the good stitch

The Socks on Two Circulars class we took last month did not go well for me. I wasn’t terribly interested in socks in the first place, but wanted to keep taking classes and picking up skills, and wanted to take a class with Jamy and Lee. That was the next class on the schedule that we could all three make.

Then I made a classic rookie mistake and picked a very fine-weight yarn. I was knitting on size two needles to get gauge. That, plus the fact that I have gigantic feet meant that I had eighty stitches per round. Eighty! Another, much more petite woman in class had 54 stitches per round. I secretly hated her.

And then, unbenownst to me, I was coming down with the flu the first day of class. I was miserable and cranky and I didn’t really know why. I came home from class and fell into bed for four days.

Once I returned to the land of the living, I started over with thicker yarn. It put me waaaaaaay behind and knitting furiously.

At the end of the last class, I had a mostly-finished sock in a color I hated that was, because of a measurement error, too big and baggy for my foot. I would have just finished it, but I don’t have enough yarn to make the second sock.

This little post on this little Web site is all that will survive of my sock – I’m going to rip out the stitches and repurpose the yarn. But I still wanted to debut it to the world, because as miserable as I was, I actually created a sock.

• Saturday, September 30
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In reading knitters’ blogs, you notice that people modify the patterns that they’re following to suit their tastes – they’ll change the style of the sleeves or the collar or whatever, to make the sweater one that they’ll really love and wear forever. It’s one of the great things about making your own clothes, rather than buying them. You can make them to suit your own taste.

I’d read recently that this is an great book for learning how to do just that. It goes into incredible detail on all different kinds of sleeves and collars and body shaping and waist styles, and really does make it possible to come up with a sweater that’s perfect in all aspects. So when I saw it in the store last weekend, I bought it without really looking at it too closely.

Unfortunately, when I got it home, I realized that it was targeted more at the knitting rocket scientist than at me. Now, you have to realize, the most complicated project I’ve knitted is the 2×2 rib hat (and I haven’t even made it to the crown decreases yet), so I may not be the best judge. But it’s waaaay too complicated for me. I think I’m going to return it so that it’s available when a more advanced knitter goes looking for it, and I’ll stick to some nice beginner patterns.

• Saturday, March 4
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