A great trip.

Our trip to Montana was wonderful! In spite of driving through rain, hail, and snow on the drive there we had good weather while actually in the Glacier National Park vicinity. Montana is a beautiful state and we definitely will want to go back sometime.

My planned knitting project was perfect for the trip. It was simple enough to not need undue attention and the yarn has been a real treat to knit on. I neglected to take pictures while actually on the trip, but I've been using it as my ferry commute knitting and have made good progress since getting home.

To make the knitting more interesting and to eliminate any seams in this very textured yarn I decided to knit the vest from the shoulders down to the hem all in one piece. This will allow me to adjust the fit as well as to avoid seams. The white bits in the photo are from the provisional crocheted cast-on, where I started each shoulder separately and knit down to the armholes. Once the two fronts and the back were done they were all joined together into one piece for the body. I'm increasing a bit at the side "seams" (where the orange markers are) and increasing every other right-side row to create the wedge shaped center fronts.

While in Montana I stopped in Knits 'n Needles, the local yarn shop in Whitefish, the town where our hotel was. What a terrific little shop! Lots of charm, lots of great yarns, and a very friendly and helpful owner, Aimee. She had good sample garments scattered around, as well, which I can now prove to be a huge help in selling yarn. As I was poking around, Thomas spotted a sample child's vest made from a soft wool tweed (Berocco's Blackstone Tweed) and immediately asked me if I could make him a new vest suing this yarn. He's never looked at any yarn by itself and visualized what he might want from it, but seeing it already knitted up into a garment similar to what he'd want made all the difference. He picked out a beautiful deep charcoal grey colour with an almost purple undertone and tan, rust, and light grey flecks. I found for myself a beautiful deep teal silk and wool blend that glows like a jewel. It's from a yarn company I hadn't heard of before called Yarns Northwest. I really love souvenir yarn, and this time we got his and hers yarns!