Thursday, December 8, 2011

Preparing to Travel...

Lloyd and I are getting ready to travel in SE Asia and India January to March, and my big decision has been what knitting project to pack. I normally consider socks the ideal take-along project--small, lots of stitches, and wearable when finished. However that works for a three week trip, but what about 2 1/2 months? A knitting friend suggested E Zimmermann's Pi shawl, and sure enough I have the book on my shelf:

She called it the Pi shawl because it's based on the geometry of a circle--the relationship of the circumference to the radius.
One other restriction is that I want to use only materials in my stash, and to that end I've chosen a yarn purchased in China 5 1/2 years ago plus some handpainted Koigu.
Isn't this a lovely label?
But unfortunately I can't quickly figure out how much yarn I have--apart from seeing that each ball is 125 grams. I could measure off a certain length, knit a swatch and calculate the area to figure out if I'll have enough, but I can't be bothered!
I have knit a swatch to see what size needles I'll use, plus I wanted to see how the combination of Koigu and Chinese yarn would work. Okay I think...
Interesting how *YO, K2tog* slants to the right, and *K2tog, YO* biases to the left...

Maybe I'll find some lovely fine yarn along the way that I can incorporate as well.
The idea is to knit until I run out of yarn--ideally this will make a nice big circular shawl which will be useful at some point during the trip.