Knitting plans

On Monday we are going on a road trip (we being me, my husband and 2 daughters). We are driving to Norfolk, VA. So why are we doing this on a Monday? I am going to be a surrogate speaker for my director at an ASTM symposium. So Clint and the girls will have fun at the beach while I'm stuck in a conference room for two days. No, it'll be fun, some of the biggest names in Corrosion will be there, so it's a great opportunity for me.

Since we are driving there I'm hoping to get some knitting done on the way. Hoping, because I tend to be carsick, but on an highway it shouldn't be too difficult, unless it's sunny. So we'll see.

I have one repeat left on the center panel of my 'Victorian Lace Today' shawl. Of course I ran out of yarn with one and a half repeat left (out of 36). This knitting has been smooth, right until I hit the 30 repeat mark, then I kept making mistakes and having to rip back and fix them. This is so much fun to knit and I just started my fourth skein (out of 5). So I should have enough for the edging. What's preventing me from finishing the last repeat is that I have to practice for the presentation I'm giving on Tuesday.

I'm becoming more and more American. I'm actually considering knitting out of an acrylic yarn! The yarn in question is Homespun from Lion Brand. The thing about this yarn is that it comes in beautiful colorways, is super-soft and bulky weight. So it's the perfect candidate for a blanket!

I had a great idea for a design. Last night I was drawing and calculating all night and didn't get any knitting done. I finally came up with the perfect design. It looks simple but it was difficult to get the right sizes. Now all I have to do is to swatch to see my gauge so I can figure out how many stitches to cast on and how many rows to knit. The blanket is made up of panels and I'm not going to knit it in a 'logical' order. Let's just say that it is a Mason-Dixon inspired blanket.

Hopefully I'll have everything sorted out before our road trip. If I run into problems I always have my faithful French Market bag. It's at the stage where you just knit around and around, so it's a good traveling piece.