Car Knitting…..

Alternate between the solitary and the social.
Whether alone or with others, keep serenity.
Deng Ming~Dao

This post has been marinating for a while….it's about how I spend my lunch break.
Most of you know that I now work at my local vet hospital and it is indeed a very popular and busy place with a phone that is forever ringing.  Finishing a thought or a conversation can be a challenging thing during the day, but it is a day that almost always passes quickly.
When I first started my job and watched one of my co-workers spend his lunch in his car instead of the lunch room we have, I asked him why?  He just smiled at me and nodded his head, mentioning NPR and quiet.  What?  I quickly came to understand why he chose to spend his 1/2 hr in his truck.
No ringing phones, no mindless conversation…..a true break from work for a short time.
I too now spend my lunch enjoying the quiet in my car listening to NPR while I eat my lunch and squeezing in some quality knitting time.

My summertime knitting is Elizabeth Doherty's sweater pattern Marklee in my Airy yarn in the Violetta colorway.  I will be vending at the Indie Dyer Trunk Show in Rhinebeck, NY this fall so I am on a mission to have this sweater finished. It is what I have on my lap at lunch, while I watch tv at night and when I am fortunate to sit at the beach.  Knit in fingering yarn, it is a much slower knit than my Helvetica Sweater, but I am really enjoying the process.

One of the beauties of Elizabeth's design is you can block the top part of the sweater to see if you are at the correct gauge or if you should make adjustments before you have invested too much time.  While I made a large swatch for this sweater to get a good idea of what my gauge would be, I was nervous as I was knitting the sweater.  I was worried that my gauge was too loose, but once I soaked and blocked the back of the top part of the sweater, I was spot on.  Whew…I was already prepared to rip it out and drop down a needle size, but blocking it told me  that I was on the right track.

Between working at the Vet Hospital and dyeing on my days off, my knitting time is limited, so not only do I knit in my car…I block yarn there as well..ha!  This portion of my sweater was mostly blocked at home, but I gently placed it along the passenger seat of my car to finish drying so I could pick up stitches during lunch for the next section.

Marklee, like Helvetica is mostly stockinette knitting which I have to say I completely enjoy, but there are definitely some challenging portions in her patterns for sure.  Fascinating techniques that truly do create a well fitting garment.
Tonight with some of the challenging portions of this knit behind me, I took the sweater to our local Concert in the Park put on by North Conway's Art Jubilee. 
The concert was a duo replicating Simon and Garfunkle's concert in Central Park, NY.  I have always been a huge fan of their music and with each and every song a memory of a moment in my life growing up was wrapped up in each song. 
While this may not have been Simon and Garfunkle in any way, it still made my heart smile.
Summers are short up here, so I better get knitting!
 

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