As a young single mom, I feel like I am constantly struggling to find time for almost, well, everything. I have only been at my current job for a few months, so I’m still proving myself there. Which means getting to work early, working through lunches and bringing home work to do after M goes to bed. Once proven, the workload is still so high, I’ll keep doing this to reduce stress during the actual workday. By the time I can no longer physically stare at my computer before potentially spontaneously combusting, I should have been in bed hours earlier. So when do I get to knit??
Now that M approaches two and a half years, she is more and more aware of what I am actually doing with my sticks and string. However, with her new found knowledge of what making something is comes a curiosity so intense that she wants to rip the project out of my hands and “make” the lace shawl herself. I typically only attempt to knit while she’s awake when she’s eating a snack and/or watching a movie so that I don’t draw too much attention to the knitting and don’t miss out on quality playtime that is so rare during the week. But not much gets past her… so out came the old acrylic. I found a yarn bowl I made in middle school that had scraps of old acrylic yarn that I could give her to play with and pretend to knit next to me. This new technique has given me maybe 15 minutes of knitting a week.
So I drag my knitting everywhere. Even the too-large-for-on-the-go-knitting projects make their way back and forth to work everyday (for my mythical lunch breaks), sit next to me in the car during our incredibly short commute (just in case we get stuck at a red light!), and are never more than a foot away from me throughout the day and night. I am so desperate to get a few stitches in that I have found myself knitting in my sleep! Really, falling completely asleep sitting up while knitting, only to wake up to a surprising amount of progress that I know I didn’t accomplish consciously.
Many knitters find a support group. A knit night at a their local yarn shop. There are even a few virtual knit nights out there. But do I join in on any of this fun? Do I designate a time and a place to get some serious knitting done? No, I do it the hard way. I pray for traffic.
a singular knitter 