On my needles: Vacation knitting

Today marks the middle of our three weeks' vacation "down the shore."  I brought a ton of fiber with me, along with my entire collection of knitting needles and my spinning wheel!  Last year I wound up having to buy yarn and needles to work with, but I wasn't going to make that mistake twice.

I spent the first week swatching with Atacama yarn by Arucania, a discontinued DK weight alpaca that looked kind of skanky in hank form, but knit up into a lofty confection of a fabric with the big needles the Neck-Down Wrap Cardigan called for.

Yes, it took me a week to get gauge.  I knit three funky-sized swatches (which, incidentally, I did not wash because the ball band indicated that dry cleaning would be most appropriate -- I suppose I should have steamed them, but what's done is done) and alternated the boring swatch-knitting with some hippy-dippy crocheting.

The Rickrack Kerchief, in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, is right up my alley.  It's the right level of challenging, which means that I can watch TV or daydream while I work on it, and it's the right type of finished product, meaning that I will totally wear it when it's done.  And it has a ribbon woven Right Into The Headband.  I am completely mesmerized by ribbon these days -- buying it, saving it, making it, using it.  The Christmas packages are going to be so much fun this year!

So finally I finished the swatches and started on the wrap cardigan.  I had thought that I could not do another row of stockinette-with-raglan-increases when this number showed up.  There is something about this pink-cotton-candy knitted fabric that makes it such a pleasure to work with that I don't care if the knitting itself is uninteresting.  The yarn is fascinating and I cannot wait to see what it will do next.  The thought of making a little more of the fluffiness in my hands is enough inspiration to keep me going, and I hope this will  be a project where the process and the product are equally important -- I want to wear this loveliness.

I have also been reading a lot about knitting this vacation, and have many big ideas concerning fair isle, ganseys, log cabin knitting, organic cotton washcloths and multi-media knitting, but that's for another post.  What's on your needles this summer?