When I was working, I always had a knitting project close at hand.  At the end of a long, stressful day, I loved to watch television and knit for relaxation.  I also knit at interminable clergy meetings and in hospital waiting rooms.  I was surprised, then, when my knitting production slowed down in retirement.  I don’t have as much stress and I don’t watch as much television.  Tom and I do a lot more things together, and I don’t usually knit when we are doing them.

Recently I decided that another reason I haven’t been knitting as much is that I was bored with the things I was knitting.  I knit a lot of prayer shawls, and my standard prayer shawl pattern is knit three pearl three for row after row after row until I have five feet of prayer shawl.  My standard sock pattern was row after row of knit two pearl two ribbing followed by row after row of stockinette on little tiny needles.

So, if you still love to do something, but find that you are bored with it, it is time to shake it up a little!  I went on Ravelry.com and found some prayer shawl patterns that were more interesting.  Suddenly I have been knitting prayer shawls every chance I get:  in the car, talking to people, while I’m doing the laundry.  I especially like this Mitali pattern, although it makes a prayer shawl smaller than I would like and you can’t really make it longer.  But I finish it in about a week because the pattern is so interesting.  I’ve made two of them this summer.

I also knitted two sweaters.  One for my mom for her birthday last year.  She wears it frequently (or at least when I am around) which brings joy to my knitter’s heart.  The other one went to my nieces, Grace and Cat.  Although Grace is older, Cat is the same height as Grace, so I thought they might be able to share it.  Here is Cat graciously modeling it for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a few other prayer shawls I knitted this last year:

Another thing I did to get out of my knitting blahs was visit three yarn shops over the summer.  I went to Temptations in Columbus, My Sister’s Yarn in Akron, and Island Yarn in Massachusetts.  Visiting a yarn shop with all the possibilities and creative displays can really get your creative juices flowing.

I was afraid I was done with knitting, but I really just needed to challenge myself with some new patterns in order to rediscover my love of knitting.  I have a feeling the knitting needles will be seeing a lot more action this next year.