Finding Time To Knit

This has always, always been a dilemma of mine. I do not have a lot of knitting time. During the school year I work as a full time substitute teacher. I am trying to get back into teaching full time after having my second son 5 years ago. With two kids ages 12 and 5 in a variety of activities plus a husband who has a pretty time-consuming job, I don't have a lot of time to knit.

Now that it is summer, my time is a bit more open. The oldest is in a variety of camps and the oldest is in preschool camp two days a week for 5 hours, but I am trying to use the time to catch up on projects around the house, such as weeding wardrobes, removing clutter from our town home, and dealing with my overgrown garden, not to mention the regular things like cleaning my house doing piles of laundry (hence the wardrobe weeding I am doing), getting to the gym on a regular basis, cooking dinner, and the list goes on and on.

With my limited time, this is what I am trying to do to get more knitting time.

1) Knit when my youngest son is occupied and entertaining himself or is watching his bedtime show (Assuming I am not dealing with dishes or straightening up the house which I often do). Even if I get 10-15 minutes in, it's still knitting time.

2) Take along knitting whenever I can. So if we go on a longer car ride someplace and my husband is driving, I will take along a brainless knitting project (Like Hitchiker which is currently on my needles).

3) Once the kids are in bed, sit down and knit for a bit if I can. This only works if my younger one is cooperative in going to bed at a decent hour. Lately this one has been hard, but I try.

4) Schedule regular knit nights with friends. I try once every two weeks to meet friends outside of the house at a local Starbucks for the sole purpose of knitting. It's good for me to get away from the kids for a bit and it means lots of uninterrupted knitting time for me.

I do have to admit I do get a bit of envy here of my single friends who have tons of knitting time. It's hard when I hear about their multiple evenings out to knit with friends each week or the afternoon they spent knitting when I was chauffeuring two kids to activities, making dinner for the family, and cleaning my house. I sometimes wish I could trade places for a bit just to get the extra knitting time. I love my kids and husband, but sometimes I just want lots and lots of uninterrupted knitting time. Until that happens, I am grabbing little moments when I can and trying to turn this unfinished projects into finished ones.