Take 5: Procrasti-knitting

Welcome back to another episode of the Take 5 blog series! This week, Alicia Morandi of Woolen Diversions and The Sweet Sheep Body Shoppe, who is an avid knitter and spinner who calls Rhode Island home. Today, she shares her top five methods of procrast-knitting while still actually doing things which relate to the craft. Click here to get caught up past Take 5 blog posts; I'll let Alicia take it from here: 

When I first heard the term 'procrasti-knitting', I figured it referred to all of the times that we knit instead of doing something else we ought to be doing. Then I realized that, due to a combination of Type A neuroses, day job, knitting blog, and lotion business, that definition would encompass pretty much every time I sat down to knit at home. There seem to be countless tasks I ought to be doing besides playing with yarn, but listing off 5 things like laundry, dishes, and account balancing would make for a rather mundane blog post. Instead, I've decided to describe 5 things that I (and hopefully many other knitters?) do instead of actually working on their WIPs -- a different take on 'procrasti-knitting'.

1) Ravelry pattern searching

I doubt there are any internet-savvy knitters who have never once gotten lost in the glorious pattern archives of Ravelry. I have spent countless hours admiring other people's designs, modifications, and yarn choices. In fact, I often consult Ravelry projects to discover what other people have used a particular yarn for before I plan my own project. There's amazing inspiration to be had, and the forums are fascinating places to spend your potential knitting hours, as well.

2) Online yarn shopping

What do you do when you've had kind of a bad day, need a break at work, or are waiting somewhere without your knitting? I, for one, often shop for yarn. The Loopy Ewe, Eat. Sleep. Knit., The Verdant Gryphon, Blue Moon Fiber Arts... their brightly colored sites cheer my right up. Not to mention the glorious rabbit-hole of hand-dyed yarns on Etsy or the Indie Untangled Marketplace... hang on, I need to go lock up my wallet.

3) Problem project abandoning

I consider myself something of a work-in-progress expert, in that I'm really quite skilled at convincing myself to go ahead and start something new. I hear the siren song of startitis and find a way to rationalize it with ease: I need a simple project for meetings, something to knit while reading,  something interesting for TV knitting, or I want a new lace shawl, I dropped a stitch so I should start something new until I have time to fix it, I need to concentrate to turn that heel so I'll just start a new sock for this trip... etc. etc. etc. Starting a new project before finishing a perfectly good one in progress is probably the ultimate form of procrasti-knitting and boy, am I good at it.

4) Festival visiting

How many hours have you spent petting sheep, watching searing demonstrations, taking classes, and strolling past booth after booth of tempting vendors? Those are hours you could have spent knitting! Perhaps you brought your knitting with you but I never accomplish as much as I think I will on such trips. However, I don't regret a single fiber festival as there is nothing more exciting than being surrounded by a community of like-minded folks who are just as excited about fiber as you are.

5) Weaving, spinning, dyeing, oh my!

Indubitably, many knitters will at some point dive head-first into another fiber-y craft. Handspinning stole my heart a couple of years ago and I find I love the process of creating yarn just as much as using it. Both activities fill different roles in my crafting life, with spinning being more meditative and process-driven and knitting being more involved and product-driven. Even when not actually knitting, many knitters just cannot keep away from yarn.

So there's my revised definition of 'procrasti-knitting': any way in which one engages with yarn that is not the actual act of knitting. I'm a proud procrasti-knitter, are you?