Progress in the fiber arts, or lack thereof
So as I’ve written in “The men’s room” articles, I’ve been learning to spin yarn and knit. And since we’re going to dedicate the next issue to last minute gift ideas for knitters, I thought I’d give you a little progress report.
The yarn spinning is coming along - I don’t spin as often as I should (’cause hey, I’m going to write articles about this stuff and I really need to get better at it) but every time I do sit down and work on it, the skill improves. Which is very gratifying and encouraging.
The knitting on the other hand…not so good. I’ve started two or three different projects that didn’t work out, and I was able to rationalize my failure. One project was with charcoal colored yarn, which is frikkin’ impossible quite difficult to see unless you’re knitting in broad daylight. One project was with a three-ply yarn that had a funky ply - two tight plies and one loose ply, and I kept getting the needle between the plies. Then I tried to start on a sock using multiple double pointed needles. Imagine trying to knit with a porcupine…that’s kind of what it’s like. A live porcupine. An angry live porcupine. With hemorrhoids. And a hangover. Perhaps a sock was a little bit ambitious, no?
So, I back peddled a bit, and decided I’d just do another dish cloth. Boring, yes…but good practice. Lots of knitting, lots of purling, but nothing complicated. It’s what might be referred to as “low hanging fruit”. I needed a success to boost my ego and keep me motivated. I’ve started it twice now, and ripped it all out both times. My ego is bruised. The first time was due to a stupid user trick…I accidentally let a couple of loops come off the needle and it unraveled and I couldn’t figure out how to put it back together. Not a big deal - it could happen to anyone (it’s not just me that does this, right? Dang.). The second time however was not just your everyday, run of the mill stupidity. This was stupidity on a grand scale! After knitting several rows, I noticed that one side of the knitting has more rows than the other side of the knitting. Neat trick eh? All I can figure is that I put it down in the middle of a row, and then picked it back up upside-down. Twice. One end had six rows, the other end had two rows.
Sigh. Maybe the third time will be the charm.
Allena said,
October 12, 2007 @ 4:27 am
How many times have I said, just let me finish this row? Unless your working on a project with a million stitches, finish the row. HA! Now you know why I finish the row, even if we are sitting in the parking lot, and its pouring rain, and you are standing in the rain because you bolted out of the car as soon as it came to a complete stop. This will give you a powerful insight to my habits… Don’t worry, we all had to learn things through some failures, and you are doing great. I should have helped you more.
Nikki said,
October 12, 2007 @ 11:05 am
You’ll get the hang of it
and the first summer I knit, I knit so many dishcloths. I refer back to it as the Summer of dishcloths (catchy huh? 
) BUT it improved my knitting skills and let me try new things like increasing and decreasing and colorwork (very minimal but hey… I did it) and yarn overs… and if they turned out looking less than stellar… they still wash the dishes 
Michelle said,
October 15, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Wow, a grown man who knits — I’m impressed! I guess my husband learned as a child, but obviously didn’t continue. Me, I practiced on a dozen simple bias garter stitch scarves before I ventured on to hats, then sweaters. Since Christmas is coming up, I’m back to scarves….
tracey in mi said,
October 27, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
low hanging fruit is sweet!