28 March 2011

Knitting on a work day

Monday is a fairly heavy day for me, work wise. I like to do a thorough clean through of the kitchen, laundry and family room. After a weekend of the whole family being home they really need it. And there's always washing to do, as well as tidying up the rest of the house.

On top of my housework I have a lot of Cheapskates work to do to. Catching up on emails that have come in over the weekend, getting the website up to date, working on the newsletter and answering questions usually takes a couple of hours on a Monday.

Today I was itching to get it all done and I had a great time racing myself to see just how quickly I could get everything done. I even made a chocolate cake for afternoon tea. I know, I'm just a kid at heart, but I had a powerful motivator - I wanted to get back to my knitting.  I have a lovely new multi-coloured yarn to use and I was just dying to see what it looked like knitted up.  The urge to knit was intensified by a discussion I heard on the radio this morning about how fashionable knitting has become and how many young girls, and some not so young, are flocking to knitting classes in droves.

As an added incentive Mum rang to ask if she could borrow some knitting needles. She's put her spares away in a safe place and can't remember where it is. I've always said you should never put things in a safe place because they'll be gone forever, or until you don't need them anymore!

Anyway I had to sort through my stash of spare needles to find the sizes she wants. While I was doing that I decided that they all looked a little grimy and dusty so I filled the kitchen sink with hot water, added a squirt of dishwashing liquid and gave them all a good wash. Grimy and dusty they were, the water turned brown very quickly, a good reminder to always wash my hands before I start knitting. I swished them for a couple of minutes then let them soak for a few more, gave them another swish and drained the sink. I spread them on a tea towel to dry before I paired them up.



I was trying to think of something I had on hand to keep the pairs together when I remembered the kitchen junk drawer. I found just the thing - plastic sandwich bag ties - sitting in the junk drawer just waiting to be used. They are the ideal size to wrap around a pair of knitting needles. I've put the needles for Mum aside and the rest are back in the needle case, all clean and paired up. I just love having things neat, tidy and organized.

By lunchtime I was ready to sit down and knit so I turned the TV on and watched Born and Bred, a lovely program about a doctor and his family set in an English village in the 1950s. It's on Channel 72 on a Saturday evening at 6.30pm. We were busy on Saturday night so I recorded it to watch later. Today was "later".

Before I knew it, it was time to go and get Hannah. I packed a bottle of water for her, picked up my knitting and off I went. I was a little early so I sat in the car and knitted quite happily until she came down.  She just shook her head as she climbed into the car.

I can't help it. I like to have something to do and knitting is easy. It'll be winter soon enough and I'll start tapestry again, but in the meantime I'll keep on knitting. I think knitting has always been in fashion.

2 comments:

  1. I've just been through the saga of sorting out knitting needles. In this case it was because I'd bought bamboo needles and wanted to get my self organized. So...I sewed a 'needle' roll - not unlike a tool roll. Each 'cell' became a little larger as the needle sizes went up or perhaps I had two the same. It's no longer a chore to change needles.

    Helen H

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  2. Helen I have one pair of bamboo needles and they are just lovely to knit with. Most of my needles are very, very old - older than me - and came from Mum, and they are tortoiseshell. I have from a 14 (old size) right through to 5 (again, old size) with doubles of some of them. I love knitting with them too, so smooth and easy to slide the stitches along.

    I have a bundle of spares made up of odd tortoiseshell, plastic and metal needles that Hannah uses now and then, or I lend to my sister-in-law or Mum when they need a certain size, but I really prefer my favourites. But if something happened and I had to replace my set of needles I'd be very happy to go with bamboo.

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