All Purpose

So I don’t have any pics, and I don’t really have too much knitting updating to do. I’m depressed, I’ve had a rough week. I have been totally slacking on my 365 project I skipped Sun-Wed of this week. I did manage to take a pic yesterday so if I can repeat that today I may be out of my slump there.

I have been working on my second Jitterbug sock. It is not going well. I have no idea how the first sock could have been so relatively easy and this one is so freakin hard. I think I knit and frogged the heel turn like 5-6 times before feeling like I did it right (maybe?) but when I went to pick up my stitches for the gusset (is that right?) I realized I had the whole thing on the needles all cattywonkas and I had seriously fucked something up. I was so pissed I just frogged the whole thing and started over. My reasoning was that I did make a change for the second sock: doing the small size so I should just redo the whole thing as a medium since that worked so much better last time.

I managed to get Ella’s blanket seamed yesterday and was able to measure that I have about 15″ to finish for my first trim piece.

I got my buttons for Ovaltine, but haven’t put them on yet. Maybe after work today, but maybe not since it’s supposed to be 90 (yes 90) degrees today.

M. came home last night (good) but I also got some bad news about my stepmom (bad). So now I’m trying to decide if I’m really want to go to the free shows at Auditorium Shores tonight with my neighbor/friend or if I want to bail because I’m bummed and don’t feel like dealing with the crowd, etc. I actually don’t feel like I should be out enjoying myself after what I heard last night. That’s probably the wrong attitude to take though.

2 Comments | In: gifts, knitting, work in progress | tags: blanket, depression, knitting, ovaltine, socks, sweater, sxsw, work in progress. | #

So I’ve been getting into podcasts a lot lately and I listened to one last night as I finished Ovaltine (DONE!) and I started thinking about how I got started knitting and it made me think that would be a good blog post, probably. I mean how could it be any worse than the normal stuff I put on here.

So I started knitting in 1998. I had quit smoking at the beginning of that year and taken up cross stitch (I know) to keep my hands busy. Then I moved from New Orleans to Missoula, MT and decided that I needed to learn how to knit. I think I was getting bored with cross stitch. So I don’t remember exactly the first think I knit, but I did teach myself using some books + the internet. I made a bunch of people knitted presents that year. I made my first sweater, for my sister, out of some crazy acrylic/mohair Lion’s Brand yarn. She actually still wears it, but recently confessed to me that she’s never been able to actually wear it since the neck opening it so tight it would choke her. She wears it preppy style instead (over the shoulders). I knit most of the time I lived in Montana, but since 1999-2001 included me busting my ass to finish my BA and working as much as possible the knitting tapered off toward my last year there.

Then I moved back to Austin for grad school. You would think grad school would sort of preclude knitting, but I found a lot of would-be librarian’s were getting into knitting so toward the end of my grad school time I started doing more and more knitting. I also discovered better yarn (because really all yarn is intrinsically good right). Then I finished school and I did pretty steady knitting and crocheting (yes I picked up crochet somewhere in there as well, also self-taught) until I got engaged last year. Then I stopped everything. I really didn’t even look at my knitting for 9 months. I never really thought about this until after the fact when I picked it all back up and realized how much I had missed it. Now I am sooooo into it it’s a little scary. Ok, not scary but M. has commented how I’m so into knitting lately, and I am. I think I finally reached the tipping point of seeing myself truely progress as a knitter + starting to understand fundamentals better + Ravelry. Now I’m unstoppable knitting machine.

It’s funny though because I went to a knit class a few weeks ago and most of the people in it were new knitters and I had forgotten how dejected a new knitter can get. It’s really hard at first and it seems like you will never improve, but I’m proof: you will improve it will get easier, it just takes time.

No Comments | In: knitting, ravelry, work in progress | tags: knitting, learning to knit, ovaltine, sweater. | #