The Pains of Being a Self Taught Knitter: Back to Basics

Today I learned how to knit garter stitch.

No, I am not kidding. Garter stitch.

Apparently, I've been knitting backwards (or continental, or eastern uncrossed, or so I've been told) for the past 4 years, which somehow lead me to twist stitches without realizing it. I knit with the left 'leg' of the stitch to the front of the needle. Most knitting books (at least the ones I've seen) show the right leg in front. It's no wonder I've been so mixed up! I had a breakthrough when I realized that I was twisting my stitches in the round, fine. I could handle that information -- I hadn't knit that many things in the round up to that point. But for the past 4 years I've been knitting garter...wrong??

I've always hated knitting garter -- it's painful and slow. Now I know why. I figured it out when I went to weave in ends on a garter border...and, waiiit a minute...those aren't supposed to look like that... (I've clearly also just recently learned how to correctly weave in ends.)

I also learned how to do a proper, right leaning decrease - k2tog. For me, the actions to get the slanted decreases are reversed. I already figured out that ssk meant I could just 'knit 2 together,' but today I learned that k2tog does not mean I can just shove my needle into the stitches from the opposite direction. I actually have to slip, slip, knit. I'd already deciphered some of the knitting code to match the way I knit (ex - tbl means to twist the stitch, even though I have to do it through the front), but k2tog!?!

Yeah. Still not over it. The wine is helping.

Emotionally Ready

Sunday, on my way to the gym, I caught part of an interview on NPR with a woman who has read every Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. At the end of the interview, she was asked whether she'll immediately read this year's winner (Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout). She replied that she would probably buy it soon, but only read it if she was emotionally ready for it, as fiction has the ability to connect with our souls and move us emotionally. Similarly, I believe the same can be said for craft. Craft isn't just about making things; it's about communicating to the world what I'm feeling and how I've been inspired.

But it also explains why some projects just get shelved, or why I just don't have the motivation to continue. Despite that I currently have 3 projects on the needles, I cast on another yesterday. The WIPs are unsuitable to knit for the following reasons: Laminaria -- dropped a bunch of stitches and have to retrofit a lifeline. This requires time, patience, diligence, patience, a clear head, patience. Which I have none of at this particular moment. The yarn for the drawstring raglan has been ordered and I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival. (Final additional color choices where mushroom, ice blue and cinnabar -- color combo inspired by an artist who had decorated a robin's egg with dried flowers - white petals, beige centers - and some kind of flecks of red.)

And then there's the beach dress. That dress has been stressing me out ever since my first attempt at it almost a year ago. Life outside of knitting is currently stressful as it is (end of the semester, graduating in a month, still looking for a job, etc etc) and this was an unfortunate project to take on at this time -- it wasn't alleviating the stress in my life, sadly, only adding to it. I need something that reminds me about the joys of knitting, something that surprises me, something that stirs my emotions positively. Enter Vogue's latest Pleated Top.

Every stage of this project has been an unexpected delight and delightfully unexpected. Paid a long overdue to my LYS on Sunday, to pick up needles. (Somehow I'd found myself with all this lace weight yarn, but no appropriately sized needles with which to knit it.) Nancy greeted me and instantly told me I needed the new issue of Vogue. It's a great issue, by the way, the patterns are truly timeless and versatile. And so I stumbled upon the Pleated Top...and matched it with a skein of Misti Alpaca Hand Painted Lace in Piney Woods.


Normally I don't like variegated yarns, but there was something about this hank that spoke to me, and now that I'm knitting it, it is revealing to me it's secrets, it's undulating rivers of forest floor, flecks of lavender and budding leaves, peaking out from the edge of ponds reflecting a midnight sky, all in lace yarn that is whimsical, feathery and playful, while being, not unlike pine needles themselves, sturdy and resilient.


In other words, this is a gorgeous fabric. I have visions of the finished top dancing around in my head. I haven't knit anything in over two weeks -- arguably one of the longest periods of time I've gone without knitting -- to the point where it was actually a bit awkward to knit at first, which is slightly embarrassing. In any case, this is the project that has restored my faith in knitting, in craft, in wanting to create and communicate with the world. This is the project I needed to change me, emotionally.

DIY Salad

The Artisan Cellar in the Merchandise Mart is easily my favorite place to eat lunch. It's a small shop and they only do a few things (wine, panini, salad, coffee, cheese, and cured meat), but they do them extraordinarily well. I've been eating there several times a week for 3 years now, and neither the food nor the service ever fail.

Tonight was a build-your-own-salad for dinner kind of a night. In complete homage to the wonderful creations Artisan puts together, this was my salad:


Romaine, clementines, strawberries, figs, and gorgonzola in a citrus vinagrette (fresh squeezed grapefruit, orange, lemon and lime juices, minced jalepeno, a touch of blue agave sweetner [similar in texture to honey] with sunflower oil). Yum.

Little Breakthroughs

I love little breakthroughs. Little breakthroughs are what makes the world go 'round.

