Travel Knitting

I wrote this last Saturday before leaving for a weekend trip with my sister, but was unable to publish it. Since I don't have anything ready from the quilting workshop I attended yesterday I decided to share this instead.

My sister and I are going away together for the weekend. We leave Saturday morning and come back Sunday night, so it’s nothing extravagant. Packing went very smoothly since figuring out what to wear is never the problem. The struggle for the past week has been determining how much knitting I should bring. My first thought was to bring my Falling Stars sweater. I’m currently 7” into the 13.5” of stockinet, but because the laws of time and how much knitting this knitter can fit into that time go on vacation when I do I will of course be able to finish the sweater, including the sleeves, which would mean that I’d need to bring the 12 balls of purple and the 15 colored balls for the color work on the sleeve. Around Monday I realized that I make this mistake every time I go on a trip and always come home with most of the yarn still unknit.

Then I decided I’d bring to cabled sock I’ve been struggling with this month. A slightly more manageable project, but it would require me to read a chart in a car. The sock also requires quite a bit of concentration which would mean that I couldn’t work on it and talk with my sister very well.

On Thursday I decided that the sock yarn I’ve been saving for February isn’t going to work well with the pattern I want to do in February, but will make a beautiful vanilla sock. (For those non-knitters reading this, a vanilla sock is just plain sock without lace, cables, or any other pattern.) The logical side of my brain assured me that this was a good plan since a sock could fit in my purse, would be easy to do in the car, restaurants, theaters, etc., and wouldn’t require extra attention during conversations.

Then the voices in my head started fighting.

The Paranoid Voice is screaming that one pair of socks is not enough yarn for an entire weekend. (It refuses to accept that it takes at least a week, usually longer to knit a pair of socks. The Paranoid Voice strongly believes that time takes a vacation when I do and the unprepared knitter will pay.) There is a shopping trip in which more sock yarn is going to be purchased and even the Paranoid Voice admits the likelihood of me knitting two complete socks in 12 hours when not all of that time will be knitting time is small. (The Paranoid Voice does reserve the right to say “I told you so” should I finish my socks in that time and be out of knitting.)

The Rule-Following Voice is not happy with the idea of doing February’s sock in January when January’s sock is not yet finished. I’m the kind of knitter who usually only has one project on my needles at a time. I have grown as a knitter and am now okay with having a sweater and a sock on my needles. I’ve assured this voice that the two projects on the needles now aren’t good travel projects and the thought of three hours in the car without knitting has allowed for a small bend in the rules. The Rule-Following Voice has also accepted the bribe of new sock yarn, some of which will be for February.

The Realistic Voice knows that I will come home with the first sock half finished. It acknowledges that I may have turned the heel by tomorrow, but I will still be in the middle of the foot at best so I really don’t need to worry about scissors, a darning needle, or a second ball of yarn. The Realistic Voice can stuff a sock in it. I’ll have two done on Sunday.