Road Trip Knitting

We took a road trip last week, so of course I needed to pack projects. But since we were planning to drive through the night for part of the trip, I had to scale back on that packing.

I don't attempt to knit or crochet in the car when it's dark outside. While I could use a small light, I always worry that it will make it difficult for the driver to see outside.

(And there were so many deer on this trip! Even into the wee hours when they can usually be expected to be bedded down. Thankfully all but one stayed in the grass, and we had plenty of time to brake for the one that ran into the road.)

I very reasonably packed a pair of socks that I've been knitting with only a half of one sock left to finish. And an assortment of scrap sock yarn to potentially start a new pair. And a 5.25 mm crochet hook (size I) because one never knows when a bathroom break might be at or near a big box store that sells dishcloth cotton.

The socks that were already in progress are in the Open Twisted Ribbing pattern from Charlene Schurch, knit in the Miss Babs Putnam colorway Spotted Flowers. It's a 4-row pattern that's easy to memorize. The stitch count varies through the pattern repeat, which can be helpful in minimizing color pooling from hand-dyed yarns.

I finished them somewhere in West Virginia, I believe. The yarn is such a lovely, cheery color — but especially so as we headed into dark clouds and rainstorms.

While we were at our destination, we stopped into a yarn shop that we've visited before and my daughter requested a pair of socks. This never happens! She chose Super Soxx Color 4ply in the colorway Dublin from Lang Yarns.

I cast on for the socks our way home and, because I had the book with me, I chose Charlene Schurch's Uneven Ribbing pattern. I wanted a ribbed pattern for the extra stretch because there was a lot of room for error in our method of measuring her feet while we were on the road. This is a 2-row pattern with some visual interest that was easy to memorize and simple enough not to detract from the strong horizontal color stripes in the yarn.

Her feet are narrower than mine and she only wanted ankle socks, making these a relatively quick knit. She likes to wear socks that coordinate rather than match, which worked out well for me because I had a little bit of trouble aligning the color repeat.

I never did use any of the scrap yarn that I packed, and it was decided that we didn't have enough time to visit the yarn section during our one big box store bathroom break. However, I picked up two other skeins of sock yarn during our yarn shop visit. Both are brands that I've never knit before; I'm excited to get them on the needles soon!