hmm

I am going away tomorrow for a long weekend and I don't know what knitting to take... I usually get a decent amount of knitting done on the train either way, but I'll be decently busy while I'm up there, as my nephew is not quite two.

The last few days, I have been knitting pieces from Alan Dart's Chess Set - so far I have three pawns, a rook, a knight, a bishop and a king, but they are not assembled because I don't have nuts to weight them yet (I bought them off ebay Monday night). So, I could just take the yarn to finish the black side, which would probably be enough, or I could take yarn for the white side as well, or... If the nuts arrive tomorrow I can take stuffing as well and sew up some of the bits, because sewing up is horrid and I'm not leaving it all until the end or it just won't get done. I'm already doing all the arms and most of the pawns in the round.

Or I could do something completely different. At the weekend I started trying to design a cardigan, and it started getting over-complicated, and with a bit of distance I think I was just trying to do too much - with a fitted waist and boob shaping, and a cable pattern, and then hip shaping, and what about the sleeves, and... I think I can do a cropped cardi with the shaping I was thinking about, but I don't know.

So do I take a creative project that might go horribly wrong, or a pattern which will have me scattering a dozen little pieces down the back of the sofa?

ETA: I keep thinking of packing as a huge thing, but it really isn't. Fifteen minutes and I'm done, except for the ongoing knitting swither. And when I'm going to my sister's, it really doesn't matter - I forgot black trousers and she had half-a-dozen pairs in the wardrobe, I forgot socks and I went into the shopping centre by the station and bought a pack of new ones, it's not the end of the world.

I think it's a learned thing from childhood, and the thing is, taking trips with kids is difficult, and packing for yourself and three weans is stressful. But packing for yourself, when you've travelled enough, and know what you're going to want and what you couldn't care less about... it's really not a problem.