Now, I understand about major breakthroughs in science and technology (and plenty of other fields) that have shaped and shifted our thinking, and in many cases, turned our way of doing things on its head. The difference between a major and a little breakthrough being that major breakthroughs affect a mass population; little breakthroughs affect pretty much me exclusively and happen when I'm trying to learn something new. It's that feeling when something finally 'clicks.'

Yesterday I had not one, but two(!) little breakthroughs on the guitar. First, I learned how to mute strings. My way is to put the side of my strumming hand on the strings to get the click sound. This doesn't always perfectly - if part of my hand misses, I'll get this half-mute, half-open cacophonous mess that requires me to stop and redo. I know some people that mute with their left hand and I have no doubt that in some cases this is probably the preferred method, but for now, the only thing I'm muting with my left hand is the F chord.

My other little breakthrough was that I figured out the "proper" (I use that word loosely. I'm basically teaching myself [with the help of some friends and youtube], so 'proper' could just as easily be substituted with 'way more comfortable.') way of positioning my left hand around the neck. Here's what I figured out: Cognitively, it makes sense to form a chord where your fingers are perpendicular to the strings. Physically, that doesn't work so well. I'm trying to strum a C, trying to figure out why I keep muting certain strings, strumming strumming strumming, and then I shift my fingers from a 90 degree angle to a 45 degree angle. Each string rings clearly! My thumb, which used to push against the back of the neck (as if I was giving a thumbprint biometric), now (the entire length of which, including the fleshy part of my palm) rests parallel to the neck. Brilliant!

I tried it with (fake) F, D, Am. Everything sounds better! And it's far easier to change chords now too, I feel as though my fingers don't have to move as far, for some reason. I tried sliding up and down the neck, also with clearer and faster results. Sweet! I'm now slightly better at the same 5 songs I've been trying to learn for the past 2 weeks -- which makes me think that someday I will get it; I will be able to play to tempo without having to stop at every 4th chord change. Little breakthroughs are little motivations.

Annals of the Beach Dress

I'm mad at my knitting.

For the past month I've been diligently trying to knit this cute little beach cover up dress thing. So diligently in fact, that I've even refrained from casting on other projects! Although I did start learning how to play the guitar -- which, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose could be likened to casting on. Anyway, I didn't like it after the first few rows, I didn't like it after the first ball, and I don't like it now, 3 balls in and half way done. This is new for me. I typically like the things I'm making and I like making them. So here's why I don't like this one:

1. Don't like the yarn. I initially bought this yarn on impulse. I saw the pattern first, of course, and in a momentary lapse of reason, decided that this yarn would be the yarn for the job. It's what I would call a skinny slug. I've worked with slug before, several times actually, and have always been somewhat disappointed with the way it knits up. But for some reason, I keep buying it. I think it's just one of those yarns that manages to look better on the ball than it does as a fabric. (Which, when I get a chance, I actually want to buy another couple balls of this [in a different colorway] and try to weave a scarf with it -- the woven texture might be more interesting than the knit one, and I've never woven before, so it could be fun first project.)

2. Hate the color. It reminds me of the aftermath of a night of hard drinking. Or letting stomach flu have a romp through your system. You get the idea. Now, this wasn't the only colorway at the shop of course. There was a beautiful, pristine summer white, and an equally lovely taupe brown, the color of wet sand. (Uncoincidentally, those were also the recommended colorways in the magazine -- in a different yarn.) But no. I bought the "beach-y" color, and this whole time I wish I'd bought the white one. And I keep thinking that maybe, just maybe, it will look different if I keep knitting. As if 3 skeins in doesn't let me know. I'm threatening to dye it. Black.

3. The swatch lied. Yes, I actually took the time to swatch. Twice. I'm knitting at 26 sts and 36 rows (approximately -- the slug makes it kind of hard to count) instead of the 22 sts and 28 rows the pattern calls for. I'm also knitting one size bigger than usual, so I'm actually ok, circumference-wise. The problem is the row gauge. Since I'm off 2 rows to the inch, my "dress" is now about 7 inches shorter than where it's supposed to be. So now, it's more like a "tent" and edge happens to fall at the widest part of my hip. Awesome.

I'm at the point where I put the skirt on a holder and knit the sleeves, before joining for a round yoke. Inevitably, since the sleeves are knit flat and the rest in round, I'll get a different gauge for them too (what else could go wrong??). As far as I see it, I have 2 options: [1] block the skirt to see if I can even get remotely close to gauge, and [2] when (ok, if - I'll try to be optimistic) that fails, frog the whole thing down and start over on a larger needle. Or [3] accept that I'll be wearing something that could probably fit a 4 year old. Well, it is for the beach -- coverage is only necessary enough.

Making Stuff

I knit. I sew. I paint, I needlepoint, and I take photographs. I even built a bookshelf once. I'm not listing this to boast or brag, but I do think it's very clever indeed to have the ability to make stuff.

