Escape knitting

There are times - many times - when work life is so frustrating and ties my psyche in such knots that all I can think about is getting home and spending my Saturday morning knitting on the couch. If it's easy knitting, I can have the television on in the background; if it's more difficult, I either ensure I have something on that I've seen before, or, I turn it off altogether.

My Pink Memories sweater, in progress.
A ribbed neckline is added later.

Last weekend, it was raining, it was chilly, and my mind really needed to be focused on something that wasn't my day job. And so I knit. The subject: Isabell Kraemer's Pink Memories sweater, knitted on size 4 needles (when I swatched I swore to myself that no way was I going down to size 3). My memories are knitted with Misty Mountain Farm's Prime Alpaca, which I dyed to a warm brown a few months ago. It's a simple pattern: a top-down, raglan sweater knit in the round. The fun part is that the front is garter stitch, and the back and sleeves are stockinette. When I saw this pattern, the yarn practically begged to be knit into it -- the different textures create interest, but there aren't any complexities in the pattern that would get lost in the yarn's fuzzy halo.

So there I was on the couch, trying to escape into my knitting, but because the pattern is so simple, my mind kept running off to think about the things I wanted to escape. (To explain those things would simply bore you. Just the usual frustrations with a pigheaded, idiot supervisor who undercuts the people who report to her instead of supporting them). Perhaps at this point I should simply have played the 1963 film The Great Escape. Instead I started poking around for something else to knit that would have a little more complexity.

It should come as no surprise that I love a good theme, and the Down Cellar Studio Podcast's Pigskin Party KAL fits the bill. It's a knit-a-long that lasts throughout the NFL football season. Say what you want about football and the NFL (I don't watch NFL football, myself), but this is a great excuse to knit. I participated last year and had so much fun! It was a great opportunity to try new yarns and patterns, and interact with other knitters.

This month's interception (an opportunity to knit a specific type of thing that can be entered for extra prizes) is to knit an ornament of some type. For a lot of people, this is probably a Christmas tree ornament, but it could be any knitted or crocheted item that is small enough to hang from something. Now here's the thing. For years I've thought it would be fun to knit little bird ornaments to hang around the house or on a small Christmas tree for the holidays. What an opportunity to finally begin this project!

Megan Kreiner's Four Calling Birds

And so, I put down my needles to plan my bird knitting. There's not a whole lot of options, but I did find myself tickled by Megan Kreiner's Four Calling Birds Ornaments. The cardinal in particular looks so spot-on! I even have the right yarn already! The only bummer is that it's only available as part of the 2014 issue of Love of Knitting: Holiday Knits. I could buy a digital copy of the magazine, but having never done this and being uncertain as to what I would actually get, I opted to find the hard copy instead. I found it at vintageknits.com (quite the handy website).

The magazine is scheduled to arrive in my mailbox TODAY. I'm very excited. Perhaps I will go crazy and knit all 16 "fun ideas to deck your halls" as they say on the cover... or perhaps not. The wreath just wouldn't have that lovely evergreen scent. But I will enjoy escaping my demons this weekend as I bury myself in a potential flock of knitted birds.