Where I Knit

I'm blaming this one on Julie, over at Samurai Knitter, who asked for photos of where we knit.

My knitting location varies with the season. For most of the winter, I knit on this green vinyl loveseat. Since the vinyl is cold in the winter and sticky in the summer, it always has an afghan or a blanket of some kind wrapped around the seat cushions.

The corner seat cushion consistently seems to get junked up with whatever I'm working on. It was cleared out recently -- look, you can see both rows of buttons on the seat back! Today we have the Graham-Campbell book on the Vikings I have out from the library, two skeins of yarn that were Christmas presents from our 7-year-old son, my lapdesk, and some paper and scissors from making rhombic calendars.

And on the back of the couch, wintery art by said son, standard pile of books, book bag from the library, blue ceramic plant dish, and tie-dyed wall art my husband bought at a Grateful Dead show years and years ago.

Most of the winter I knit at our dining room table, across the room from the loveseat. But as I cleared off this table completely to put our Christmas tree on it, it is still bare of knitting. (The Christmas tree goes on the table because a 111-lb. dog who stands three feet at the shoulder has a table-high tail-swipe. This way, all of the ornaments are above tail-wagging height.)

My film camera is waiting for me to use the last three shots on the roll, and some school records seem to have gotten on my chair. Most of my knitting is sitting in the white cart on the right, with the "Sampler M" patterns in the blue binder on the top.

My birdfeeders are outside this window, so it's a very entertaining place for me to sit, look out the window, and knit. The big dog bed is underneath the table, so if it's cold, I usually can wedge my feet under a nice warm dog.

But this is where I really knit!

Yes, that tiny circle of bare carpet is where I get most of my knitting done when the concrete-slab floor is not winter-chilled. Now you know: I'm a floor-sitter.

There's a lot of stuff showing in this reality-knitting photo: plywood (for making knitting rings), chair cane, the legs of my loom bench and floor loom, a big cone of tussah silk, a potholder on my double rake, my big knitting notebook still open to the "swirl ball" pattern, a couple of bags of stash yarn, knitting rings with yarn on them.

For me, inveterate packrat that I am, there is actually a lot of bare floor space beyond this picture. I tend to sit in a certain spot with all of my materials handy around me in a big "U" at arm's-reach. When I was growing up, I used to do this on my (made) bed, but now that I have a whole room for my fiber-arts materials, I have my own floor space.

The good thing about working on the bed was that I had to clear it away when I went to sleep, or risk rolling over and hearing something crash to the floor.

The bad thing about working on the floor is that I only have to clear it away when I start to stack one project on top of another until they cause avalanches, or when I get irritated at having to move projects out of the way to get at earlier projects. Unfortunately, I have a pretty high clutter tolerance, and since this room is at the end of the house, out of everyone's way but my own, it can get pretty cluttered.

So. Now you know. Are you sorry you asked, Julie? :)