Saturday, June 14, 2008

Comfort Knitting

It has been a very busy week! Even though the summer is supposed to be more laid back (1 class instead of 2-3), I still have a full therapy load, 1 full day in the child clinic (I test children for ADHD, learning disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and other mental health concerns), 1/2 day at an asthma clinic, research, and a stack load of meetings. For every patient I see, I have at least 30 minutes of supervision and then about 3 hours of research meetings. ::sigh::

What has been getting me through this? Two things. First, every night before going to bed I work on my blue, ribbed, homespun scarf. I love this thing. It is soft and cozy and a quite large at this point (I am determined to finish two skeins of homespun for it even if that is a bit excessive). It is like the security blanket I had as a kid but it looks far more presentable than my blankie. I am so amazed how mindless the ribbing is. When I knit this scarf in Fiesta years ago, I had to rip back a million times. I needed stitch markers to remind me when to switch from purl to knit. Now I can read the stitches and I can knit this while watching my favorite BBC shows. I will have to take a picture tomorrow for you.

The second thing that got me through this week was my new favorite podcast. Now I have been out of the knitting community for a while, so this might be old hat to everyone, but I will share my new find just in case you haven't heard of this podcast. On Tuesday I cruised iTunes for new knitting podcasts (my backload of Cast On is gone, so I needed something new for my daily school commute) and found the KnitPicks podcast. Now I was unsure about trying this podcast since it was company sponsored, but the popularity level was high, so I decided to try it out. Please keep in mind that I have only listened to the first 15, but here is my opionion about the show.I love this podcast. The show is only 30ish minutes, so it is the perfect length for my walking commute around school. The woman who does the podcast keeps a nice flow to the show. She talks about her own knitting, talks about different knitting techniques (I learned something new about ribbing!), reviews a few knitting books (I love this since I am a knitting book harlot), and sometimes interviews coworkers or big name knitters (I am listening to an interview with Ann Budd now). Yes, she does refer to knitpicks yarn regularly (she does most of her knitting with knitpicks yarn), but this doesn't bother me. At least in these early episodes I haven't felt like I am listening to a commercial.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:28 AM

    It makes a big difference when you can read the stitches. My 9 yr old son is just beginning to knit and yesterday he suddenly realised that depending on the stitches it looked different. First step to reading the stitches. I love watching him grow in confidence

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