A Basket of WIPs and some Big Decisions

So, I’m moving.  After five wonderful years in Baltimore, I’ll be heading up to Philadelphia in the fall.  There’s nothing like a move to make you realize just how much yarn you own. Or how many WIPs you have.  That basket is full of projects I’ve cast on just since the beginning of March.  Two of them were cast on in the last two weeks.  And there’s a much bigger basket I have to sort through that has projects with ages I’d prefer not to think about…  While I’d like to think I’ve gotten better about seeing projects through to the end, I still have a long way to go!

There’s a million things left to do before we move out of our house in less than a week, but the most obvious and pressing is, ahem, doing some project planning.

For a whole host of reasons, it’s going to be a peripatetic summer before I move into a new apartment in Philadelphia in September.  That means that almost everything we own, including all my yarn, is going into a 10×10 storage unit next week, then we’ll start a grand summer adventure: first we’re going to spend a week with my family in Virginia (Mom, what should we cast on while I’m home?!) and then we’re heading to New Zealand for almost two months with Mr. N’s family!  I’ll have brief access to my stash again at the end of July, then will be reunited with my beauties in September.

I find packing yarn for a normal length holiday a challenge — my aspirations for the amount I’ll knit always far exceed reality (I do the same thing with books for vacation reading).  How to plan for roughly three months of knitting, then?  Especially when that three months will include some very long haul flights (I’m looking at you, dreaded Los Angeles to Sydney leg), hopefully some road trips in NZ and winter temperatures that will undoubtedly put me in the mood for staying in with tea and heaps of knitting.

I’m trying to be reasonable.  I really am.  Especially as I’m trying to not buy much yarn over the coming months. (For some reason, Mr. N laughs in a very loud, and to be frank, slightly rude way when I mention this, I’m really not sure why…)  But I also want to make sure I have enough yarn for the different projects I may want to make while I’m gone.

On the WIPs front, I’ll take my Islay, the Marigolden socks, and Mezcal, which I knit two sleeves on a few months ago before getting distracted by my May Cardigan.  I need to have a double check, but I am thinking the simple lace body could be a good project for plane knitting, if there’s not much waist shaping, which I’m fairly certain is the case.  I think I’ll also toss this in-progress Multiplicity shawl in my carry on.

But that’s obviously only the beginning!  I bought six balls of Zealana Heron when I was in NZ back in 2013 for Brooklyn Tweed’s Guernsey Wrap.  I’ve never cast on, but thought it might be fun to be knitting with some Kiwi yarn while I’m back.

I have yarn for a few fingering weight sweaters that I really would like to be able to wear this fall.  I think they could be good candidates for the trip since fingering weight yarn doesn’t take up much room, and the sweaters will take longer to knit since they’re out of finer yarn.  So in addition to my new Jill Draper Makes Stuff for Asagi, I’m going to take my four lovely skeins of Ysolda’s new Blend No. 1 (right) for Polwarth and possibly three skeins of this beautiful Kettle Yarn Co. (left) for a Bailiwick Pullover.

Even all this, I realize, is overkill.  Am I really going to finish two in-progress sweaters, a pair of socks, shawl, a large guernsey wrap, and start/finish three more fingering weight sweaters?  Of course not.  So why, you might ask, am I also toying with the idea of taking yarn for this pullover, the rest of the yarn I bought at MDSW, some back up sock and, most preposterously of all, the remains of my Buachaille  from the Seven Skeins Club?   I think I’m having some yarn separation anxiety…

So I have some hard decisions ahead of me this weekend!  And you know, some packing to finish or something.

If you have any suggestions on packing for long term trips or which projects I should definitely take, let me know in the comments!  Happy weekend to all!