Knitting? No really, I do that sometimes...

I am trying to whittle away at a few of the more doable items on my list of good intentions for 2010. Today's project is getting the knitting projects in order with a view towards (drum roll, trumpets, choir of angels) BECOMING A MONOGAMOUS KNITTER. Seriously. I so admire people who know how many needles they own, because other than the set that is in their current project they are all resting neatly in their needle case. I am not one of those people. I recently found out that I own three identical size 8, 24" circular needles. I was actually about to buy another set when I thought to myself "waaaaaait a minute, this seems really familiar."

I knit a lot. Not nearly as much as I used to, but if there is a minute of time when I am not holding a baby, folding laundry or cooking something, I am probably knitting. And I knit pretty fast. Not Greek fast (only Woven Art regulars will know what I mean by that) but fast enough that I should be able to finish a few things now and then. But when you knit for 20 minutes at a time on 20 different projects all that "progress" is spread so thin that finishing something is a miraculous once in a blue moon experience. I actually start smaller projects so that I can finish something because the larger projects are taking too long...and I'm sure you can all tell where that is going.

I won't bother to list my "currents" here since I don't have pictures taken of them, and descriptions of half finished knitwear is...yeah. Dull. That's a future post.

Rather I want to point you towards the biggest offender in my "enabling" bookmarks collection. Is it Ravelry? where you can see thousands, nay millions of projects by other knitters to covet and inspire? No. Is it Knitty, or Twist? Those lovely on-line knit magazines full of great advice and fabulous free or affordable patterns? No. It is a relatively boring, unpretentious little site that enables you to create actual size graph paper based on your swatches. This is like crack to me. I am a color-a-holic. I love charting out little thingies (okay, skulls) to incorporate into future knitwear, and once I have the chart, then I REALLY REALLY want to see how it knits up.

So...what are you waiting for? Swatch and play! Aside from being invaluable when you want to, say, knit skull and crossbones into your kid's underwear, actual size graph paper is also very useful for figuring out decreases, on a sleeve for instance, when you don't want to do any math.

Ragnar...with skulls on it?