Not knitting, yet still knitty

Do you want to hear from me if I'm not knitting? I suppose if you're stuck on my prose alone, you could make do by reading my Procrastination Diary. Today's entry is a confession of the obsessing I've been doing about a war memorial I visited on the weekend - a decidedly non-knitty topic, save for my having noticed and stared at and reflected on the knitted helmet it wears under its metal one.

Anyway I am knitting really, or at least I do have a bowl of knitting on my desk waiting for me to chart out the next row. It's come to that, yes - a charted pattern with lots of cables and twists and slipped stitches.

And I have a little tinyhappy zip bag full of a swatch for another hat, a design commission no less, that will also require some charting. Probably not in the final pattern, but definitely as I work out the repeats for the body of the hat.

AND... I'm looking at knitting books. Of the four I had in my clutches the other day, I will be making room on my bookshelf for two (Reversible Knitting and The Knitter's Book of Wool), which means losing the pretty flowerpot in which I'd been storing stash. I could move it to the desk, but I really don't think there's space there either; and it's not as though I didn't give myself two workbaskets to store works in progress. I don't knit anything large enough to require more than one skein, after all - two baskets ought to be plenty.

(They aren't, but I need these books in reach, so too bad.)

Ah, books. I have a friend who, owing to work and time constraints, does most of her knitting mentally, having a special gift for visualizing the piece's progress as she reads a pattern line by line.

That must be pretty nice. I read patterns and get ideas either for using the techniques in them for entirely different projects, or for adding in different techniques and features. That is mostly exhausting, even if it is invigorating when I manage to pull it off.

I don't know what to do with the stitches that most attract me in Reversible Knitting. I think the reversibility aspect doesn't interest me; I think I just love the gorgeous, gorgeous stitches and the economy of having one that can serve two entirely different purposes. By which I mean that right side out would be one for one kind of hat, and the other for another kind of hat. Double the inspiration, double the fun!

And now, if you will excuse me, I must get back to my Not Knitting. Not knitting at all, no.