Knitting & Crafting During Gaming

I knit during D&D sessions. Sometimes it’s a simple afghan square but it’s usually very simple socks. I find that it helps control my tendency to fidget. I also get, er, rather passionate about what’s happening in-game and knitting helps to keep me from attempting to destroy the dice when they are rolling horribly. I’m a somewhat ADHD person so it actually helps me to balance multiple activities at once.

Thus far I’m the only crafter at the table, as well as the only woman. The other gamers smoke (a lot) and one of them paces excitedly and waves his hands around so I’m hardly the only fidgety person there. Still, I’ve heard from other crafters (usually women) that they’ve run into hardass DMs that ban crafting during the game as being ‘distracting’ while ignoring the 5 other people continuously texting.

What do you do during downtime in a game?