{"id":118,"date":"2009-03-13T20:19:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T20:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=118"},"modified":"2009-03-13T20:19:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T20:19:00","slug":"portable-knitting-tip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2009\/03\/13\/portable-knitting-tip\/","title":{"rendered":"portable knitting tip"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During my prolonged illness, there have been times when all I have felt like doing is reading. And sometimes where my brain can&#8217;t even handle reading. At other times I feel that I can take a little more activity. Of course, I&#8217;d love to be doing some embroidery, but most of the time that&#8217;s too much for my brain (deciding where to put a stitch etc) and too much for me physically. Equally, I&#8217;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&#8217;t handle writing much at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>So, in these times when I haven&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;t get out much, at least I am doing something positive, something for others, and contributing something to society.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_7t90_05oQVE\/Sbn-PxX0HqI\/AAAAAAAAAS4\/802GM1yUNWU\/s1600-h\/circular-needles.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 225px;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_7t90_05oQVE\/Sbn-PxX0HqI\/AAAAAAAAAS4\/802GM1yUNWU\/s320\/circular-needles.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312556782364925602\" \/><\/a>I use circular needles (see right) for knitting my squares for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>they are the right gauge for what I need<\/li>\n<li>if I drop one, I haven&#8217;t really dropped it, because its still attached<\/li>\n<li>because they can be popped in my bag as they are very compact (see second picture)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_7t90_05oQVE\/Sbn-EdJgDUI\/AAAAAAAAASw\/YyiWUWJbvcs\/s1600-h\/compact-knitting.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 169px;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_7t90_05oQVE\/Sbn-EdJgDUI\/AAAAAAAAASw\/YyiWUWJbvcs\/s200\/compact-knitting.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312556587957620034\" \/><\/a>The interesting thing is that many people seem to have never seen circular needles before. I&#8217;ve had quite a number ask me what I am using to knit with. <\/p>\n<p>So I just thought that maybe some of you haven&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;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!<\/p>\n<p>As an update for how my knitting project is going, I have knitted about 30 squares. You need 28 for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnsw.com.au\/Wrap.htm\">Wrap With Love<\/a> rug, so I already have enough for one whole rug. And I&#8217;m quite grateful for all the extra yarn at the moment, because I haven&#8217;t been so well lately, so knitting has been quite welcome. When I first thought of knitting after I got sick, I decided I&#8217;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&#8217;t do very much else. And it does (sort of) help with my constant compulsion to be making something. <\/p>\n<p>One rug down, how many more to go? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During my prolonged illness, there have been times when all I have felt like doing is reading. And sometimes where my brain can&#8217;t even handle reading. At other times I feel that I can take a little more activity. Of course, I&#8217;d love to be doing some embroidery, but most of the time that&#8217;s too [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hints-and-tips","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}