I thought that working from home would give me more time to knit. HA! Silly, silly me. I’m knitting less than before, for many reasons. I don’t have my subway commute time, which was a guarantee of ~45 minutes to an hour each day. I knocked out little projects during that commute. (NOT complaining about not having the commute, don’t get me wrong!) Also, another problem I’m not complaining about….I have a lot of work. Thanks to my Google Ad for my little business endeavor, I have more work than I can do, quite often. Just yesterday, I was contacted by 3 people wanting to hire me to edit their 100,000+ word novels. One is amazing, one has the potential to be amazing, and the 3rd is stupid. They can’t all be amazing, and at least the stupid one is not about Dracula and prairie schooners.

This work is of the type that causes (and requires) complete immersion. If I were just doing proofreading, I could pick it up and put it down. But I have to hold the whole novel in my mind, see redundancies, sections that would better fit elsewhere in the novel, gaps, inconsistencies, etc. Plus, I get in a kind of flow with it; I’ll open the file and start editing, and the next thing I know it’s 8 hours later and I haven’t stopped to pee or eat or anything. Poof! Eight hours have passed.

I’m also teaching stats, and let’s be honest. None of the students love stats the way I do. They’re required to take it, some are very smart but some are incredibly stupid. That’s right, I said it. Some are mushy-minded people who seem to have been failed by the educational system. But anyway – also teaching stats. And also needing to do 6 research projects for the publishing house I worked for.

So when’s a girl to knit? I also worry about all the hours doing very finely-focused computer work (on a laptop with a cramped keyboard) and getting carpal tunnel. That would be just horrible. At the end of these very long days, I still need to eat dinner and straighten up, and the day is done. Last week I didn’t sleep one minute Tuesday night (thank you stupid waitress who clearly gave me full-caf instead of decaf, even though I emphasized and asked again twice before drinking it), and Thursday night I slept 2 hours.

So here is the current state of my WIPs:

there it is.

First up, the one that’s been sitting in my bag the longest: Mondo Cable Cardigan, with madelinetosh merino, in Graphite.

near the end of sleeve 1, body finished.

look at the beauty of the yarn

I realized some of my skeins were a drastically different color – blue black instead of charcoal gray – and it put a hitch in my gitalong. Thanks to ravelers, I was able to score a couple of skeins that matched better, but I’ve never recovered my mojo on this one. But it really is beautiful, and softer than a baby angel fairy’s bottom.

coming along - but not too quickly. FUN pattern to knit!

This is blanket-sized: It’s the Totally Autumn pattern by Anne Hanson, and it’s such fun to knit! The pattern is cool, and it remains so engaging as I work on it. The Cascade 220 is hard, though, and my index fingers starts to feel raw after a while, as the yarn runs over it. It’s never as hard as I remember it, so whenever I do pick it up to work on it, I’m always surprised. Still, I’ve got a long way to go on that one.

Peasy - after I finish the current ball, I'll be ready to do the collar and button band!! WOO-HOO!!

Peasy, of course, though I couldn’t photograph the color accurately today, for some reason. You’ve seen it so many times on my blog, so you know the color is a rich avocado. I’m getting there, and cannot wait to wear it at Rhinebeck. One good thing that’s come about as a result of this sweater: I don’t hate the purl row as much as I used to. The collar and button band are simple, and not very wide, so I really am getting near the end with this one. Just one more ball of Rowan Felted Tweed.

this one is suffering from no commute time

The Sockhead Hat, in a Regia yarn that I’m not all that crazy about but it was a gift so I love it for that reason. This one stays in my project bag in my purse, and whenever I’m in the subway I feverishly work as much as I can, but I’m only in the subway once a week now.

I don't know; I'm not feeling it. The yarn is just so special - may just frog this.

This snowflake hat pattern is fun to work, and of course the yarn nearly makes me cry, it’s so soft and lofty and such gorgeous colors too. I suspect I really want something different for the yarn, something I might wear against my skin – a little shawl or something, to wrap near my neck. I do suspect I’ll frog this.

close to the toe on sock #1

And my socks, out of Tosh Sport (colorway tweed – this photograph does capture the color pretty well, which I think should be called bronze. But they didn’t ask me.)

the beginnings of bag #1

And a new project I cast on yesterday – the Monteagle bag, using the Louet Euroflax yarn string yarn I recently got from Paradise Fibers. I’ll be making two of these, if I can tolerate it. The linen is kind of hard to work with, especially with these tricky stitches (the next one of which I cannot begin to figure out: “*Knit into the back of the second stitch with a double wrap, but do not transfer to the right needle; knit the first and second stitches together through the back loops with a double wrap and transfer both stitches to the right needle; repeat from * around on each following pair of stitches.”) WHA??? And the linen wants to be straight and hard and pop off the needle mid-stitch.

For now, though, many other less-pleasant tasks are calling my name. Shut up you less-pleasant tasks! I’d rather be knitting.