I have a new lapboard and I could not wait to try it out
(how quiet a life I lead!).My lapboard
is my desk when I am stationed in my leather chair – and is especially useful
for holding My Pet (my mini-notebook computer – not a parakeet or gerbil).My old one suffered some, er, unpleasantness
from one of the cats and had to be discarded (immediately).So, for a few days I have been improvising
with a cushion and a clipboard.And I
kept saying, gee, I should go out and get a new lapboard.
But I didn’t.The
weather here has been crazy – when we woke yesterday it was dumping snow and
there was already an inch or so on the ground.The rest of the day: sleet, rain, wind, rain from several directions at
once, hail, about 10 minutes of a completely blue sky, then the rain came back –
and the wind.There was sleet
again.And when we went to bed snow was
powdering the back deck.Today, we are
back to the plain drenching rain that chills your marrow.So, I have been lurking inside as much as
possible.
Fortunately, we needed groceries.And George, being kind of a hero, not only
went to the grocery store, but stopped at Bed, Bath and Beyond to get me a new
lapboard.And it is a pretty spiffy
one.It has a built-in cup holder and a pop-up LED
light on a flexible goose-neck (and it looks like some kind of space-age alien
thing – pretty cool).It has a pencil
trough, too.
My husband, George, is accustomed to finding baskets and
bags of knitting about the house.He was
kind of wondering, though, why there are now empty bowls strewn about as
well.A ceramic bowl has been living on
the floor by my chair for over a week.There is a wooden salad bowl which moves about – from the dining room to
the living room and back to the dining room.
Knitting Bowls.
I have discovered that a nice smooth bowl (such as a wooden
salad bowl or one of those many lovely bowls my kids made in ceramics classes)
holds a ball – or balls – of yarn beautifully while one is knitting from said
ball (or balls).One yanks the next
stretch of yarn and the ball bounces in the bowl.The yarn pulls smoothly because the ball is
not wedged in the bottom of a bag.It does
not get caught on the paraphernalia in my knitting bag (or the bag handles or
the pointy wicker ends of a basket) or get tangled with the yarn from another
project (I have more projects than bags…).Meanwhile, the yarn ball bounces contentedly in the bowl and does not
fall off my lap or the table top and roll across the room.
Brilliant.
And, now, a photo of a finished project (polite applause).This is a picture of Sonja wearing the
capelet I knit for Sasha this summer (Sasha is away at college and unavailable
for modeling).It is a wool/silk blend
yarn knit in A LOT of moss stitch with a cable panel.There are segments of mohair box pleat edging
and vintage buttons.
Another essential knitting tool that doesn’t fit in a
knitting bag is a Good Chair in a Good Spot.Over the years, I have knit in living rooms, waiting rooms, parks,
trains, cars, beds, airplanes, coffee shops – wherever I happened to be and
happened to have my knitting along.
But I have favorite knitting spots, of course.The car on roadtrips, for example.Starbucks is a good one, too.At home, I usually knit in my leather chair
in the living room – usually in the evening.During the summer, I enjoyed knitting out on the deck, but autumn has
settled in and I doubt I will do any more deck-knitting this year.
But now I have a new spot – and I am pretty excited about it
(okay, even knitters may think I am a little crazy now, but…)
The leather-chair-in-the-living-room is cozy in the evening,
but a bit gloom-ish in the afternoon.Our autumn-winter-spring skies are (almost) perpetually gray, but even
the thinnest daylight is welcome as the nights elongate.Our living room faces east and has narrow
windows – there are some lovely tall firs glowering nearly to the walls of the
house, too.So, in the afternoon there
is essentially no daylight – not even the thin stuff.Meanwhile, across the way is the dining room
which faces west, has a generous bay window – and the lovely tall firs are a
good stone’s throw from the house.So,
lots of thin daylight!
Frequently, I sit and knit at the dining room table;except thatI don’t much care for having a big heavy table hanging over my lap while
I knit and the chairs are sturdy wooden ones that are not well-suited for the
leaning-back-a-bit position I prefer for knitting.So the dilemma:if I stay in the dining room, I get fidgety
and stiff, if I retreat to the living room, I cast longing glances at the
luminous dining room window and become depressed.
Enter: the sudden realization that I have small sewing
rocker (i.e. a rocking chair without arms – arms get in the way when one is
sewing by hand and, coincidently, when one is knitting).I fetched the rocker – which is compact
enough to fit between the table and the window without my having to rearrange
anything.I zapped a mug-worth of coffee
I found stone cold in the pot, put my iPod into the speaker-thing which is attached
to a kitchen cupboard (a benefit to being in the dining room beside the
kitchen), located a piece of dark chocolate (another benefit of being close to
the kitchen), pulled out my lace knitting, sat down on my rocker in a pool of weak
Pacific-Northwest sunlight, and began to knit!
I found that the rocker has a pleasant throaty creak and
that the ability to rock a bit helps me settle into my knitting rhythm – and
decreases my need to fidget.AND I get
daylight in the daytime.Sometimes it
really is the simple things that make all the difference.
I have been using a new knitting bag (which I bought at Stitches West) to house Max’s sweater project. It is too lovely to call a mere “bag,” of course, but what other word do we have? Purse? Handbag? Not a Tote, heaven help us! Reticule? Sack, Haversack, Carryall, Holdall, Quiver? Thank you, Mr. Roget for your kind help, but I am left with Bag. Knitting Bag, it is.
This knitting bag is made by Offhand Designs – sumptuous velvet in smashing green stripes with black velvet piping. Black grosgrain interior. Sensible pockets and handles – and those little brass feet. It is a long, narrow bag (clutch-shaped) and a departure from my usual voluminous black-hole bags (the stuffable kind that usually retains crumbs, as well as every broken pencil lead, receipt, and twist-tie that has passed within 3 feet, but time-warps crochet hooks and the last page of sweater instructions into the stone age or Renaissance or somewhere they are unlikely to do any good – okay, maybe Queen Elizabeth I would have appreciated a nice standardized set of crochet hooks…).
This is a “One Project Bag.” Totally monogamous – one sweater, no little sock-knitting slipped in. I am becoming converted to this method. Besides the obvious fact that it totally legitimizes the purchase of new knitting bags, it keeps me focused. If I have one knitting bag with three or four projects inside, I am pretty much destined to project-hop my way through the evening. I will begin with the baby sweater and, eventually, the socks will start whining for attention or the ball of silk (that is not even cast-on, the hussy!) will coo invitingly. With one project in the bag, I am safe – or, at least the other projects would have to really yell from the bedroom and then I would actually have to get up out of my chair…
Anyhow, it is a good system and the new bag is a good bag. The best feature is the frame which is hinged in 6 places. It snaps open and stays open so I can knit out of it. Function is Beauty – and the green striped velvet is pretty cool, too.
