Travelling Companion

My favorite skirt for travelling and packing is a mid calf brightly colored crinkle skirt from TravelSmith. It can be worn with just about any color top you can imagine. Often when I am traveling and end up on a plane or in a restaurant, I get chilly from the air conditioning (we rarely need to use it up here on the mountain). About 2 years ago, I made a generous shawl that went everywhere with me and was used as a shoulder cover in restaurants, a pillow on a plane, or even a small blanket for my legs if I didn’t have on long pants or a long skirt. Within a couple of weeks of bringing the German Shepard into the household, she chewed two decent size holes right in the middle of it. The holes were too large for me to try to mend, so I pulled the shawl apart and began reknitting it in the same pattern. I just couldn’t get inspired to knit it again, and besides, it wasn’t very warm.
After reknitting daughter’s black lace sweater, the one that was ruined a few short weeks after it was made last year, and getting it mailed off to her, I tackled a different shawl with different, very colorful yarn. The colors are very jewel like, the pattern, the Travelling Companion Shawl, the yarn, 5 different skeins of Koigu, a Canadian yarn. My attention to lace knitting isn’t good, especially since I often knit in the car when hubby is driving, or in front of the TV or a book on my tablet, rarely giving it my full attention and when I got to the last section of the lace on this shawl, I was surprised that my stitch count was dead on, the last section seemed straight forward enough and off I went. About halfway through the section of 23 rows, two of the three sections were off stitch count. I unknitted the row, counted the stitches and at this point had well over 350 stitches on the needle and the count was wrong. If I were a really meticulous knitter, I would have ripped back to the last point that I knew I was correct and started that section over, but instead, I switched to a simpler lace that had been used earlier in the pattern and kept right on going. After reaching the requisite number of rows, the shawl didn’t seem quite large enough for me, so I added another couple of inches of garter stitch to complete the shawl. The colors are perfect for the skirt, the shawl is generous and very warm. I love it.

Now on to the baby sweater in my queue for a December baby and then two sets of finger puppets to go with books for granddaughters for Christmas. Maybe someday, I’ll finish the socks that are about half done and figure out what to do with the yarn from the chewed shawl, plus design the scarf to go with my favorite hat with the yarn that was specially dyed for me.