Snail Spirals

I mentioned a couple days ago that I brought Kiri as my travel knitting. I cast this on in the airport in Boise as we were waiting to get clearance to fly to Chicago, in what would become the three day adventure of getting to Maine. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much done during all that waiting as I would have liked, because of extreme tiredness and toddler chasing.

I did, however, manage to get Chart 1 and four repeats of Chart 2 done.



I've only knit a few rows since I've been in Maine, but finally picked it up again today. I'm halfway through the seventh row of leaves. It's an easy knit, once you get the pattern figured out and memorized. That's why I chose it for travel knitting- no concentration necessary.

Recognize the yarn? Yep, it's Urchin revisited. I had to get another skein to finish off the edging, so I had this mostly-full skein left over. I knew I wanted to bring just one project on this trip so as to reduce the volume I had to pack, and a lace shawl seemed to fit the bill. Fine yarn and small needles mean it takes a while to finish and doesn't need much space.

I'm knitting this on 2.5 mm (US 1) Addi turbos, and have ~90g (I think...need to check that...) of yarn. I plan to just knit and knit and knit, hopefully leaving enough to do the edging. Ideally, I would like to use up all this yarn and have none left over. The attraction of this pattern was that it's knit from the center neck out, increasing at the center so that you can stop at any point on a whole repeat. And the way it starts from a sideways provisional cast on, so that you have an unbroken band of continuous garter stitch along the neck edge? The elegance of that pleases me no end.

Also, fair warning for Kris: I really don't like the color of this yarn. It's an insipid baby blue. (When I bought the three skeins I used for Urchin they were on sale, and I bought them hating the color, loving the price, and knowing that I would overdye the finished product. I can't tell you how galling it was to have to buy another skein of this so-very-not-me color to finish Urchin.) I'll be overdyeing Kiri when it's done. Prepare yourself accordingly. ;)