one of those knitters

It appears that I have become one of those knitters.

As best as I can tell, there are more or less three kinds of knitters.  I started out as the first, was comfortably one of the second, but seem to have become one of the third.

The first kind of knitter pretty much only ever has one project going at one time.  They start a project, they finish a project, then choose the yarn and pattern for the next project.  This has the distinct advantage that they are likely to finish most of their projects.

The second kind of knitter has a couple projects at a time, but not more than they can manage easily.  I was comfortable being one of these knitters.  I often had one small project (something that would only take a few hours, maybe - most of these little projects have been dishcloths for me), two pairs of socks (usually not more than one sock on needles at a time, though - after I finish a sock, I'm kind of tired of that pattern, so I make another sock from another pattern, then go back and finish the first pair, and back and forth), and one bigger project (a large scarf or something).

The third kind of knitter starts projects as the fancy catches them.  They have UFOs (unfinished objects) all over the place.  They steadfastly ignore the call of a current, enticing, lovely project when a new pattern or yarn catches their eye.  They flit from project to project willy-nilly.

I think I'm there.  I'm not sure I want to stay there.

Meet my current projects.

 

A wool scarf.  This is my first foray into a technique called double knitting.  Essentially what it does is create a double-thick fabric which allows you to use two colours of yarn, and create oppositely-coloured patterns on either side.  I started this for G prior to coming here.  I now have about 18" of scarf finished (about 13 repeats of the pattern), and it's planned to be about 6 feet long (this is to say, it's got a while to go).

Curtains.  These cotton curtains are being made for our kitchen (the window pictured is not our kitchen.  The kitchen window is a funny green-grey color).  I've made one.  I need two.  I've barely started the edging.  The edging is actually fun to knit.  But the body of the curtain... is boring, and goes on forever.

Socks.  These socks started out yellow.  However, the yellow yarn didn't want to be these socks, and after mostly finishing the first one, I listened.  Actually, I knew that the yarn didn't want to be these socks well before almost finishing, but because these socks are put together oddly, I wanted to understand how to make these socks before figuring out which colour the socks wanted to be.  See, most socks start either at the toe and work their way up, or start at the top and work their way down.  These socks start with the lace panel, then work to the toe, down around the bottom of the foot, around the heel and up the leg.  The original pattern had the lace panel further down the foot, and I wanted it to be higher, plus I wanted to understand how the construction actually worked.  So I mostly finished the yellow sock, figured out how I wanted to change the pattern to get the result I wanted, and then did test lace squares in green and blue before settling on the blue.  The first sock is done (and pictured).  The second sock is almost done - I just need to get around to finishing the leg.

More socks.  After the first curtain and finishing the first blue sock (which pattern I had basically knit twice in a row, which I don't usually do with socks anyway, and to make it worse, the second half of the sock is really really boring, which is part of why I haven't finished the second sock of the blue pair), I wanted something intricate.  I talked to the yellow yarn of the first round of the blue sock, and it told me it wanted some cables (the twisty bits).  So I spent some time with the Ravelry pattern database, and found this pattern (it's called "Wandering Rose").  It's intricate and complicated and looks way harder than it is (the individual stitches are not that difficult, but you have to pay attention to what you're doing to get them all in the right order).  I'm actually a couple inches into the second sock of this pair now - but well, I need to finish these two.

Another sock.  This is the toe-up variety.  While G can wear my socks (our feet are very nearly the same size), something tells me he's not likely to wear the blue or the yellow socks. We had planned on visiting his parents this weekend (about a 3 hour drive each way), but he got sick, so we're not.  However, I needed to have something to take with me that didn't involve complicated instructions I had to pay close attention to.  I've only done one pair of toe-up socks prior to this, but the bit between the toe and the heel is pretty much the same for at least 2-3 hours worth of knitting, so I figured this could be car knitting, and then I could look up the directions for the next bit when we got there.  It's not terribly obvious in this photo, but there are cables on this sock to keep it from being too boring.  (the mesh bag the yarn is in I made too... pretty much all my yarn gets to have a bag like that to keep it from falling apart while being used... each one is a good morning's worth of knitting, and there's at least one bag for every project...)

A shawl.  This is the project that has pushed me over the edge.  I had reasonable plans (until today when G got sick) for finishing the blue sock and making progress on the grey sock, I'm really enjoying knitting the yellow, and the curtains make pretty good TV-watching knitting, and the scarf, well, as long as it's done by next winter, I'm good.  But this yarn came in the mail today (I wasn't expecting it for a couple more weeks), and I had bought it with this shawl in mind... and I opened the box and less than half an hour later, I'd cast on for the shawl.  It seems that I am fickle.  But I really hope that it comes out the way I want it to.

I am not allowed to add to my projects list until I finish something else...