Knitting Monogamy

We’re healthy again here. (Or at least, recovering.) So the knitting has resumed, albeit slowly.

I’ve been thinking about knitting monogamy. I used to be extremely monogamous with my knitting. I’d start a project and keep plugging away at it until it was done. I’d carry the same project everywhere with me, knitting on it in waiting rooms, in the carpool lane, at long red lights… pretty much anytime I had enough time to pull my project out of the bag.

And then something changed. For one thing, I became a better knitter. Instead of tackling that first pair of socks (just to see if I could do it) or that first hat, I’m an accomplished enough knitter now to know that I am more than able to finish the project. So perhaps I don’t have anything to prove now. And for another… like most knitters I know, I have a (cough, cough) rather long queue of projects I’d like to knit (and the ever-increasing yarn stash to accommodate those projects). So casting-on for one or two (or three or four…) projects makes me feel like I might actually get to them all. Or maybe I just (as the Yarn Harlot says) have a really bad case of start-itis. Whatever the cause, it’s become pretty clear that I’m about as monogamous about knitting as Tiger Woods is about women.

But it’s not entirely a bad thing. Some projects are more portable than others. It’s a lot easier to pull out a small sock when you’re sitting in a waiting room than a whole sweater. But a stockinette sweater knit in the round is a perfect television-watching project. You can knit and knit and knit, without ever taking your eyes off Downton Abbey.

And sometimes you’re just not up to a complex project. I love my beaded Haruni scarf, but I’m nearing the end, so I have well over 200 stitches per row. Knitting a single row (pausing every four or five stitches to place a bead with a tiny crochet hook) and purling back takes me almost an hour. And the yarn is dark, and the beads are slippery, so the only place I can work on it is sitting at my kitchen counter, with the lights turned up all the way. Not exactly a good project for the carpool lane!

And sometimes you just need to take a break. After an intricate row on the Haruni, the simplicity of my Lanesplitter (knit three rows, purl one) is a breath of fresh air. And when I get tired of picking vegetable matter out of the Noro Silk Garden, going back to the lovely, tight plies of Sundara’s Sock Yarn is an equally welcome change.

The biggest downside to this arrangement is that it makes for rather slow progress on the individual projects. I’d love to post more pictures of my works-in-progress, but honestly, they look pretty much the same. A few more rows, a few more beads, neither still bearing much resemblance to the finished items they’ll become. So I suppose knitting philandering requires a bit more patience on the part of the knitter (and also the recipients of the knitted items, if they’re destined for others!).

How about you? Are you a monogamous knitter?

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