Knitting Olympics update...#4.

Elapsed time is 73.65% as I write this, so just as well I`m about half way through Jaywaker #2.



I`ll finish it in time, I know I will, especially as I`ll have four hours of knitting time in the car on Friday morning. I`m reasonably pleased about how they`re coming out as well. The colours in the pix above are far closer to how they are in real life than the previous update pictures, btw. I took the above picture with some daylight in addition to my normal lighting, I used a more neutral background and, finally, I stopped being lazy and took a white balance reading first to normalise the colours. Much better!

I`ve been thinking about the Knitting Olympics. Now I don`t really know just what Yarn Harlot was thinking about when she originally floated the idea, but the rules said it was to be a personal challenge. Initially when I chose the Jaywalkers as my Olympic piece I was more thinking of the challenge of the pattern, given that I`m still pretty new to sock kniting and dpns. However as I progressed through Gauge Hell and Pattern Error Gully, I discovered that it wasn`t going to be so much the pattern that was the challenge, but keeping going with the knitting.

I like to knit when the kids are in bed and when there`s someting to watch on the TV. Peaceful chill-out time. Trouble with this is that peaceful chill-out time is in pretty short supply in this house, and even when it does appear it`s often so late I just want to go to bed. So I`ve been having to knit at other times, which I normally don`t much like doing. Knitting for me is a destressing activity, not a stressful one.

Having said that knitting outside the perfect zone hasn`t been that bad, and the rewards for that have been that yes, your knitting grows faster and yes, knitting does destress you even when you`re stressed when you pick up the pins. You get a sense of achievement as to having managed half a dozen rows rather than feeling stressed because you don`t have enough time to do anything, let alone knit. I don`t usually knit to deadlines because time pressure is a big stress factor for me, but I`m finding that a little stress is good for your knitting. So thanks, Harlot.