I should so not have taken up this hobby in the middle of the semester.
Not because it’s not great – on the contrary, I’m having a lot of fun with it despite the fact that I’m one of the least patient people I know. I am constantly drooling over all of the amazing things there are out there to make that I’m not good enough to knit yet. This obsession has gotten that much worse since my Ravelry invitation finally came – a nice reward after my comprehensive exams last Friday.
I actually think that the fact of my having so little patience might actually make me more, rather than less, likely to keep knitting. As long as I pace myself and keep doing small projects where I can see progress quickly, I can see myself forging ahead to bigger and better – and more rewarding – projects. Luckily one of the things I’m itching to do the most, cabling, is supposed to be much easier than it looks.
Going along with my lack of patience, though, is the discovery that I am not going to be a monogamous knitter by any stretch of the imagination. I anticipate needing to have one large project and one or two smaller projects on the needles at any given time, hopefully with one of them close to completion. This will keep me sane through endless rows of garter/stockinette/other boring stitches that everyone complains about!
I am making good progress on my boring scarf, despite all of the craziness of the past two weeks. I finished one skein of yarn and am on to the second, as you can see. It’s soo soft and warm and fuzzy! The only thing that drives me a little crazy are the thick stiff acrylic fibers that stick out from the yarn every now and then. I fear I will soon be an anti-acrylic purist! I feel very comfortable with the motion of knitting and am getting a fairly consistent tension, now that I can sort of feel it and adjust for it when necessary. But it is starting to get kind of dreary looking at the same thing in the same color day in and day out, so I ordered some yarn and needles for my next project.
I’m going to throw together some of Grandmother’s Favorite Dishcloths for my kitchen in preparation for the two kitchen sets I want to do for some early summer birthdays. After these three projects are complete, I should have learned the purl stitch, how to switch between knitting and purling in the same row, how to do a yarn over, how to knit 2 together, and how to read a basic pattern. And since they’re small and have some variation, I’m hoping they’ll be a more interesting alternative for when I get sick of looking at garter stitch.