I feel that the addition of each craft gets easier to figure out, based on knowing that each is simply made up of a few basic parts (with endless manipulations and variations). For example, I began my craft career sewing. All garments are made from some modification of 5 basic pattern pieces -- skirt front and back, bodice front and back, sleeve. Having made enough garments by the time I picked up a pair of knitting needles, I understood shaping, drape, and construction. Knitting itself is made up of 2 stitches -- knit and purl. Photography is just the effect of manipulating light -- aperture, shutter speed, film speed, color temperature. And so on and so forth.

So it's with this building-block, I-can-figure-it-out mentality that I'm going to learn to play the guitar. This is how I see it: per the Craft Yarn Council of America, there are 38 million knitters and crocheters in this country (equivalent to the entire population of Poland). According to a questionable internet source, 65% of Americans know how to play the guitar -- or about 195 million people. If that many people (not accounting for the billions more scattered around the globe) have been able to figure it out, I'm sure I can too. After all, I make stuff. :)

Means Ends; Ends Means

I first learned to knit my freshman year of college. I didn't have a sewing machine with me, but I needed to craft, so I went to Wal-mart and bought a pair of size 17 needles, a skein of Lion Brand Homespun yarn, and the "I can't believe I'm knitting!" book. At some point, (on like, page 3) I got confused. I then bought the "I taught myself knitting" kit, because after all, two books telling you the same thing is certainly better than one.

I figured out how to cast on. Woot! I think I initially wanted to start out by making a scarf, but had no clue as to how many stitches to cast on, so I ended up casting on the entire length of the needles - 14" worth of cast on stitches. Size 17 needles are bulky and kind of awkward to use in general, but even more so when I was learning.

I learned to knit English. The book told me so. I hated it. It just seemed obnoxiously hard. Unbeknownst to me at the time of course, was that English knitting tends to produce a tighter gauge than Continental. I struggled to get the stitches off the needle, using the tip of my finger against the tip of the needle to give enough force to drag the stitch off. Well, you can imagine that after about a row of this, I had a very sore finger. (Plus I was knitting garter, which, in my opinion, is harder to knit than stockinette because the stitches "face" the wrong direction.) I think I got about halfway through the skein of yarn before I considered it quits, and the project got shelved.

I wrapped the knit part of the [what was now quite evidently more of a shawl than a] scarf around the remainder of the skein and stuck the extra needle through the middle. And so it sat. For 5 years. And got stretched out. But I picked it back up, this time with a determination to finish it. Not even so much to knit for knitting's sake - just to finish it. I ended up buying an extra skein to get the length correct (it being so wide and all) and finished it. One side ended up being a little wider than the other, but who cares? It's done! It actually stayed that way for about another 3 years, until I finally washed it and that evened out the stitches - sigh.

One knitting project down, why not start another? My mother had a bit of yarn (black, of course) left over from some project or another; she passed it off to me, and I cast on again - this time on size 8 needles - much easier! I'm sitting in the kitchen, knitting (or at least making valid attempts to) when my father walks in, glances in my direction and flat out tells me I'm knitting wrong.

Ok.

My grandmother, who was an avid sock knitter, but also a teacher (his teacher in fact), taught his entire 5th grade class to knit. And after all these years, he's managed to retain that information. I guess it's true when they say knitting is like learning to ride a bike - muscle memory never really forgets. He showed me the "proper" way to knit - Continental, of course.

For me, Continental was the gateway drug. It was faster, more intuitive.* It was easier to "pick" the yarn - for both knit and purl stitches - than it was to remember which darned way to wrap it.

Now, I'm not saying there is or isn't a "correct" way to knit. Knitting is the means to the end; as long as the fabric comes out correctly,** then do what makes you happy.

*Which is not to say that Continental didn't have it's pitfalls. For about a year and a half I didn't know the difference between k2tog (knit 2 together) and ssk (slip slip knit). K2tog: yes, ok, put the needle through 2 stitches instead of just one, and knit them, ok. Ssk: it's the exact same thing! Why would I slip them first? And what's with all this "back of the stitch" business? I am putting my needle into the back of the stitch! Of course I later learned, that based on how I knit, I had to put my needle into the front of the stitches in order to k2tog, and that k2tog and ssk are not the same because they slant in different ways. Oh, and about 3 weeks ago, I finally figured out how to properly make left and right slanting increases.

**Increases, decreases, yarn overs (a term that is entirely too vague in most patterns - I prefer the British delineations of yo, yrnd, and yfwd), and knitting in the round were all learned the hard way. I think almost every project I've ever made, save the last 2 or 3, has mistakes in it. Some which actually compromise the integrity of the garment - like socks with twisted rib instead of regular rib, that then won't stay up.

But I'm ok with it. So what? It doesn't prevent me from wearing the things I've made. I have a whole closet-full of lessons learned and I'm proud of each one. What's more, knowing that I still have so much more to learn is what keeps me knitting. Off to go screw something else up!