Hockey knitting

My husband and I have long been Ottawa Senators fans. Sometimes we’ve had full season ticket, sometimes we’ve had smaller packages of games, and sometimes we haven’t gone much (especially as the kids have been getting older). I’m not even sure that I’ve been to more than one game this season.

One thing that is constant about hockey is that if I’m at home watching the game, I’m knitting. At the moment with the Stanley Cup playoffs going on and the Sens still in the mix it’s been so tense that at times I’ve had to stop knitting and basically hold my breath for the last few minutes of the game.

In Round 1, I was knitting my Daisy Hat. It was just the thing that I happened to be working on at the time. It wasn’t too bad as hockey knitting. I could look up & down as needed, pausing occasionally.

In Round 2, I was knitting a Herbert Niebling doily. This was certainly not ideal hockey knitting, but I’d started it at one of my son’s swimming lessons and I wanted to finish it up. It was a learning exercise and I’ve long wanted to knit one of his patterns. It was fun and my new crochet skills paid off for the finishing:

During Round 2 there were some tweets and some reaction to a woman knitting during the Pittsburgh Penguins games – at times right behind the bench. You could see from the video that @PensKnittngLady chooses her knitting more carefully than I do. She was cranking away on the knitting and keeping her eyes glued to the game. Now in Round 3, my beloved Senators are facing her Penguins, and once again I’m finding it hard to just sit in my seat.

Yesterday I came up with a plan for a small project that would use some lovely stash yarn. I’m finally breaking into my Kate Davies Designs Buachaille yarn for a pair of Gimmers. This fabulous sheepy pattern is just one of the 7 variations in Ann Kingstone’s lovely Tup Knits. If you aren’t already aware of Ann Kingstone’s work, go and have a look. I’ve been a fan for quite some time and William is one of my absolute favourites.

I wound the yarn by hand during the game, then ran all over the house in a break looking for the right dpns to get started. I tried a couple of sizes to get the gauge on the colourwork right:

I promptly ripped it all out to do the *real* knitting. I got the ribbing done during last night’s game and started that colourwork. If I am lucky enough to get seats to a playoff game I’ll have to leave this project at home in favour of some stockinette or garter stitch. For at home, this project is perfect to work on. The series is tied at 2 games each, so I’ve got at least 3 more games to knit through.

I’ve had to pack my Gimmers away in a beautiful project bag for hockey knitting only so that I knit on what I *should* be doing. I’m working on a series of swatches that will lead to my 8th annual Tour de France KAL. My inspiration this year is Chantilly Lace, and right now I’m working on getting the shawl border to look more like the picture in my head. I look forward to sharing sneak peaks of that in June!