What do you do while you're knitting?

[jackandahat]

I've just read yet another person going "Ooo, you can't possibly knit during films with subtitles". And I keep getting people doing the internet version of looking at me funny when I talk about knitting while reading fanfic.

But... to me that's perfectly normal. Obviously there's some stuff where I have to look at my hands, anything like picking up stitches. But if it's something like plain knitting/ribbing or an easy pattern, I'm generally either watching a film (with subtitles, dodgy hearing) or reading fic/a blog. I don't have the one-track attention to only be knitting unless it's something incredibly complicated - in which case I can only do little bits or it drives me nuts.

What do you do? Do you knit in front of the TV? Do you read while you do it? Do you knit while only focusing on the knitting? I'm curious now.

Comments

[domtheknight]

I pretty much never knit completely by itself! Instead I'm at a sporting event, or hanging out with people and having intelligent conversations (or knitting while teaching other people to knit), or watching tv/movies or reading (on the computer - can't hold open books and still hold knitting).

The rare exception is that sometimes if I'm taking a bus or train somewhere I might only knit. But typically I'm watching the scenery or the other passengers and making up stories about them in my head, or I'm plotting out a novel, or thinking of solutions for work problems, or similar.

I go the fastest on plain knitting or ribbing, but I taught myself two color brioche stitch a couple months ago and after the first two inches on the 7 foot scarf I read the rest of the way through it. I knit a lot of socks with lace or similar patterns, and if I'm doing that then I read a bit slower. I can't count stitches and read/talk/whatever very well - but I try to set things up so I don't have to count stitches.