There are things you just shouldn’t do

And one of them, believe it or not, is knit every waking moment. Oh, sure, you can knit while riding in the car (back of a bike is difficult, especially if you drop your yarn… don’t ask me how I know), you can knit during meetings, lunch hours, or odd bits here and there. You really shouldn’t knit while driving. I’ve been guilty of this, on a really nice day, on a back road, going slowly, and knitting stockinette stitch. Scuba diving and knitting aren’t really compatible. But you know what else?

Knitting while exercising is totally doable! Unless you happen to be totally uncoordinated like I am, and keep falling off of the treadmill and eliptical. It’s just such a waste of time, walking or elipticalling, thinking about everything you could be doing, so I tried it. Not so good, but I’m getting the hang of it. Keeping it simple, it’s just a scarf for my granddaughter, but I fear the exercising part of it is falling by the wayside. Especially when I have to keep stopping to pick up my yarn. I’ll get there, took me awhile to get to where I could knit and walk at the same time too. And, yes, I do have one of those awesome Port-a-Pocket pouches, that helps.

And Podcasts! Who thought up that little time waster? My palm/phone/camera/portable brain has a large sd card and while it’s not an ipod, I can download podcasts and listen to them while I’m doing just about anything (again, the port-a-pocket pouch is great!). So now we have 3 things we’re doing. Elipticalling, knitting and listening to podcasts!

Check out podcasts, you can download and listen to them right on your computer. I’m not going to recommend any in particular, they’re all great, and most of these folks are just plain zany. Go to itunes and search for knitting podcasts. You’ll be hooked! Or needled. Or whatever!

So where do you knit? And what is the craziest thing you’ve ever been doing while knitting? Keep it clean folks.

Next Pattern:

When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them.

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere.

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started.

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm).

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind.

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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