Knitting at Sea

Perhaps one of the best things about long sea voyages is the knitting time. Hours and hours of uninterrupted knitting time. Since I am not interested in Bingo (you have heard that rant before), or Casinos or various games or gorging myself at the buffets, this leaves me a lot of free time on the ship. Especially those ships which are crossing oceans yield extensive knitting time.

And listening to music time, there is that.

But anyway as a knitting I almost always bring more projects than might seem sensible. After all, when one is at sea it is impossible to find more yarn or knitting needles. Besides short projects I brought along a major UFO.

This sweater is Lastrada another in the seemingly endless Hanne Falkenberg designs in which I have indulged these last few years. The yarn I am using in this case is a complete substitution with fingering weight alpaca yielding a soft and extremely light garment.

first, the yarn

I started this while stationed in the UK – so figure Winter/Spring 2010. Then it sat fallow, first because of moving everything back to Germany, then because of the deployment and finally because it is just too warm for summer knitting.

The first half I completed promptly

Right side of sweater

since each half is knit in one piece – you are looking at the complete right side both front and back. It is also not like I didn’t start the second side –

the left side started

it is more a matter of the infinite number of hours of garter stitch that made me put it on hold. Since this knit is almost the definition of mindless knitting, it seemed ideal for ship board, especially since rough weather is not going to get in the way of endless stitches on 3mm needles. Oh, the good part is that you start with the maximum number of stitches so each row does get shorter.

I am still testing out the various lounges and haven’t found my favorite place to knit, but then I still have seven more sea days ahead of me after the Canary Islands.