Wow. As I write this, Monday's post has been up for less than 24 hours, and there are over 300 comments already!
You all had so many wonderful suggestions and ideas regarding what Knitting Daily
could do to help you be a more fearless (or a more joyful!) knitter.
I've asked our wonderful customer service folks to help me collate all
your responses. Once that's done, I can start putting together a plan
for future Knitting Daily posts which incorporates all that good stuff you suggested. Thank you—and stay tuned for what comes next!
Cap'n Frog keeps an eye on my knitting
Meanwhile,
I am going to distract you with a story of one knitter's attempt to be
fearless, and how it went just a wee bit wrong...and then how it came
out all right in the end again.
We begin our story as our knitter (we'll call her, oh..."Ms. S") is
getting ready in the stupid-thirty hours of the morning to go off and
be interviewed on live TV. Ms. S is facing many new challenges this
day: her first live television interview, having to get up so early,
not being able to have her beloved coffee, and the final indignity:
having to wear makeup for the cameras. Any one of these four would be
enough to bring any sensible knitter to her knees, of course, but our
Ms. S is determined to do her part for the greater good of hockey, charity, and morning TV talk shows.
Ms. S's part in today's TV script is to sit with two other
knitters—the charming Ms. Marin and the wonderful Ms. Mya—and knit on
camera throughout the interview: speaking when spoken to, smiling at
the camera, and of course, not cussing like a sailor into the
microphone. For her live TV knitting debut, Ms. S has brought her
current knitting project with her: Hana Jason's Gathered Pullover.
She feels quite proud of this choice as an on-camera project: She has
the cable pattern memorized, and thus can knit without looking—the
better to be filmed smiling into the camera whilst saying something
witty and informative.
Of course, by now, you know that the hapless Ms. S is none other
than myself—and that our TV knitting heroine is pretty much doomed
somehow.
Marin and Mya were champs. The shots of their skillful knitting
hands were awesome and they both had excellent hair days. I, however,
was struggling with the whole
knit-and-talk-and-smile-and-be-charming-and-wear-makeup all at the same
time routine. When asked what kind of yarn was best for afghans, I
blurted out that wool was great, and that acrylic was well-liked, and
some folks preferred cotton, and oh, yes, blends, blends were good too.
(Why does the earth not open when you want it to? Why?)
The next day, when I pulled out the Gathered Pullover, I found that
I had knit the first 21 rounds of the cable on the front, as
instructed…but somehow, during the glamor of the TV show, I had
miscounted the markers, and oh, heck. The second half of the cable,
rather than being on the front where the first half was, ended up on
the back, in the vicinity of my right shoulder.
It's not supposed to have a cable on the back...
All
right, go ahead: Giggle. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to work up to
admitting this to you all. I'm telling this story because I've learned
something important about myself as a knitter: Sure, I can knit without
looking at my knitting. And sure, I can be charming and live through a
TV interview, makeup and all. But cables and lace and other complicated
patterns need to stay at home when I'm doing several other complex
things at once.
Thus, perhaps the First Pithy Saying of Fearless Knitting is this: Know Yourself.
If you need peace and quiet to knit a particular pattern, then shut the
door and turn off the phone so you can knit your heart out. If you need
to use four dozen markers plus tick marks on a sticky note to count
your stitches, then buy yourself a ton of markers and stickies.Figure out whatever it is that you need to make each knitting session comfortable and successful, and then do exactly that. And if you make a mistake, giggle, figure out what happened and how to fix it, so you can keep on knitting.
On Friday, I'm going to show you how I fixed my mistakes, and got back to knitting a very beautiful sweater for myself.
You can still vote for next week's free pattern!
I've narrowed down the choices to three...and guess what? It's your call from there. Vote for your favorite! The pattern with the most reader votes will be posted next Monday as a free download here on Knitting Daily.
Sandi Wiseheart is the editor of Knitting Daily.
What's on Sandi's needles? Three projects, all of which have
been "learning experiences" for me: the Gathered Pullover, which is now
recovering after a visit from Cap'n Frog; a rather untidily grafted
hood on my husband's pullover that might need some Knitting Daily
magic; and the Secret Knitting Daily project, which also spent some
quality time with Cap'n Frog. (Cap'n Frog is a very important member of
my family by now.)