Most of the knitting I do is for me.  Occasionally, I knit for my husband….hats mostly, but I have knit him some worsted weight socks and most recently, I have on needles for him a pair of fingerless mitts that should have been done months ago, but that for some reason I am just not digging.  Progress on those has been glacier-like.

I have been known to knit for friends, but since most of my friends are knitters, it sometimes feels like bringing coals to Newcastle.

Most recently, I fell into knitting socks for my Mom and my Dad.  It happened by accident when my mom admired a pair I was working on (that I didn’t love) at the exact time when I could still alter the WIP to fit her.  Once she received them and loved them, she asked for another pair.  I have a strange sort of compulsion…I can’t really do something for one parent and not the other.   Since Mom had two, I had to knit two for Dad.  I gave him one at Christmas (which I am told he is going to wear out at this rate – YAY!!) and have another pair in the queue.  He wants brown.  Oy!

When I was at home for Christmas, my dear friend Karen gave me a bunch of Malabrigo that she was never going to knit.  She’s a knitter of heavier Mal Worsted and Mal Mecha, but had somehow obtained several skeins of Mal Lace and a few of Mal Sock.  When I compared one of the Mal Sock skeins in a colourway called Archangel to Mom’s new leather jacket, it cried out to be knit into a light, airy, lace scarf to go with the jacket.

The picture doesn’t entirely show how well the skein matches with the leather, but they’ll co-ordinate extremely well, I think.  I decided on the Foreign Correspondent’s Scarf as it’s a basic 4 row repeat, it has lots of nice open airy fishnet lace, and it won’t fight with the variegation inherent in that colourway.  In any case…one more thing to knit.

So when I say I have a “knitting” schedule, it’s not entirely accurate.  It’s more of a list of thing to start/make/finish, in the approximate order in which I wish to start/make/finish them.  The occasional gift item falls in there, which means I sometimes have something that resembles a deadline.  Overall, I have to say that I am not much of a deadline knitter.

I got an email from Porter Airlines the other day, advertizing a 50% off sale.  I figured it seemed like  a good time to get my parents to come visit, as they like getting away from Newfoundland in April or May.  It’s warmer here around that time, as spring has sprung in Toronto, but there’s still frequently snow on the Victoria Day long weekend (that’s May 24th, for you Americans!).  Dad mailed back and said they were going to come for a week around Easter, if that suited, which it did just fine, thank you!  Except…that means one thing.  Two planned projects now need to move up the queue.  Mom will want to have the scarf for her spring jacket, and the last time I mailed a pair of socks to Newfoundland, it set me back over $13.  So frankly, if I can have them ready for mid-April, more’s the better for me!  So, tonight…I wind!!

Do you have a knitting schedule?  Do you actually keep to it?  What sorts of things disrupt it?