Dusting off my travelling shoes

It’s just one week before I leave for an 11-day cruise in the southern Carribbean with my husband and mother-in-law.  I’m at that point where excitement has started to give way to anxiety (Are our cats going to be okay without us for 2 weeks?  Will I be able to sleep okay in our room on the boat?  Am I going to get horribly sunburnt the first day…or seasick the whole time?).  I know that by this time next week, on a plane flying over the States on my way to Ft. Lauderdale, I’ll be back to excitement again, but I’m not quite there yet. So I’m dissipating my nervous energy by knitting!  It’s a long post, so all the details and pictures are after the jump.

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UFO sightings

In December, I was super focused on finishing my deadline knitting.  I think the only relaxation knitting I let myself work on was dishcloths, and even those were for a gift.  So as soon as Christmas was past, I had kind of a project explosion, as you can see here:

Clockwise from the top left, they are an Ivy cardigan in some Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool I got on super sale (more than 50% off!  Hope I have enough…), of which the back is finished just past the start of the armholes; my (first?) contribution to the LSG4BabbyWIP charity project (more on that later), a seed stitch cap; a MochiMochi Grouchy Armchair for my dolls to sit on; and my second-time-through Strange Bird shawl in the delectable hand-dyed yarn I impulse bought during a “Cyber Monday” sale in November, largely because it’s called Princess Jasmine, whose colour scheme I dig way more than any other Disney heroine.  Missing from the picture is, of course, my epic baby blanket, which has been hibernating for a few weeks due to running out of yarn, but which I’m about ready to start plugging away at again.

I’m not naturally inclined to finish things.  G is very complimentary about the number of projects I get to the end of, but sadly there are a lot of things that will get 10, 20, 50% finished and then languish in a drawer or basket for weeks or months before I can revive my enthusiasm for them.  I try to keep a lid on that kind of behaviour by aiming to have no more than about 4 projects on the go at one time (1-2 each of stay-at-home and travel-ready), but every now and then I just want to start things all day long!  You should have seen me yesterday, browsing patterns, checking out my stash for possible yarns, on the verge of running to print a pattern about five times – when I could have been using that time to finish binding off the shawl in the picture…!  Sigh…

One of the things that’s really inspiring me right now is the LSG 11 in 11 challenge.  LSG is a group I belong to on Ravelry, and there are two craft-alongs going on right now (that I’m part of), and watching other people’s progress is super exciting.  The 11 in 11 challenge is exactly what it sounds like: finish 11 projects this year.  For me, that’s going to be no sweat: since I joined Ravelry and started keeping records of most of my knitting & crochet (in October 2008), I’ve posted almost 70 projects.  There are more.  I’ll be shocked if I don’t knit 11 things.  So I decided to narrow my focus a little.  Our friends J&A are expecting their first child this spring, and kids are near enough in our future too that I want to start laying by more things in my hope chest, so I decided to count 11 baby- or maternity-related projects this year.  The baby blanket is, of course, on my list (I’m using the challenge as the kick in the pants I need to make sure it’s finished this year!), as is the baby cap in the photo.  The hat, however, is neither for my friends (already made 2 for them…) nor for me (I have designs on the remainder of the Princess Jasmine).  It’s for LSG’s second craft-along, the charity initiative in honour of the child some are calling “BabyWIP.”  The two masterminds behind the whole Ravelry community are expecting their first child, and a number of groups on Rav have thought that it would be great to donate to charity to celebrate.  BabyWIP is bound to have as much knitwear for him- or herself as any baby could want, so we thought we’d pass our good feelings on to some babies who might not have dozens of loving knitters and crocheters around them.  I’m not sure if we’ve settled on a particular charity to donate to yet, but I figured I had the yarn handy and I might as well get started – knitwear doesn’t go bad, after all.

Of course, for all the 11 in 11 challenge has been inspiring me, it has honestly been inspiring me more to start than to finish – the hat’s no more than 2/3 finished and my blanket still has around 100 rows to go, but last night I was researching colour schemes for a toy I want to give my friends and trying to figure out if I have enough of the funky cotton-nylon yarn I bought ages ago to make more than one Presto Chango…I don’t really need to finish anything, do I?

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