I’d love to be able to post a picture of a massive chunk of completed blanket but the sad truth is – I’ve only just finished knitting the squares for the 5th strip…barely one strip knitted in a week and still the pressing and sewing up to do!

At this rate this blanket will take months to complete and worse than that – my blog posts for months will all read “knitted some more squares – still not finished…”

If I gave up work I’d have enough time but wouldn’t be able to afford yarn (or food or the mortgage or cat food), I still need sleep and time travel only seems to happen when the  entire weekend seems to disappear in less than 2 hours.

I was pondering this problem when something my friend Janie had said, sprang to mind. Janie is a confirmed Sock-Addict and knits her socks on every available part of her commute in and around  London. She mentioned that she managed to knit one and a half round of a sock while in the lift at Mornington Crescent tube station! (That’s the Subway, Underground or Metro to my trans-continental readers!!)

So if Janie can knit in the lift, why can’t I knit on more of my 70 minute total journey?

Currently I only knit waiting on the platform at my local station and for 20 mins on the Overland train to London Bridge.

On Friday I tried something different…

…I arranged my handbag shoulder strap diagonally across me with my wool pre-unravelled and feeding through a small gap – Circular needles firmly in hand….

…I carried on knitting the easy stocking stitch stripy square as I shuffled the length on the platform at London bridge, behind the annoying people who were ambling while they sent text messages, read the newspaper, wondered where they should be going and yelled down the phone…

…at least I could knit and look where I was walking unlike them!

…I had to wait at the barriers for the Northern line – still knitting…

…There’s a huge long escallator ride down to the Northern line…knit knit…

…I managed to stand up in a corner on the cram packed tube…knit knit..

…Up the long, long escalator at the other end …Knitty Knit knit….And enjoying the freaked out look on the faces of some of the “Kooky, odd ball but Oh so fashionably trendy” Islington folks….

Round the corner and into the little coffee shop for my morning coffee where they didn’t bat and eyelid as I put my knitting away so I could carry coffee.

I had managed to knit and extra 30 minutes of my journey each way  and blot out some of the more annoying, “dawdling pedestrian” elements of my daily commute 🙂 50 whole minutes each way of knitting 😀

There was another unexpected benefit of this “Knit’n’Commute” approach…

… standing on the bouncing, juddering tube, without holding on used all my balance skills, previously reserved for skiing and body balance classes! My thighs and stomach muscles were burning by the end of the 10 mins “knit and try not to fall on your butt” tube experiment!

Who’d of thought “Knit’n’Commute”could provide a whole hour a day extra knitting time and a total body workout!!