Getting Your Knit Fix When You Can't Knit

Last Monday I wrote about the sometimes painful side effects I get from knitting.  Occasionally,  the best way to deal with the pain and discomfort is to not pick up my needles for a few days.  Sounds extreme, I know - crazy talk!  But it helps and sadly, I need my hands to be healthy so I can (once in a while) use them for things other than knitting.

When I am forced to take a short knitting hiatus I still get my knit fix by indulging in non-knitting knitting activities.  I am still immersed in my knitting, I am still productive and my hands get a rest; this is a win-win situation. Some things that I might do if I can't knit include:

• cleaning up my Ravelry queue - I try to keep it below 300 projects.  It needs to be culled and re-prioritized regularly
• organize my stash - a huge ongoing project which will never be done.  Also, Ravelry has a great stash feature that allows you to upload your stash to Ravelry and keep track of what you have, where you keep it, how much you have and will even match your stash with patterns in your queue.  It is an amazing resource and I suck at making use of it
• organize and tidy my notions and needles
• organize my physical patterns and books.  I have a lot of books, and written resources that need to be organized and tidied up regularly
• catch up on knitting blogs and YouTube videos
• spend some time on Craftsy and Loveknitting soaking up the knitting and yarn porn
• cruise Pinterest, Ravelry, Instagram and Facebook admiring other people's knitting and looking for inspiration 
• mend any knitted items that have been waiting to be mended
• weave in ends (sometimes I procrastinate)
• block whatever has been waiting to be blocked

How do you cope when you can't knit?