Knit One . . . Slowly
I've recently taken up knitting. For a few years, I'd been making noises about wanting to learn, and my aunt gave me some gift certificates to her favorite yarn store for birthdays, etc. But, somehow, we never quite made it around to actually going to pick out yarn and learning to knit. Over the summer, though, we had some family medical issues* that were really stressful and scary, and my aunt decided that I needed something to relax me, something that would help take my mind off things. And she decided that thing was knitting, because apparently it's very relaxing to her.
Here's what I've learned about myself and knitting so far:
My first project.
Warm fuzziness.
Current project. The left front of the ruana.
The cables of which I am ridiculously proud.
*Yes, the scary issues have, thankfully, thankfully, gone away. Hopefully never to return.
Here's what I've learned about myself and knitting so far:
- Knitting is not relaxing. I generally feel like I need two extra hands, especially when learning a new stitch. And, somehow, I keep thinking that getting really good at one stitch should make it easier to learn the next one, but I always end up with that needing-four-hands feeling.
- Knitting doesn't actually help me take my mind off anything. Mainly because I can't just knit. If I try it, I get bored. I need to be doing something else and knitting. Which is problematic because:
- I'm not able to have actual conversations when knitting. If you try to talk to me while I'm knitting, I respond about ten seconds too late to everything, and generally preface that with "Wait untilI I get to the end of this row." Not very sparkling conversation. Also, I miss about half of what anyone says, because I'm counting stitches.
- I can, however, knit and watch/listen to TV shows that I've already seen, as long as they don't have heavy visual interest. So Buffy (especially any episode with Spike in it, because he is of very heavy visual interest) is out. But Star Trek is in. So I've knitted my way though about three seasons of TNG.
- I can also listen to music, so I'm hoping that when we run out of Star Trek, I can get some books on tape and knit while listening to them. Whether I'll be able to get books I've never read before remains to be seen.
- But, all that said, I'm really enjoying it. I feel productive when I'm knitting, and am looking forward to one day being able to make very awesome, fantasy-esque things like this and this. When this will occur, I'm not sure. But I keep telling myself that it will happen.
My first project.
Warm fuzziness.
Current project. The left front of the ruana.
The cables of which I am ridiculously proud.
*Yes, the scary issues have, thankfully, thankfully, gone away. Hopefully never to return.