“Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root is in my head this morning. Why, you ask? Well, serious progress has been made. To be honest, I worked on Rusted Root while traveling to and from the East Coast for a family wedding in September. The hours flew by, and when I returned, my Rusted Root looked like an actually sweater. Then, it languished. I got it out to take pictures for the blog, and looked at it a lot when contemplating what to work on, but ultimately, decided that I didn’t have the patience at the end of the day to keep track of the lace pattern.

Enter the first work-related trip of the year — to Indianapolis and back. Determined to force myself to work on Rusted Root, I packed it and the lone Tiger Sock I have been working on.

I’ve finished the shaping, and now I just need to work the lace repeat until it is long enough, pick up stitches to finish the neckline and sleeves, and I will be done. This pattern is a lot of fun to knit — a great mixture of plain stockinette and a beautiful leaf pattern that appears as I work; great for airplanes and airports.

I did have a MacGyver moment on the way there: I didn’t bring a yarn needle for weaving in ends, etc. because I didn’t think I would get far enough to need one. I forgot about  needing to put the sleeves on scrap yarn. I packed light — not even a crochet hook in my plastic bag. I had a too-small stitch holder and my sock project, and that was it. I got out a size 0 needle (from the sock) and decided that I could use it to simulate a crochet hook and loop the scrap yarn through the live stitches in the same way that I would use a needle to pick up and fix dropped stitches. I wish I had taken pictures, as I was seriously proud of myself at the end of the process, but I figured that would be too wierd to attempt on a crowded airplane…

Soon, I will put all the stitches on scrap yarn and try on my Rusted Root. I am already excited to wear this.

By the way, Indianapolis was beautiful -rainy and full of brightly colored leaves, both on the trees and covering the narrow neighborhood roads I was driving. More soon — the Purl Scarf is coming along nicely.