So, I’m all about hobbies, I really am. I see something I am interested in and I either go try it, or I read and research it to death to make sure I would like to. My interest finally came around to knitting one day when my Sister came over to my house and was asking me to give her one of my Grandma’s handmade prize winning quilts. She wanted it for her daughter and my instant response was a big “HELL NO! I’m not giving Grandma’s painstakingly put together quilts to a 10 year old!”. Seriously, maybe when she graduates high school and is old enough to appreciate it.
Since my answer was a echoing no, which she agreed on, this got us talking about all the afghan’s my Grandma used to make, and she asked if she could at least have one of those and I had to tell her they were all destroyed when our house was leveled by a tornado. Yes a tornado, I’m not kidding here. This in turn made my Sister give me a horribly sad face and my big mouth decided to say, “Don’t worry I’ll make you guys one!”. How hard can it be right? I mean I leaned to saw and blow torch silver for God’s sake, surely I can knit a blanket!
So with this comes the idea for my first project. I figure, with my amazing ability for logic, that it should be something fairly simple. Something straight and maybe stripped so I can get the hang of alternating colors. So off to the craft store I went for yarn and other various items to learn to knit my first scarf. Yes, I decided on a scarf, a probably much overdone Slytherin house scarf for my Husband.
So I do the research, I buy the materials and I come home and begin, and I find that knitting is fun! That’s right I said it, knitting is fun, but did you know that knitting can hurt? If your reading this blog your probably a knitter and already know this but, KNITTING FRICKIN’ HURTS! I mean it’s knitting, little old ladies do this! And did you know that it’s impossible to get the other needle through the loop to make a stitch? Yes it’s impossible. It’s too tight, and again, pushing the needles up and down to go through the loops, wait for it, HURTS! The tips of my fingers have holes in them from pressing the needles down.
So after a few hours, more than a few curse words, and ALOT of laughing from my Husband, I begin to Google what I’m obviously doing wrong because I’m pretty sure knitting is a non-violent sport and shouldn’t cause my fingers to bleed. I read a few articles, watched a few YouTube videos and figured that my problem is tension. Apparently the trick is to stay loose but use just the right amount of tension so your yarn doesn’t fall off the needles. Oh yeah? Is that the trick? Well your trick sucks cause it’s impossible! Ok ok, I admit it, it’s not impossible, and after about 3 days I finally figured out a nice rhythm where I wasn’t poking holes my fingers or having the yarn fall off the needles. Granted I’m not flying on 90 stitches per minute or anything, but I’m hanging in there.
This next part is where I get to use all the knitting lingo I learned, and I definitely earned the right to use these words. Words like “Frogging“. Oh yes, I frogged, I frogged like 14 times before I finally made some headway, and ok I may have only got a few rows done before I screwed up beyond repair, but hey, I can hold the result in my hand since its more that 2 rows. The next word I now like to use is Tinking. Did you know you don’t have to frog? Virtually destroying all your hard work, but you can tink! Of course you fancy talented knitters did, but I didn’t. Did I say I love YouTube videos for showing me how to tink? (that kinda sounded dirty.) Tinking is now my new best friend, no more ripping up my hard work, I can just slowly undo it instead, which granted still sucks but hell, its not a total do over! So here is my first “real” attempt, it failed (I horked up a row and couldn’t get back on track), but I was so I was proud I took a pic! And, yes, I am completely aware this is the world’s ugliest scarf and not suited to the garter stitch, off to research more on stockinette stitches.
