Vacation Knitting

I was having a hard time deciding which project to bring with me on vacation last week, but then I decided I'd much rather start a new project. So, I purchased a copy of Eagles Rest by Stephanie Rodger, had my husband add the pdf to his e-reader, wound the yarn, found the needles, and grabbed my ongoing sock project (in case I needed a backup project, as you never know what could go wrong). The sock sat around being ignored as I enjoyed Eagles Rest.

I had been looking for a pattern to use the Malabrigo lace that I had picked up last year in Vancouver. When I bought it, I had been thinking that the two skeins would be just right to knit up another Whisper Cardigan, but I hadn't realized that I had picked up two different dye-lots. They were definitely a bit too different from each other for my original plan. The yarn sat there waiting, and every so often I would look for other patterns that might suit.

Now I quite liked the look of Stephanie's Eagles Rest, and since I'd recently tried out shawl knitting (and decided I quite liked it), it had made it into my queue. Of course, it wants sock yarn (not that you couldn't knit it with lace-weight if you wanted to), but when it occurred to me that I could hold two strands of the lace-weight together, I realized that that would solve the problem entirely: I would be able to use up both skeins (without ending up with two olive-green shawls) while knitting a shawl that I quite liked, and I felt that it would be an excellent pairing of yarn and pattern as well.

It was definitely an excellent pairing; I could tell once I'd knit a few rows that it would be even better than I had thought. Since the pattern has a mesh lace rather than a figured lace pattern, the slight fuzzyness of the incredibly soft yarn would not be a drawback so much as it would add to the cozyness of the shawl. While on vacation, I made many people pet the shawl-in-progress to feel just how soft this wool is. I think I may just have to buy a new strappy-sort of dress to coordinate with the shawl just so I can enjoy wearing it on bare shoulders. I'm very pleased, and found it an enjoyable and straight-forward sort of knit that was just right for vacation knitting (I could read a propped-open book at the same time for most stretches), and enjoy knitting it while visiting and while riding in the car. Also, I think it's just plain lovely.