Progress or Not

When last you heard from our heroine she was madly trying to complete too many things and deciding which items to place into her suitcase and which clothing to leave home.
Today she can proudly announce the following checks on her list.

√ cami blocked in plastic wrapping with extra yarn and needles ready to be placed into the suitcase.
√ one sock completed
√ singles done and ready for plying for Presto Chango
~√ only one more batch of dyeing to do before take off

Still to be done:
--- practice spinning cashmere on Spin’n Ride so she doesn’t look like an idiot amateur trying to spin it in public.
---when the needles get here on Monday, remember to put them into the Sea Shell sock bag
---send out a newsletter announcing the Open House June 26 & 27  Oh and dyeing workshop signups & other info is here or else call.
---finish deciding which projects go into her carry on bag.

However she has this little problem........ Susan tends to fill up open spaces in her schedules. It might be left over from teaching. Maybe, but it's like a compulsion.

So the other day I bought myself the Spring/summer issue of Vogue Knitting.  I love that magazine.  The designs and layouts are usually over the top.  It's such fun to think about how they thought up the locales and the backgrounds and the costumes under and around the knitted garments.   Sometimes I do wonder just who wears those things.  Certainly not I.  The current issue has a Gatsby look.  The models are photographed so they looked even taller and slimmer than usual. I love losing myself in the page, looking at details, thinking about somebody's high life in the Hamptons or Newport in another age.

 There I was sipping my iced coffee when I turned the page and saw a vest.  I love vests.  I knit too many of them but they are usually winter weight items.  Here was something very airy that looked like it would be a quick knit.  I only have a denim vest for spring and nothing for summer.  I want a summer weight vest.  I don't want to buy one.  uh.  oh.   BIG.  TIME.

Before I knew it I was walking into our LYS looking for cotton yarn. Sometimes its a nice change for me to use a commercially prepared yarn.  There I found some nice bamboo cotton blends in bulky but nothing in the right color. sigh... I did wind up purchasing some Rowan Summer Tweed (cotton/silk noil) in a nice plum with black flecks but once I got home and made the swatch not only was the yarn sticky to work with but the gauge was too off to be easily accommodated. I know better than to work with silk noil.  It is always ucky to me.  OK that's a sign, right?  Cut this out.  Susan you have plenty to do before Wednesday without taking on another project.  I did allow myself to drool over look at his pattern on Ravelry where the folks who have made this already say it is really fast, retro and a hoot to boot.  Size 15 needles too.

Then yesterday I went to AC Moore to find a pair of round ended folding scissors to take with me.  I looked and looked with no success but did find some ultra soft Lion Brand organic cotton.  Lion Brand has some nice yarn hidden in its line up.  All of a sudden 3 skeins in almond and 3 balls of Sugar 'n Cream cotton in striping blue were in my arms.

 uh oh big time.

I made myself finish spinning the panda and then, as a reward, allowed myself to do a swatch, 

only a swatch.  

Somehow this morning this much of the vest was already done.

Do you think I will be that skinny when I model mine?