A New Perfect Project

Right now, neither of the two cardigans I'm working on is really portable. This is a problem because every weekday afternoon I have about 40-45 minutes sitting in the Pick Up Line at school, and most weekday afternoons I have 45 minutes of sitting at the gym while Caleb works out. Since I can knit, there's no point in just sitting there like a lump bird, but because I can't really spread out a big project either place, anything with charts or complex shaping where I might be strapped to a pattern just doesn't work. Also, simple designs are easier to knit and talk to other people. Last summer I found the perfect project for portability - the Silky Lace Alpaca Wrap. Now, this should come with a warning because if you're not spending a mind numbing amount of time waiting on a critter to do what critters do, you might poke yourself with a knitting needle just to relieve the monotony of acres and acres of garter stitch. If however, you find yourself very familiar with certain parts of the Pick Up Line or know which seats in the parent waiting area are to be avoided because they eat the parents sitting on them, this might be the perfect project for you. I found it to be so perfectly portable and mindless that I knit two of them last year. The first was for me and the second was for Mindy for Christmas (done in superwash sock yarn for hers - easy care for the non knitter).

The other day, when I joined the sleeves to Coraline, I lost my portable knitting project. (Knitting a sleeve is portable. Knitting a yoke with decreases and a stitch pattern and a body and sleeves flying around, is not portable.) Fortunately, Ravelry saved the day. I had run across this pattern and saved it as a favorite. It's meant to take 2 skeins of Kid Silk Haze, which I fortunately have in my stash. (A more economical alternative would be Elann's Silken Kydd - almost the same yarn, half the price of KSH, but fewer colors, and I also have some in my stash.) I was all prepared to start this with some creamy white mohair gorgeousness, but then it hit me - I had something else I could use - some Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silkmo! Silkmo is 64% kid mohair, 20 % mulberry silk, and 16% nylon (when I went to link this, I found that the fiber content has changed slightly - it's now 70% kid mohair, 20% mulberry silk and 10% nylon. I might have to get some of the new version to test it out, for scientific purposes and all). It's very similar looking to KSH and Silken Kydd but the core is not quite as shiny. (My guess would be that it's the addition of nylon, which adds strength to the yarn, but isn't as shiny as silk.) The color of Silkmo that I have is Lunasea, which is a varigated yarn. I had purchased it a while back and actually started Atlantis in it, but soon realized that it was too varigated for the look I was going for. It got stashed and forgotten, until I realized that the Mohair Bias Loop would be perfect for a varigated brushed mohair yarn! One provisional cast on and some sitting around time later, I have the start of my very own Mohair Bias Loop! It's mindless, it's portable, it's easy, it's fuzzy and it is definitely a contender for the title of Most Perfect Portable Project! (And I might come back later and knit a dressier version in the solid cream, like I had originally planned!)