Knitting: the learning curve

So, last night a few from the Thursday clan met up because this Thursday we'll miss our night together due to the holiday. We had a new person/guest. A brand new knitter, like she knit her first stitch last night--brand new! I find it amusing and awesome the reaction from people as they first learn and I remember back to those days of being a new knitter myself. And what is kind of funny is most people have the same reaction. Either uber excitement or horror. Our gal was of the excited variety.

Starting a new adventure can be fun and exciting and maybe scary. And with knitting, I learned something I thought would be very difficult (it wasn't, I tricked myself for years). So when I completed my first finished object, a HAT. I couldn't believe it. I was elated! I made a piece of CLOTHING! And though I made outfits before for myself, via regular material and sewing, it wasn't the same excitement. I couldn't believe how easy it really was and how for so long I tricked myself out of knitting. From that first hat I made another and another and another. With each one, I slightly modified the design. From there I moved on to some fluffy scarfs (maybe). I don't even remember and back then, Ravelry wasn't born yet.

I am still a learning knitter. I think we all are. We tackle new projects and techniques as we go along. My latest feat has been fair isle. It scares some people, different yarns and starnds everywhere... and long ago, I think it probably scared me a little too, but I must say, having done it, I fell in love. It took me years to feel comfortable with my knitting (from where I started) and being confident to deal with stranded knitting. But now I feel accomplished and I love color and the relationship and the patterns and variance keep me "entertained" while I knit. So, stranded colorwork is good for me. And small segway into growing as a knitter, in my opinion, this is the great thing about knitting groups, we all get to see and feel each other's projects and I think those relationships feed our confidence in ourselves and allow us to step outside the boundaries of where our knitting feels safe. These relationships challenge us to take our knitting to another level. Now in some cases, we may say... WOW that is good for you... but I'm not there yet, or good grief, I don't think I'll ever do that!


Which leads me to my next topic.... the dreaded lace! I have some friends that have made beautiful amazing pieces. See here and here and here. But I have attempted to make some lacey type things with little success. It is definitely something that takes more patience than I am willing to give it. Don't get me wrong, I can MAKE lace, but it wears on me and it becomes unfun and I get frustrated, so for now, lace is on my backburner. I would rather keep the fun in knitting and knit what makes me happy... so fair isle it is! HA!

But back to the learning curve... as I was saying, I still learn almost daily something about knitting. Take for instance reading about cast on's a few weeks ago, I had this epiphany that I had been doing the knitted cast on WRONG for umm... yeah, years. When I brought this up last night, Julane did mention something about, yeah that sounds ok and then she said she thought one was the cable cast on and one was knitted, etc....

So of course I looked it up and low and behold, I was in fact doing the KNITTED cast on, correctly and what I recently read the author confused it with the CABLE cast on, which in turn made me feel like I had been doing it WRONG for years, when in fact, I had not. But again, it taught me a new technique. Cable cast on! And to take things a step further, this is where I get a little annoyed with pattern writers or magazines and other sources. I wish they would tell you the cast on of choice for the pattern and WHY you should use this cast on.

Now... some projects, the cast on is irrelevant... but others it is very relevant, say for instance if you want to pick up stitches later... then you need the provisonal cast on, sometimes called a crochet cast on. And here is another non-standarized thing, I consider the crochet cast on, where you actually use a crochet needle to cast RIGHT onto the knitting needle. I'll have to make a video to show the technique, but to me that is a crochet cast on. Others say crochet is what I consider provisional, which is where you make a crochet chain and pickup the back loop stitches of the chain on your knitting needle and knit away. Later, you pull the crocheted chain out and pick up the live stitches and knit on from there.

The point is this, knitting is old, old, old... and people the world over have been knitting for centuries and with all this handed down knowledge, terms and changes are bound to occur. Couple that with the fact that we all hold yarn a different way, some of us knit continental, others knit english and as long as the end result is what we want, we are successful, and that is just the way it should be.

Of course if it isn't, we tink it, rip it, frog it... see, different words mean the same.

But ahhh... the newness of knitting. It's fun all over again.