…like I might be getting the hang of all this.
I’m a perfectionist. It takes a lot of effort for me to leave even insignificant errors alone. This can be a good thing, of course. I generally do good work and producing something I’m happy with feels very good. However, when I’m still in the “learning curve” phase like I am now, it gets pretty frustrating. I end up tinking or ripping back every time I make even a tiny mistake. So rather than pushing through and figuring out WHY I keep getting split yarn or WHY I purl when I should knit (or vice versa), I just keep starting over and over and over.
The project that’s beaten that out of me is actually, I’m a little embarrassed to say, going to someone else. A member of one of my Rav groups recently lost everything in a fire. And knitters (and crocheters, of course) like to help each other in times of need, so our group is contributing squares to be sewn together into a lapghan for her. Self-conscious as I am about my still meager skills, this is a great effort that I’d really love to be a part of. So I gamely cast on for a 12×12 square.
I chose the Seed Blocks Square. While I would have loved to choose a cable design and learn a new skill, the square needs to be sent in by Halloween, and I worried about not being able to finish something presentable by then if I was struggling with a new skill. Seed Blocks is an attractive design, simple without being boring, and something I think I can handle at this level. But it wasn’t going to give up without a fight.
The first three sections have mistakes in the seed stitch blocks. I was trying to follow the pattern stitch by stitch rather than letting the work “tell” me where I was. I didn’t trust myself, not being a visual-spatial kind of person, to recognize just by looking at my knitting what stitch I should be on. This would be great, if I could count. But all it takes is one stitch off, and you don’t get seed stitch anymore. You get this:
Not exactly right, is it? Can’t see it? Look now:
Two knit stitches next to each other vertically, when one should be a purl. It may seem like a small thing, but I couldn’t stand it. Just one stitch off on one row, and all the seed stitch blocks were shot! If I’m not mistaken, this makes it 1×1 ribbing instead of seed stitch. But by the time I realized it wasn’t coming out right, I’d already gone so far after casting on 3 times trying to get something 12 inches wide…I wasn’t about to look back. I determined to figure it out or die trying. Then, halfway through the second pattern repeat, I got totally lost. I forgot to tick off a row I’d done and suddenly didn’t know where I was. And then I thought to myself, “I have to be here, because the stitches look like this, and so if I do that next, I should be back in the pattern.” And this is what I got:
It doesn’t seem all that impressive if you already know what you’re doing, does it? “Well SPLUH! I could have told you that!” But it was a big deal for me. I looked at what I had, and figured out what I needed to do to get it to look a certain way. I can’t do that…or at least I couldn’t until I’d started this project. I feel a lot more optimistic about my ability to get good enough at this to make some of the cool things I’ve seen other knitters make (like free-form cables – that stuff is the shiznit)!
My only regret is that my Rav-friend is going to get an imperfect square. I’m almost halfway through and I’m still thinking of ripping it all out and starting over, but I seriously doubt I’ll have enough time to finish it by the 31st if I do. I can only hope that it’s taken in the spirit in which it is meant, and that she won’t mind that it definitely got better as I went along.
