The other reason is to escape into quiet contemplation, into a place where I can hide where the world cannot follow, where I can focus outside of myself and just see something very interesting happen no matter what my day was like.
On rare occasions the world intrudes into my focus, and there is less of an escape there. When that happens I go intense. Hyperfocus even. Or I try. Somedays it takes hours to work off the stress. Yesterday was just such a day.
In the space of an hour I knit 6 inches on socks and then I picked up the shawl and knit on that for several hours. Even with my slow pace here to keep my tension as close to perfect as possible, the Tasha's shawl rapidly grew past what I was comfortable working on the straights with. So back to the sock. I then realized that I could no longer focus on anything. Time to put the needles down. No way was I ready for sleep. I would have watched TV but the blurry part was a problem. Reading was not an option so I started tidying my knitting needle container. Old circs and and old needle holders wound up inside the container were causing problems.
As soon as I picked up the wine gift box that I use as a needle holder, I realized that my hands were no longer gripping anything well. This happened. Sigh.
It looked a lot like my day. I realized that in this mess, I had a 2.75 ciruclar needle and it was nice and long. I thought I'd give it a try to see if I could maintain my gauge on the shawl. Close. Very close.
It looks ok, and it seems to be holding, but the problem is this.
Do you know anyone who knits a light worsted weight yarn with a 2.75mm? That just seems wrong and I'm doubting if the whole project will be too stiff (Swatch? What swatch? ) Its going back on the 3 mm straights, and I am going to get some proper needles.
Serious needles investigation is at hand. This knitting is pretty intense, and since I'm positive I will be doing it for quite some time, I'm going to get some really decent needles. I'll be checking reviews on some of these.
Signature Needles (dreaming of these)
KnitPicks (I'll link to this one later, they are down, but they have wonderful things)
Plus the usual crowd of Susan Bates and others.
Shopping anyone?
1 comment:
I used a 16" Addi Turbo circular needle (4 mm) to knit a watch cap for Mr Ml for Christmas, using Wool Ease worsted weight. It was like a dream - so smooth, so fast, so uniform. The cap turned out great, and even fit him. Those custom needles look wonderful.
I've gotten to the point where I can resist the yarn, but I walk out the door with $30 worth of needles. So much better than what I was used to!
mostlylurking
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