Knitting Blues And Greys
Feb. 7th, 2019 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenRight now I am writing this blog post, but just before now I was frogging my, um... 10th maybe... attempt to needle-knit. I am a crocheter. I can crochet. I can hook-knit with a crochet hook. But I thought I'd try learning needle-knitting because all the needle-knitters look at me funny whenever I mention hook-knitting. And because it would be easier to learn fancy stitches because nobody makes hook-knitting tutorials beyond the plain knit-and-purl. So I have watched multiple videos on knitting-for-crocheters and on Contininental Knitting (because Continental-style knitting is easier for crocheters to grok). And I bought a set of interchangeable needles from Ebay, because I thought value-for-money.
So.
Long-tail cast-on. Not a problem, especially after this video broke it down in a way I could grok. (That isn't a video for long-tail cast-on, it's a video for a more fancy cast-on which is related to long-tail cast-on)
The actual knitting... ugh. Lumpy, awful, my tension is all wrong, the stitches either won't move or the needle slides out of them, I split the yarn, the yarn keeps sliding off my needle before I can pull it through, I get confused about what direction I'm supposed to wrap the yarn, I slip a stitch when I think I've knitted it, I mysteriously add stitches, I get odd loops hanging out, it is utterly horrible!
Part of me wants to give it up as a bad job, and part of me wants to prove I can needle-knit so that people will stop looking at me funny. And because I want to learn fancy stitches. And because Continental knitting is supposed to be fast, and it would be nice to be able to knit faster. Well, I'm assuming that Continental knitting is faster than hook-knitting, though I have zero data about this. I just know that Continental is faster than English.
(sigh)
I know all the knitters in the audience will say "it's easy!" but you probably all learned it at your grandmother's knee. My grandmother wasn't a knitter, she was a mad-keen gardener, and so was my mother. So I was not able to learn from them. My sister can knit, but she lives in another state, so opportunities for face-to-face knitting-learning are few.
(sigh)
So.
Long-tail cast-on. Not a problem, especially after this video broke it down in a way I could grok. (That isn't a video for long-tail cast-on, it's a video for a more fancy cast-on which is related to long-tail cast-on)
The actual knitting... ugh. Lumpy, awful, my tension is all wrong, the stitches either won't move or the needle slides out of them, I split the yarn, the yarn keeps sliding off my needle before I can pull it through, I get confused about what direction I'm supposed to wrap the yarn, I slip a stitch when I think I've knitted it, I mysteriously add stitches, I get odd loops hanging out, it is utterly horrible!
Part of me wants to give it up as a bad job, and part of me wants to prove I can needle-knit so that people will stop looking at me funny. And because I want to learn fancy stitches. And because Continental knitting is supposed to be fast, and it would be nice to be able to knit faster. Well, I'm assuming that Continental knitting is faster than hook-knitting, though I have zero data about this. I just know that Continental is faster than English.
(sigh)
I know all the knitters in the audience will say "it's easy!" but you probably all learned it at your grandmother's knee. My grandmother wasn't a knitter, she was a mad-keen gardener, and so was my mother. So I was not able to learn from them. My sister can knit, but she lives in another state, so opportunities for face-to-face knitting-learning are few.
(sigh)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 10:36 am (UTC)I find I don't initially understand what stitches are trying to achieve until I've knitted a section.
The same with crochet. I have to have actually made a granny square sample before I get a feel for how the different stitches work together.
I'm guessing that life is really crap at present, because it isn't like you to give up on a new skill so early on.
Then again, if life is crap, the added stress of trying to lean something that does not want to co-operate can be the last straw.
I'm currently coping with stress by learning German nouns, at least they don't fall off needles...
no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 11:08 am (UTC)Well... it isn't like I don't know how to knit, I just don't know how to knit with needles. So my motivation to learn isn't as high as it usually is. Mind you, I learned to hook-knit even though I already knew how to loom-knit, because I had found there were things that loom-knitting was not suited for (cables). I haven't had the same level of frustration with hook-knitting, merely a lack of data as to whether the things I wanted to do were possible or not.
But you are not the only one to observe that I usually don't give up on learning a craft -- the very same thing was said by my friend Janeene this afternoon.
Mind you, there is one craft that I have abandoned in the past as too difficult, and that was tatting (both shuttle-tatting and needle-tatting). I might not have abandoned it if I hadn't considered that I could still do similar things with crochet and macrame, though.
Is life really crap for me at the moment? I wouldn't have thought so... except that I had a bit of a meltdown this evening after a bit of constructive criticism indicated that all the work I'd done on my Etsy photos last week had been a complete waste of time. (sigh)
I'm currently coping with stress by learning German nouns, at least they don't fall off needles...
(laughs)