6KCBWDAY7 | All at sea

[su_box title=”Day Seven: Your Time, Your Place” style=”soft” box_color=”#5a889e” radius=”5″] Where and how do you take time out to knit and/or crochet?

Maybe you don’t take time out at all and instead have your needles twirling as you try to juggle a multitude of other tasks with no ‘spare’ time to think of. Maybe you enjoy nothing more than to crochet whilst winding down from a yoga session, chatting with some friends in a nearby cafe.

Whether social or solitary, tell readers about your crafting time and space, and where you either most enjoy (or can simply find a few snatched moments) to turn yarn into something even more beautiful.

6KCBWDAY7[/su_box]

Historically it has not been a question of taking time out in which to knit. I simply knitted. All day, every day. I knit and I knit and I knit.

I knit until my hands hurt too much to knit and then I took a rest. A long one.

Nowadays I seem to scarcely knit at all. I have been wondering why. It is true that I am spending more time with my camera and photo editing tools but that is insufficient explanation. I think it is the chaos that I am living in that is stopping me. I need to relax in order to knit and I rarely feel relaxed when there is so much upheaval about me.

So, although we have tackled this subject before, this year my answer is a little different. For months now my only knitting time has been on the ferry to and from town. As I try not to go to town unless I have to, that means that very little knitting has been done all winter.

I have my sock kit:

The Ferry Sock Kit
The Ferry Sock Kit

I am now keeping my ferry knitting in a tub that once held laundry detergent capsules. It is neat, light and exactly the right size. It currently holds the better part of two socks in two kits: one for me, and one for ‘im indoors.

Socks for her
Socks for her
Socks for him
Socks for him

In the tub I have pen and paper, stitch markers, finishing needle, long circular needles and yarn. It also holds my books of ferry tickets. The pattern is normally vanilla and exists only in my head.

In the kit
In the kit

I prefer to travel on the MV Varagen and usually pick a day when she is sailing on our route. I settle myself in the cafeteria where there is good daylight and there are tables to  work at. The ability to have  a cup of tea and a bacon roll whilst I knit is a definite bonus. Knitting on the Earls Thorfinn and Sigurd is a far less comfortable affair, with much poorer light.

varagenwc
MV Varagen

I knit vanilla socks on the boat because there will certainly  be  distractions. The trip to town is a highly sociable affair and folks will stop to ask what is on my needles or otherwise engage in conversation.

Mansock
Sock knitting in the cafeteria

Once in town the knitting will come out if I stop for lunch or coffee and it comes out again once I hit the waiting room prior to the boat home. Again, there is often interest from fellow travellers in what I am doing. Vanilla socks are the only safe option should I not wish to be tinking all the way home!

The sock kit is frequently replenished as the trip can involve four hours boat time — and I can knit a lot of vanilla sock in four hours.

Occasionally I take my knitting out on Mondays to Spinning Group, now renamed Makkin’ and Yakkin’ due to so  many of us failing to take our wheels with us! We do an awful lot of  knitting at Spinning. In recent months I have been working on my Colinette throw, the Denali. With only a couple of hours worked  on it every few weeks it is failing to thrive. I am hoping that writing this blog post will stir me into making a dash for the finish!

What has been interesting to me is the minimal amount of knitting that I was doing in the campervan. I took it with me every time that we went away but the only knitting that I worked on was the ferry socks, which travel in the cab with me – safely stored in the wine cooler cupboard between knitting sessions! I knitted on the move but never in the long evenings when we were parked up. I hope to develop the evening knitting habit when we next go away. I shall certainly pack multiple UFOs in the hope of getting something done!

9 Comments

  1. May 17, 2015
    Reply

    I really want to go and knit on a boat now! LOVE the feety pics!

  2. spinninggill
    May 17, 2015
    Reply

    You need to stash a project in every avalable cupboard in Brunhilde, so that whenever you open a cupboard to get something, some knitting fall on your head! (Not sure what Mr L would think though 😉 )

  3. May 17, 2015
    Reply

    Love the boat knitting!

    I hope you continue to enjoy your knitting!

  4. May 17, 2015
    Reply

    So interesting how you knit on the ferry and socks too! Love the feet graphics!

  5. this is a great story – I knit on the ferry too when I head to the island, but it is only 90 minutes – so wow, four hours!

  6. May 18, 2015
    Reply

    A four hour ferry ride – boy, I’d get a lot done doing that! Love the boat photo treatment.

  7. May 18, 2015
    Reply

    Ah, no, ladies. It’s not a four hour ferry ride – a day in town can involve up to 4 hours on the ferry. Good grief, it would not bear thinking about, I go stir crazy in an hour and a half – which is the time involved some days. On other days we go via Eday and the journey approaches two hours each way. There is a service that take the best part of three hours but I simply choose not to travel on that one!

  8. That kit looks so handy!
    And I just realized it’s sooo far from my own living that I can’t really I would have to get a ferry to come into a town. I just take one of the trains that’s coming every five to ten minutes… Definitely another living!

  9. May 23, 2015
    Reply

    What an interesting life. We have no ferries in MN to speak of, even though we are considered “the land of 10,000 lakes”. I am sure that someone has bothered to count them all to see if this slogan is true or not, but none of the lakes that I ever see have ferries. That is cool.

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