#90 - Casting off

There is now another woolen scarf in the world, and this one was made by my own hands. This was me for the past 10 months:

I now know how to do plain and purl, cast on, cast off, and the rib stitch. My mom has a big basket of wool from the '80s and a stack of knitting needles tucked away in some cupboard somewhere which she's now given me to play with. I may try another scarf sometime just because I've gotten so used to having this project to pick up whenever I'm watching a movie or have nothing else going on. Sitting and knitting is always a good combination. Last night I finished the scarf during an epic marathon of the first season of Vampire Diaries here in Bashaw, Alberta. Why? Too long to explain.

The new scarf now belongs to Cornelia, who evidently enjoys wearing it with plaid. It's cold here in Alberta, so it seems to make sense.

                                    What a great scarf model.

I can't remember why I wanted to learn to knit, to be honest. I don't think I ever had any intentions of learning to make my own clothes or anything. At least I've crossed another item off my list. Ten down, 90 to go.

Knitting breakthrough

I found this website threadbanger.com that has a show called Threadheads, which has videos on its blog about how to knit that are really basic.

I'm almost finished the "world's ugliest scarf" -- according to some. I don't think it's THE ugliest scarf. Maybe in the top 10, but it's a nice colour, so that's something. It started off well, a nice rib stitch, but then devolved into a too-wide part where I screwed something up. Then it got too thin (something about tension) and then too wide again. Anyway, I managed to figure out what I was doing wrong with the rib stitch (you need to start with the same type of stitch every time you start a new row, not alternate types) and now it's looking okay near the end. I should be done within a day or two.

As frustrating as it can be (and as itchy as wool is so who's going to wear this thing?), I enjoyed working on it last night for the first time. It was strangely mesmerizing. I may (MAY) even be tempted to try another one. But the next one will be with size 11 knitting needles, not size 7, which are way too finicky.

Bitch 'n stitch

Being about halfway through the dreaded knitting project (a simple scarf), I feel I should just motor on regardless of the loops and holes and weird variations in thickness I can't explain.

So I brought my work to my mom to ask for some advice yesterday and she showed me what I was doing wrong with the purl stitch. She watched me try another row and I was complaining how difficult it was and she thought this was funny because for her knitting (and all other sartorial exercises) is just something she used to do while watching TV before Julia Roberts made it cool. Actually, when she saw me struggling to figure out why I couldn't pull the wool below the needle but had to pull it over the top when I started a new row, she was belly laughing. When I reached the peak of frustration before handing it back to her to sort out, exclaiming "Son of a bitch," that was it. She was just about falling over with tears of jocundity streaming down her face. (You'd have to see my mother laughing to understand just how intense it is. Is she sobbing? No wait, she's laughing. Ha ha. Ha.) At least she told me it made her day to have such a good guffaw.

I guess that's a sort of consolation to my lack of knitting skillz. To top it off, I went to a friend's in Vancouver for dinner tonight and she had her knitting project strewn casually on the couch ("Oh, yeah, I just started last week. Isn't it fun?") as a side project to organic gardening and practicing law. Why are the little things in my life so HUGE? I can't even get through a scarf. It takes intense concentration. PLUS, it's not fun. Not really at all. Sitting in bed working through five rows of rib stitch, counting in twos to make sure I don't screw up the order makes me feel like I'm working in a sweat shop. And it's itchy and makes me too hot. That's why I took a knitting hiatus over the summer. But I'm back at it, and I'm going to finish the damn thing by Christmas if it kills me.

One fifth of a scarf

The scarf is taking longer than I'd expected, and is about a foot long and a foot wide. I don't quite know what happened, and I had to re-start the whole thing several times. But at this point, I don't want to turn back yet again, so it's just going to be a wide scarf. And perhaps not all that long. I would have thought sixty stitches would be a decent width, but it turns out wool magically gets bigger or something. Oh well. So far, there are only two small holes. And a couple of other parts on the side that look like mice have been nibbling at it. At least the colour is really great. Kind of a mango/melon sort of sunrise hue.

Still don't know how grandmothers produce one toque per episode of Oprah. How do they knit without looking? Tried that. Didn't work. Also, I forgot how to do purl, so the whole thing has been done in plain stitch. I'll look up a YouTube video tutorial or something to figure out the other one and maybe do the middle stretch in another stitch just to mix it up a bit. Or maybe not. Better to get this done before summer so I'll be able to actually wear the thing.

Anyway, that's the update with the knitting. Still can't juggle though. And I've been practicing.

Purl and Plain

So my mom showed me how to do the two basic knitting stitches, plain and purl, the other day, and how to cast on, to start a knitting project. I think it's pretty straightforward, and I now have a scarf about a foot wide and an inch long. It's my third attempt, after messing up and having to pull it all apart and start over again. This time, though, I think it's working. So if I knit about an inch a day, I should have it done in a couple of weeks. Whether it will be wearable remains to be seen, but it will be a scarf and I will have knitted it. And that will be something else off my list.

Wool

I've decided to learn to knit before the new year arrives. Last month I met a woman who is completely deaf and going blind, who knits for a living, and I was inspired. This woman lives on a small farm about 20 km south-east of Merritt, where she and her husband have about 20 sheep. For each of them, she can get enough wool to knit three sweaters. She also knits toques, scarves, gloves, socks, and a bunch of other things. They have a shearer come in every spring to take the wool off the sheep, and then she takes care of the rest -- carding, spinning and dying the wool herself. Along with her beautiful finished products, she sells batting and spun wool. I bought about three spools of a great melon yellow coloured wool to try my hand at making a scarf. My mom has promised to teach me over the holidays, so here goes!