I broke one of my knitting rules yesterday. Yes. I said knitting rules. And one of my rules is that I only allow myself to have one mindless project going at a time. It used to always be a sock but, while my love for sock knitting has never wavered, my love for actually wearing hand knit socks has . . . decreased . . . in recent years. I do have a pair of socks on the needles, though, and the 2nd one is this.close to being finished. As in, there’s less than an inch of ribbing to go on this toe up baby. It does still need an after thought heel but that’s not mindless and I needed some mindless knitting.

Why?

Because last night was town meeting in the town where I work. And, while I needed to be there to answer any questions related to the library budget, the rest of my time was spent observing. As knitters, we know that observing and knitting go hand in hand. You know what makes for perfectly mindless and delightfully entertaining mindless knitting?

A Musselburgh Hat.

I started it at home yesterday morning to get past the fiddly cast on.

It was a loooooong meeting . . . and this is how far I got last night.

Town Meeting and Knitting. Just call me Madame Defarge.

One of the things I vowed to do recently was to be consistent with blog posts and to plan them a week in advance as much as possible. This has mostly been working well for me and I’m not left in the early morning trying to figure out what I want to say.

Except, of course, that Wednesdays Are For Knitting . . . and there really hasn’t been much knitting going on at all.

I mostly blame Fred and George. While I can knit on the sweater while they are sleeping, I have to keep it where they can’t find it at all other times, which is currently the mudroom. That one little detail has proven to be a huge barrier when it comes to actually working on it.

The same can be said of the socks I have going. They have to be kept away from my little furry friends except when I am working on them and, while they are close by, I just haven’t been reaching for them. Instead, when it’s time for television, I tend to play a mindless game on my phone while watching our shows. It’s a bad habit and I need to break it and that’s why I’m confessing it to you.

So. Brighten my day by telling me what YOU are knitting these days!

I wish I had an exciting knitting update for you but things are pretty much the same on that front.

There is progress . . . but it’s not exciting progress. The leg of the second toe up sock is longer. The length of the Daytripper Cardigan is longer. But neither is longer by much and I blame Tik Tok and reading and, quite frankly, Fred and George.

It’s fairly easy to knit on the sock while they are awake as they don’t seem to pay much mind to that. But the sweater? Those Icelandic wool fumes are irresistible to them and I can only work on it when they are (soundly) asleep. I’ll finish it one of these days.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the process.

I saw a this or that on Instagram a few weeks ago and I saved it, thinking it would be fun to blog about it. And since it’s Wednesday, and since Wednesdays are for knitting, and since I don’t have any new knitting to share with you, today’s the day.

This Or That . . .
Sleeves First or Body First
Chart or Written
Weave In Now or Weave In Later
Metal or Bamboo
Knitflix or Read and Knit
Monogomous or Too Many WIPs
Circular or Straight
Stitch Markers or Wing It

Here are my answers . . .

Body first. I’ve heard that sleeves can work as a gauge swatch but it’s not something I’ve ever tried.

Chart. I love to use charts and especially love to use them in the Knit Companion app.

Weave in Now. I really dislike weaving in ends so I try and do it as I go along rather than be faced with a whole lot of them to deal with at the end.

Both metal and bamboo. My interchangeable needles are bamboo (I got the Tulip set from Modern Daily Knitting almost 3 years ago and I use them a lot) but I also love Addi Turbo needles, especially when knitting lace.

Knitflix. Or anything else on tv. I don’t generally read and knit although I can do it.

Monogamous. Sort of. I usually have 2 projects going, one for at home and one that is portable. This occasionally expands to 3 but that’s my limit.

Circular. Always.

Stitch markers. But not many. I use them to mark the beginning of a round, because who wouldn’t? But I don’t use them when knitting lace because I can see the lace better without the stitch markers. I think it was Margene who told me to try this ages ago and I haven’t looked back since.

I hope you’ll give me your answers in the comments, I’d love to learn more about your knitting preferences and choices.

That title up there? It’s a little misleading. I have indeed started my Daytripper Cardigan. And I did indeed start it on February 1st, along with a gaggle of knitters from Modern Daily Knitting.

However.

I have no intention of finishing this by the end of the month. I am mostly knitting on this exclusively and it is knit on big needles, but it’s not a race for me and I just want to enjoy the hell out of knitting it.

You may recall that I bought the yarn for this sweater back in August while in Iceland for Hannah’s wedding. We visited, of course, the Handknitting Association of Iceland in Reyjkavik. And I considered actually buying a sweater but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, especially since I’m pretty sure that yarn is about the only thing cheaper in Iceland than in the United States. So, I shopped the huge wall of léttlopi and, with Dale’s help, chose colors that reminded me of Iceland.

I cast on Tuesday night and knit just up to the point where the colorwork started. And then I sat down last Friday morning and I mapped out my colors and I spent the rest of the day knitting the yoke. Saturday morning I took a look at it and decided it looked like crap. The orange was totally wrong against the purple, the white didn’t jump out at all, and the medium blue provided no contrast with the purple. I should have taken a photo so you could see just how spectacularly I failed but you’ll just have to trust me on this. Once I got over my mistake and realized it was worth fixing, I ripped back and changed the placement of the colors and, once again, spent the rest of the day knitting the yoke. By that evening I had finished the colorwork and I was much much happier with the results.

By Sunday night I had gotten past dividing for the sleeves and I am now knitting round and round (and round) on the body. This is the mindless part and it’s absolutely perfect for knitting and watching the Olympics.

And that’s what I’ll be doing for the next little while.