Streamlined Knitting

This appears to be a serene little slice of hand knitting life.  But just a few inches over sits the truth. 

After my last post about downloading books onto my ipad,  I sat down on my couch to knit amid all of my knitting "gear" and realized this was all about to be a thing of the past.

The clutter is bad, folks.  I try to paste all of my possible modifications for a pattern on one page and keep the pattern pages in a plastic sleeve, but then I mark out my rows, do a little math, keep a printed out how-to of a difficult stitch nearby,  have various needles and markers floating about, and before I know it things are out of control.  My husband, checking first for scissors and needles, sits by me with this mystified look on his face as he hands me a messy stack of these pages.  "What does this even mean?"

Once I just stood over my son and dropped a pile of wrinkled Beatnik pattern pages and mods over his head, littering the couch around him and asked, "Is this what it feels like to sit by me on the couch?"  I wasn't surprised by both of my children yelling, "Yes!" in stereo.

 Even my little dog walks up to the couch with hopefulness as I finally sit down, only to let a canine sigh escape when he sees me pull out the needles.  He turns in disgust and heads for a chair.  Is my habit pushing my loved ones away?

 Probably.  It's not like I'm some brilliant, eccentric scientist discovering cures in the lab that doubles as a home.  It's just sweaters and stuff.   So I'm beginning to store my patterns on my ipad, along with all of my modifications under one bookmark named for that pattern.   I'm using GoodReader to annotate any pdf's or Werdsmith to write up pattern ideas of my own, and I've got a drawing app for any sketches I need to make as visual cues.   In case I run into problems, I have a tab with Ravelry ready and waiting on my browser.

I think I'll get used to this.  In the short amount of time I've been doing this, I find I'm thinking more creatively about construction, even snapping pictures of things that inspire me to file with any drawings of possible pattern ideas.  This may lead to a personal sweater pattern.

There will be more togetherness and harmony in the living room now.  That is, as long as I don't connect my ipad to the tv and make them watch interviews or how-tos with knitwear designers that I downloaded.

 my Ravelry and my Flickr