Here's the Bearly Knit kit from Caroline Laudig that I won in the KBTH Virtual Conference. The pattern for the bear sweater is located HERE and I just love the colors of Campion & J&S Caroline provided. I doubt I could put together such a good colorway for the project. The colors are a bit darker in the photos. Also included in the gift were lots of fun goodies like different types of stitch markers, a stitch holder, highlighter, post-it notes, coilless safety pins, etc. I'm very grateful for winning such a terrific gift and plan to get started on the sweater next month.



Theresa had a recent post about finding time to knit. I'm luckier than most in that I have a lot of time to knit. I only occasionally do some freelance writing, mostly food stuff. I have come up with some ways to get more knitting done and thought I'd list them here.



1. Encourage your DH/SO/partner to cook. My DH is turning out to be a better cook than I am but he used to make some awful stuff. I still rave about everything he makes, even if it isn't good, to keep him cooking. Cooking can take up a huge amount of knitting time. If you do all the cooking, develop a nice list of easy-to-make healthy meals. Also, make larger quantities so there are leftovers (and days you don't have to cook at all).



2. I notice there are certain times of day I am more productive with my knitting. For me it is late afternoon and early evening. I try to honor those times and do the cooking and cleaning at the other times. For instance, I usually don't get as much knitting time on weekends when DH is home so I plan to do the week's laundry then.



3. Be organized. About every two weeks I go through my yarn and patterns and books and needles and get everything where it belongs. I used to be quite disorganized and it would take me hours to find a certain needle or skein of yarn - what a huge waste of time.



4. Find the right balance of knitting projects. I am continually working on this as I often don't have enough easy or mindless projects going. I also don't work well when I have too many projects going simultaneously. I think too many UFO's weighs heavily on my mind and can make me abandon knitting entirely. Conversely, if I'm only working on one project and it isn't going well I can stop knitting altogether just to avoid it.



5. Knit everywhere. Obviously you need mindless knitting for this purpose. I knit when we have friends over and I knit when I'm browsing blogs online. I knit when DH and I play Scrabble. Sometimes I try to think of how I can work more knitting into my life. DH loves to go canoeing and this is a wonderful, uninterrupted time for knitting. Too bad there is no water here in NM.



Today I ordered a sock kit from Blackberry Ridge Farm. Every Halloween I wish I had something related to knit and they sell an inexpensive kit for black socks with orange jack-o-lanterns that I want to make this year. I'm going to add some lettering on the top and maybe a spider on the heel if I can find a good chart of a spider.



I'm back to work on the Lucy Neatby Paradoxical mittens inspired by Mare. I am also getting back to work on Trondheim and the Vinternatt mittens are done.