I know, I know, it’s been ages since you’ve heard from me. Stealth knitting keeps my hands occupied, but, well, I can’t tell you about it.

Well, not much anyway. I can tell you that I’m enjoying the knitting more than I thought I would. I’m almost to the half-way mark, and my enthusiasm hasn’t flagged. The material isn’t one I knit with often, and it’s been a pleasant surprise. Euroflax linen, sportweight, to be precise. It’s not nearly as hard on my hands as I feared it would be. I do have to take occasional breaks, though. More than if I were knitting with wool.

Can you see what’s at the end of the yarn in the picture? Yup, a knot. The first in 800 yards. That’s not bad.

So what keeps you going when you’re knitting along on a project that has a looming deadline? I can only sit still so long before I get sleepy. Music is great for a while, and my passion is WEMU via ITunes. We lived in Ann Arbor for almost 20 years, and this was our favorite radio station. NPR news, a wide variety of jazz, blues and world music… I think it’s one of the best stations in the country, and am eternally grateful to the Internets for making it possible for me to listen in even though I’m now more than 600 miles away.

Sometimes, though, music just adds to my sleepiness. Movies and tv are fine, but if it’s something that I’d really like to see I tend to focus on the tube, not the knitting. Not so good for error free knitting.

Enter audio books. I’ve been listening to them for a while, and enjoying them, mostly when I travel. Last week I had a whole day to devote to the stealth project, but I couldn’t find my IPod. Deb had mentioned reading the Pern series last month, and I remembered that I had one of the later books in the system, so I turned it on. Boy did I fly my fingers fly! An interesting enough story to keep my attention, but no pictures to distract my eyes. That’s how I got to the half-way mark so quickly. Now I just need to figure out which book I want to listen to next.

So what keeps you going when you have to stay the course?