I *had* to cast on something new

Last Monday afternoon I was packing my bag for Monday evening's knitting group and looking through the available projects, only to conclude that none of them were suitable. On my needles were:

1. A baby blanket that I had got to the border of. Large pieces of fabric do not work well in the pub
2. A pair of socks that had reached the critical 5 rows before the heel step, and I was planning a heel I hadn't done before. Far too much concentration required to work on whilst chatting
3. A baby cardigan with just the sleeves to go. Perfect, apart from the my not being certain I'd have enough yarn to make both sleeves full length, so the yarn would need weighing every few rows to make sure I can make both sleeves the same length, and I wasn't taking the scales to the pub, which made this project another no go

So what's a girl to do? Cast on a new project of course!

I needed something easy enough to do whilst chatting, but something interesting enough that I would also want to finish knitting it later. I opted for the Htichhiker scarf, currently the most popular pattern on Ravelry, with over 19,000 projects! The scarf has been in my queue for a long time, and has recently been promoted with my acquisition of rather a lot of hand painted sock yarn - the combination of garter stitch and constantly changing row lengths makes this pattern perfect for such yarn. 

I wound one skein of my Mother's Day yarn into a ball and threw it in my bag along with a pair of 2.75 mm needles (gauge isn't too critical for this pattern, and these needles should get me pretty close to the tension specified). I cast on in the pub, and immediately liked my pattern selection: the pattern is really well written, with some nice details; the pattern repeat is only 8 rows, so easy to memorise; the yarn is a pleasure to work with, soft, squishy and I'm enjoying watching the pools of colour emerge. I knitted 8 'teeth' in the pub, and have now done 14; I'm really looking forward to knitting the remaining 28!