Bring Enough Knitting

One of my favorite things about being a knitter is that, as long as you remember to bring your knitting with you, you always have something to do.  But you have to make sure you bring enough. For example, this past weekend, I was doing a volunteer thing and was away from home (and teh internetz!) for a long time two days in a row. The first day, I went out of the house with my current sock in progress and an extra cake of sock yarn. I figured that I’d be away from home long enough to finish the one project and start on another. Only, when I sat down and got out my knitting, I couldn’t remember if I’d done the foot of the other sock with 5 repeats or 7 before turning the heel. And I didn’t want to have to frog back 2 repeats if I didn’t have to. I would have started the new sock, but I’d neglected to bring another set of needles. Lesson learned: ABEN (always bring extra needles).

The second day, I was naturally more prepared and packed 4 projects: my sock in progress, the new sock, some cotton yarn and a set of needles for a dishcloth for my TAS, and my sweater in progress. Having checked in with the other sock, I knew that I needed to do 7 pattern repeats before turning the heel. I did the pattern repeats, but decided that turning the heel would take more concentration that I had available to me, so I put it aside and got out my sweater project. I had two rows left to do before starting the lace pattern (for which there is an errata in my size and, naturally, I didn’t print out the errata before leaving home). Also, lace requires concentration and focus which I just didn’t have at that moment. So I put that down and took out the new sock, finishing the toe before realizing I hadn’t settled on a pattern for the rest of the sock. I stuffed it back into my bag, to be knitted after browsing Ravelry for patterns.

The dishcloth is what saved me that day.

Even if I could have been paying a little more attention…