Knitting Projects: Finding my Balance

I'm at the delicious part of knitting a garment where it's nearly finished. I have trouble putting them down when they reach this point as the excitement starts to build. The other half of my mind can't help but think that there's no rush to finish, as Autumn isn't here yet. But I love that as soon as that first cool day arrives, the one that has you reaching for something warm to put on, I'll be able to reach for something I knitted by hand.

I'm trying a new way of making this year. I'm trying to have fewer projects on the go at once. My plan is probably laughable, as generally speaking, I'm not a knitter with a project problem. At the most, I've only ever had 6 on the go at once, and as knitting is my only craft I know that this sounds like a tiny amount to some. My happy place used to be to have three to four projects on my needles at the same time. But lately, I've felt the need for change. I'm going to experiment with only having one major project happening at once. When I've finished knitting one, I will start the next. I'll only double up when I'm also working on a design for a pattern.

This was going well until last weekend. I was hosting a social sit & knit gathering as the last party for the last day of my pop-up shop. It was a really lovely afternoon, and it also doubled as a meet-up for participants of the Kanga Kiwi Knit & Crochet Along (you can read

about that here

). I wanted to take part in the knitalong and to do that I needed to use a pattern and a yarn that is from either Australia or New Zealand.

The yarn I'm knitting my jumper from is Australian-grown, but the pattern I'm using isn't. So I decided a pair of socks were in order. My favourite sock patterns to use are by an Australian designer, and I decided to treat myself to a skein of

hand dyed alpaca yarn

So now I have two projects in progress. I was reminded today that this is actually a good thing, though. Sitting with a cup of tea under the ceiling fan, trying to enjoy some knitting this morning, the jumper on my lap was feeling very warm. This jumper is knitted all in one piece, so as I'm now working on a sleeve, I have a whole body of a woollen jumper in my lap. It was getting too warm, so I swapped to knitting on my sock.

Even though the sock I'm making is a blend of alpaca and merino fibre, socks are so tiny that there is hardly any fabric under your hand while you make them, and there's certainly none in your lap. The perfect summer project.