Meetin' Socks

At least I like the stitch pattern with the
double matching center rib

I love the t-shirt from Cafe Press that says:

"Knitting in meetings

(because falling asleep) 

is just rude"

I only resist the urge to buy it because for me, knitting in meetings is a regular activity. Why do I do it? See shirt caption above. Knitting also helps me concentrate better. It helps me to focus. It helps me to do more knitting.

I have knitted just about everywhere I can in my short, five-year-old knitterly life. I guess I am still excited about it, since I am still just a kindergarten-aged knitter, and I want to do it all the time. 

I knit in every room of my house, including my front and back porches. I take knitting on the road, in the car, to work, the library, parks, local fountains, restaurants, bookstores, airports, the woods, the beach, church, several Starbucks locations and even to the grocery store, just in case I have a chance to sit in the little grocery store deli and have a snack. If I leave home without my knitting, it feels just as weird as leaving my shoes behind...or maybe more like leaving my vital organs behind.

Knitting is pretty important to me, as it is to all you fellow Knitaddicts for whom knitting is not just a hobby or a post-apocolyptic skill, it is an appendage. Like your soul.

This is why we knit everywhere and with wild abandon and with no thoughts (sometimes) for our own safety. Yes, we knit anywhere, and meetings are no exception.

I love knitting in meetings. I get the best ideas for impromptu sock patterns during them. It's like a

The fit of this sock is pretty loose. See the baggy heel?

game where you are given limited supplies and told: make something awesome. Like the television show Chopped where would be star chefs are given a date, some brown sugar and an old boot and the game show host says, "You have 30 minutes to make a 5 course meal using all these ingredients: GO!" 

That is what is in my mind when I am faced with an 8 hour meeting. The voice in my head says, "Janelle, you have one set of needles, you only remembered to bring zero stitch dictionaries, you have one skein of sock yarn and we are providing an old dude staring you down during the next 8 hours with disdain as he decides whethere or not he is going to call you out for knitting during this his meeting. Before he sounds our giant gong and drags you out of the room, you must complete one interesting sock and retain all the information presented during this meeting: GO!"

While I do not have an old boot at these meetings, I imagine that I am charged with filling one--in a sort of "shabby chic" way--with a fabulous sock. My mind always races. 

At the last meeting I attended, I was able to complete most of one sock without being dragged off the stage by a hook in front of all of my colleagues. It is a little simple pattern in Kroy Sock gray heather. I love it, except that during the meeting the room was a bit dim (darn PowerPoints and informative slide shows) and I was knitting a bit loosely to compensate for the added blindness hurdle in the imaginary sock competition. 

This became a problem after I returned home to find that I sure do knit with a lot more tension when I have light. And also the (much) bigger sock is not as attractive as the firmer tensioned one. 

I must frog the meeting competition sock and knit it again. 

While this does not constitute a defeat, it is still irritating. Next time I am bringing light yellow yarn.

Actual size difference is about a whole inch!