Trailer Knitting

Are you wondering if I knit at the trailer? Need you ask?

This trip I only brought three projects with me. The first - the one I started during the ten hour car trip - is this little summer top.

With these yarns, purchased in Nanaimo. 100% Cotton.

When you shop far from home, you sometimes make a few mistakes. These yarns have the same label. The orange , a favourite colour of mine, caught my eye first. The gauge is 18 sts/4 inches. Just one stitch off required gauge. I can work with that.

Without checking the blue - same label as yoou can see (well, at least same front part of the band) - I bought enough for the top.

Ready to start the top, a closer look at the ball band of the blue yarn showed a gauge of 22 sts/4 inches. Dang!

Before I started, I had to re-write the pattern for the lower portion. Knowing that once I arrived at the orange portion, I would have to change back again. Not normally too difficult a task, but this top has several rows where both colours are used. And once into two colours, the orange uses two separate balls.

So, there I was, cramped into the front seat of the van along with all our stuff for a summer at the trailer, trying to knit from three balls of yarn using two different gauges, three sets of needles, two of which were a different size than the third. Just a tad confusing. And doing it in the car no less!

But so far, it looks good.

The top, as you can see from the magazine picture, is a short little cropper. But the magazine is quite old. With today's pant styles being lower waisted, I decided to lengthen the top. No exposed belly button for this Grandma.

And I decided to lengthen the orange part as I like orange better than blue. Makes sense, right? More of the colour I like? But it has given the top a entirely different look. The point of the bottom portion in the magazine photo is nearer the top. Who would have known that was an important feature?

Mine looks quite different. But with great knitterly denial, I am pushing on. I'm sure it will be fine. Otherwise it will be a re-start.

And since today - while you folks in Southern Ontario are basking in warm temperatures - it is 4' and raining, I have lots of time to trailer knit.