Idle Hands

Yesterday was a trying day.  I had some issues at work that were quite difficult.  All day long I just wanted to leave and go home and play with my yarn.  It was what was motivating me to keep going...

...and what motivated me to get through the drive home (which I hate if you haven't figured that out by now).

...and what I talked about when I walked in the door.

Until I saw David put some envelopes on the counter and out of my mouth blurted, "You can take those to the PO when I finish doing the bills."

Yep, I had to do the bills last night. I hadn't even thought about it all day long. And I'd skipped doing as much of them as I could last week, so I had a LOT of stuff to go through it being the end of the month and all.

The yarn was calling, those wonderful banana splits I'm working on, and the sweater that NEEDS to get finished because I so desperately want to wear it.  I was even considering starting a new project last night just for kicks.  Or working on the easy blanket so I can start getting myself used to knitting while holding the yarn in my left hand.  It goes SO much faster.

But the bills were my responsibility and I had to get it done, so after eating a responsible dinner of tuna and black beans (which was actually pretty tasty), I got busy on those cursed bills, finished them and sat on the couch and read.

I'd lost my big desire to knit after being denied my ability to just play like I wanted, and I really didn't have the time at that point to weave.

Tonight, though, I won't have idle hands, I swear it.

Today's picture is of the lunch time afghan after I finished the first ball of yarn.  It only took 3.5 months, but I got several "squares" out of it.  I'm working on a lovely blue, purple and green (all royals) right now.

Little Bits of Time

I am one of those staunch believers that you need to fill every moment doing something.  Little bits of time add up and if you are busy then you have accomplished something.  It may not be much, but it's something.  That's why I dislike my drive so much.  There are 45 minutes wasted (each way) because I have to spend my time concentrating on the road and other drivers to make sure that I get to work in one piece.

This year, in an effort to work on my stress management, I decided that I needed to fill the minutes in my lunch hour that are not spent eating with knitting.  I like knitting.  I want an afghan one day.  So, knitting for 30 minutes or so each day will get me somewhere.  And since I've developed an obsession with sock knitting, I'll have a lot of odds and ends of sock yarn after I've knitted a pair...so I should definitely put that yarn to good use as an afghan.  Above are the completed first square and the work in progress second square.  I have a LOT of this yarn left so will get 5 or 6 squares out of it, probably.  But isn't it lovely.  It reminds me of zinnias and the rich color transitions from the center of the petal outwards. 

In one month of 20-30 minutes of knitting I've begun a square, ripped it out, and begun again with a simpler square and here I have 1.2 squares knitted.  Kind of cool. I think I can probably crank out 2 squares a month at this pace.  It'll be a lot of months adding up to getting an afghan, but I'm young and I have a lot of months of lunches left to knit.