I’ve been thinking this morning about my “knitting journey.” This fall I’ll hit my 4-year mark from when I started to learn to knit. I have 54 finished projects in my list on Rav, or about one F.O. per month. More than I expected, really. But I’ve never been interested in churning out projects. I’m a lot more interested in learning new things.
Looking at the list that way shows that I’ve been true to my focus; most of those projects are first of a kind for me, or steps in learning, where I’ve done a clumsy first effort and progressed to a harder or more-finished project on the next project of that type. My only ‘gimee’ projects tend to be for charity knitting… for instance, the mittens I made early this year using super-chunky yarn.
I haven’t done anything often enough to get really good at a particular technique, but I don’t believe that learning happens in a linear fashion (at least for me). I seem to learn in a way similar to accretion, where each bit of learning (when it actually sticks) builds a bit more of the structure. So learning to do stranded color work leads to increases in my skill in yarn handling and tension control, and learning to cable helped me learn to ‘read’ my knitting on my lace projects.
Overall, I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made so far. My frustration with my current convertible mittens centers on the feeling that I didn’t push myself. I suspect that I’m going to thin out my queue of any simplistic patterns and focus on things which… after two months or more of work… I’ll be thrilled with, not just happy the project is done.
Some things that have changed for me over four years of knitting:
- I thought that I’d always do simple patterns. Now I look for complexity.
- I thought I’d always use thick yarn. Now I work mostly with fingering weight.
- I loved rugged-looking, uneven yarn at first. Now I love smooth, tightly-wound yarn.
- I used to compulsively buy any yarn that appealed to me. Now I have so much yarn in my stash that I (generally) only buy for specific projects. Any time I think… “ohhh, that yarn is so cool!” I try to remember the ultra-cool skeins lurking in my stash, which have never yet seen a moment of use.
- I thought I was alone being a guy who knits. I’ve discovered a rich community of men who knit, but even more importantly, I’ve discovered that the Charlotte knitting community is incredibly welcoming to male knitters. In fact, I’d say that I’ve had only a tiny percentage of knitters anywhere react to me in anything but a warm and helpful fashion.
What has not changed…
- I still haven’t found time to really learn to spin, nor prep the fleece I have in my stash, nor refinish the spinning wheel. (However, at least I know about these things now!)