Self-teaching

[smarriveurr]

So, there were two Craft Nights in a row in the local shire. Last night, one of the ladies showed ragnvaeig some fingerpuppets she'd wanted to show me, which seemed to be knitted. But I don't knit. ragnvaeig mentioned the universal agreement that learning to knit out of a book is hard. That registered in my brain as a challenge. So somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00 pm

Comments

[risiko]

Welcome to the Imperium! That's a nice lookin' gauge swatch. Try sliping the first stitch of every row to even out the edges.

[smarriveurr]

Wouldn't that be reducing my stitch count though? As it stands, I've got a consistent stitch count, it just grows because of poor tension control. The awkward edging... I'm not yet sure where that's coming from.

[risiko]

Nope. What you do is slip the first stitch and then knit to the end. On the return row, slip the first stitch (which was the last stitch you knitted in the previous row) and purl to the end (including the stitch you slipped in the first row.) Repeat ad nausium. What occurs is the the end stitches are stretched to the height of two rows while all the other stitches are one row tall, but you retain the same number of stitches through out.

[smarriveurr]

Ohhhhh, I get it now. I had to go look up the actual meaning of slipping a stitch, and totally missed the point the first time. Now I see what you mean. Interesting approach - I still feel like I should find out What I'm Doing Wrong, though, as I'm quite sure there's got to be something I've Done Wrong without noticing. Maybe I will pluck up the courage to actually *gasp* ask someone who knows to watch me.

[troubleagain]

Aw, crap. You've already gotten farther than I have.

[smarriveurr]

It's just a small little swatch.

Also, I'm apparently a supergenius.

[troubleagain]

Obviously. I *get* knitting, mentally. I just can't seem to make my hands do it.

[smarriveurr]

If it's any consolation, it's a laborious process for me that involves hands and resting things on my thighs, at the moment. So it's not like I've really got it down either - I've just got a method that produces something approximating a swatch.

[firynze]

Yup, looks like you've got the basics!

I taught myself to knit out of a book. Even learned cabling that way. The only thing I had to be shown was casting on, because the way the book did it was WRONG WRONG WRONG.

[smarriveurr]

I got Knit pretty quick... once I had Purl I figured I could claim to have learned knitting. ;)

I looked at about three different ways to cast on, and learned a fourth at craft night. The book I was learning from was really little help for casting on at all - that obviously makes it harder to learn the stitches, since you don't know what you've got is right.

[firynze]

Cabling is fun. Just wait 'til you hit that point.

I don't knit, because it's slow and hurts my wrists, but my first project was a knit, cabled mockneck sweater for my father. When I learn something, I go big. :-D

[smarriveurr]

See, I just tend to go for something vaguely interesting, but usually relatively small. Like fingerpuppets and cat toys. I seem to recall a Hellboy doll pattern that would use up this rather nasty red yarn I picked up ages back...

[paperkingdoms]

I learned to knit from pictures on the internet. So, not terribly hard. I'm with firynze... it's slow and harder on my wrists than crochet. But cabling *is* cool, as are double-point needles.

[smarriveurr]

*nod* It was more a matter of getting the structure. Once I had the idea of where loops go when they're going... simple. Just need more practice to find out how to hold my hands and such. And yeah, some of the effects you can achieve in knit are just neater than you'd find in crochet. So we'll see if I find an excuse to practice.

[smarriveurr]

One of the reasons I so enjoyed TNOTW was that I totally understood Kvothe, even when I was insanely pissed at him. I was never quite that clever, but I was totally that cocky impatient bastard of a kid prodigy who didn't know the difference between being smart enough to know how to do something and being wise to be trusted to do something.

[smarriveurr]

"Insanely pissed" might not be the right words... I'm just very used to be angry at fictional characters for doing stupid things, and every once in a while I had to remind myself that he wasn't doing a stupid thing, he was a fourteen-year-old doing an unwise thing or an impatient thing or a proud thing. Which, of course, was annoying me in part because it's easy to stop thinking of him as a child and in part because I remember being that child.