portable knitting tip

During my prolonged illness, there have been times when all I have felt like doing is reading. And sometimes where my brain can’t even handle reading. At other times I feel that I can take a little more activity. Of course, I’d love to be doing some embroidery, but most of the time that’s too much for my brain (deciding where to put a stitch etc) and too much for me physically. Equally, I’d love to be working on either of my books that are underway, but have had to be temporarily shelved. Unfortunately my brain just can’t handle writing much at the moment.

So, in these times when I haven’t got anything to read, and I am capable of doing *something*, I knit squares for charity rugs. Knitting is something that I can do without concentrating, because all I’m doing is going backwards and forwards, and no tricky increasing or decreasing is required. So it suits me at the moment. Especially because even though I can’t get out much, at least I am doing something positive, something for others, and contributing something to society.

In her Christmas letter, my mother told her friends of my illness and asked if anyone had any spare wool to keep me occupied while I was incapacitated. (I was horrified when I found out that she’d done this.) I was even more horrified when bags and bags of knitting yarn donations turned up! I was beginning to feel a bit better, and knitting was becoming a bit passe. I was ready to do some embroidery, and even get out a bit.

However, I was now morally obliged to use the wool to knit the squares. So while my daughters have their sporting lessons, I take my knitting with me. I can keep my fingers busy and still be able to watch them swimming and doing gymnastics. With my youngest having just started school, for the first month they finished a half an hour earlier than the rest of the school. Because my older daughter still finished at the regular time, we had a wait until she came out of class. So I took my knitting with me and sat and chatted with my younger daughter and some of the other mothers.

I use circular needles (see right) for knitting my squares for a number of reasons:

• they are the right gauge for what I need
• if I drop one, I haven’t really dropped it, because its still attached
• because they can be popped in my bag as they are very compact (see second picture)

The interesting thing is that many people seem to have never seen circular needles before. I’ve had quite a number ask me what I am using to knit with.

So I just thought that maybe some of you haven’t seen or used them either. Circular needles are usually used to be able to knit a tube sort of shape without any seams. It means you can just keep knitting stitch after stitch after stitch, without having to turn at the end of a row, because there is no end of a row! However, you don’t have to use them that way. Like me, you can use them just as normal needles that happen to have their back ends attached.

If you haven’t tried them, they are great for portable knitting because they are so compact. I can just roll the knitting up around the ball, stick the needles in it, pop it in my bag and off I go!

As an update for how my knitting project is going, I have knitted about 30 squares. You need 28 for a Wrap With Love rug, so I already have enough for one whole rug. And I’m quite grateful for all the extra yarn at the moment, because I haven’t been so well lately, so knitting has been quite welcome. When I first thought of knitting after I got sick, I decided I’d see how many rugs I could get knitted during the course of my illness. I felt it was a good way to continue to feel like I had a place in society, even though I couldn’t do very much else. And it does (sort of) help with my constant compulsion to be making something.

One rug down, how many more to go? 🙂