Knitting Tuesday

Today ended up being a laundry and knitting day. I probably should have worked on my story since it's looking like the kids will be home again on Friday. I made the mistake of turning on the TV while I was folding laundry and got sucked into watching reality shows. So out came the knitting to work on while I was waiting for the dryer to stop. I typically don't watch reality shows but every now and then I need to just watch something mindless.

Most times I've got two knitting projects going - one is usually a short term project while the other is long term. My short term project is a simple ribbed scarf with some stripes at each end that I'm making for C. I made him a hat using the same colours and he asked for a matching scarf so I pulled the yarn back out of the cabinet and started it. I just finished the stripes at one end so now I have 46 inches of ribbing to do before I get to the other end. That doesn't sound very short term, does it? It's actually going faster than I expect so I'm putting it into short term category. My long term project is also a scarf but it's a much wider, much longer scarf and it has a section of cabling running down one side of it. I've gotten to the point where I've memorized the pattern so in a way it's become non-thinking knitting, which is good for watching TV.

But next week this project will get put on a back burner for a bit. I'm starting a mystery knit-along (KAL) for a shawl. I'm a bit nervous about this KAL because I've seen some of this company's shawls and they are amazingly intricate lace shawls. I have a love/hate relationship with lace. I love how it looks when it's done but at times I hate doing it. It requires me to pay close attention to what I'm doing as opposed to the two scarves I'm working on now. I will get a clue a week for the shawl. I hope I can get each clue done before the next one comes out.

I really do love knitting. I taught myself to knit shortly after J was born and I've been knitting for almost 10 years now. I taught myself to crochet when I was a teenager, possibly before that, so I've been working with yarn for along time. But once I learned to knit I ended up liking it better than crocheting. I will still crochet but I'd rather knit instead. I have made many different things. If you're a knitter and on www.Ravelry.com, feel free to stop by my page and check things out. My name there is Jennilynn.

I've been good about my resolution of knitting from my yarn stash. I have been slowly knocking down the amount of yarn I have by knitting lots of hats and now some scarves. The yarn for the mystery shawl was purchased before my resolution kicked in. I'll keep knitting from my stash as long as I can. I'm starting to get down to the point where I have more sock yarn than yarn I use for making hats so I guess it might be time to start making socks again. Or else I'll have to pull out my one-skein sock yarn book out and see what things I can make. But the good news is that I am making progress on using my stash. Maybe soon I'll get to go buy some new yarn. :-)