Procrastaknitting...

The procrastaknitting & procrastaspinning cube…. filled with half-spun bobbins, a swatch for a cowl I will never make, and my fishing socks that are waiting for summer to get finished.

Ever have a project that you procrastinate on like crazy? It sits in your usual project spot, staring at you…but you have to get some spinning done first…or maybe do some chores…and now it’s like 10pm, and you really shouldn’t start knitting because you’ll just be putting it down again in two minutes…

Ugh…

I’m not talking about the side projects either. Every knitter has at least one project half completed, tucked away in a closet that they’ll come back to. My come and go project is a pair of socks. These are usually reserved for summer, when we go fishing…well my hubby goes fishing and I sit in the boat and knit, hah. I have one half finished sock sitting on the needles, waiting for next summer to come. These socks will get finished, when the fishing ritual resumes.

Procrastaknitting projects glare into your soul, causing you to look away shamefully…until you begrudgingly pick them up to finish. They’re more of a chore than a joy, or at least a certain part of the knit is. Things can be going great, then you get to a part of the project that either doesn’t interest you, or requires more thought than you care to give…whatever the reason, the project s…t…..a……l………l……s.

The latest procrastaknit I had was the hunting hat for my cousin’s son. He lost his hat, and they asked me to make another one for him. Everything started off well, I ordered some yarn - real wool of course - and dyed up a skein in hunter orange and another in black. I grabbed the Andrea Rangel pattern for the Full Spectrum hat, modified the design slightly, and started knitting.

The inside of the hat was knit quickly, I figured out the extra length for the folded brim, and decided how big to make the lettering panel. No sweat! I did my first duplicate stitch “en masse”, and even wrote a blog post about it because I was happy with how well it went. I was just about ready to start the deer pattern portion. More than 1/2 way done!

Then…came the doubt…. I decided the orange looked a bit pumpkin-y in the daylight. Back to the dyeing pot to get a new shade of more hunterish orange. I cut out the duplicate stitch (holy crap that sucked), and ripped back to where the inside of the hat started. Phew. 7 inches of re-knit ribbing and a re-duplicate stitched text box later, and I was back to starting the deer section.

After a power session to get through the dreaded deer colour work…. If you look close, you can see a slight colour transition below the wording from brighter orange to pumpkiny orange…

That’s when the procrastination started…

I washed a fleece.

Then dyed a bunch of roving.

Then spun 200g of said roving.

Then combed some other wool…

And did a bunch of other things while the orange hat sat like a beacon on the coffee table beside the couch, wondering what it did wrong…

So finally, a couple of weeks later, I gathered up some courage and went back at it. I was able to get done the deer’s legs all in one sitting. This section was done in stranded colourwork, and I was not happy with the black float “catches'“ showing through the orange…so I stopped again. After another couple weeks, some more combed fleece, and a cleaned house, I went back. Each night I resolved to do a few rows. Teeth gritting, I finally got to the end of the deer!! The rest was finished up over the weekend, and BOOM - DEER HAT.

If you actually made it to the end of this post, thanks for sharing my harrowing deer hat experience. Hilariously, my cousin’s other son liked the hat I made his brother and asked if I could do one for him too! AAAAAAHHHHHHH! 😳. Of course I said yes! Haha.