A few posts ago, I posed this question: Are you a knitter who enjoys reading while you knit? Do you take your knitting to the movies and click away in the dark while the film rolls? When you go out for a meal with friends, are you knitting even as you wait for your food to arrive?

Stockinette Rules For Knitterly Multi-Tasking

For knitting under these circumstances, I’ve always preferred an easy project that doesn’t require too much of my attention. Stockinette is in many ways ideal; on its own with no multi-tasking, it can be the ultimate bore. But when my attention is divided and I need to focus visually on something else, stockinette is just the thing.

Habu Love

These gorgeous fibers from Habu entered my stash at Stitches West this February. Tsumugi Silk with its slubbed perfection, Wool Stainless Steel in all its tensile glory, and Kusaki Zome  with its gorgeous sheen and dry, crunchy hand. Oh, how I love them. The clean orchidacious colors are the icing on the cake.

The fibers themselves are so interesting that I didn’t want to use them in a project with complicated stitches or texture, although they would certainly work well enough for those pursuits. As I thought more about my Knitting-While-Reading project, the Habu yarns captured my imagination and wouldn’t let go. I decided to work with them on a larger needle than their fine gauge might suggest; in this case, a US size 6. With yarn so fine, the airy openness of the Stockinette stitch is lovely.

Simple But Effective

Elegant Simplicity became my mantra. I wanted a simple project, but not quite as straightforward as a scarf. The photo below might suggest that this is exactly what I wound up making, but that assumption would be wrong. With enough of the Habu yarns to make a garment, I set my sights a bit higher. Taking advantage of the knitted fabric’s wonderful soft drape, I settled on the idea of gathers. Simple construction to be sure; the tunic will be made up of only two pieces cleverly assembled with seaming and ruching that takes advantage of the fabric’s best qualities.

Stay tuned! This is a vacation project that I’m knitting while reading, and it will be completed upon my return next week!

Or should that be reading while knitting?

A group of us were sitting around the other evening talking about knitting (what else?), and one member of the group asked if anybody had figured out how to read a book while knitting. Now, most of us already watch TV while we knit and don’t think anything of it. Easy-peasy, right? But reading seems to require a whole new level of multi-tasking proficiency. It turned out that I was the only person sitting around that table who has been known to read and knit simultaneously.

Here’s my secret:

In a word: Stockinette. In another word: Garter. If the knitting project on my needles is worked predominantly in either Stockinette or Garter stitch, I am perfectly capable of reading a book at the same time – probably because I could do those two stitches in my sleep, so reading doesn’t feel like much of a stretch. Anything more complicated or demanding such as cables or lace, however, and I have to close the book and concentrate on the knitting.

The miraculous thing about knitting a long stretch of Stockinette or Garter while reading a good book is that by the time I finish a chapter and take a look back down at my knitting, a huge amount of progress has been made. It always astonishes me that the muscle memory in my hands can take over like that. Makes me wonder what else my hands might get into while my attention is elsewhere… such as the cookie jar, the chocolate stash, etc.

The Single Most Important Tool for Reading-While-Knitting Success:

In my opinion, this simple hands-free bookmark is your insurance policy against books that seem hell-bent on slamming shut all by themselves, thereby losing your place just when you were getting to the good part. A friend gave me one of these years ago and it is still my favorite bookmark ever. Yes, you do have to stop knitting momentarily to turn the page, but it’s worth it.

A Project To Facilitate Reading While Knitting:

We all want them; those projects requiring so little attention that we can focus without worry on our favorite TV program, or keep our hands busy on a long car trip but still be able to make conversation with the driver, or occupy us during a long flight (but allow us to ignore a snoring seatmate).

As it happens, I am working on one of those right now, made out of this gorgeous laceweight slubbed tsumugi silk from the geniuses at Habu:

I’m picturing something drapey and fluid, a tunic perhaps. Knit on large-ish needles (US size 6 or 7?) to render the finished garment translucent and cool. Gathers or ruching or smocking; whatever the fabric demands to create a sense of movement and simple elegance. Let’s see what I come up with.

I’ll be on vacation next week, and have already warned my family that I might not join them for every single activity: the zipline tour/swim with dolphins/sunset cruise (well, maybe just not the zipline tour…) kinds of things, so that I can simply relax (now there’s a novel concept). Lie around, free up my imagination, play with this silk, and see what happens.

Yum.