Close Knitters

Vacation!

Depending on your point of view of a vacation, it may mean lots of time sitting on a beach, in a car or airplane, or on a ski slope. For a knitter, a vacation is time away from the day to day routine of work, groceries, kids and driving. So you can knit, right?

This was the view for a lot of my vacation

Palm trees. Blue sky and water. And two socks in progress. Socks are great for travel- they don’t take up a lot of space and there isn’t a heavy pile of wool in your lap in a warm place. You can keep them plain and simple, or knit something more complex. I like to have both, so when I’m waiting for a flight or watching the waves at the beach I can pay attention to something like this

Knit in blue Trekking, the pattern is from Nancy Bush’s Socks on the Road. Twisted stitches that don’t need a cable needle!

And for times when I don’t want to pay attention to it, just knit

The gray sock is out of Louet Gems, which is sport weight and knits up pretty fast. The pattern is a rewrite of a man’s sock pattern from 1914 which was in the recent Knitting Traditions from Interweave Press. The top is patterned, but since it’s knit three purl one it’s good for watching a movie on the plane.

What do you knit on vacation?

Once the weather warms up we know that the grandkids don’t need scarves, mittens, or cosy sweaters.

But they may like a vest-

Just think how cute the little ones will be in a vest- a little dressed up for a special occasion, but they can still run or crawl.

The top one is knit out of Sweetness, a sport weight variegated yarn. The lower one is knit in Provence, the old standby worsted weight cotton from Classic Elite. Both are machine washable, kid friendly yarns, so when the ice cream hits the hand knit it’s not a disaster!

Both patterns are commercial, the Sweetness from a booklet full of patterns for that yarn, and the Provence from Minnowknits.

New yarn! Great excitment!

Temp is a soft blend of cotton, acrylic and nylon. It works up at 5 stitches per inch. I wanted to “do something’ with it.

Ravelry showed that someone had knit one of these.

Is it a cowl? Neck rings? A loopy scarf thingie? I”m not exactly sure, but whatever it is, everyone who looks at it says, hey, it’s cute!

The original pattern was written for a more wintry feel. To lighten it for summer, I did six rows on each ring, and got a nice little something out of a skein of Tempo. It would be a nice little knit in other yarns, too.

The original pattern is by Kirsten Johnstone- thank you so much, what a great idea!

The one skein of Tempo version has five loops, six rows each. Kirsten’s pattern on Ravelry- look for Sev[en] Circle.