How Does it Feel to Treat Me Like You Do?

I'm leaving to visit my brother's family in VA in a couple of hours, and although I didn't start packing until this morning, my vacation knitting plan has been in action for a few weeks. I've had Sabbatical in my queue since February, and somehow a long, complicated lace sweater converged with a yarn and needle buying opportunity and a little extra cash in my pocket, and I took the plunge. I bought my first pairs of Signature circulars (they are awesome), and beautiful Madelinetosh pashmina yarn, and got right to it. The swatch? There in the upper right? It's not very good. The gauge is too big, the color is too dark to show off the lace pattern. Also, the yarn is so dark that it makes it hard for me to read my lace, resulting in some errors. Or maybe not--it doesn't look quite right to me, but I can't really tell where I went wrong. This yarn and this pattern are not going to work for me, so that relationship is over. I will find a plain sweater for the yarn, and maybe I'll start saving up for the recommended yarn, which is gorgeous but even more pricey than the pashmina.

Since it was Sunday by the time it became clear that the Sabbatical wasn't going to work, the new-project alternative was to pull something out of the stash & give that a try. So I swatched for the Monday Morning Cardigan (Rav Link) in Dream in Color Classy that I've had for a year or so, using US5s. It looks good! I got gauge!! The downside? I need to alternate balls of yarn to blend the skeins, so I'm carrying two skeins with me--it didn't occur to me before I cast on that I should wind off smaller amounts, and now the project is packed. The upside is that after running out of tail during the long-tail cast-on, I remembered the advice that I should cast using two skeins. No way to run out, and since I need to alternate yarn, there isn't even any extra ends to worry about.

It's going to be hot in VA, so in addition to this big project I'm bringing the Iris Waves socks, and the second Kira sleeve. Let's hope that there's some relaxing knitting time in store--I could really use it.