Back from vacation

As the title says, I am back. I took my very first cruise. It was beyond amazing! In one week I took about 2,000 pictures and ate enough food for about a month. I am slowly weeding through the pictures amid about 500 back emails, and a pile of mail and phone messages. Here is a picture of the view from my hotel room in Vancouver, the evening before boarding the ship. (No, that is not our ship - ours was around the corner of the cruise ship terminal.)

I knitted some during the cruise, but there was so much to see and do (and so many meals to be had) that my progress was limited. I have the first six mitered squares done and am working on the seventh. Each square should block to about 8.5" x 8.5". The plan is to make a checkerboard shawl using the 2 similar colorways, with an added lace border around. It should work up into an almost featherweight summer shawl (stole, wrap, whatever).

Change of plans

Not mindless vacation knitting after all

The purple hoody will not be done in time for vacation, so it has been set aside for a while. I need good travel-worthy take-along knitting. Lace weight yarn for easy toting about and a mindlessly simple pattern for social knitting. Jeanne assured me that the Shoalwater Shawl pattern would be a good choice. I splurged on some Lorna's Laces "Helen's Lace" yarn, liking both the color and the name. Turns out Jeanne is a much better knitter than I am. The Shoalwater pattern is doable, but not mindlessly simple for me. Another project set aside. Instead I have started a simple stole using the modular knitting described in "Knit to be Square". Helen's Lace on size 6 needles should make it light and stretchy.

Zachary standing in for test

Zachary standing in to test email posting.
Originally uploaded by Purple Fuzzy Mittens

This is a test of the Flickr to Blogger capabilities. If you can read it, then it worked.