On autopilot

It's amazing what you can accomplish without even knowing it. Ask any nervous eater what can happen when you're not paying attention.

I'm not a nervous eater, but I do have one habit that sometimes surprises me.



(Sorry for the horrible picture...I have been meaning to take it during daylight for the past few days, but daylight is a fleeting thing nowadays, and I keep missing it)

Put some mindless knitting next to my chair, and even if I don't feel like knitting, or haven't thought about what I want to knit, somehow the knitting will grow. I can be reading a book, surfing the internet, writing emails, blogging, waiting for something to bake in the kitchen, and somehow my hands find the knitting and get to work.

Most people have to try and curb their automatic habits, but I think I'm going to let this one continue to run wild. Not too wild, though. There were a few times on the leaf-socks-that-aren't where I distinctly said that I did not want to knit (I know...but it's a sock, what can I say?), and then 10 minutes later Branden looked over and said "I thought you didn't want to knit." It was only after he said something that I realized that I'd picked them up anyway, just to have something to knit on. Believe it or not, I actually caught myself pausing and looking down at my hands in surprise, before shrugging and admitting that it was better to knit on them than on nothing. And they got done, simply on merit of being the project closest to hand.

This is a great thing to know for those neglected projects that really need doing. I have very few UFOs, but I think I might start moving them closer to my chair one at a time, just to see what happens. Or maybe I'll just surreptitiously place cast on socks around the knitting basket, hoping to fool myself into doing them without realizing it. The only requirement is that the knitting must require little thought. That way, I can knit without interfering with getting other things done. Too bad I won't be churning out any fancy lace this way, but I'll take what I can get from my "in between" moments.

I don't feel like I've been knitting much in the past couple of weeks, but then again, I have two sleeves and a quarter of a sweater that have magically appeared in my knitting basket. Mindless knitting is a wonderful thing.