I sleep a lot, and I fall asleep quickly, but increasingly I don’t always sleep well. Case in point: I woke last night at 3am, in a pool of sweat (oh perimenopause – you beast), and my guts in agony. I proceeded to toss and turn for a full hour before I stumbled back to sleep until about 6:20am.

While perimenopause and ongoing gut issues are not going to be solved by knitting, even when I sleep through the night I find myself stumbling through the day often, exhausted. Again, there are other reasons for this perpetual state of exhaustion, namely a pesky heart condition and the associated medications, but after listening to a medical professional talk about the importance of sleep and sleep environment, I’ve decided to enact some sleep changes. The sleep I get needs to be quality sleep and it’s a great excuse to include knitting.
Here are changes for this heart of fiber:

1. I will go to sleep at a decent time. Before 1 am. Preferably before 10:30pm
2. All the lights including the bathroom light will be off (We kept a little light on in the bathroom so when the kids stumble in during the night they don’t stumble over us. I’ve convinced my husband that this isn’t really necessary anymore.)
3. I will not use screens in bed. No checking email, Facebook, Instagram etc at night from bed.
4. I will have a routine. And this is where knitting comes in.

My sleep routine will include:

1. Listening to audiobooks. Some light and fluffy listening. Thank you Audible and Pima County Library
2. A little bit of knitting.
3. A cup of herbal tea.

What I have learned in the past few nights. I am more rested. I love knitting in  bed, and I really love color work,  but I probably shouldn’t do colorwork at night, in the low light of my bedside lamp. I had to tink a whole three rows the other night after I mistook what color combination I should be using, but if I chose the right project and accompanying book I can have some fantastic dreams. Right now I’m cruising through Sara Donati’s books  historical fiction set between upstate New York and Scotland in the 18th and 19th Century (Yes, Outlander fans -same period AND Claire, Jamie and Ian are mentioned!). I’m working on Crofthoose Hat by Ella Gordon for Shetland Wool Week and between that and the Donati books I’ve got dreams of mountains and highlands, islands and Scottish cities.Which brings me back to knitting again.

I’ve always had a thing for Fair Isle yokes, but never entertained the thought of actually knitting colorwork…and then there was Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is a knitter’s nirvana, from weather that positively begs for woolens to be worn, afternoons whose only reasonable recourse involves a sofa or armchair and your latest yarn adventure, to lovely local yarn stores, knitwear designers, proximity to wool sources, and knitting podcasters, hello there Louise. And it was in one of those local yarn shops, Kathy’s Knits, this summer that I was introduced to Ella Gordon’s Crofthoose Hat.

Kathy and I pored over the various shades of Jamieson & Smith’s 2ply jumper yarn to identify just the perfect Shetland yarn for my hat. Back in Tucson I cast on, wondering what on earth I was thinking, but with a little help from a knit group friend I found out something I never would have suspected…I freaking love color work. There is a sense of accomplishment that far surpasses any other knitting experience I’ve had so far. So maybe I can do color work at night, just need to know exactly what two colors I’m using on any row, which can be difficult if the chart is in grayscale. But it’s worth it for the dreams and the color work.

Does your knitting match you’re reading or what you’re watching or perhaps even your dreams?

– Rachel