Thursday afternoon I could feel a cold coming on – and it was feeling like a bad one too. But on Friday I tried something different: rather than soldiering on I took a day off.
I sat on the couch. Drank lots of tea. Had soup for both lunch and dinner. I read a little and I knit some really mindless garter stitch. I didn’t do any work and let Neil worry about the animals. I got up once to put up my blog post*
And you know what? It worked! By saturday instead of being in the depths of a cold I was feeling a bit better. By sunday I was perky enough to go to the Christmas Revels performance with my mom and friends.
Who knew this resting up thing worked so well?
The mindless garter stitch is going to be one of those long stripes garter stitch scarves. I pulled the scraps** from my swatching bin and organized by color. I cast on about 200 stitches (backward loop method, and I didn’t even recount to make sure I had the right number) and I’m breaking the yarn after every row so there’s a tail ~6 inches on each edge of every row.
The scraps range all the way from fingering to bulky weight and I’m using US 10 needles because that’s the ONLY size I own a long (47 inches) circular needle for…
*because that’s how much I love you all!
**scraps too small to become a full sized swatch, and too long to be thrown away.
Ramblings 
Tipping the scales away from the most frequent commenter. ;-) Garter stitch would make anybody feel better, it’s like chicken soup.
I’ve come to appreciate garter stitch only within the last year. Before that I always felt it took too long and looked too plain. But now I like it’s simplicity and peacefulness as a break between complicated things.
Great idea and wonderful range of colors. :)
So will you arrange your colours rainbow-fashion, or will it be a more random progression? I like garter stitch, although for years I couldn’t knit it without having it slowly “stretch” as I knit – the first bit would look right, but my ridges would get farther and farther apart. I have no idea why, and it doesn’t come out that way anymore!
I am glad you didn’t get properly sick!
I’ve been working the colors semi-randomly. I’m using purple as a base color, so I’ll do a few rows of purples, then a few rows of blues, then a few rows of purples, then a few rows of greens. But only 1 or two rows of any single color so it’s all mish-mashed together. It’s an organized sort of randomness.
I’m intrigued to see how it comes out with all the different weights! I’ve seen some neat mixed weight stuff out there!
The more colors and weights I throw in the better I like it!
My granddaughters love the large needle scarves, and they will be finding them in their Christmas stockings!! I have lots of yarn stashed away, so am putting it to good use. I hope you continue to recover from your “bug” and write more stuff for me to enjoy!!
Thanks! I’m definitely improving AND I have an awesome scarf project to show for it!
Whew! Glad you dodged the bullet! Whatever “cold thing” is out there this season is awful. It’s taken me 3 weeks to get over mine, although to be fair and honest, I did NOT do the resting thing. Hm.