a sow's ear) tank out of it, working in pieces.

Digression: everytime I get seduced to the dark side of knitting from the top down, I am reminded why I don't like that method. Sure the collar and yoke are fun, and it's exciting dividing for the arms and body. But after that the thrill is gone and you're left slogging through miles of knitting and having to constantly rearrange a huge mass of knitting in your lap. No fun and not very portable. And the stitches at the underarms stretch out forcing you to pick up more stitches than called for on the sleeves to hide the holes and then figure out how to decrease them away. End of rant.

So, back to the tank. I am knitting Prairie out of Anny Blatt Timeless Classics from the Knit Collection (I added the pattern to Ravelry, but there's no picture, since I'm not sure of the copyright violation of scanning in the picture published with it, although I've seen others on Ravelry do it). I bought this book when I first started knitting, but was so intimidated by it that it's sat on the shelf ever since. Anny, you're going down. I will conquer a pattern from you or die trying. Okay, not DIE, but the desperation of forcing two sticks and string into something beautiful sometimes approaches that emotion.

And what of the Master Level Handknitting course, have I flaked out on that as well? No, sir, I have finished swatches 4-6 and when I laid them out side by side, noticed swatch 5 was much shorter than the other two, due to the fact that I missed an increase. I'll have to completely redo it, so it's going into Time Out until I get back.