The past month (or so, I’ve been lax in posting all the things) has
been a month of a lot of knitting firsts for me and I thought I’d share
them with you. Because I got long winded, I’m going to do these as a series
of posts.
So…we shall begin with…
The First First: Knitting Class (and tangentially … sock)
Because I’m the sort of person who thinks to herself “but why
shouldn’t I do it the most awesome and hard way possible on the first
try instead of easing into a thing”, I decided that for the femme Fifth
Doctor costume I’m working on for a con upcoming in July (and then
another one in August and then office Halloween in October) I should not
only knit a vest
(which is done and I really need to post photos of it but haven’t)
which is easy and I KNOW how to do and will be nbd, and sew a skirt
which is using a pattern I’ve already sewn and love and is also nbd, I
should also knit myself socks. Knee high socks. Knee high T.A.R.D.I.Socks.
I made this decision at the end of April and then told myself that
before I could cast on said knee high socks I had to finish the mittens
of repeated epic fail (more to come once that situation sorts itself
out) and also my SO’s cardigan.
Which, as previously discussed, took me until the middle of May. So I
somehow decided that between May 15 and July 3 I would finish the half
completed vest, sew a skirt, also knit another sweater that I wanted to
make for a trip I have on July 9, and knit knee high socks that by all
reports take experienced sock knitters months to years to do because
they are SO DAMN ENORMOUS. Oh, and did I mention I’ve never knit a sock
before in my life and while I conceptually understand that socks have
heels and toes and legs and feet I don’t have a clue about how to adjust
that to fit my actual heel or toe or leg or foot? Did I also mention
that these socks are toe up and leave most of the adjusting to the
knitter? They are.
Which brings me to my first first … my first knitting class. In a timely fashion, my LYS
sent me an email that they were having a “knit a sock” class for the
first two weeks of May. I’d never taken a class there before, but I
learned to sew by taking classes so I figured what harm could it do.
Granted this was a cuff down sock on two circular needles using worsted
weight yarn and not a toe up sock with patterning and self-adjusting on 4
dpns, but at least I could understand the basics of sock mechanics.
Hopefully. The short answer was, I found the people in the class not
that awesome (much discussion that made me cringe at the levels of fail
on various levels) and the teacher was distracted at best and almost no
one but me actually made any progress or seemed to understand knitting
in the round, but the materials I received and the comprehensive
instructions on how to figure out what size your feet were and how the
parts of the sock went together accordingly were hugely helpful. And at
the end of it all I had a sock. Just one, but a sock no less. I want the
cuff to be longer, but I ran out of time, so I’ll probably end up
ripping it out and making it taller ( which can wait until closer to
winter because worsted weight wool socks in the summer are just … no),
but I have a sock.
So there you have it. My first class and my first very plain, very boring, ultimately well fitting sock.
Okay, so I’m not sure it’s “the one” yet, but I am knitting a new
thing and I just listened to a podcast that compared making a swatch to a
first date and I liked the analogy so I thought I’d run with it.
As a promise to my SO, I said I’d use up some of my stash yarn before
I buy new yarn for myself (yarn for Etsy projects doesn’t count) and
because I do things systematically, I sorted my Ravelry stash by date
stashed and I’m finding projects I can make (in the time I have when I’m
not making hats like I work in a factory) starting with the oldest
yarns first.
This led me to Malabrigo Yarns Rios.
Way back when I was a brand new knitter sometime in 2010, I got it in
my mind that I was going to make SO a brown vest (per request). We
trekked down to one of our many LYS in town (this is how long ago it
was…the store is no longer where it used to be, it has since moved and
is, in fact, the place where I bought my emergency ball of Rowan Pure
Wool DK tan for 4th Doctor Scarf of Frustration) and started looking for
brown yarn. What you should know is that this was literally the first
time I had bought yarn anywhere that wasn’t a big box craft store and I
had no idea what I was doing. The poor employee had to watch me while I
wandered around for half an hour lamenting the price of yarn, then had
to show me how to wind the yarn into cakes because I’d never seen an
actual yarn hank before, then asked me if I knew about stranding with
that yarn (obviously I didn’t since I didn’t even know WTF that yarn
was). I said “yes” though, because I can’t possibly admit to a complete
stranger who might be able to help me that I don’t know something.
That’s just a particular quirk of me though. I imagine I had at least
done something smart like write down what weight of yarn and what length
of yarn I needed for the project, but I can’t be sure that ending up
with the right amount wasn’t just a happy accident. So…if I bought the
yarn for the vest, then what’s going on with it now?
Well. I made the vest a few months ago (after about 5 tries because
SO is bigger than the pattern and I don’t can maths), but I ended up
making it out of Red Heart Soft. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me why. I
imagine it was because I decided that after I spent US$45+ on yarn I was
making something for myself out of it, dammit. So it sat in my stash,
probably waiting for me to make *myself* a vest.
Then, at some point, I realized that I don’t wear vests.
For a long time, this was *still* my only trip to a non-chain craft
store and my non-big brand acrylic yarn purchase. What can I say, no one
ever raised me with the stigmas against acrylic yarns.
Michael’s/JoAnn/Hancock would sell me yarn on the cheap, so I bough it. I
ain’t ashamed. But, since I’m a borderline hoarder, and the Rios was
still the most expensive yarn in my stash, I knew I needed to do
something important with it and I didn’t have anything important to do.
Fast forward to now-ish. Periodically, I’d pull out the Rios (now not
the only nice yarn in my stash) and think “I should make this into a
thing”, but not have the time or the energy or the whatever to actually
do anything about it. So it would sit there. And I’d buy more yarn
(funny thing, I now own like 4 colours of Malabrigo worsted that I
*also* don’t know what to do with). I had these plans for what order I
was going to knit things in, but then I opened an Etsy store and had to
make like a billion hats and forty 4th Doctor scarves, so that threw all
my plans out the window.
Since I got hardcore into knitting podcasts over the last month, I’ve
been getting all sorts of inspiration and ideas (usually from back in
2009) lately. One particular podcast did a challenge over the course of
2012 (yeah, I’m behind…story of my life) that encouraged people to post
their goals for the year in the Ravelry group and then they’d draw
prizes once a month for everyone who posted in that month’s thread that
they had met a goal. Most of the goals included using up stash. Which,
of course, was what gave me the revelation that I should use up stash.
It wasn’t possibly the fact that I recently bought a plastic shelving
unit to keep my yarn in so it wasn’t just haphazardly piled in paper
bags in the corner of the bedroom and all the yarn STILL didn’t fit in
there and had to expand into the ottoman and the antique chest that SO’s
mom gave us. No. It was people talking about using up stash.
But, it’s gotten me down this road and I’ve finally finished up some
other things (I frogged a sweater that I’d made last fall and decided to
reknit it…I’m blaming/thanking Ravellenic games for that one), so today
I was home and I knit a swatch. Well, I knit two swatches in one, which
is why the photo looks a bit wonky. I’m sure that’s not the approved
method of swatching, but I’m lazy and I’m sure as hell not cutting any
of this yarn (I’m not actually sure I have enough for the project I
chose), so it is what it is.
I learned some things about swatching from yet another podcast, but
that’s another post. I’ll keep you posted on how the Rios sweater
adventure turns out.
