Sailing Away!

Well, only three more days before we start out on our Caribbean sailing trip! We'll meet up with three other couples in St. Martin, pick up our sailboat and sail away to our first island destination. For the next 10 days, we'll be island hopping down to Guadeloupe.

And with so much to do, this will be my last post until we return mid-month. There's laundry to do, bathing suits to find, house sitting and cat feeding instructions to write, a refrigerator to purge...not to mention making sure I've got all of the knitting supplies I'll need for a project or two. And I need to track down the bathing suit I ordered. The bottom piece arrived right on schedule, shipped 2nd day. The top was back ordered and shipped today...first class mail. To arrive in 7 to 10 days. To Leesburg. Arrgh! I'll be more than halfway to Guadeloupe by then.

I haven't done that much knitting after coming back from the Knitting Experience, despite being full of inspiration. I've been trying to work out the design stitch pattern for the Rio shell and have started swatching for a couple of other projects. And it's very frustrating swatching indeed because I cannot get the gauge required! The row gauge is correct for recommended needle size, but the stitch gauge is double. Increasing a half size improves the stitch gauge, but I'm still not there. Going up a full needle size gets me stitch gauge (almost), but now the row gauge is off. I'm half tempted to get circulars in all three sizes and just start knitting the thing to see what happens when I start the lace pattern. So what am I swatching for? A lace shawl. I know, it's shawl and there's a fair amount of latitude for size, since it isn't a fitted garment. However, there's a center lace inset and I'm a little concerned that it will look a bit odd if the gauge is way off.
And maybe I'm obsessing about this a bit too much? My pitta tendencies are making themselves felt.

I promise to post pictures when I get back. In the meantime, happy knitting and spinning!