Vacation away

Today is the start of a week-long vacation....

I'm not going anywhere, but it will be nice enough to just sleep in and not have to check email 50 gazillion times a day.

As usual, I have plenty planned - probably more than I can conceivably do in just a week... but that's just the way it goes. I hope to do some sewing, some drawing, some gardening, and if the weather is decent, maybe convince Dave to go on a hike. But mostly, I'll be knitting (no surprise there!)

One of the main things I plan to work on is Maeve.

What you see there is one completed arm and half a back. The pattern has you continue across the back and right down the other arm, but I'm going to do them as two separate pieces - for a couple of reasons:

• Several other Ravelers have noted that the cast off from the last cuff looks quite a bit different than the cast on of the first. Working them both the same eliminates any issue there.
• By doing them separate (then grafting them together), it's easier to make adjustments if my back is too wide or too small. I have narrow shoulders and find most patterns too baggy in the back for me. This way, if I need to adjust, I just undo the graft, and shorten or lengthen, as needed. If I did it as written, I'd either have to live with a too saggy/too tight back, or rip back and entire sleeve to make adjustments.

I also lengthened the sleeves (for my monkey arms), and will probably make some adjustments to the collar, but I'll see when I get there.

The yarn I'm using  is Baruffa Merinos Otto, which was liberated from Mom's stash. I've knit with it before (Dad's Christmas Jumper). It's one of the nicest commercial yarns I've ever knit with, so when Mom reluctantly offered it up (my other option was some Cascade 220) it was really hard to turn it down.

It's a multi-ply, high twist superfine merino. It's pure joy to knit with, has beautiful stitch definition, and zero itch. The more I write about it, the more I want to go buy some more!

For now I'll have to settle for just knitting with what I've got. My goal is to at least finish the other sleeve/half back by the end of vacation.... but no promises... we all know I have the attention span of a squirrel!