Effortless Cardigan by Hannah Fettig is getting a lot of attention right now and seems to be in a lot of queues. It's a super fun and fast knit, this took about a week to make, most of it when I was on a car trip. My husband and I travel well together: he is the driver and I am in charge of the music, the candy and the knitting. Just perfect, we're peas and carrots together when we travel.

It's also a fun sweater to wear. It's swingy when you walk and I love having it on. This will get quite a bit of wear time. The pattern is very well written and easy to follow.

The yarn, Madeline Tosh Merino DK is soft and springy like you want a fine merino to be. Though it says it's DK, think of it as a light worsted. I used bamboo size 7's and got a gauge of 20 st. per 4" and the fabric looks and feels great. I bought it on-line from Jimmy Beans and had a great experience with free shipping and it arrived in just two days. Once it came, I cast on and didn't stop until it was finished, (except for a tiny gnome interruption).



So now you know what I knit on our trip, would you like to know where went? We drove down the 101 from our home in Nor. Cal. to visit our kids in So. Cal. Now that we have more time, it turns out that the destination is not the whole trip. The getting there is pretty fun too. There are many beautiful places to stop and linger on our drive, San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara, the list is endless. We don't need to stop and spend the night, it's not even a 6 hour drive, but we do stop and spend the night. Going down and back up again we stay in Solvang, an adorable little Danish town in the Santa Ynez Valley. It's surrounded by horse farms and now wineries. And it's beautiful this time of year, all our rain has painted our state an eye-popping GREEN. (I know the rest of the world seems to have such catastrophic weather right now, but here we are, all gloriously green and blue)


We stopped the first night for steaks and local wine at The Hitching Post, made famous in the movie Sideways. The next morning we had Danish at Olson's, this place is famous for a reason.

For our return trip a few days later we arrive too late for dinner, but not too late for hubby to gamble at the Indian Casino. I opt for knitting in hotel room. In the morning, after Olson's again, we walk through the little town and end up at Ingeborg's because we always do. There is candy at Ingeborg's, and where there is candy to be had, we will have it.

Rasmussen's is always a stop because downstairs they have all these Scandinavian must-have kitchen gadgets that I fill my kitchen cupboards with, and upstairs there is this:
Next we stroll around an antique store.


Before we head out of town we stop to tour the Mission Santa Ines. I love missions, I take after my granddad on that, and visiting all of the California missions is at the top of my bucket list.
We then drove north on Refugio Rd. to have lunch in Los Olivos where there are dozens of wine tasting rooms for this very famous wine-grape growing area. Drive north again on Foxen Canyon Road, one of the most beautiful back roads of the area, past contented cows, California Live Oaks, and greeny green rolling hills. It's a beautiful drive. I was gazing out the window, smiling, knitting, nice trip.