There's No Place Like Home

I love to knit. I love to read. I love to watch movies. I love to drink coffee. And I especially love to do them all at the same time. The next 3 and a half months will be a 7 days a week knitting marathon for me as I finish up all the projects for the book, with my reward at the end of April being 12 days in the French countryside with my darling, patient, and in my opinion, extremely-lucky-to-be-married-to-me husband. But since I am incapable of doing just one thing at a time, I have prepared for this knitting marathon by joining Netflix and buying a 24 book plan at audible.com for audio books.

I'm working on the Williamsburg "Rag" Rug, which is easy knitting that allows me to actually read while I knit. I'm on the latest volume of Diana Gabaldon's wonderful Outlander series of books. & volumes so far and I think the smallest one is still more than 700 pages. I'm down to the last 200 pages and am making quite a bit of progress on both the book and the rug. The rug project will definitely outlast the book, so I'll switch to movies to help pass the time while knitting this 6 foot wide rug. Hence, Netflix.

I have a pretty good collection of DVD's and Blue Rays, but mindless knitting gives me the opportunity to see new movies or movies new to me. Leaving the house to actually rent movies means I waste time dressing and driving, cutting into my knitting time. So I'll be streaming movies on my laptop while I work away on this rug.

The rug project is perfect for reading or watching movies while knitting, requiring no shaping or row counting, but the rest of my projects for the book require a bit more attention. I can't knit from a chart in Fair Isle or Intarsia while reading, and even have trouble "watching" rather than just "listening" to a movie as I am counting in my head and checking my chart. So I can "listen" to a movie that I've seen 20 times. Of course the problem with that is that I've already seen the movie 20 times. So I've decided that charted or shaped knitting will be best accompanied by audiobooks. I did a little research online and settled on audible.com and started linig up my books. My criteria is first and foremost length -- the longer the better! An 8 hour audiobook is good for one day of knitting. So 24 hours and up is the standard. Otherwise, I'm gonna need to sell my stash on ebay just to pay for my audiobooks.

Classics, historical fiction, romance -- doesn't matter as long as it's l-o-n-g. Well, I guess it does matter since I'm passing on the longest piece of fiction, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand which logs in at over 60 hours. I'm also passing on the James Clavell books as I've already read them. Oh, and the John Irving books. My son, a writer himself, loves John Irving. Me, not so much. So first up is the Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George, a huge piece of historical fiction, that clocks in at a whopping 41 hours and 20 minutes.

So I'm all set. Movies to stream , audio books to download, at least a year's worth of coffee pods, and buckets and buckets of yarn. No need to leave home until April. Back to work....