This Work-in-Progress Wednesday is brought to you on Monday via a road trip to Waterloo, New York. I’ve never been much for having patience, and I couldn’t wait until Wednesday to talk about these WIPs with you.

Paul is going to paint a car for our racing friend, Denny, who lives in Ohio. We drove out to Waterloo to meet him part way so the drive from Ohio wouldn’t be so long. So, of course, since it was going to be 6 hours in the car for us, I had to figure out what knitting I was taking. Six hours is a nice chunk of knitting time and I had to make the most of it.

I decided on three projects. As I got in the truck with my huge project bag, Paul said “Um, it’s not a whole-weekend trip.” Duh. I would have twice as many projects if that were the case. (By the way, my projects are sitting on top of my well-loved Umaro blanket by Jared Flood that I finished in 2013.)

WIP #1 Longjohn Socks

These Longjohn Socks by Anne Hanson (love her designs!) were started August 8, 2014. One of my oldest works-in-progress. I put them down because there is a 4-row repeat to keep track of and at the time I put them down, I just didn’t have the bandwidth to keep track. Most of my sock projects are the vanilla version (just knitting) and are easy to carry around and not think about when I’m knitting.

So these got pushed to the back of the bin of WIPs until just recently. I only have the foot and toe to go on both. As you can see I have both socks going at the same time on two different sets of needles. That is my preferred way to knit socks so the pair will be done at the same time.

Yarn is Plymouth Happy Feet but I don’t have the color name (purple with some olive green accents).

How far did I get on this on our road trip? 2 rows. Because I had to pay close attention to the pattern, I started getting car sick! So, I picked up WIP #2. (See? That is why one must bring multiple projects. If I had only brought the socks, and then had to put them down, I would have been a miserable traveling partner for the rest of the trip.)

WIP #2 Memories Cardigan

This Memories Sweater by Heidi May was started November 15, 2017. The main reason I wanted to knit this sweater was for the thumb holes at the end of the long sleeves. I just loved the idea of them.

Plus the pattern sample sweater was knit in one of my all-time favorite yarns Malabrigo Rios and I just loved the look of the yarn with the pattern. So, that was my excuse for buying a sweater quantity of Malagbrigo Rios in the Purpuras colorway.

I had worked most of the body of this sweater, and started the bottom ribbing, so in the car I was able to finish the bottom ribbing and bind off.

Now I have the sleeves and the button band left to do.

Once I bound off, we were about 3/4 of the way home, so I picked up WIP #3 which I had started Friday night.

WIP #3 (but really an FO) The Calming Cowl

Yes, I started another project, but again, my excuse is that it will be for an online knitting class I will teach. So, I’m allowed. Plus, on our road trip it was a WIP but now it’s finished!

This is The Calming Cowl by Lisa Hannes. It has a cabled center panel and a textured body that kind of looks like cables. As the name implies it was a very calming project. The center panel requires a little brainpower but the rest is just an easy K2,P2 pattern. It really was a joy to knit.

It’s hard to see the details with it all scrunched up so I’ll show you a photo of it blocked in the next post. Stay tuned for online class dates if you are interested in knitting this.

In and amongst all the knitting, we picked up this very stripped down 68 Buick Skylark for Paul to paint.

I also bought some wonderful crocheted pumpkins for my fall decorating from Denny’s wife, Renee.

Adorable right??? Thank you again, Renee!

One the way home, we took the somewhat-long way, all the way along Route 20 (instead of taking the highway). It is a much prettier and interesting drive. We stopped in Skaneatles (pronounced skinny-atlas, believe it or not), a favorite pretty lake town of ours, and ate lunch.

Yummy fish sandwich and grilled shrimp po’ boy from Doug’s Fish Fry. It was a perfect, warm fall day and a beautiful setting.

If you are a knitter, what do you think about online knitting classes? Have you taken any? Are they something you’d like to try? Let me know in the comments below!