Pandemic Hitchhiker

The first weekend we all stayed home because all of our scheduled engagements vanished, I started 3 new projects. Here is the first one finally finished: my Pandemic Hitchhiker:

I used up all but a few grams of the yarn, which is very satisfying. When I got close to the end, I weighed my remaining yarn every time I finished the 8-row repeat. I started calculating how much yarn it took to do a repeat (which increases the further along you go). It was easy to nail it with this approach. No yarn chicken, no stress, no frogging.

You may be wondering what this fiber looked like when it first came home with me. I got it at MDSW in 2016 (yikes). This is a blend of 65/25/10% Polwarth/Mohair Silk, dyed on top by Spunky Eclectic:

I spun a 2-ply yarn without any plan in mind, and got a skein of 528 yards of light fingering. To my credit, I spun this in September 2016, so the fiber didn't sit in stash very long. But the yarn sure did!

I think a simple, garter stitch pattern like Hitchhiker is ideal for handspun yarn.

I also think simple, garter stitch patterns are ideal for knitting during a pandemic, which is why I've started another such project. Here is the photo that instigated it:

The mother's caption was "Baby will have grown out of your sweater in a month or so and he's not happy about it!" So naturally, I cast on for another one. If I make the same pattern in sportweight yarn rather than fingering, it will come out a little bigger. So that's my plan. Luckily, I had some in stash.

Garter stitch FTW!