knit every day

Moved on from the finished pink shawl, to several other shawls or shawl-like objects. One is bulky and somewhat frustrating; one is simple and somewhat boring; one is complex and somewhat intimidating. Oddly enough, I like them all, and I’m making progress on at least one of them every day.

With pink shawl. It’s taken me what, two months? Partly because I got a little distracted. After this shawl is done and blocked, I have another to start that a friend, in a fit of generous exuberance, gave me yarn for so we could do a knit-along. I didn’t really need another project, but it is lovely of her to want to give me a yarn treat, and I do think I’m going to like the shawl.

The knitted border is a new piece of lace, so it’s going to take a bit to get up to speed. I haven’t finished one motif yet, and there’s ten per side (2 sides) plus the point of the shawl. At this rate, I’ll be done in, oh, 4 weeks? But I think I’ll pick up steam. And even if it takes 4 weeks, well, it’s not a race, right?

Not sure why I picked this goal. Probably because I hadn’t knit the day before. But usually I knit every day because if I don’t, I grow scales and start digging through the carpet. Still, it’s nice to see something on my list that I’m really likely to achieve.

What I did today: cast on for the border of a shawl (have already knit the body), found errors in the pattern, alerted the designer, frogged, started over. But I still love this pattern, and it’s going to be a beautiful shawl.

I’m still finding myself too busy, too tired, or too distracted to do this daily. Plus, after three sinus infections and a bit of wrestling with tendinitis in my hands (!), I wasn’t healthy enough to keep up for a while.

What I have managed to do is knit at least 3 days a week, keep active WIPs down to 2 at a time, stay away from startitis, and donate a bunch of my unused stash. Plus – I haven’t bought yarn since the first of February!

I’m happy enough with my progress that I don’t feel too bad about giving up on this goal. I’d rather focus on quality than quantity!

From January 3-11, I kept this to a T. The creeping crud hit me a little on the 12th and 13th, but I’m back on track today. As long as I make this a continued goal, I still think I’ll accomplish what I’m setting out to.

My projects seem to take forever to finish. It’s taken me a while, amongst all my busy-ness and stress, to come to the realization that I’m not actually a slow knitter. My problem? I usually only knit for a couple of hours, once a week.

Well, I’m ready to change that, and starting with my regular Thursday knit night, I did. I’ve knit a couple of rows a day on a project that’s been on the needles for almost a year, and the progress is impressive.

While I know I won’t manage a lace shawl segment – or even a blanket row – every day, keeping a smaller project in my purse all the time will help. Whether it’s a 30-stitch dishcloth row or a 30-row repeat, I will do my best to knit every day from now on.

Even if its just one row, I want to make sure I work on some project at least once every day.

I’ve been keeping up with this one pretty well. Knitting makes me feel very calm and focused. And I’m really starting to see some progress on all those half finished sweaters and scarves I have lying around the house.