One of the things I'm intending to do with this blog is keep track of what I've got on my needles.
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| Working on a summery hat on New Year's Eve. |
Yes, I know that I can do this on Ravelry and Instagram, but I think that blogs give you that little bit more room to explain your thinking alongside photos and links to other places.
I used to be a strictly monogamous knitter, dutifully working through one project and one project only until it reached its conclusion, at which point I would then cast on for my next project; sometimes, if I was feeling especially daring, I might cast on for the next project before I had finished sewing up the previous one!
Several things left to this change in approach.
Firstly, if you start to lose enthusiasm for your solo project, but you feel like you can't cast on your next one until it's done, it kind of sucks the fun out of knitting, and so it can be easier to just not knit at all. Obviously, this does nothing to help you make progress towards finishing the unfun project, and kind of kills your knitting mojo.
Secondly, I've found it helpful to have different projects on different sized needles to help prevent hand and wrist strain. It would appear that this is some well-known thing in lots of knitting circles, but I didn't realise it until I'd been knitting for about 15 years. I'm a tight knitter to begin with so too much time spent on projects calling for smaller needles is guaranteed to make my hands feel sore and achy. Multiple projects means I can take a break from knitting by doing more knitting. This is always a win in my book.
And thirdly, I now have children. Three of them, in fact. I need to grab my knitting time when I can.
Sometimes I can get a good three hour stretch to knit when they're in bed. Other times, my sole knitting time for a day is ten minutes here and there when they're involved in other things. For this reason, it's just not practical for my only project to be something that requires a great deal of concentration, I need something mindless and easy to pick up and put down too.
Right now I have four projects on the go, this is maybe one project too many, in an ideal world, three would probably be a little easier to manage; too many projects and you start to feel like you're neglecting some of them at times. Two of these are blanket projects and in the future, when I successfully finish one of them, I'll probably just stick to a single blanket at a time.
Blanket #1 is a temperature blanket for my son, tracking the daily temperatures from the day of his embryo transfer in 2017 to his birth in 2018. It's mindless TV knitting, but not particularly portable.
Blanket #2 is the Rowan Elder Throw. This is a lockdown era knit along which was released in eight parts. I started on January 1st this year, planning for each release to take 6.5 weeks or fewer, but have already fallen behind my target. This is an indulgent project for myself and one which I'm happy to take my time on. I'll talk about this project in greater detail in a future post.
Next on my needles is a hat project, I make these to sell so like to have one on the go at all times. They're baby knits so never likely to take too long and generally these are pretty portable. Except for when they're not! The current hat project involves some colourwork, so having two balls on the go doesn't always make for the most portable of projects.
So naturally, I need a back up portable project. This is generally subject to change, depending on what I'm in the mood for. Until recently this was a cardigan for my kids' dolls, but I've made three of them to date so felt it was time to ring the changes; now I'm working on a little purse.
I'll share photos, inspiration, and more info about these projects in future posts.
